Three Minutes for $500 — Then the Old Farmer Took His Stance

 The Price of a Broken Machine

Grease had a way of embedding itself into the whorls of a man's fingerprints so deeply that no amount of pumice soap could ever completely scrape it away.

Clayton James had stopped trying.

He stood beneath the harsh, flickering yellow light of his barn, staring at his hands while the dead combine sat behind him like a wounded animal.

His knuckles were black with oil. A jagged scar crossed the back of his left thumb, a pale, crooked reminder of an accident from years ago. Beneath his fingernails was a permanent darkness that seemed to belong to him now.

The barn smelled of burnt wiring, old diesel, hot rubber, and dry Kansas earth.

Outside, the July evening was suffocating.

Cicadas screamed from the cottonwoods along the creek. The last orange light of sunset rested on thirty acres of winter wheat that should have been harvested already.

Clayton looked at the combine again.

The alternator had finally surrendered.

He had spent nearly three hours tracing wires, testing connections, cleaning contacts, and pretending the problem might somehow fix itself if he stared at it long enough.

It hadn't.

The replacement alternator would cost nearly five hundred dollars.

Clayton had eighty-three dollars in his checking account.

His mortgage payment was due in four days.

The property tax notice was sitting unopened on his kitchen table.

And his wheat was beginning to dry beyond the ideal harvesting window.

He rubbed his face.

At fifty-two, Clayton had learned that panic rarely accomplished anything.

It merely made a person tired.

He picked up his phone and stared at the screen.

There were two people he could call.

One was his bank.

The other was his neighbor, Earl, who had already lent him money twice that year.

Clayton put the phone away.

He wasn't going to beg.

Not yet.

He looked at the clock.

8:14 p.m.

He could sit on his porch with a cheap beer and listen to the insects.

He could ignore the combine until morning.

But the wheat didn't care whether he was exhausted.

It didn't care about bills.

It didn't care about the ringing in his ears that sometimes became unbearable after dark.

Twelve years ago, a mortar shell had exploded less than twenty yards from Clayton James in Ramadi.

He had survived.

Some of the men around him hadn't.

The doctors had repaired what they could.

The Army had sent him home.

The nightmares had eventually become less frequent.

The ringing never left.

Clayton grabbed his keys.

Thirty minutes later, his rusted Ford pickup rolled into the gravel parking lot of the Iron Horse Tavern.

The building wasn't really a tavern.

It was a corrugated steel pole barn sitting almost directly on the county line.

On Friday and Saturday nights, the place smelled of stale cigarettes, spilled beer, hot bodies, and bad decisions.

Tonight was worse.

A fight club was being held in the back.

It wasn't officially a fight club.

Rusty Cobb, the owner, called it "friendly competition."

Nobody believed him.

Farmhands came.

Off-duty deputies came.

Construction workers came.

Young men who had watched too many fighting videos on the internet came.

And occasionally, professional fighters passed through town and turned the place into something much more serious.

Clayton had been there before.

Usually for a beer.

Never for a fight.

He pushed through the heavy wooden door.

The air-conditioning had died months ago, so two industrial fans were circulating hot air around the room.

A jukebox blasted country music.

Someone shouted near the pool tables.

Glasses clinked.

A cheer erupted from the back.

Clayton walked toward the bar.

He was wearing faded Carhartt pants stiff with dried mud and a gray T-shirt stained with engine oil.

Rusty looked up.

The large man's stomach hung over his belt like a sack of wet laundry.

"You look like hell, Clayton."

"Combine died."

Rusty winced.

"That's worse than looking like hell."

"Alternator."

"How much?"

"Five hundred."

Rusty gave him a sympathetic look.

"That's a bad number."

"I know."

"What are you drinking?"

"Club soda."

Rusty laughed.

"You're either becoming a saint or planning something stupid."

Clayton took the sweating glass.

"Neither."

"Good."

Rusty nodded toward the back.

"Because if you're planning something stupid, there's an open challenge."

Clayton glanced over his shoulder.

A crowd had formed around a makeshift fighting area.

Someone had cleared away several tables and laid down thick gym mats.

A young man stood in the center.

He looked about twenty-six.

Broad shoulders.

Close-cropped hair.

Expensive fight shorts.

Black compression shirt.

His name was Trent Larson.

Clayton knew him by reputation.

Trent had competed in regional MMA tournaments and had recently started training with a professional camp two hours away.

He had won enough fights to develop the confidence of someone who had not yet lost something important.

A man beside the ring was holding a wad of cash.

"Three minutes!" he shouted.

Trent raised both hands.

"Three minutes with me."

Laughter.

"Five hundred dollars."

More laughter.

Clayton turned back to his club soda.