The gravel in our farm drive always crunched a certain way under the tires of my old pickup truck, a dry, rattly sound I could pick out from a hundred yards. But on that Tuesday morning, my truck stayed parked in the machine shed because the transmission had finally given up the ghost after three hundred thousand miles of hauling feed and pulling disc harrows.
I didn’t want to mess with fixing it anymore. I needed something that would start every single time I turned the key, something with four-wheel drive that could handle the drift banks when the lake effect snow came howling across Marathon County.
I pulled on my everyday clothes. That meant a nine-dollar navy blue pocket tee I bought off the rack at the local supercenter three years ago, a pair of worn Levi’s with a grease smudge near the right knee from changing a hydraulic hose last Friday, and my old brown work boots with the toes scuffed down to the gray leather. I reckon I looked like every other retired dairy hand who comes into town to pick up binder twine and a cup of lukewarm gas station coffee. I didn’t care much about looking presentable. A man at my age spends less time worrying about his reflection and more time worrying about whether his hip is going to ache before it rains.
The dealership downtown had a tall glass storefront that caught the noon sun and bounced it back out onto the blacktop. Inside, polished concrete floors reflected rows of shiny new vehicles sitting under expensive recessed lighting that hummed like a nest of hornets. I walked through the double glass doors, the cool conditioned air hitting my face with a faint smell of new carpet and tire rubber. A young fellow with slicked-back hair and a sharp gray suit was leaning against the reception desk, tapping away on the screen of his phone with both thumbs. He didn’t look up when the door chimes went off. I stood there for a good twenty seconds waiting for him to acknowledge me, but he just kept right on tapping.
“Morning,” I finally said.
He lifted his chin, his eyes sweeping down from my graying hair, past my faded pocket tee, and resting squarely on the scuffed toes of my work boots.
A little smirk flickered at the corner of his mouth, the kind of look my grandfather used to give a calf that was born crooked. He slipped his phone into his trousers pocket and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Can I help you with something, old-timer?” he asked, his tone dripping with the kind of practiced condescension that only comes from working on straight commission in a wealthy county. “If you’re looking for the service department, that’s around back by the alley. Parts desk closes at noon.”
I looked past him toward the center of the showroom floor where a massive dark gray SUV sat on a rotating platform. A small placard on the windshield listed the sticker price at ninety-two thousand, four hundred and fifty dollars. It had leather seats, four-wheel drive, and enough engine under the hood to pull a loaded flatbed out of a muddy pasture.
“I’m not looking for service,” I said, keeping my voice level and quiet. “I’m looking at that one right there on the platform.”
The salesman let out a short, dry laugh that sounded like gravel rattling in a tin can. He shook his head and took a step closer, as if he needed to make sure I wasn’t tracking mud onto his imported floor tiles.
“That’s the Yukon Denali XL,” he said, speaking slowly like he was explaining the alphabet to a slow learner. “That’s not really a browsing vehicle for folks on a Sunday drive. Maybe start with something over on the used lot out back. We’ve got some trade-ins from about ten years ago that might be closer to your speed. Or your budget.”
He didn’t know a blessed thing about me. He didn’t know that my family had cleared those timber-heavy ridges back when the county was still just a scattering of logging camps. He didn’t know that the timber rights alone on my south section had cleared three times the price of that truck when the paper mill bought them out two autumns ago. He just saw a man in a nine-dollar shirt and made his calculation.
I didn’t argue with him. Arguing with a fool is like wrestling a pig in the mud, as my mother used to say; after a while you figure out the pig enjoys it. Instead, I reached into the front pocket of my jeans, pulled out a standard business-sized envelope, and laid it squarely on the center of the clean laminate counter. I tapped it once with my index finger.
“There’s a cashier’s check inside from the First National Bank of Wausau,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “Drawn for the full sticker price, plus tax, title, and licensing. Made out to this dealership. You can run the numbers right now if you’ve got a mind to.”
The salesman looked down at the envelope. His smirk didn’t vanish entirely, but it turned tight and sour around the edges. He reached out with two fingers, hooked the corner of the envelope, and slid it toward himself. He pulled the flap open, peeked inside at the blue-tinted security paper, and read the figures written in the bank teller’s neat cursive hand. His eyebrows went up about an inch, and the color in his cheeks shifted from ruddy to a pale, unhealthy gray. He cleared his throat, but no words came out right away.
“Now look here,” he started, his voice losing that bright, mocking edge it had a minute ago. “I didn’t mean any disrespect. I just thought…”
“You thought wrong,” I said.
