The Auctioneer

by Joan Samson

  “Me and you,” John said, “we always used to go down near the first ones. You hankerin’ to go back to that?”

  “Then he’s got this thing about farmin’, and well water, and firewood, and clear air. To his mind, all that’s part and parcel with Christian values.”

  Mim chewed on the knuckle of her thumb uneasily.

  Gore lit another cigarette and drew on it so that his whole front lifted six inches. He looked down at Hildie, then turned to gaze uncomfortably at the plastic daisies hanging between the front windows. “Fact, he was after me to ask who all would send their little ones if he started a Sunday School.”

  “I taught Sunday School thirty-five years, for my part,” Ma said.

  “Well I know it,” Gore said, nodding.

  “Course Hildie’d go to Sunday School,” Ma said. “She’d love that. And she needs it bad.”

  Hildie felt her grandmother’s complacent glance, caught her lip in her teeth, and scuttled to her mother.

  There was a loud snap in the stove and the hollow sound of the fire momentarily blazing, not a comforting sound since the room was already too warm for everyone but Ma.

  “That what you’re doin’ here?” John asked, starting to laugh. “Collectin’ kids for a Sunday School class?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Gore said. “Thing is, we thought we’d give it another go next Saturday.”

  “Another auction?” John asked, his laughter cut short.

  Gore shrugged.

  “I thought the one you had was fine,” John said.

  “If one’s good, two’s better,” Gore said, resettling his bulk in the chair. “We’re thinkin’ we might hold even more.”

  “For the police again?” John asked.

  Gore rummaged in his back pocket for his handkerchief again. “If you wait till crime gets out of hand before you get around to more police...”

  Ma nodded enthusiastically. “Why it’s just like Janice Pulver was sayin’ about how Farmer’s Mutual had to raise its prices because of payin’ so much on account of them hippies campin’ out all over the place. Never mind Amelia strangled like that.”

  “Well, things are gettin’ more complicated,” Gore said, turning to Ma with gratitude. “That’s about all I know.”

  “Why, we can give them that old buffet,” Ma said. “What’d we ever do with that anyway?”

  On the days when nobody went to town, John walked the quarter of a mile to the mailbox as he had since he was barely bigger than Hildie. Usually it was empty. But on the Friday after Gore’s second visit, when he lifted Hildie to look, she pulled out a letter. She ran home ahead of him in the sunshine, so agile now that John could no longer keep up with her without breaking into a run himself, and he was some years past that. His boots crunched rhythmically in the sandy mud as he followed, his broad face content as his child widened the gap between them, waving the letter high over her head like a flag.

  Hildie threw the letter triumphantly into Ma’s lap and waited for John to sit in the rocker so she could climb into his lap. Mim leaned against the piano in her apron. Ma read aloud:

  Dear John, Miriam, Mrs. Moore, and Hildie:

  The wheels you contributed to the policeman’s auction brought a surprisingly good price. I would like to remit some of the money to you as a recompense for your generosity.

  Bob thinks the auction was a great success. I certainly hope it will contribute to Harlowe’s future safety.

  As you no doubt know, I am the new owner of the former Fawkes place on the Parade and very much hope that we will meet as neighbors soon and see a lot of one another.

  Sincerely,

  Perly Dunsmore

  Enclosed was a check for three dollars. “More than the firemen ever do,” John said, turning the check over and righting it again.

  “He’s sure got Bob Gore all wrapped up and tied with a yellow ribbon,” Mim said.

  “That’s nothin’ to sneeze at,” Ma said. “For all his talk, Bobby got the share of sense for the whole nineteen of them Gore kids. And if he’d a lit out of Harlowe like the rest, we’d have old Toby on the dole sure.”

  “How ’bout the cows, Ma?” John said, winking at Mim. “We’d of had the cows on the dole too. Might’s well shoot Toby outright as take his cows away.”

  “Crazy how that barn don’t fall on them,” Mim said.

  “Everybody from Harlowe knows it’s goin to stand as long as Toby,” snapped Ma.

  “Bob’s not the worst cop you could have,” John said. “He’s sure to be up in a flash if you call.”

  “He’d be scared of missin’ somethin’,” Ma said.

