by Jack Cady
The kid, knowing he was reamed no matter how he answered, supposed Lester was a serious person.
"Lester thinks like a white man. Lester sees a thing develop, like how an item set wrong blocks the flow of the crowd. Lester don't have to be told what to do."
The kid, whose answer had been on the edge of correctness, remained silent but relieved.
"So if Lester wasn't black as the ace of spades, he'd make a hell of an auctioneer."
The kid, who mortally feared the day when he would be called on to act the part of auctioneer, and face an auction crowd, kept his flapper shut.
"Which means I'm obliged to Lucky. You can learn a lot from Lucky."
Lester approached, springy of step. "He's a goddamn goldmine," Wade said. "He's like strikin' oil. Most of the help you get have hangovers."
When Lester came through the doorway Wade got businesslike. "My girl stays here. You take the truck and the kid," he told Lester. "The Mrs. and I will meet you there. We'll bust ass early. It's gonna get hotter than the Pope's hemorrhoids."
* * *
The '39 Ford truck carried a twelve foot moving-van body, rusted floorboards covered with sheets of boiler plate, and a clutter of tools in the cab. Lester slid behind the wheel like the happiest man alive. "I think to get some wheels," he told the kid. "Then I think maybe not. Maybe get a pickup. Police don't mess with a man in a truck."
. . .turn left on Bardstown Road, past the skating rink and bars and orphanage. When the truck got to Charlie Weaver's place, Lester and the kid saw a colored man sweeping. Chairs and a couple of lamps, plus ashtrays and other odds and ends sat on the sidewalk. An old International pickup sat at the curb. On its sideboards was painted the biggest double- entendre in coal-burning Louisville, although the owner didn't realize it. The sign said, Ashes Hauled.
"That's old Larry," Lester told the kid. "Clean-up man. He takes the trash, gets the spare goods, plus a buck or two for work and gas." Lester looked at the empty auction house, at the dusty windows and fading sign. "Hell of thing," he said. "Charlie, he was all right."
"My dad said he was smart."
"Your daddy is smart. Charlie is more on the quiet side. Or was."
Hang a left at Cave Hill and travel half the length of Broadway to Arnold's Moving and Storage, famous among Louisville's small businessmen and a favorite of auctioneers. When an auction is held outside the auction house, the commission goes down to ten percent, but the gross goes up. The customer base widens to include contractors, builders, even grocerymen. It all depends on what's for sale.
In a warehouse sale, as Lester would explain because he is even more experienced than Wade, people expect most anything. It is different from an estate.
In an estate the person is dead. His goods got abandoned in the midst of daily use. They sit in place in his house, his furniture, his little secrets; dust on the lintels, month-old lettuce sinking to liquid in the refrigerator. The goods, having outlasted the master, are still arranged in practical patterns. Somebody else could move in, rearrange things, and the house and property would continue.
But in a warehouse sale the goods seem to apologize. After all, the person who left them meant to return. Why else leave personal stuff? But, life gets in the way. People remarry or die. Age and failed memory send some to the poorhouse or the old folks' home. Some move or are careless. Their goods sit lonesome. Warehouse fees add up. When the bill goes unpaid for too long, the auctioneer gets a call.
If goods could feel bad these would wail . . .
nice-stitched linen, antique pistols, old coins, diaphragms (always means a divorce), sentimental stuff: programs of concerts, invitations to balls, ribbons faded but pressed among pressed flowers, Bibles holding faded obits from newspapers, tissue V-mail from the war, fading blue. There are dance cards, family photos, groups of grinning soldiers, doughboys, G.I.s, pictures of ships and planes, cars and houses, and photos of Old Dog Trey.
Porn books, porn pictures, porn postcards, mostly French from the war; but also comic books on newsprint: Donald and Daisy Duck doing the deed. Tarzan and Jane. Wimpy and Popeye and Olive Oyl.
Stuff that folks save: balls of aluminum stripped from cigarette packages, balls of string, stubs of crayons, pencils, prescription bottles with a few remaining pills, plus aspirin, and always and forever, dried-out Pepto Bismol, once pink and promissory; ration stamps from the war, for meat, gas, sugar, stamps that controlled goods outside the black market, plugs of tobacco, half-bitten, tucked in brass spittoons.
