Horror - Novelette

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Proper Farmer Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

PROPER FARMER

Adrian Zucker sank beneath the weight of his father’s hand. Heavy how it was heavy when he was a child. Adrian had reached his father’s height at seventeen, passed it by the day he graduated, and reached his father’s weight by age twenty-three, passed it with visits to the gym by twenty-five.

And still, that hand weighed a lifetime of tons.

“Proud of you, boy, really becoming a man.” David Zucker kneaded the muscles of Adrian’s neck. “Now, you just get a few young ones running around…”

They stood on the doorstep of the newly inhabited farmstead. It was a fixer upper. All lived-in farms are, once they hit the market. The barn was more than one hundred years old; gaps between the boards seemed to ooze shadows into the daylight. A shed, newer and steel, sat between the house and the barn, in need of a fresh splashing of red. There was a Ford 8210 tractor with harmless rust in the huge white rims and gathering around the chrome of the side mirrors and the greasy PTO shaft. Tractors aren’t like cars. That steel would take decades of rusting before it did any real harm.

“Maybe start with a dog, I suppose,” Adrian said.

“Sure, then you can get yourself a proper tractor.” David laughed.

Adrian grew up with his brothers, sisters, and mother on David’s farm—his siblings had all moved west, where the pastures were bigger. By default, farms seemed to belong to fathers only. An ingrained Christian trait trickling endlessly. Adrian thought Gloria would laugh if he ever suggested such a thing of their recent purchase.

Along with ancient traits, families followed colors. The Zuckers were Deere people. They bled green. Growing up on a John Deere farm put Adrian in a prime position when he graduated college and sent a resume to Burke Farm Supply. A week after the first interview, Adrian started on the sales floor, his shirt grey with green pinstripes and a John Deere crest over his heart.

That was six years earlier. It had been a great start to inching toward his father’s expectations. The farm was even better, a second step.

“You can bet your first cut, I’ll be upgrading sooner than later,” Adrian said and smiled an honest smile. Planted and rooted, the notion that a green tractor was undeniably better than a blue tractor was something that went unquestioned.

“That’a boy.”

—

“Zucky, come check this out!” Reid Burke shouted from his office.

It was eighty-eight days since Adrian had moved onto the farm and ninety-nine days since mentioning he’d soon need a model 7350 or a 7130 or something thereabouts to his boss.

Adrian took his coffee mug from the station and stepped into the office. Reid was behind the computer, his absurd, square, serial killer glasses reflecting the image of a tractor in a yard.

“What you got?”

Reid pointed as Adrian rounded. “That’s your babe. Just got it from the bank, coming in later today. You knew Brian Dickson.”

Sure Adrian knew Brian. He’d jumped a million hoops trying to get the right options onto a used 7630. He had the paperwork ready once there and went out to the Dickson farm for a signature on the dotted line. Brian had gone to an auction, picked up an almost identical tractor as the one on the Burke lot.

“Prick,” Adrian hissed.

Reid grinned. “No doubt, but that’s between us. He’s died, suddenly, like last week I mean, and according to the bank, he actually got the deal he told you he had. Look’it, oh-nine, two owners, nine hundred hours, clean all over, and the bank wanted only to even out as quick as possible.”

“That’s not right.” Adrian pointed to the screen. The price was $19,450. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Apparently nothing. It passed a complete PTO to grill before the auction, trying to drive up buyers. For some reason, none of the locals wanted it and no dealerships jumped on it. Beats me.”

“Jesus, you’re going to make a killing.”

“Am not.”

“You’re not?” Adrian straightened his back, catching on quickly. “How much?”

“Oh hell, an old Ford on trade and an even five ought to do it. There’s what six thousand on that old Ford of yours?”

“Closer to seven. I’ll run to the bank at lunch. Jesus, Reid, this means a ton to me.” Adrian held off licking his lips. It was one hell of a fine tractor. “I’ll drive the Ford in tomorrow morning.” The smile began to stretch on his face.

“Try to push some sales this week, make up for what I could’ve gotten.” Reid knew more about the tractor than he said and he wasn’t losing all that much, but there was no sense getting into all that.

—

“That’s fantastic. Can we afford it?” Brenda Zucker sat across the table. A couple glasses of water, and a fresh out of the oven freezer pizza steamed between them.

“I can’t imagine not taking this deal. That tractor’s worth closer to a hundred grand.”

“Something wrong with it then? How much do you have to put into it?”

Adrian was no fool and he thought hard all day on that. The price was too good to be without a hitch, but he couldn’t ask Reid, that might appear ungrateful. “We’ll have to see, but apparently it’s in fine condition.”

Brenda nodded, she did not understand the Green obsession, but it was a quirk of farming. “All we’ll have to do then is get pregnant and we’re a regular farm family. That’s about it, eh?”

Adrian bit into a slice to hide a grimace. He hated children and he’d watched Brenda close enough over the years to catch deviations. Twice she’d given up on the pills without acknowledging it but jumped back on them with some mysterious change of mind.

—

The old Ford rolled at twenty-four miles an hour over the gravel backroads that connected the Zucker farm to Burke Farm Supply. It took a little less than an hour to cover the distance.

The stereo in the Ford barely overpowered the engine’s din that seeped in around the cracked seams and the loose dash column, and the creak of the seat as it bounced like hotel bedsprings in and out of every pothole. Adrian heard none of these sounds. Did not hear the AM country station permanently tuned on the dial.

He was in a fog of excitement. It would be a very long day, thinking, aching to get the tractor home, hitch onto a plow and revisit a field already carved for spring seeding. To pay back the assumed favor done by Reid Burke, he called thirty-four seemingly interested farmers who’d come in months earlier but slipped away without lifting a checkbook.

He pulled the Ford through the wire mesh gates and parked next to the wash bay. It was the first stop for all used equipment. Inside he created a work order on the wash attendant’s list and then closed his laptop. He sent a text to the newest salesman, a peppy, irritating relative of Reid Burke, asking for a quick ride back to his house whenever it was convenient.

The text came back: I gotta prep these mowers!!!

The mowers didn’t need prepping. They were mowers, the farm machinery equivalent of chocolate bars at the checkout line, in commission anyway. Young Mr. Burke was, at best, an idiot and, at worst, detrimental to business.

What had started as a question became a demand. Do them when we get back.

“You bought that sweet sixty-three-twenty coming in, huh?” Walter Burke said, foot pinned in a company truck, barreling down the slim gravel road toward the Zucker farm.

“Seventy-six-thirty, but yep.”

“Seventy-six-thirty, that’s what I said.”

