Rick knew Vernon knew it.
The sales manager stepped closer.
Quietly:
“Rick.”
Rick ignored him.
He looked toward the farmers.
Then at Vernon.
“All right.”
A murmur moved through the crowd.
Rick pointed toward the plow.
“Same setup.”
“That's what I want.”
“Same depth.”
“Fourteen inches.”
“No changing bottoms.”
“Wouldn't ask.”
Rick smiled.
“Go get it.”
Vernon turned.
No speech.
No grin.
No theatrical challenge.
He simply walked toward his pickup.
By the time he returned sixteen minutes later, almost everyone at the field demonstration had heard what was happening.
The Massey Ferguson appeared on the road first.
Red hood.
Black grille.
Large rear tires.
Clean enough to show pride, dirty enough to prove it worked.
It looked substantial.
But parked beside the massive articulated 9530, the difference was obvious.
The Deere looked like a machine designed to pull buildings.
The Massey looked like a large conventional tractor.
Someone near Rick said,
“This won't be close.”
Another farmer replied,
“He wouldn't bring it in here if he didn't know something.”
Vernon drove onto the field.
Stopped near the plow.
Climbed down.
Two farmers offered to help with the hookup.
Vernon checked the drawbar connection himself.
Hydraulic lines.
Safety chain.
Depth setting.
Nothing changed from the Deere run.
Rick watched from beside the flatbed.
His arms were folded now.
The microphone remained in his hand, but he had stopped using it.
One of his salesmen leaned close.
“Want to stop this?”
Rick looked at him.
“Why?”
The salesman shrugged.
Rick knew the answer.
If the Massey failed, the demonstration became better than anything Rick could have purchased.
He would not merely have claimed his product was superior.
Everyone would have watched the competing tractor prove him right.
Vernon climbed into the cab.
Closed the door.
Inside, the world became quieter.
He had purchased the 8680 used in 2009.
Eight hundred ninety hours.
One hundred forty-two thousand dollars.
Six-year financing.
It had been the largest machinery purchase Vernon had made without his father's opinion.
His father had been dead three years.
Vernon still found himself wondering what the old man would have said.
Probably something about buying a tractor nobody nearby could service.
Maybe something worse.
Vernon had run International Harvester in the 1980s.
Case IH in the 1990s and early 2000s.
When he considered replacing his primary tractor, he had looked at Deere.
Case.
New Holland.
Then somebody convinced him to try the Massey.
The first thing he noticed was the transmission.
No traditional shift interruption.
No hunting between gears under changing load.
Set speed.
Let the machine manage the relationship between engine and ground speed.
Vernon liked that.
Then he liked the fuel numbers.
Then the cab.
Then the fact that after two years the tractor had given him very little reason to think about it.
That was the highest compliment Vernon gave machinery.
He did not need a tractor to make him proud.
He needed it to disappear into the job.
Now, however, two hundred people were watching.
He adjusted the remote.
Set field mode.
Checked engine speed.
Looked backward through the mirror.
The plow lowered.
Twelve bottoms entered the same black Missouri clay.
A few men stepped closer to the field edge.
Rick watched the tires.
Waiting for spin.
Vernon eased forward.
The Massey loaded.
The engine note deepened.
For half a second, the tractor seemed almost to hesitate.
Then the Dyna-VT settled into the load.
4.1 miles per hour.
Steady.
The first fifty yards went cleanly.
No one spoke.
One hundred yards.
Still clean.
The plow stayed buried.
All twelve furrows rolled evenly.
A farmer near the front bent slightly, trying to see whether one bottom had lifted.
None had.
Halfway through the strip came the heavier clay patch.
The same one that had deepened the Deere's engine note.
The Massey reached it.
The engine loaded harder.
Ground speed dipped briefly.
4.0.
Then returned.
4.1.
Vernon's right hand remained away from the throttle.
The transmission managed the change.
Someone whispered,
“It's holding.”
Another man said,
“Look at the furrow.”
Rick heard both.
He said nothing.
Three-quarters of the way across, the crowd had become completely silent.
No cheering for Massey.
No heckling Deere.
Just farmers watching a tractor do something they had been told it could not do.
Vernon reached the end.
Raised the plow.
Looked at the timer mounted near the dash.
Four minutes, eleven seconds.
Nine seconds slower than the John Deere.
He made the turn.
Returned.
Stopped beside the flatbed.
Shut the engine down.
The silence after the Massey stopped felt larger than the engine noise had.
Vernon climbed out.
Mud clung to the tire lugs.
He walked toward Rick.
Two hundred people seemed to move with him.
Vernon stopped.
“Full depth.”
Rick looked toward the field.
“Yes.”
“No shift break.”
Rick said nothing.
“No throttle correction.”
Rick finally met his eyes.
“You made your point.”
Vernon shook his head.
“I'm correcting yours.”
Rick's jaw tightened.
“The 9530 was still faster.”
“Yep.”
“Nine seconds.”
“Yep.”
“That's field capacity.”
Vernon looked toward the Deere.
Then toward his Massey.
“How much does that 9530 sell for?”
Rick didn't answer.
Someone in the crowd did.
“More than Vernon's.”
A few men laughed.
Rick's expression hardened.
Vernon remained calm.
“I'm not saying mine is the same tractor.”
“Because it isn't.”
“No.”
Vernon pointed toward the furrows.
“But you didn't tell these men mine was smaller.”
Rick waited.
“You told them it couldn't do the job.”
The field went quiet again.
Rick looked at the Massey.
Then the Deere.
Then the parallel furrows.
There was no argument available that could erase them.
Finally:
“It did the pass.”
Vernon nodded.
“That's all I came to show.”
He turned away.
Unhooked the plow.
Climbed back into his tractor.
Then drove out.
No celebration.
No raised fist.
No insult.
That made the moment worse for Rick.
If Vernon had acted arrogant, Rick could have dismissed him as a Massey partisan trying to create a spectacle.
Instead, the farmer had simply arrived, done the work, and left the evidence in the ground.
Twelve black furrows.
Parallel to twelve green ones.
Then came the questions.
Ed Pulliam asked the first.
He farmed nearly a thousand acres south of Bloomfield and had been considering a new John Deere.
“Rick.”
Rick looked at him.
“You said no Massey could handle that.”
“I said the systems are designed differently.”