Cecil had woken that morning and asked, in a cracked whisper, whether anyone had fed the cattle. The nurse called me, and I had asked Dwight to pass along the news only if the bidding stalled. Travis stood in the dirt with his hands hanging at his sides and said nothing. The old farmer, whose name was Harlan, told him gently that a man who sells his father’s life’s work will never get it back.

Travis broke down right there. He admitted he owed nearly twenty thousand dollars on his truck and had been too ashamed to ask for help. He had told himself his father would never need the tractor again, and the words had sounded worse every time he repeated them. Dwight pulled lot forty-one from the sale, and two farmers offered to haul it home on a flatbed that same afternoon, free of charge.

We drove to the hospital together, Travis in the back seat, silent. Cecil cried when he saw his son, and he squeezed Travis’s hand. Months later, after Cecil came home, he and Travis worked a whole winter getting the Farmall ready for the parade. Travis got a job at the feed mill and paid back every cent he had borrowed. This Labour Day, Cecil drove the tractor down Main Street, with his son riding beside him.