“What’s the rush?” Adrian gripped the grimy door handle. When it was much newer, it had been his truck. Once the boss purchased a new truck, Adrian took the top salesman’s ride and passed down his truck. That was two trucks ago. “Slow down, I saw a fox the other morning out here.”

“Ten points for a fox. Twenty points for a groundhog.”

“Right.” Adrian stared out the window. At least pushing these speeds shortened the ride.

“I hear that Dickson blew his brains out in that tractor and that’s why nobody wanted it.” Walter fiddled with the radio dial as he spoke, eyes seemingly everywhere but on the road. “Need a new rear window in it, Uncle Reid put a work order in for that yesterday morning. Must be some whore of a mess after something like that, huh?”

Adrian forgot the speed. This was news. He weighed a suicide ride for about five seconds before deciding it was his luck. What bothered him more was the right assumption that Reid Burke was a salesman long before a friendship ever came to mind. That tractor would be impossible to sell.

“Think the bank cleaned it up? ‘Cause I don’t. You gonna make Rudy clean out the brains and shit?”

“Jesus, you’re one uncouth asswipe, aren’t you?” Adrian hoped to hell that the bank had cleaned it up.

“Huh?” Walter wheeled in the half-mile lane.

“Forget it, thanks for the ride.” Adrian swung open the door of the eight-year-old Dodge. He climbed into the 2016 GM and started the engine. The face in the rearview suggested that maybe the suicide in the cab of his new tractor did bother him a little bit. Enough that he would never mention it to Brenda.

It was a hell of a deal nonetheless. A smart farmer couldn’t afford to pass on a deal.

—

The lip of the bridge’s foundation wore a splash of glistening scarlet. The front wheel of the black Huffy bicycle spun in a way that seemed like forever. Adrian’s mouth moved like a cow chewing cud. A low wheeze whined up from his throat.

Arnie Henderson and Adrian had been playing bumper wheels, but that was in town, and minutes earlier. Arnie was bigger and rough, he’d knocked Adrian from his Supercycle twice, but never fell himself.

Adrian followed back out toward their farms, eyes pinned on Arnie’s tires. He didn’t like the boy much, it was a friendship of proximity, and right then, he was mad as hell. He’d swore five times under his breath, words that would’ve put a tan on his ass had his mother heard him.

He whispered, “You shithead,” as he hopped up and stomped the pedals to gain on the cruising boy ahead of him. At the moment of rubber on rubber impact, Arnie had lifted his hands and put them behind his head. He did this to show off and irritate Adrian.

Adrian couldn’t bike with no hands.

The contact was perfect. Arnie tipped and skidded. The Huffy’s front wheel found a pothole and the boy flew. His hands slapped against the stone and cement edges of a uniform corner of bridge foundation. The top of his head connected with the triangular edge.

The sound was dull, like snapping a wet twig. Immediately, Arnie’s right leg began to dance in the long grass. Adrian fell from his bike then as he braked with too much demand. The fall stung in his wrists and knees.

“Arnie? Arnie?” Adrian crawled, avoiding that jitterbugging limb. He yanked the boy back. As if pulling a plug from the bathtub, the flow gushed from the flappy hunk of skull. Arnie’s eyes were half open, bulbs rolling, both leaning away from center as if drifting from one another.

“Arnie?” This came out in a gasp. Adrian climbed over the dying boy and tried to force the crumbled bit of skull and scalp back into place over the bloody grey matter. Moving the flesh and bone made gushy noises and Adrian gagged.

Arnie’s leg danced until there was nothing left.

As a boy and a teen, Adrian wore a quiet guilt. He’d told the paramedics, and later the cops and his parents, that Arnie was going no hands and hit a pothole, which was not a complete lie.

He hadn’t thought of Arnie Henderson in years but seeing that hunk of brain nestled in a greasy crook next to the parking brake as the delivery driver dropped off the machine brought it back in a full-bodied rush. He was there again and the fantastic excitement he felt as the flatbed lowered the tractor outside his office window turned sour.

“Did they clean it out?”

Adrian looked over his shoulder at Walter. “Why don’t you take a hike.”

“Huh?”

“Get the fuck outta here!”

Walter backed away. “Whoa, man. What’d I say?”

“Go away, shine your mowers. Maybe shine the extras. Extras are how you make money, you dumb shit.”

Adrian climbed into the machine, sank into the like-new leather seat and was okay again. The wheel beneath his hands had a calming effect. He turned the key and the tractor came to life. It was a comparatively quiet machine, even lacking a back window. On the floor behind him, between the seat and the taped plastic, were shards of glass and spilled blood, bits of human gore.

Arnie’s rolling eyes flashed anew.

Adrian put the tractor in gear, depressed the parking brake without looking at it, and drove to the wash bay.

—

“Weren’t nothing.” Gary King had a Matinee gold dangling from his cracked lips. “You remember the Hollis kid? That silly fucker run out in front of the combine, remember? That was one of Reid’s sales, did in-house financing, quit after that one came back.”

“That’s why we stopped doing in-house?” Adrian was intrigued, never guessed he’d learn something from this semi-civilized hillbilly.

“That’s right. Well that combine come back and I had to clean it. Found a goddamned finger in the teeth. I told Reid, asked him if I should collect parts in case the family wanted to bury them. He said to use the shop-vac and don’t mention it. He give me a sixty ouncer of Gibson’s Finest that payday. Flesh bonus.” Gary grinned around the cigarette.

“There wasn’t too much—” Adrian started to say, but Gary interrupted.

“Other good one was the Lemieux bailer. That one went to auction too. Auctions out of town is the only way to sell a killer machine. I found an eyeball in the bit of hay rammed in the feeder. Dried and stringy, took me a minute to figure it out. Like a raisin by then, all wrinkles, and the veins or whatever were like swamp grass. There were nine empty beer bottles around the fucking work platform. Imagine how many there must’ve been in the cab of the tractor!”

“Crazy,” Adrian said. What else was there to say? “Do you have the work order for the glass, or Tim?”

“That one’s in our joint list, but I can put aside those skid steers that come in ‘til tomorrow.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“No worries. You want to see the stuff I vacuumed? I sometimes like to guess what shit is what; guess it’s all noggin meat?”

Adrian shook his head. “No, I think that might just spill my lunch.”

Gary took a deep drag and exhaled. “You get used to it. Farming’s a killer, you ain’t careful.”

—

After pre-selling three snow blower attachments and a loader attachment, Adrian rushed to the liquor store and came away with bottle for Gary. Back at the shop, Gary accepted the sixty ounces of Gibson’s Finest without a word, only nodded. It seemed hardly enough given what those hunks of Dickson brought to Adrian’s mind.

