"Ninety-five dollars an acre," Ed had said finally. "Is there any other bid."
There was no other bid. Ed Vlasak said sold, so quietly Arne almost did not hear it. And the people on the steps turned and walked away, not quickly, not with any show, in twos and threes with their heads down against the wind, and the Methodist minister put his hand on Albin's shoulder, and the priest looked at Arne a long moment and went too, and in a minute and a half there was nobody left but Arne and the sheriff and the deputy clerk with her pad, waiting for him to come inside and write a check.
He had told himself all the reasons, that night and every night since. That the meadow would be sold to somebody eventually, and better a neighbor than a bank in Omaha or a doctor from Denver looking for a write-off. That Farmers Home was never going to lease it back. That it lay alongside his own and would make his place whole and carry him through the review. That ninety-five dollars was more than fair. That Ilse would have wanted him to keep the place. That his father had said the windmill was theirs.
That last one he did not say out loud, even to himself. But it was in there with the others, and he knew it.
Nobody spoke to him at the feed store after that. Not rudely; nobody in the Sandhills would be rude at the feed store. They said "Arne," and nodded, and Lafe rang him up and said "Thanks, Arne," and that was all. At church Zdenka Pospisil, who had brought a hotdish every week for six weeks after Ilse died, turned to speak to someone else as he came up the aisle. And on the fourteenth of February he had come out to feed and found the word on the big sliding door of his barn in red spray paint, letters three feet high, run a little at the bottoms in the cold.
VULTURE.
He had stood and looked at it for a long time with the bucket in his hand. Then he had gone and called Ed Vlasak, and Ed had driven out from Mullen and stood next to him and looked at it too.
"Kids," Ed had said finally. "Probably."
"Probably."