I went to the auction yard in Davidson that Friday afternoon for one simple reason: to buy a stock tank. Our old galvanized one had rusted through, and after twenty-two years of marriage, I had learned not to wait for things to get fixed. I was sixty-four, wearing my navy church shoes because I had just returned from the hospital in Regina, where my husband, Virgil, lay unconscious after suffering a stroke. I was halfway across the machinery yard when something caught my eye. At the end of the third row stood an old Farmall M. I recognized its rear wheels immediately, especially the homemade wheel weights Virgil had poured himself during our first winter together. Then I saw the tiny silver thumbprint in the red paint on the left rim. He had made that mark himself and called it his signature. I had watched him touch it for luck before every parade for twenty-two years.
A paper tag swung from the wheel, tied with green baling wire from our own barn. It read: LOT 35. I stared at it, unable to understand why my husband’s tractor was sitting in an auction yard. A young man nearby casually admired the machine and asked whether I planned to bid. I barely heard him. All I could say was, “That tractor isn’t supposed to be here.”
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