He climbed into the tractor—leaving his truck at the shop—and started the trip home. The radio was fantastic, almost futuristic by comparison. Digital, CD, auxiliary input, Sirius Radio ready. Adrian hadn’t thought about the radio until he was a half-mile from the shop and a familiar voice spoke over the pre-set station.

“I told you this before. This is going to be the new economic challenge for America: people. Baby boomers are retiring, I did my part, but we need to have higher birth rates in this country.” The voice was Paul Ryan, his message stuck on repeat for nearly a year, and it made Adrian’s skin crawl. He hit the search button.

“Coming up we’ve got some Kenny Chesney, but first, The Oak Ridge Boys with Thank God for Kids.”

Adrian stabbed the scan button again.

“Is that how a man acts? Is that what a man does? No!”

Adrian’s foot lifted and the tractor rocked and then stalled in the middle of the skinny, vacant, gravel road. That voice, those words.

“When your father tells you something, you listen!”

The voice fizzled away and Adrian licked his lips: a memory, one of many featuring a red-faced father who smelled of manure, screaming at a cowering Adrian. It came like the surf lapping at the shore. In and out, images. That voice, those words, as if it bubbled, embossed, emboldened, and of physical mass weighing on him.

“I’m trying!” Adrian shouted.

His cellphone vibrated in his pocket. As he’d done thousands of times before, he planked one side of his body straight to retrieve the phone from his pants. It was a text message from Brenda: Call as soon you get this!

—

The memories brought about by the tractor were all gone. The funeral became the world and he had to do so much. His mother was two years in the ground, his sisters were a mess, and his brother was still travelling while decisions had to be made about the casket and the notifications, and there were so many little things, picking food, picking pallbearers, picking flowers, picking psalms.

According to the doctor, David Zucker got word of the advanced pancreatic cancer two months earlier. By then, it was a hand with a million fingers, reaching and touching and spoiling. The man had had back pain and an irritated stomach, but that was all.

David did not awaken the morning the tractor arrived on the Burke Farm Supply lot. His cows screamed for feed and went on screaming until that afternoon when Peter York, a man from down the road, stopped by to borrow a tool. He found the hungry cows and the unanswered text messages and phone calls a big enough suggestion to enter the home uninvited.

It wasn’t until the pastor began into the finale of the service after the casket fell beneath view that Adrian recalled the moment he heard his father’s voice over the radio. Adrian had always scoffed at the notions of spirituality and the supernatural, even church.

“An insane thing happened last Wednesday,” Adrian said. The service was done. Folks had hit the road. Cards and food containers filled the kitchen, not so many, Adrian supposed, as had it been his wife in that box. “I heard Dad’s voice on the radio.”

“What?” Brenda lay on her back, staring into the dark space between couch and ceiling.

“I heard him, right before you texted.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

After a pause, Brenda asked, “What’d he say?”

“Nothing really. I mean he didn’t say he was dead, didn’t impart any wisdom. It was more like a memory. You know how he would say stuff about a man’s man.”

“That’s creepy.”

“Right?” Adrian had never confessed the anguish his father caused. He would never confess that having dead parents seemed like a weight lifted, but somehow also a building strain. His father couldn’t demand of him ever again. His father’s memory was a legacy with expectations. The points flipped and flopped.

In bed, Adrian was almost asleep when Brenda said, “I guess with our piece of the inheritance, we can afford kids now.”

Adrian’s eyes blinked wide and the words readied to suffocate him with undeniable accuracy. The last holdout was gone. “I suppose so.” He rolled onto his side, facing away from Brenda.

—

“Don’t be long. If we’re going to make a baby, there’s a certain thing we’ve got to do.” Brenda’s index finger and thumb played with the button of her jeans, pout on her lips.

It was a sick mockery of something he used to enjoy. Before it was half-hearted foolery, but this was wide-open admittance that he was a tool. As it was, on the rare occasion they did roll in the sheets, she treated him like a masturbatory fixture, writhing on top of him, kneading a breast, fingering her clitoris, ignoring him until she needed her asshole touched. In a cosmic joke, it had begun that he was the less likely figure to finish. According to stand-up comedians, evening sitcoms, and New Yorker fiction, this was impossible.

“Right, well, I’ll be quick as I can.” Adrian pulled the door closed behind him. He’d had the tractor a week and mounted the Quicke loader with the bale spear fitting, using the machine as much as he could, given the season. Mostly, he drove it around and felt a bit more himself all the time, or rather the him he needed to be.

Twenty-nine beef cows rushed to the yard feeders as Adrian dropped the round bale from the spear. It took sixteen minutes and he needed to kill however long it took to let Brenda’s mood fizzle.

A decent dusting had settled on the interior of the tractor since Gary cleaned it and Adrian rolled to the shed where there was likely some Armor All. There aren’t many surfaces to shine in a tractor. This meant Adrian’s attention stretched miles beyond necessary. The steering wheel was slick and reflective. The left panel and every yellow knob gleamed.

When he turned to the right, he noticed the owner’s manual in a plastic bag. It was leather. Armor All spurted and Adrian rubbed. There was a zipper sealing the book. Adrian opened it and found the original bill of sale.

Duncan Potts bought the tractor new back in 2009 from a dealership three hundred miles to the east, two-forty from the auction that put it into Brian Dickson’s possession. It appeared that Mr. Potts had used it for a summer, had it serviced in October, and then nothing else in the papers beyond that.

Adrian pulled the Galaxy S6 from his pocket. Even in the shed, he was on the household Wi-Fi. He Googled the name and location. What came up first in the more than one million hits was a story featuring the word murder and that couldn’t be. Farmers don’t murder people, they…the next five also said murder. Adrian clicked the National Post link. There was a headline that made his mouth dry instantly: MAN KILLS WIFE, TWO KIDS, TWO FARM HANDS, ONE CHILD SURVIVES.

“Geez Louise.”

There was a picture. It was from Christmas and a smiling, normal family stood before a dressed tree in a fine living room. Hardwood floors and expensive furniture.

The story below stole his breath. A shotgun. A sledgehammer. A hole dug. A fire lit. There was a second image beneath the story. Police tape seemed to flutter despite the photo being still. In the background was a barn and to the left side was a blurry green smudge in the vague shape of a tractor.

“Ain’t that something?”

Adrian put the phone back into his pocket, the paperwork in the owner’s manual, the manual back into the plastic sleeve, and the sleeve in the slim mouth beneath the right-hand panel. He slipped out of the tractor, shut the door, and went inside.

