How Two Extra Jobs and Forty Thousand Dollars Bought the Old Miller Farm

“Do I hear twenty-six?”

“Twenty-six,” Nate said.

Vance turned his head slowly, his narrow eyes taking in the grease-stained cuffs of Nate’s coveralls and his worn work boots.

“Twenty-seven,” Vance said.

“Twenty-eight,” Nate said.

“Thirty,” Vance called out, turning his shoulder completely away from us toward the auctioneer.

“Thirty-one,” Nate said.

A man on the step below turned around to look at Nate, his eyebrows raised.