Victorian pictures of the dead: mother and child, woman in wedding dress, baby in ruffles though stillborn, in fancy coffin. Plenty pictures of well-dressed corpses, youths, and businessmen.
Coffee cans filled with buttons, magnets fashioned like little scottie dogs, nosing each other, ribboned medals from eighty years of wars, crayon pictures drawn by children and folded into dictionaries, pinking scissors, darning eggs, all a-tumble; worse than an estate sale. Sad. Ghostly. Troublesome.
And ( . . .and this is where trouble and some real ghosts would walk in on everybody that hot August day) there are lots of containers: Drawers after drawers in vanities, dressers, highboys, old-fashioned kitchen cabinets sporting flour mills (some still holding flour), tool chests, hope chests, cedar chests, plus cartons and boxes and wooden cases. There are desks and file cabinets, armoires, hidden drawers, false bottoms in fine furniture, and trinkets carefully wrapped and packed in wastebaskets.
Lester and Wade's kid brought the truck along because a warehouse sale holds a lot of unsalable stuff that goes to the dump.
Lester pulled the truck into the huge warehouse. The truck sat dwarfed beside the 'lots' (inventories) of goods being sold for storage charges. Yellow forklifts trundled here and there. Warehousemen kept their distance. To the warehousemen, the auctioneer and crew were intruders.
"We gotta," Wade said to no one in particular, "hump like a horny racehorse, 'cause we're way behind. Number as we go. The wife and I work one lot, and Lester works another."
Wade's kid, relieved, went with Lester.
Some days, as Wade would attest, are not worth cow plop on a highway. Box after box held more trash than merchandise. Junk went onto the truck, which by noon sat half full. Lunch came from brown bags. Wade's wife had fixed for the whole crew and pretended to a picnic. She was self-conscious, the kid was self-conscious, and Lester remained quiet. Out of habit maybe, or because he still mistrusted Wade, he managed to sit off some distance by himself. Lester could not go into a white restaurant.
Wade, on the other hand, chomped fast, resenting the time that eating took away from work. And then, shortly, Wade and Lester (who would likely tell you they had seen it all) found out they hadn't.
The shrunken heads appeared just after lunch, but nobody sicked. Lester pulled them, wrapped in cloth, from a dresser drawer. He unwrapped them and the heads, with eyelids sewn shut, tried to stare back. "Sweet Jesus," said Lester. "Fiji Island?" said Lester. He laid the two heads on top of the dresser. "Better come look," he told Wade.
The heads were no longer black, as when alive. Black had turned dull gray. Leathery. They were no larger than a big man's fist.
"Some soldier-boy," Lester said to nobody in particular. "Bought 'em in the Solomons."
Wade's kid, scared, backed up. He was obliged to act like a man, but nobody said he had to like it.
"Natives sold to the soldier-boys," Lester said, "mostly imitations. Mostly monkey heads. These ain't monkey heads."
"They're worth something." Wade looked ready to reach for a lot-number. Then his mind turned to problems of display. Then he hesitated because his wife took charge.
"These were people. You'll not sell people." Then she turned red, redder than Wade's kid had ever seen her.
Lester turned away so as not to embarrass her any worse. "I'll take 'em," he muttered. "Say a word over them. Give 'em a burial."
Wade, who finally picked up, stood for a moment like a juvenile delinquent caught in a hot-wi
red Packard. Silent, he turned back to work.
"We're trading," Wade's wife said in a voice so certain that no sane man would argue. "I'll work this lot with the boy. Lester works my place." She didn't say she had bad feelings about that lot. Didn't have to.
Just as well. Southern ghosts appeared, and the day had it in mind to stay ugly. Wade's kid next discovered a photo album in a desk. He idly opened it to a black and white glossy of a man lynched. The man dangled, not well dressed. The picture had been taken in daytime. The kid flipped pages. The same man appeared, but this time the photo showed a close-up of his face; tongue sticking out (but not much) eyes wide like he watched something spectacular; the springtime leaves of Heaven or the winter roots of Hell. This photo showed night. A glow of firelight, or flashbulb, brightened the man's brow. The skin shone dark as Lester.
The kid motioned to his mother. She looked, whispered, and the kid had never heard her voice so sad. "Wrap it in something. Bury it in the trash on the truck. Do it quiet."