Without argument, Adrian stripped and let his wife wake up his member before mounting him in her usual method. He closed his eyes and ran through all the pretty twenty-something-daughters his older Facebook friends had posted pictures of or had Liked.

—

By Monday morning, Brenda had sapped his mental hard-on bank, but she wasn’t up for much herself. On their fourth attempt, she’d run dry and he’d become a noodle. “I guess we’re out of juice, need to get back in the habit, like in college.”

At work, Adrian released a relaxed breath. He batted the idea of sneaking in to visit the doctor, get the snip. He’d gone as far as asking Reid and Reid demanded that if Adrian was going to have it done, that he schedule a week off beforehand.

“Painful?”

Reid shook his head gently. “It’s horrid. My nuts turned into hardballs, and I had to sleep with a bag of Green Giant peas for three days.”

That wouldn’t work. Adrian pushed it from his mind as well as he could.

At 11:30 AM, a young man shuffled through the door. He walked with a cane. He wore his collar high and still drew the attention of every set of eyes on the sales floor. Adrian was in his office and focused on the paperwork before him after the man entered and began walking in the opposite direction. Two minutes later, there was a knock.

“Uh, Adrian, this gentleman is here to see you.” This was Kim from the parts desk.

“Oh, sure.” Adrian lifted his eyes to the shiny, deformed skin of a severely burned young man. He looked like something from a horror film. A creature melted in a brimstone stew, climbed from hell to do Satan’s bidding. Adrian cleared his throat. “Hello, what can I do for you?”

The man lifted an electronic voice prosthesis to his throat and said, in a harsh mechanical tone, “You bought a tractor recently.”

—

Adrian found himself holding his breath, listening to this young man’s story. He was twenty-four and survived burning in a pit thanks to his mother’s corpse rolling on top of him, smothering the gasoline fire dancing over his body. Long before that, the man, Scott Potts, was a boy at his father’s side as a slow change took over. It began with a new tractor in a fleet of new tractors.

The farmhands didn’t quite refuse to use the 7630, but they steered clear. Still, they did use it. One quit, another died in an accident on the job while bailing straw. That was when Duncan Potts picked up the slack and joined his laborers in the fieldwork. It was stuff he’d done for years, but being the boss meant it had been awhile. The only real change was the cushy new tractor seat.

“He raved about the Seventy-six-thirty. At first.” Scott’s voice was like cement in a meat grinder.

Changes started. His father began spending longer and longer days in the tractor. He thinned, eating only when reminded to. A smile, wide and ghoulish, became the resting expression.

“I know it was the tractor because I heard it talking to him. It was radio fuzz to me, but the way it rose and fell and the way my father nodded, I know he heard words.”

Adrian forced a slack face, refusing to let the memory of his own father’s voice coming through the speakers show. It was a coincidence. His father died that day and he’d had a whiff of the preternatural, even the supernatural, but that came about upon the force of a soul leaving its body. The tractor was beside the point.

Then it hit Adrian and he was furious. This sonofabitch wanted the tractor back, and likely on the cheap. The bank had probably repossessed it and here he was with some tale tall as Mount Kilimanjaro.

“I own it fair. You can’t get it back. I’m sorry about your family, but the tractor is mine.” Adrian’s hands clenched into tight balls beneath his desk.

The man squinted and frowned.

“I said, the tractor is mine and you can’t have it back.”

Scott grimaced, where the burned tissue could move. “I don’t want that awful fucking tractor. I inherited six tractors and sold them all, but for one. I sent that one to the wrecker. But the lawyer misunderstood and signed it over to the wrecker. The man who owned the junkyard owed the bank and handed the tractor over clean. It went to nine local auctions before I heard. I demanded the bank crush that demonic thing. I told the paper and the local cable station, and the bank backed off, but that fucking monstrous machine sat in a shed, waiting.”

Adrian’s hands ached. This burnt bacon-looking prick was talking about his tractor. A tractor he’d come to love, to need. It was a part of him already. He couldn’t imagine giving it up. A farm like his, a man like him, he deserved a fucking break and a goddamned beautiful green machine.

“Still, they were smart enough to send it away for auction. I only found out this morning that the tractor was gone. Sold twice over.”

“Bullshit. Why didn’t you just buy it?” Adrian was seething.

“You don’t buy that tractor. You can’t own that tractor. It buys you. It owns you. You only need to give your soul to it.”

Adrian barked a single laugh. “Get outta here.”

“Mr. Zucker I—”

“I said get outta here, you goddamned freak.”

“It’s already spoken to you, hasn’t it?” Scott stood from the padded and grease-stained stainless-steel chair.

“You’re crazy, just like your daddy. I know all about him and what happened. You can’t blame the tractor, crazy is in your genes.”

“What about Mr. Dickson?”

“He was depressed. Had nobody left to talk to, maybe never handled his emotions well. Old farmers blow their heads off all the time.”

“You heard it and you know what I’m saying is true.”

Adrian launched his chair backward into the wall behind his desk. “Get the hell outta here! Sell your crazy tales someplace else. I hear there’s some suckers over at Olson New Holland, try them!”

“Talk to your wife. Let her in.”

Mention of his wife sent Adrian over. “You have five seconds, and only because you lost your family. One.”

“Mr. Zucker.”

“Two. Three.”

“Please.”

“Four.”

Scott Potts turned, kicked the wall, and then left.

Adrian stepped from behind his desk and stood at the door of his office to watch the man limp away.

“What the hell was that all about?” Reid asked, coming over, big grin on his mug.

“Some damned nut talking crazy.”

—

Snow flew one Saturday in November. The sun went down hours earlier. Adrian had reached the point of laughter whenever thoughts of Scott Potts entered his head.

In the chill, Adrian swiped an arm under his nose, catching sight of his watch as he did so. “Damn.”

There in the shed, with the tractor, time seemed to slip away. Greasing, tightening, attaching, removing, wiping, waxing, and testing, the machine filled his days outside work. But he’d made a promise and rushed out of the shed.

“Sorry, sorry. I lost track of time,” he said as he flopped down into his seat at the table.

The candles on the table had melted some, not a tragic amount, but enough that Brenda was in all rights to offer a tongue-lashing. She didn’t. Instead, she rose from her spot and pulled a black roasting pan from the oven. She set it on the table, opened the lid, and filled Adrian’s plate. The linen folds in a basket peeled away and she dropped a fresh, warm bun next to the veggies.

“Geez Louise, you went all out, huh?”

