“I have a bid of three hundred five thousand dollars,” Denny said.

“Do I hear three hundred and ten?”

The land company man took his hands out of his pockets.

He pulled out his cell phone and stared at the bright screen.

He was running a quick calculation on the corporate profit margins for farmland leasing.

I kept my arm raised.

The white card fluttered in the gusting wind.

I had an old dental scaler tucked in my left pocket, a broken one I used for scraping paint around the house.