  “Kind of mean, ain’t it?” John said. “All these seven years he’s been dreamin’ of havin’ a real honest-to-gosh crime to solve. And now he’s got a whopper—a stranglin’—not to mention the break-in and the holdup. And poor old Bobby ain’t scared up so much as a suspect.”

  “Fanny says he was so cross he wouldn’t even talk about it,” Mim said. “Not even when he’d had a few. Not that I blame him. Downright humiliatin’, right there in the biggest house in town like that.”

  Ma turned to John. “Do you recall that spell back when old Nicholas Fawkes used the big barn for auctions? she asked. That makes a sort of a tradition, don’t it? Maybe this Perly Dunsmore ain’t such a fool after all. You ought to go on down to the store a bit more often. See what you can find out.”

  John shook his head and grinned. “You’re workin’ up a powerful curiosity about this fellow, Ma,” he said.

  “Can’t say I ever thought about it just like that before, did you, John?” Mim asked. “That what they’re really after is to get to be like us?”

  “Who?” John asked.

  “All the people movin’ from the city to the country,” she said.

  John and Mim were climbing up the pasture to replace any fallen stones in the back wall so the cows wouldn’t stray into the woods. It was always a good hike to the top, but that morning there was a fog curtaining their progress, and it seemed a journey. The child walked between them, subdued, keeping their hands tight in her own. An invisible phoebe called over and over as if counting their quiet footsteps up and up on the steep brown island fading into whiteness, and occasionally crows cried in the distance.

  Halfway up, they turned, as they always did, to look out over the pond, but it was lost completely in the fog. “Look at the house,” Hildie whispered.

  “Looks nice,” Mim said.

  What they saw was a white cape set into the side of the hill with a fence of tall hand-carved pickets across the back. The mist bleached away the weathering on the paint, the rusty tin over the woodshed, the missing bricks in the chimney, the plastic over the windows, even the tangle of last year’s morning-glory vines still clinging to the fence.

  “Looks all polished up,” John said.

  “Like summer folks had got their hands on it.” Mim laughed and turned to climb again.

  Eventually, the small walled cemetery under the cherry tree emerged through the fog. “Look out,” Mim warned as they approached, catching Hildie before she stepped into the brown remains of last year’s poison ivy. “We ought to spray that,” she said, before it gets a hold this summer.”

  “Before Ma goes,” John murmured. “Now there would be a pretty mess.”

  “Might not suit your pa either and all the ones before him to be lyin’ like that in such a bed of poison.”

  But the child had turned to look down again. “It’s gone!” she cried. “The house is gone!”

  “No more than you’re gone from it.” John laughed. He caught her up to carry on his shoulders. “Look at the willows, pet. See that smudgy yellow? They’ll be greenin’ up and we’ll have spring before we’re halfway ready.” They headed toward the high back wall of the pasture, scanning it carefully for broken places. But most of the granite chunks remained in their accustomed places, fastened by a sinewy net of Concord grape vines.

  “All things considered, I don�
�t half mind,” Mim said.

  “What?” asked John.

  “Bein’ the way we are,” she said.

  2

  As mud gave way to black flies and black flies to mosquitoes, Bob Gore came again, and yet again.

  The Moores heard about the auctions at Linden’s store. Every week more people came, more people smitten with the romance of a country life, part of the same blind force that, since before Hildie was born, had been tearing up the hillsides with bulldozers and setting in the trailers and tiny modular houses designed to look traditional. Some of the new people drove halfway to Boston every day to work along the outer belt highway. Some manned the bright glass and steel factories going in along Route 37 as it made its way south. And more and more summer people poured in off the interstate every weekend, invading Linden’s store in flimsy striped and polka-dot clothes, complaining about the price of produce, and gobbling up the plastic balls and pinwheels and inflatable elephants that Hildie loved so.

  When Gore came, John led him down under the barn to the cavernous area that housed a century’s collection of broken rockers, tables with legs missing, cracked mirrors, rusted cider presses, and outdated tools. “How long you figure you can get people to buy this rummage, Bobby? John asked one week.

  “I wonder myself sometimes,” Gore admitted. He stopped to light a cigarette and watched the smoke curling up into the cobwebs overhead. “Perly’s like a magician, but still...

  “Hard for me to figure people with nothin’ better to do in spring than go to auctions.”