“Sure.” She poured wine into his glass and sat. She reached for the water pitcher and filled a tall plastic cup. Adrian began digging in while Brenda loaded her own plate. Adrian took a short sip of wine.

“How’s the wine?”

“I don’t know. Same as ever. Why are we having wine?”

“We aren’t, you are. I’m drinking water.”

“Oh, weird.” Adrian resumed digging, thinking his ass would be a lot happier in that yellow leather seat of the John Deere.

“Aren’t you curious why you’re drinking wine, but I’m not?” Brenda’s voice was on edge, about to fall off into exacerbation or fly into euphoria.

“Oh, sure, I guess. Why am I drinking wine?”

“Ugh, that’s not the point! I’m not drinking wine because I can’t have alcohol.”

“Oh.” Adrian was thinking about how to best prevent future wheel rust. “Oh.”

“Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you?” Brenda stood, unable to keep her right foot from stomping. “I can’t drink because I went to the doctor and found out I’m pregnant!”

“Pregnant.” This brought him around. Sex had become okay again. Brenda had come out to the shed once when he hadn’t made it in for a scheduled romp. She was proactive, hopped up into the tractor where he sat listening to static over the radio. She opened his pants, sucked him to stiffness, and then planted his rod. He thought of this every time since. The feeling of sexual release and being in his tractor was the secret button to his libido. “Oh, okay.”

“Oh, okay? That’s it?”

“No, this is good. I’m happy. Good.”

This, of course, was an utter lie. She’d expect him to help with baby stuff and that meant less time spent elsewhere.

—

“Really becoming a man,” Adrian said. He was in the tractor. He had his phone out, scrolling through images of plows—disc and claw.

A voice he felt as much as he heard carried somewhere on radio static he no longer registered. “You are, but there’s more to go.”

“I know.”

“It won’t be easy.”

“I know.”

“Just think of the outcome.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

“I’m really becoming a man.”

The voice changed subtly. “I know, finally.” This was a perfect mimic of David Zucker.

—

Adrian had lost weight. He’d called in sick nine times since November first. Christmas was too short and too much of that time he had to spend with his in-laws. If it wasn’t for the goodly sum of snow, things might’ve gone differently, but he’d spent just enough time with the tractor. In March, the snow ceased to fall. In April, he had an excuse to spend every free moment in the field, the barn, or the shop.

In June, Brenda was a house on legs.

Nine smiling women sat in the living room around the baby-centric woman who’d had a distraction so great, she hadn’t noticed the progression her husband appeared to slip into. If it wasn’t for the mostly grey beard that fell mid-way down his neck, she’d noticed nothing different in him, hands forever rubbing her belly.

The others noticed. “Here’s the man, you must be so proud,” Lilian Giles said. She was an orthodontist who’d been a friend of Brenda’s since childhood.

Adrian stopped on his trip through the kitchen and veered into the living room. “I am proud.”

“It’s so exciting, isn’t it? I remember my first,” said one of the three Susans in the room.

“Your first?”

“Oh, yes, I’d never say it in front of the kids, but the first is extra special,” June said, she was a nurse who worked for insurance companies testing blood.

“It’s not the first,” Adrian said, confused. “I had a Ford before.”

Brenda looked at her husband, trying to understand the joke.

“Fords are junk. Proper men run Deeres.” He looked at the confused faces.

A silence fell over the room.

“Are you talking about tractors?” Another Susan asked.

It was Adrian’s turn to wonder, what else should make him proud?

A woman named Glenda began laughing. “You’re too funny. You never told us he was so funny. And such commitment, you had me going.”

The others laughed. Brenda did not. Adrian shrugged and left.

Two hours later, the last straggler was gone and Brenda rooted through her purse to find the number of the strange, disfigured man who’d come by the house several months earlier. She’d thought him nuts, but he’d made two points. One sank immediately: her husband was despondent. The other took time and in that time, she’d become too pregnant to think about it: Adrian was furious with me, threatening, if he doesn’t mention it, it means he’s hiding it, the man had said.

And damned if the other, insane things the man said finally seemed right there. It was in front of her and for too long. It wasn’t as if she could blame someone, but if she had to, that bun and its effect on her headspace was probably the best place to point.

Thoughts of the man made her shudder. He was a last resort, but it was good to know the card was there. Instead of calling, she sent a text to Lilian, asking if she knew a good therapist who might take on clients, short notice.

—

“What?” Adrian asked, clean-shaven. The idea to shave cropped up the morning before Brenda told him about the therapy consultation.

“Do you think you’re obsessed, a workaholic?” Dr. Tracy was a stern man. His expression revealed zero emotion.

“No, it’s the tractor, not the work,” Brenda said.

“Sorry, I don’t understand,” Dr. Tracy said.

“He’s obsessed with the tractor. The work just gives him an excuse to be with it.”

“What?” Adrian’s collar was ready to burst into flame. He knew this was coming, but it was like being caught jerking off.

Dr. Tracy turned toward Brenda. “Brenda, please keep an open mind here. Are you jealous of the tractor and how much work your husband does? Have you been experiencing anxiety everywhere?”

Brenda frowned, ready to claw eyes. “What? I’m not the problem!”

“Have you ever heard of prepartum, or prenatal anxiety?”

“Oh, like hell. We’re here to talk about how much time he spends with his stupid tractor.”

At this, Adrian clenched his fists. The bitch didn’t get it. Didn’t get anything, ever.

A timer pinged on a table. “Half-hour’s up. I think there are things we need to work on. I suggest our meeting once a week.”

—

Brenda’s water broke three days later. All future appointments postponed indefinitely. Adrian wanted to name the boy John. Brenda, livid, wasn’t naming her child after a tractor. She gritted teeth and said the first and least farmer-ly thing that came to mind, “Waldo Nix Zucker.” She was oddly thankful that her baby had beautiful brown eyes instead of green ones.

—

Scott Potts followed Brenda’s posts on Facebook. It was their own fault they hadn’t listened to him… But no. The birth of the child killed his attempts at forgetting the people.

Waldo Nix Zucker was a bundle of pink rolls in all the pictures with his mother. The father was elsewhere. It would be absurd to question where.

—

“Think of your child,” Scott said into the phone.

Brenda nearly laughed, all she did was think about her baby. “Sir, I don’t know where you’re angling, but it’s all coincidental.”

“What about your husband?”

“He’s been great!”

There was a moment of silence. “Really?”

“Yeah, every night cry, every dirty diaper, every burp, if I’m not up for it, he’s ready and willing. You’re dead wrong. I’m sorry about what happened to you, but you have to let this go.”