And, the day wouldn't quit. In a cedar chest, right on top of sheets, lay a Klan hood. When Viola pulled it out, she gasped, then tried to hide her confusion.
"Never mind hiding it," Lester said to her. "I see the damn thing. Lemmie look." He walked easily as an actor, and took it from her hand.
Klan hoods, up close, came in considerable varieties. Some were made of cheap stuff, starched and backed with cardboard. Some, like this one, were of finest muslin with a Christian cross embroidered large. Holes for eyes stared oval, awful. Lester looked it over, felt its considerable weight. "The lady knew how to sew," he muttered. "Look at the handwork on this thing." The stitched cross, in red, lay as clean and tight and comfortable as rope. "Through the years," Lester said to Wade's wife, "a couple of these came through Charlie Weaver's place. We all felt bad." He tossed the hood onto trash in the truck and went back to work.
And Wade's kid, who was of two minds about everything, watched his father go red and speechless. As work continued Wade remained quiet. He did not cuss and he did not boss. Where Wade came from, Indiana, there were more Ku Klux than in any southern state. The best that can be said of Wade is that he had never actually been Ku Klux, because he was not a joiner. He wouldn't even join the Rotary.
By three o'clock the truck sat filled. Wade turned to Lester. "Best make a dump run. Take the kid."
August 11th
Dump Run
The dump lay out behind Butchertown. Huge trucks trundled along narrow streets, turned into a graveled road and eased over rumpled hardpan which turned greasy, thus skiddy during rain. In summer heat, smells of decay and turpentine layered the air. In some spots, nails and glass poked through muck. A guy had to figure at least one flat tire for every half dozen dump runs.
Two men ran the dump. One tended the trash-fire that burned all day, smoldered all night. The man lived like a gamble-man, except life and limb, not money, were the stakes. The game was played in a combat zone. Discarded ammunition sometimes blew off. It was usually small stuff, but an occasional 30-30 or .45 (called 'zingers') came singing out of the fire.
The other man sat in a shack at the entrance and did diddly. Before his alcoholic eyes passed garbage trucks, mostly uninteresting, and other trucks holding amazing possibilities. Louisville had industries.
Drums of used oil, aluminum scraps, out-moded office machines, broken glass, cases of bottles or canning jars, ammunition boxes from the war, boxes of paper files, rusted tools, discarded canvas, packing boxes, cases of water-damaged clothing, books, chemicals, jerry cans painted army-khaki-color, and entire inventories of smoke-stained merchandise from some store's successful insurance fire.
A few people lived at the dump and also made their livings there. Crude shacks stood on the perimeters, nailed together from used boards and roofed with discarded tin. These 'regulars' lived off the effluvia of a growing city. They swapped, sold, sometimes cornered a market in gallons of paint discarded because it had been frozen; or building materials. For amusement (and they were joined in this on Saturdays by young boys from the neighborhood) they used .22 rifles to pot rats.
And for these folks, Lester and the auction truck were a special joy. It would not be fair to say they 'lived' for the appearance of Lester, but it is fair to say the truck made-the-day for one whale of a lot of happy scavengers.
* * *
Lester drove and Wade's kid rode. The shrunken heads rested in an old pillow case on the truck seat. The kid kind of nestled toward the door, away from the heads. When the truck bounced on railroad tracks the heads sort of jounced up, then settled. Lester hummed as he drove. "My daddy," he said softly to the kid, "was a sorta mean bastard. Not much of a drinking man. Just mean."
The kid avoided the heads, and found himself speechless. Some kind of opening lay in what Lester said. Maybe. He watched Lester's hands on the steering wheel. Blackest hands the kid had ever seen. The kid thought of the lynch-pictures riding back there in the load. He told himself he'd have to get that sack he'd put them in, and get them to the fire.
"My dad ain't exactly mean," he said. "But he ain't what you'd say, polite."
"He's in a tough business." Lester still talked soft. "You got a fine momma. She treats a colored man decent."
The kid scooched away from the heads, embarrassed, and didn't know what to say. People didn't talk about colored, not in front of colored. People pretended. "I don't understand . . . shit . . . ." he muttered. It was the first time ever, in his whole life, that he had used the word 'shit' out loud. Probably headed for hell because of it. And, he didn't even know what he meant.
