SEDALIA, Mo. — Sgt. Jay Key stands in the middle of the car lot, beside a salesman, beneath the shiny metallic streamers, among the neat rows of polished Mitsubishis.

He isn't looking to buy. This is just one in an unending series of stops to make his face familiar and his mission clear.

Key is an Army recruiter, charged with selling the service even as war rages and a death toll mounts, standing shoulder to shoulder with a man who need only trumpet the likes of a clutchless shift and aluminum rims to potential customers.

They are brethren. "It's all the same," Key said. "It's all sales."

It's not an easy sell. For the year ending Sept. 30, the Army was 6,627 recruits below its goal — the largest shortfall in 26 years. The Army National Guard and Reserve did even worse.

Yet here in Sedalia, there is no deficit.

The recruitment station here exceeded its annual goal of 58 soldiers by three. The Army's 5th Battalion, which includes 295 recruiting stations in Missouri and 10 other states in America's vast middle, missed its goal for the year — but was still the top-ranked battalion.

"We hear all the bad stories. We hear recruiting is down," Key said. "But we don't see it here."

There is no single explanation for why Key and his colleagues are so successful. But if you follow them as they make their rounds in Missouri's small towns, if you talk with those who sign up, you'll hear certain refrains: They need the money, they seek an escape from dead-end lives in dead-end towns, they hew to a kind of heartland patriotism.

When 24-year-old Key signed up six years ago, many of the young men at his side were poor, like he was. Now, he says, things are different.

"We got everything from beauty pageant queens, car salesmen, unemployed, college grads, children of doctors," he said. "Everybody joins for their own reason."

FEW OPTIONS

Take U.S. 50 east from here and hang a left just past Syracuse on Missouri 5. You'll hit the tiny town of Bunceton, and 19-year-old Robert Farris says you'll understand why he left.

The railroad left town decades ago, and dreams went with it. Prosperity elsewhere drew many folks away. Those who stayed — 348 at last count — mostly commute to modest-paying factory jobs in surrounding towns. The homes here are unpretentious, the downtown full of crumbling, deserted storefronts.

So when it came time for seniors to turn their tassels at the local high school last May, Farris and three others in his graduating class of 17 decided to join the military.

"We need to do something with our life," Farris said. "And this is the only thing we got going for us."

Farris says he was the "fat kid" at Cooper County R-IV School, an unpopular guy who traveled with the troublemakers. He remembers changing in the locker room on Sept. 11, 2001, after hearing the awful news, and he was so angry. Farris' father is a Vietnam veteran and he has an aunt and a cousin who served in Afghanistan. He always was patriotic, but the terrorist attacks increased his ardor.

A NEW LIFE

Deanna Griffith is 34 with big blue eyes and soft features beginning to show markings of age. She thinks the military can turn her life around.

Griffith thought about enlisting out of high school, but a war was on in the Persian Gulf and her Army drill sergeant father wasn't keen on the idea.

Life happened. She married an Army man, had two kids and assumed a series of low-paying jobs — gas station attendant, deli supervisor, Wal-Mart stock person. Somehow, that youthful confidence that told her she surely could serve her country had slipped away.

More than anything else, it's that confidence, that pride, that she hopes the military will help her regain.

There is the money, too.

Griffith's husband was injured and left the service and they found their way to Warrensburg, about 50 miles southeast of Kansas City. She eventually took a $9-an-hour job at Whiteman Air Force Base's commissary; her husband found work at a railyard in North Kansas City, then at a commercial battery company.

Five years ago, the couple declared bankruptcy. Last year, they made less than $24,000. They struggled to make their $322 monthly mortgage payment and to feed their children.

They lost their house and car and even had to sell the three Pomeranians they were breeding. The family is now living in a mobile home parked on property owned by Griffith's parents.

"I look at it as an opportunity for me, for my whole family, to change our whole lives," she said before beginning basic training at Fort Leonard Wood.

MILITARY PRIDE

This part of the country is a place that — unlike much of the rest of post-Vietnam America — never disdained the military.

You can see it in the way the 24-year-old recruiter, Jay Key, is received as he goes about his business. He goes to blood drives and graduation parties, shares beers with schoolteachers and chats with mechanics, hangs out at a Masonic lodge and enters pool tournaments — anything to make contact with people who can feed him potential recruits.

"I don't think there's a building in town I haven't been in," he said.

People in town know Key — they seem to know all the uniformed men who call this home. They stop them to chat, offer them food, offer a friendly nod.

And as he rides around, Key says it's so evident why he's found so many young men and women willing to join: "Everybody's pretty proud of us out here."