The silence on the line poked holes in Scott’s reality. He knew without a doubt that the tractor had the husband, but had it changed? Did it pall when compared with a child? Did the birth perform a magic unavailable to his own family?

He doubted it and packed a bag. His visit out of town wasn’t going to be a day trip this time. He wasn’t going to let that tractor take another innocent life. Especially not the life of an infant.

—

As if launched from a springboard, Adrian was out of bed at the first peep from the baby. Brenda smiled without opening her eyes. She wondered if there was a mother in the history of the world that had a farmer husband as willing and ready to jump for his offspring. Maybe that was an exaggeration, but Adrian wasn’t the norm.

Her smile grew, thinking how, if only for a few days, she’d believed that poor, heartbroken, head-broken man. His scars lent brevity and reliability. It was an especially believable aura that came off him, like a holy man with a packed tent. He was so quiet and hit so many right notes.

“Because he grew up on a farm,” she whispered.

That was right, the inside feel of his information were guesses, built on experience. Farmers were a breed. Their traits came down lines, good or bad, generation after generation.

Brenda slipped away on the thought and awoke with a cold back. When Adrian flipped the blanket to rise, he left an exposed vent. He hadn’t returned. Brenda glanced at the red digits on the clock: 4:02.

That was enough to stir her. The baby cried shortly after they’d gone to bed, it was something she could measure without a clock. Babies were vindictive monsters in using their uncanny knowledge of parental sleep patterns.

Adrian had obviously fallen asleep somewhere in the home. Brenda rolled, at least a third of the way awake. She went to the can first. Peeing in the dark, she listened to the sound of footsteps and a cooing voice.

Adrian stopped by the bathroom door on his way back to bed. “What are you doing up?”

“Wondered where you were.”

“Fell asleep in the rec room. So did Waldo.”

Brenda flushed and let her long nightshirt fall. She shuffled behind Adrian. A chill came off him. He must’ve been freezing downstairs.

Under the blankets, Brenda snuggled close. She inhaled his scent. “You still smell like the field and the tractor.”

He huffed. “Didn’t shower, gotta sleep.”

She didn’t argue and in five seconds forgot, in ten was back asleep.

—

“Hello?” Brenda said into the phone, Waldo held against her chest.

“Is he still perfect or do you see the cracks?”

It was after two and Adrian had come into the house for a glass of lemonade, drank three. He was sweaty and dirty. He smelled as if he’d bathed in diesel exhaust.

Brenda put her hand over the receiver. “It’s him, again.” She’d told Adrian, eventually, everything the man said. Adrian kept it to himself that the man had said much of anything when he visited the shop, but did confess that the man made an appearance.

“Give it over.” Adrian took the phone with his right hand and rubbed at his stubbly cheek with his left. Keeping the image a certain way was smart, he wasn’t the only one who thought so. “This is Adrian Zucker. Why are you bothering my wife?”

There was a click and a light bang as Scott adjusted the machine against his throat. “You’re doing better than my father did at faking normalcy.”

“Oh?”

“Has the tractor figured that out? Is it learning? Or did you surface far enough to understand the insanity, like a junkie hiding track marks?”

“Look, you need help. Never call here again. I’m calling the cops, just to have it on record that you’re harassing my wife and annoying the piss out of me.” Adrian set the telephone in its cradle after hitting the END button. “That ought to do it.”

“You’re calling the cops?” Brenda asked, a curious smirk rising.

“No. What would they do? I’d have to waste time filling out paperwork, and for what, really?” Adrian started toward the door. “If I see him on our property, I’ll shoot him. Tell him that if he calls back, if you want. I don’t trust him. He might be a cripple, but I don’t trust him.”

Brenda tried to imagine the man she’d married shooting anyone. It was absurd, or it would’ve been before. He was a harder man nowadays, though soft with Waldo, and almost motherly in his intense willingness to care for the boy at night.

Hands stilled in realization, since his father had died, Adrian had become very much like David had been. For better or worse, her husband was in the midst of a transformation.

As if pulled by a rope, Brenda left the home and stepped into the hot early afternoon. Waldo was in his crib and he’d be fine for a few minutes. No matter how crazy the man sounded or how much reason she applied, there was something strange about that tractor.

The engine barked quietly from inside the shed. The driving door was open and she stood by the shadowy mouth and looked in at the back end of the tall green machine. Exhaust puffed from the stack next to the hood, rising to the high ceiling of the shed. Through the window was her husband. He sat, lips moving as if conversing.

As if warned, he spun in the yellow seat. The back window popped open on its black extender arms. “What?”

Brenda stepped, her mouth taking over before her brain warned of intent. “Just wondering if you wanted pizza from the Zyka tonight?”

“Oh, sure.”

“What time will you be in?”

“Uh, let’s say six-thirty.”

Brenda nodded and turned away. A ball of worry expanded. She snuffed it out.

In the house, she said, “Probably singing something.”

Waldo awoke and wailed.

—

From an old fence line, nothing left but the stones tossed from the field, Scott looked through the telephoto lens of his Canon. The money left over after selling the family farm, the equipment, and the life insurance policies put him in a position where he’d never need to work so long as his tastes remained humble. There were times in his late teens when he drank and snorted, attempting to deal with the vacancy left after that day, but he’d learned to cope.

Obsession was a cheap addiction, comparatively.

From his semi-hidden spot, he watched the bright green tractor roll back and forth two fields away. It was unclear which task Adrian feigned while rolling. To Scott, it appeared he sought only to burn diesel and drive, be with the machine.

At 7:00 PM, the tractor rolled to the shed. At 7:30 PM, the tractor rolled out of the shed. At 9:40 PM, the tractor rolled back into the shed and Scott used the recent sundown to close the distance between himself and the home.

He hid in the open doorway of the barn and waited, knowing it was only time before Adrian returned to the tractor. Soon enough he was there, and Scott snapped photos, his stomach sinking in disgust.

Three hours later, Adrian returned to the home and the dog-tired interloper on achy legs limped out the long lane, across thirty acres of field, over two former fence lines, and through a single gate. His car remained right where he’d left it. He drove into town, got to his rental room at the Cardinal Motel, sent the photo files to the Walmart Photo Center, and then got into bed. Alarm set for 10:00 AM, giving him six much needed hours.

—

It wasn’t easy to wait, but it would be trouble if he delivered those candid shots while someone might catch him. From the road, imitating an aged napper, Scott kept close watch. Near the lunch hour, Brenda rolled out in a Chevy Impala, Waldo in the backseat strapped into a bulky white carrier.