Lester hummed, sort of happy. "Do you know it's shit, you'll be okay. Listen to your momma."
The heads jiggled. Lester reached to pat the pillow case like a grown man patting a puppy, or maybe a kid.
"In the war. Did you see 'em chop heads?"
"I saw sad sacks cut the ears off-a other sad sacks who happened to be dead at the time." Lester went silent like he concentrated on his driving. Then he said, "Cut heads happened in the south seas. I was in Europe where t'was worse." He drove and sort of tapped the steering wheel with fingertips. Finally, "Lucky was going through something when that foreign boy killed himself. I was watching it happen. And Lucky ain't never even been to Europe."
When they pulled into the dump and Lester backed up to one of the dump piles, the kid found he'd worried and fretted for nothing. Lester got busy with old-home-week at the dump.
"My darling Lester," a gap-tooth lady said, "simply splendid to see you again." The lady was old and crazy-as-hell, but sweet. The kid had seen her on trips with his dad, but from afar. She was sort of yellowish, mouldy-white, with wilted flowers on her straw hat. One eye sort of cocked sideways, but seemed cheery.
"Goddamn it, Lester, you got you-self a diff'rent truck. Where you find this shitbox?" This from a little tub of a man with rotted teeth; also white but unwholesome.
"New job," Lester told him. "Weaver passed." Lester headed for the back of the truck, but the kid had bailed and got ahead of him. Drop the tailgate. Climb up fast. Rustle the stuff. The kid had klan hood and lynch-pictures headed for the fire, even while Lester watched. He heard, almost like an echo, Lester saying to the old lady, " . . . kid might be gonna amount to something."
Folks clustered as Lester and kid pushed the load. A dark- skinned man with a narrow nose talked excitedly in a foreign language. "Portuguese," Lester explained as he worked. "Sometimes falls into English. Keep away from him. Crazy as a rabbit."
And, a romantic couple, a pair of Mutt and Jeff guys; one dirty black, one dirty white, quarreled over discarded clothes. The white one wore ragged feathers in his hair. "Be polite there," Lester told the white one. To the dark one he said, "I swear to goodness, you two boys are damn near ten pounds in a five pound bag."
* * *
"Queer as bears at a fair," Lester explained to the kid as they pulled from the dump. "Those two gents have found the safest place. Every place else is dangerous."
The kid, who had heard about queers, didn't know squat what the word meant.
"I gotta drop by my place," Lester told him. Lester patted the pillow case. "Don't think it real smart to be carrying these folks on a bus."
The truck rattled along brick streets, along a short patch of cobblestones, and wound past the stockyards where cattle and swine cried; screams of beasts, no gentle moos, no contented oinks. Cattle pressed through chutes. Sheep clustered in tight packs against fences.
"Besides," Lester said, like he was excusing himself, "I'm thinking a little bit about Lucky."
Past taverns and churches, then past supply houses; electric, plumbing, printing; finally to Jackson St. The truck pulled up before a brick three-story Victorian. It looked like a regular house. Down the block, away, stood a yellow-painted building. "Lucky's place," Lester told the kid. "I'll be right back."
Wade's kid took an interest. Down a block, beside the yellow building, a half dozen colored men stood in front of a green-painted tavern. Occasionally one clapped his hands, or did a little shuffle. The men didn't seem excited, or anything; but every-other-minute one would shuffle-dance. They watched an occasional car cruise Jackson St. Sometimes a man would drift from the group like a log on the river, only to find an eddy and drift back.
Brick Victorian houses lined the street as far as the kid could see. The kid had been around enough antique dealers to know about old houses, and thus knew this had once been a snazzy part of town. He sniffed and smelled something different, but could not say what. He knew about the colored sweat which mixed in with this different smell; but the smell was more than that. If tears could give off an odor, he smelled them. If laughter could cause the mildest stink, he smelled it. The sweet part of the smell might come from church-song. His nose, more than his eyes, told him he sat watching, for him, a brand new world.
When Lester climbed back in the truck he did not start the engine. Instead he watched the street where a coffee-colored man came out of Lucky's hock shop. The man walked a little unsteady. He looked like a bum dressed in fancy hand-me-downs.