Instead of waiting for him to stumble through an apology, I turned around, pushed through the glass doors, and stepped back out into the bright afternoon sunlight. The air smelled of exhaust and damp ditch grass. I reached into my pocket, pulled out my old flip phone, and punched in a seven-digit number I knew by heart. It rang twice before a familiar voice answered on the other end.
“Arthur,” Richard said, before I could even get a word out. “You ready for me to bring the trailer around?”
“Richard,” I said quietly, keeping my eyes on the reflection of the showroom window where the young salesman was currently pressing his face against the glass. “I’m standing inside the downtown Ford and GM place. The boy with the slick hair just told me to check the bargain lot out back for a trade-in. Bring yourself down here. And bring that folder with the municipal fleet contracts we negotiated last month.”
“I’ll be there in three minutes,” Richard said. The line went dead with a sharp click.
I walked back inside the air-conditioned showroom. The young salesman was still standing by the counter, holding my cashier’s check like it was a live copperhead snake. Two other salesmen had drifted over from the desk near the back office, sensing something was sideways. They were whispering among themselves, casting sideways glances at my scuffed work boots and my faded pocket tee.
“Sir,” the slick-haired fellow began, his voice pitching up an octave. “Look, let’s not make a big production out of this. I was only joking around. We get a lot of tire-kickers on Tuesdays, “
The double doors swung open behind me with a heavy pneumatic hiss. Richard walked in, wearing his customary charcoal-gray three-piece suit that he only ever wore to county board meetings or bank board sessions. Richard is seventy-two years old, carries himself like a retired cavalry colonel, and happens to own three of the largest timber-hauling outfits in the upper half of the state. He didn’t look at the salesmen at all. He walked straight across the polished concrete floor, his leather heels clicking a sharp rhythm that silenced every whisper in the room. He stopped right in front of me, reached out a hand with heavy gold signet ring on the pinky, and shook mine firmly.
“Arthur,” Richard said, loud enough to echo off the high steel rafters. “Sorry I took a minute. Had to lock the safe in the back office.”
“That’s all right, Richard,” I said. “We’ve got business to attend to here.”
Richard turned his gaze slowly from me to the group of three salesmen standing behind the counter. His eyes were the pale, washed-out blue of a winter sky over Lake Michigan, and when he looked at people, they usually found something very interesting to look at on their own shoes. He laid a thick leather portfolio down on the counter right on top of my cashier’s check.
“Which one of you boys was helping my partner here?” Richard asked, his voice dripping with an easy, dangerous politeness.
The slick-haired salesman swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a cork in rough water. He pointed a trembling finger at himself, looking smaller by the second.
“I was,” he squeaked.
Richard nodded slowly. He opened the portfolio, pulled out a thick sheaf of legal-sized paper with the county letterhead across the top, and let it rest under his hand.
“Well,” Richard said, looking around the room at the service desk clerks and the middle-aged manager who had just poked his head out of the glass-walled office in the back. “My name is Richard Vance. My company and Arthur’s family trust purchase our commercial fleet vehicles and heavy transport trucks through this dealership group every three years. Last cycle, that totaled fourteen units. This morning, we were planning to finalize the paperwork for the next sixteen units, coming to roughly one point eight million dollars in cash transactions.”
The entire showroom went so quiet you could hear the compressor on the soda machine humming in the corner.
Richard tapped the corner of the municipal contract with his thumb. “And seeing as how my associate here was told to go look at the bargain lot out back for a trade-in, I figure we can just take our business eighty miles north to the dealership in Rhinelander. They’ve been trying to earn our account for five years anyway.”
The manager came bursting out of his office, his face the color of a ripe plum, buttoning his suit jacket as he moved. “Richard! Now hold on just a minute. Let’s not say things we can’t take back. What in the world is going on out here?”
Richard didn’t look at the manager. He just looked at the young salesman, whose face had gone completely slack, the arrogant smirk replaced by the desperate, hunted look of a dog that knew it was cornered.
“Your boy here has a very sharp eye for customer service,” Richard said smoothly. “He judged a man by his shirt and cost his boss a million-eight in municipal sales before lunch.”
I reached across the counter, picked up my cashier’s check from beneath Richard’s portfolio, and folded it twice before sliding it back into my shirt pocket.
“Come on, Richard,” I said, turning toward the glass doors. “Let’s go find a truck somewhere they know how to treat a customer who doesn’t mind paying cash.”
We walked out into the afternoon air, leaving the sound of raised voices and shouting behind us in the glass box. My old truck was still dead in the machine shed, but for the first time all day, I didn’t mind the walk home one bit.
