The auction clerk had handed it to me thirty minutes earlier, after I signed a stack of heavy liability paperwork at a plastic folding table.

The edge of the cardboard was sharp against my bare thumb.

I lifted the white rectangle up to my collarbone.

Denny pointed the gavel straight at my nose.

“I have two hundred thousand right here in the front,” Denny called out.

“Do I hear two hundred and ten?”

A man standing at the edge of the crowd gave a small nod.

He wasn’t a local farmer.