Ninety minutes later, Adrian’s work truck followed out the lane. Scott guessed he took short days during the summer, commissioned salesmen make for perfect farmers, able to work around schedules and needs.

Scott turned the key and raced in the lane. He drove beyond the home and barn, parking out of view in case someone returned before he could plant the photographs. Blown into eight-by-tens, in a recognizable Walmart Photo envelope, the images proved insanity. Proved there was much to fear.

The door was unlocked. The home was still. Scott moved in his quickest amble. He’d thought at first something to do with the baby might be the best place to hide the images so wife saw them and husband did not. Too risky. Scott’s second idea was to find Brenda’s nighttime beauty items, assuming there were some, and lodge the envelope in with them. In the main washroom, he rifled through personal items beneath the sink. He folded the envelope, nobody was apt to hang those pics anyhow, and stuffed it between a Jergens bottle and three Oil of Olay containers with light green caps. Scott straightened when he heard the main door slam closed.

Footfalls raced toward him and he spun in a full circle.

The steps were right outside the door.

Scott popped into the shower.

The door slammed open and boy-oinged on the coil stopper behind it. Adrian dropped his pants and fell onto the toilet. A high sigh left his mouth as fireworks exploded from the back end.

The scent was incredible.

Scott dared not move.

Once the initial wave settled, Adrian stared into the white folds of the shower curtain. He leaned forward and wiped.

Terror dipped into a new level of understanding and Scott leapt from the bathtub, swinging his cane at Adrian.

The farmer was ready. A smile played as the cane met palms, yanking the crippled man over the lip of the tub as he clung to his would-be weapon.

“Ugh!” Scott moaned as something popped in his hip.

“If it ain’t Scarface himself. Say hello and all that. Ha!” Adrian zipped his pants and flushed.

Scott flipped and began dragging himself with one hand, the other hand digging into a pocket for a cellphone. Adrian stomped that offending hand and an iPhone clattered, screen becoming a spider web display.

“No, wait. It’s a misunderstanding,” Scott said. “You’re not well. I’m here to help.”

Adrian swung back his leg to get a good arc and brought it around to nail Scott’s left temple. The fight left him then.

—

Adrian dragged Scott to the shed and tied his arms and legs, gagging him and hiding his helpless body under the workbench until he returned home later. He hadn’t made it to his work commitment before nature called with a 911 urgency.

“Stay put,” he said to the unconscious man before hurrying away.

—

Brenda lay on her side. Her stomach troubled her most of the day, she was irritated, and damned tired. Waldo wailed one solid cry and Adrian leapt from bed.

Brenda attempted sleep but couldn’t. It had been three months since giving birth and she hadn’t really thought about her flow, but here it was, returned to let her know her body was a flesh factory once again.

She slipped from the sheets and stepped to the can. She sat and felt the familiar measure of an especially heavy release. She opened the cupboard and pawed blindly. Her hand found the Kotex box, tipping and spilling tampons all over the linoleum.

“Fantastic.” She picked up a tampon in a purple wrapper.

Gripped tight, she fell asleep on the toilet for nearly half an hour, waking cold and numb in the legs.

Flushed. She got down on her knees and began refilling the Kotex box. It was then that she spotted the Walmart Photo Center envelope. A thing out of place, she stuffed the last tampons back into the box and pulled out the oddity.

The folds suggested there was something other than pictures, as who would fold pict—? “Oh my god.”

The first photo was somewhat grainy, but clear enough to recognize the shop. Her husband was by the door with a plastic bag in his hands. Through the open door was the big green tractor. On the hood was a scrunch-faced, pink ball of rolls, exhaust puffing from the black stack.

The second picture featured Adrian sitting in the cab of the tractor, leaning on the wheel. Waldo was still on the hood. The third picture was similar, but closer up, revealing Waldo’s agony, or at very least, his mood. She flipped to the fourth.

—

The first time Adrian went out to the shed after supper he stepped directly to the tractor, swung open the perfect, silent door, and hopped in. Key turned, he fiddled with the disconnected Sirius system until he stumbled onto a voice. It wasn’t always the satellite radio, sometimes the local stations cutaway and shined personalized wisdom upon him, but for that to work, he had to wait. The luxury of time was no longer reliable, so he shuffled the static until finding what he sought.

For the ninth time since making the smartest purchase of his life, Adrian heard the voice of God.

“Hello, Adrian.”

“Hello, John.”

“That man is troublesome. I’ve met him before.”

“What do I do? Do I kill him, till him under a field?”

That idea had come to mind with imagery. To his surprise, Adrian learned that it did not disgust him, that sight. The blood and dirt churning together in a crumbly mass. In fact, it made him excited in a way nothing had before. It was a mannish, adult lust, much more than the physical yearnings he’d succumb to in the past.

“Eventually, but I have a hunger. I need to eat. I am alive. But I am not a glutton.”

“Of course.”

A smile came through on God’s voice. “Gluttony is a sin. Feeding natural hunger is by my design. I’d like his hands and feet.”

“He’ll bleed.”

“Not if you do one cut at a time and then cauterize the wounds. You have the welding torches. You have the knowhow. You have the Sawzall, even have a fresh blade still in its package. Get it ready. Do it quick. Don’t let the gag fall out of his mouth.”

“Right. Right.”

Scott had come to and was scissoring his hogtied body to little avail. From the gaping door, Adrian dragged his meat source and surgical patient over to the acetylene and oxygen tanks. They were four-footers, the brass torches dangled, as did a bulky grey mask with a blacked out visor. There was no need for a light-dimming visor, but a visor would be handy. He had clear visors for sanding and cutting, normally it was wood chips or steel shavings coming back at him. He reckoned blood in the eye wouldn’t feel so great. Better safe than sorry.

The crippled man jerked and wailed against the cloth in his mouth. “This is going to hurt,” Adrian said as he loaded the new blade into the saw before plugging it in. He pushed Scott onto his stomach and pinned the man’s left hand behind his back with a knee. Knot slipped, Scott swung a free hand around.

It was unlikely that he hadn’t seen the saw before then and even a dull man could do that kind of math. Adrian grabbed the skin of the free arm and pinched. Scott stiffened and shouted a fresh bout into the rag.

Adrian squeezed the trigger and tried to cut and hold at the same time. When the blade nicked flesh, the crippled man squirmed like an eighteen-year-old varsity wrestler.

“Darn.” He set aside the saw, still kneeling, and wondered how many strikes of head against cement it took to knock someone cold without killing them. Hands wrapped around Scott’s ears, he thumped hard, like trying to break a coconut on a rock. Scott slowed momentarily and then went on being a worm. “Hmm.” Adrian slammed three times in quick succession. Scott ceased moving.

