University of Northern Iowa

American Eye: Selling out in West Branch, IowaAuthor(s): Jonathan GriffithSource: The North American Review, Vol. 265, No. 2 (Jun., 1980), pp. 4-5Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25125785 .

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AMERICAN EYE The sale has been going on for

several hours when you arrive. You

park down the road at the end of a

long line of cars and trucks. Cormac

McCarthy had it right in his novel, Child of God. "They came like a cara van of carnival folk," he says, describ

ing the sale of the main character's

place. Here it is late February. Al

though the sun is out, the wind still feels raw. Men mill around wearing heavy coats, bib overalls and boots.

For several weeks, the ground has

been going through its daily cycle of freeze and thaw, at best giving a

spongy feeling to the grass, at worst

miring boots in rolls of brown mud. The farm is typical of Iowa, typi

cal of many farms in the Midwest. The house is painted white, two

stories, with black tar paper nailed

along the bottom of the north side. Bales of straw have been stacked around the foundation for insulation.

Iowa has just gone through one of its fiercer winters, and years of fence

to-fence farming have reduced the

number of trees that block the wind. A few out-buildings gape open

where various pieces of equipment, rolls of wire and twisted metal, are

stored. A barn sits to the south, typi

cally painted red, but the paint is blis

tered, a sign, country wisdom as

sumes, of carelessness or abuse. For

the sale's purposes, a hay-rack has

been pulled up to the yard light. On the bed in boxes and sacks are the fast

items, hand tools, twine, a vise un

bolted from its work bench. The only woman at the sale vends coffee and

sandwiches from the rear of a camper, and you realize such a sale is still a

male's proposition in rural Iowa, that

even the farmer's wife hasn't come

out to see how it's going.

Following the crowd, you find the farmer who is selling out. Un

typically, he appears to be close to

thirty, red-haired and wearing grease-stained coveralls. He's trailed

by what looks like his younger brother, a freckled version of himself. He says little, mostly stands there to answer questions about equipment: did he buy an auger new? how much

water does a tank hold? There is a tension between the auctioneer and

the farmer that you can see in his

eyes, the self-effacing look of the de feated that struggles not to rise to

anger; does so only once, when late in

Selling Out

in

West Branch,

Iowa

the sale, a tractor doesn't get the price he wants.

"I can't sell it for less than ten

thousand," he mutters to the auc

tioneer. On his side, there are the

debts he needs to pay. On the auc

tioneer's side, there is the percentage

he takes from the receipts. He is a

large man, face pitted and eyes wa

tery from the cold. Someone laughs in the back of the crowd; another

spits to the ground already churned to

mud by their boots. "He can't sell it for less than ten,

Gentlemen," he says. The farmer

looks down at the ground, still angry.

He knows the shame is part of it be cause the auctioneer has been work

ing his failure, selling equipment he'd patched and painted for prices even he would have paid, knowing they had to have bargains to keep the crowd there.

"He won't sell for less than ten,"

the auctioneer says again. His cane

goes up like a dog's tail. "We'll begin at ten then. Anyone give me ten?" he

says, not yet in the rhythm, not yet

driving the price by the mixture of

bullying and good humor that has held them with him all day.

"Anyone give me ten? Brand new tractor. Bought just last year."

A drunk man slips. His eyes are

red-rimmed, and he curses the mud

that has smeared up his thigh. "How many hours you work it,

son?" the auctioneer says, no longer i

into the microphone, but still loud

enough for those crowded in to hear. The farmer mumbles a number,

and you hear the disgust break out

from the center like waves.

Seven hundred. You drove it too

much, the silence says.

But it's brand new, the farmer ar

gues back silently, you see what else I | got. I had to use something good.

"We'll start at ten. Anyone give me ten," the auctioneer's voice is

tense now, the crowd no longer look

ing at his face. There is about them |

the quality of cattle huddled against a | windbreak. The voice is more I

rhythmical, as if to tell them it's time to begin. "We'll start at ten, ten, ten.

|

Anyone give me ten? No ten? How I about helping this fella out?" The last stated plainly, more out of disgust than as a plea.

You drove it too much, the silence

says. You drove it too much, and you

didn't even know how to farm. Any one could have told you not to buy new equipment, but you wouldn't

listen. You wanted everything too

quickly, and now you want us to help | you out.

"No ten? You want to come

down, son?" This said quietly, but it ? is his first sign of anger all day. You find yourself hunkering like the

others, trying not to stare at another's

shame.

The farmer looks at him, then shakes his head.

"Leave it for later, Lester," the

auctioneer tells his assistant.

They sell the last of the equip ment quickly, two smaller tractors

and an auger and bin. You wander to a

garage where bank employees are

taking checks. Beneath a card table, a

portable heater blasts warm air.

"Do all right?" you ask a clerk you recognize, and he gives a shrug.

"Too late in the year to make

much," he says. "Most folks already

got their equipment set for spring." Tractors are firing, and you go out

to watch as they one after another ram

through a mud hole. It is the only way to a pasture where they load just

bought stock tanks and feeding | troughs. Each time the mud folds I

4 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/June 1980

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back and sucks at the wheels. At last, a pick-up slides into it and spins up to its axle in slop.

"Why did he sell?" you ask a farmer you know. Arvo Uuskallio is a Finnish immigrant who lives nearby. Over eighty, he's seen farming change continually since the time he

came to West Branch and bought a few acres to begin.

"I tell you," he says coming closer. "His family quit backing him.

They wanted him out." His answer is too much for him, and he stands off, shaking his head. "What you going to do if your family don't help you?" he

says nearly spitting the words. His

eyes begin to water, and you realize it

is as much from the agitation as from

the cold. "I tell them that, too."

"It's too bad," you say to calm

him, and he shakes his head.

"Yah," he whispers. "Too bad." ? Jonathan Griffith

ANTECEDENTS

"He ain't your real father,"

he says of the man he has displaced. The words hang over the saw's slurr

and the hiss of wind

until the stovelength cut of maple clunks on the pile and we pause to begin again.

"If you don't believe me,

ask your mother," he says,

not satisfied with the way his words

seem sloughed-off in the wind

and my silence. He can't see,

here in the lee of the shed

where snowflakes slant down easy

and the dark closes in

on our corner of light,

how my left hand on the log between us

tenses to leap at his face

and split it

like dry pine.

Nights, years,

go by like this. She waits for him

to come thumbing through the cold

from the garage in town,

her body-man,

with his battered hands and his drink.

Supper waits in the warming-oven

if no one gives him a lift.

She loves us both, but for him that's one too many.

He's a man who needs it all

to take him out of the terror

of his dreams.

After supper, now,

he's telling me this again in another way. What he tells me

as we cut wood for tomorrow's fires

is no lie but truth used

to do the devil's work.

We pull the pulpsaw between us

in silence, for an hour, two;

then he splits and I carry, the double-bitted axe flashing

wild in the light above us.

I'm thirteen this winter

in which I've learned I'm fatherless,

that meanness can breed

at the root of sex, that

the man I share my labor with

is down-deep mean, that someday

his meanness in me

will make both of us bleed.

Eric Trethewey

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/June 1980 5

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