Blood seeped onto the cement and Adrian picked up the saw. As soon as it buzzed to life, Scott began again, fighting, hapless as it was.

“Dang you.” Adrian pounded head on cement nine times until the flesh and blood puddle made a lapping sound that warned of an ending near. “All right, now let’s be reasonable.”

The saw bit through flesh and chewed muscle and bone. Blood poured and sprayed over his mask, but less than some horror movies suggested. The human body survived so many generations because it had systems in place. A little fire was apt to help with one of those systems.

He lit the torch, got a nice orange-blue flame and roasted the handless wrist. The blood boiled and popped, the flesh bubbled into great yellow mounds before blackening. This step took less than half the time of the first step.

“Like de-horning,” Adrian said and got to cutting off the second hand.

Once through, he left Scott untied on the floor. Where would he go with no hands or feet?

He took the appendages to the tractor. The machine was hungry and Adrian grinned, it felt good to be needed, to be a real man with a real function.

Once through, he returned to the house, slipped out of his clothes unnoticed, had a shower, and then reheated the supper Brenda had made him.

In the long hours, inching toward midnight, while he and Brenda lay in bed, the baby cried and Adrian hopped up. He’d taken the baby out to the tractor many times and each time was different. It was all building to something and he wasn’t certain what.

—

Brenda tossed the photos aside after the fifth. Her husband was out in the shed, almost certainly, with Waldo. She gasped at this realization and charged from the washroom, flipping all the light switches as she went. She slipped her feet into shoes, wearing only a light t-shirt and a pair of pajama shorts. The lights to the garage lit, followed by the ones leading outside.

Through the garage, she swung open the door and jumped back, yelping. There was a man, no hands and no feet, attempting to crawl. What had happened to—?

“Adrian!” she shouted and ran around Scott, the gag remained firm in his mouth.

The shed light poured over the dark night. She was in the cloak of that shadow as she broke toward the running tractor. She’d seen Adrian inside, but there was no way he saw her.

She crouched as she burst across the light into the shed. She grabbed a hatchet that leaned against the wall.

Adrian had his head down in the tractor, talking while loud fuzz came through the speakers. She swung open the door. The fuzz quieted and he did not move.

She climbed the steps and cocked the hatchet. “Where is he?”

Adrian leapt sideways in his seat, surprised, terrified. His gaze was wide and his mouth was wider.

“Where the hell is my son?”

His lips moved and his eyes darted to a speaker set into the ceiling above Brenda’s bent down head. She slammed the blade of the hatchet into the window to her right, sending razor’s edge spider webs dancing.

“Where the fuck is Waldo?”

Her voice was loud, but the tractor was louder. The muffler stack had been removed and exhaust puffed and jumped abnormally.

“Where is he?” she wailed.

Adrian said something inaudible.

Brenda brought the hatchet down on Adrian’s leg just above the knee. It gouged a small but gushing gulley—she’d only gone about half-speed. Still, he howled and again spoke, too low.

“Where the hell is my…”

The tractor sputtered, nearly stalling.

“…son?”

Adrian opened his mouth, hands pressed against his wound. Before anything came out of him, the tractor coughed again. This time as if clearing its throat, horking liquid and nasty stringy gore from its unfiltered exhaust hole.

“Where is…”

Another cough.

“…my…”

A wet splat landed against the windshield.

“…son?” Brenda said, ending in a whisper as she recognized the brown eyeball sliding down the glass like a McDonald’s pickle. “Waldo?”

The tractor was in a steady, happy rumble then. Adrian said, “God giveth and God needeth.”

A voice came over the stereo speakers, but not to Adrian. “Kill the bastard.”

Brenda swung the axe over and over. Blood splattered everywhere. The speakers continued talking, but she was past the point of listening. She began chopping the interior, smashing speakers, destroying the steering column.

Once too tired to destroy any more of the machine, she stumbled to the house, screaming “Waldo! Waldo! Waldo!”

She stepped around the ruined figure who’d tried to warn her and into the house. From there, there were two options.

She held a lighter and a tin of barbeque igniter fluid while she stared at the telephone.

—

“Do I hear twenty-one? Seventeen? No, nobody? Come on, this is a steal! Nobody? All right, going once, going twice, and sold to the gentleman with the double lucky number thirteen-thirteen on his sign for sixteen-five.” The auctioneer pointed his gavel. The expression on his face was glum. This was not a good start to the day. Sure, the tractor was a beat-up mess, but a little polish and some parts, hell, that machine had decades of work ahead of it.

A man in a wheelchair buzzed forward. “No, wait! I want to bid!”

“Sorry, chum, you missed that one, but how about this Case One-Six-Five? Only three hundred hours, now do I hear…?” The auctioneer rattled on.

The man in the wheelchair used his plastic hands to navigate the controls. He looked amongst those in the crowd for the man with the double thirteens—ominous, befitting double thirteens.

The man had a huge grin and an arm around a young woman who was obviously eating, breathing, and existing for two. There were four boys circling around them. They had the look of rural farmers who’d never gotten a break. Shirts somewhat ragged, hats filthy, boot toes shiny where the steel poked through the leather.

“You bought that Deere?” Scott Potts asked, holding the electrolarynx to his throat.

The little kids burrowed faces or turned away. Here was a man hard on the eyes. His burned flesh shined under the mid-morning sun. His plastic hands did as well. The chair spoke to knowledge that bad things happened to anyone and that they might just happen to you, or worse, a kid.

“That’s right. Whore of a deal!” the man said.

“I’ll pay you what they’ll charge and an additional five grand,” Scott said. His money came from a trickling trust and investment dividends. There really was no more room to offer unless the man agreed to a payment plan. Existing without hands and feet was an expensive way to live.

The man snorted. “I got such a deal, I fix this girl up with a few grand in used parts and I could sell’er for triple what I paid.”

“Not if people know the history. Why do you think you got it so cheap? The last owner stuffed his infant into the exhaust—”

The woman slugged Scott in the mouth. “I don’t give a hoot that you a cripple or how many retard parking stickers you got, don’t be talkin’ none of that garbage near my childrens, they’s innocent and don’t need to hear none of it.”

Scott forgot himself a moment and brought a plastic hand up to his mouth. He licked bubbling blood. He stared deep into her eyes. That tractor was a demon. He looked at the children, at the husband. That tractor was going to lap their fluids and make ash of their skeletons.

Then again, he was getting tired.

“I hope that machine is everything you think it is,” he said and rolled away from the crowd and toward the taxi van awaiting him.

XX