  “Well, they ain’t farmers,” Gore said. “Sets you on your heels to see all the city folk pourin’ into the Parade on a Saturday. The towns around here are growin’ all right. And even the people just drove up for a weekend can’t seem to think what to do with a Saturday. Mow the lawn, cart the garbage to the dump, complain about the bugs. What the hell? I guess Perly’s right. The auctions make them feel a part of things.”

  “I can’t say the checks ain’t welcome,” John said.

  “What Perly says is it’s just buyin’ and sellin’ in the best American tradition, and we give them a better show than a discount store, which is where they’d be in the city on a Saturday. Guess some people just like to part with money.”

  “You plannin’ to goldplate your cruiser, or what?” John asked, unearthing an old soapstone sink and indicating that Gore should lift one end.

  “Manpower,” Gore said. “I’ve got me five deputies now.”

  “Five!” John said.

  “Well, like Perly says, ‘Prevention’s the best cure,’” Gore said, running his hand over the gray stone appraisingly. “I told you we got Mudgett, and now we got Jimmy Ward, Sonny Pike, Jim Carroll, and your neighbor there, Mickey Cogswell.”

  “Tough lot,” John said, frowning.

  “Perly says,” Gore said, looking up at John, “it’s men like that make people want to bring up their sons in Harlowe.”

  John lifted his end of the heavy sink and helped Gore carry it out to the truck.

  “When you goin’ to come and see our man in action?” Gore asked. He’s a regular wizard. Puts a spell on a crowd so they can’t help what they do.”

  “But, Bobby,” John said, “you come to us every Thursday bustin’ at the seams with every slick thing that man’s said all week. What do we need to see him for?”

  The Moores found few free moments in spring. Spring was the time when they laid the foundations for another year of living. John plowed up and reseeded the quarter of the pasture that was most grown up in hawkweed and daisies. Mim pruned and sprayed the apple trees. John harrowed and manured the garden and the new patch for the squash. And Mim and Hildie planted, pressing the seeds into the wet earth by hand. They took down the plastic covers from the windows, and hung up a swing for Hildie and an old tire. They planted flowers in front of the house and in the bigger garden across the road that they still called Ma’s garden, though now it was Mim instead of Ma who cut the flowers to sell to the church. And, of course, they milked the cows in the mornings and drove them up into the pasture, then brought them back and milked them again in the evening.

  The child went with them everywhere, sitting on her own stool near them as they milked, keeping out of reach of Sunshine’s tail and asking endless questions or singing idly to herself. John and Mim listened quietly and answered when they could, resting their heads against the warm flanks of the cows and leaning into the rhythm of milking the seven cows.

  They were married over a decade before Hildie was born, and the quick fair child was so unlike her parents that Ma teased her, telling her she must be the changeling child of a dandelion. John and Mim had planned a big family. It was a part of growing to put out branches, as many as possible. When they were married, the price of milk was holding and nothing seemed difficult. Even when the milk stopped paying, they would have accepted children as part of the course of things, had they come along. But, by the time Hildie was born, their plans had faded to an almost forgotten ache, not from longing for a child so much as from a sense that they had been passed over by the rhythms of the earth, like the apple tree that bloomed so prettily but could not be coaxed to bear.

  John and Mim had always gone to the fields and the woods and the barn together and fallen into step like brothers to do what had to be done. And practically from the time Hildie was born, they continued their habit, taking the baby with them or leaving her sleeping with her grandmother, by then too crippled to care for a child, but able enough to ring the gong to summon them when she woke up. When Hildie was tiny, Mim carried her on her back or tethered her to a stake like a goat, and when she grew older, she seemed to stay nearby just naturally. And, in a way they hadn’t expected and never mentioned, it made them feel complete, even happy, to have the child about.

  In the evening the family talked, as they did every year when spring gripped them with energy and stirrings of ambition, about tearing out the big central chimney and putting in a real bathroom with a tub and an electric hot water heater. If Mim could get a few days of cleaning for the new summer people, or sell a few more flowers—if John could get more time from the town running the grader or the snowplow, or a few more jobs helping Cogswell, then they could pay for it. That year they also talked about the auctioneer—about his plans for the town. There was an excitement to his coming that seemed of a piece with the quickening of spring. It reconciled them to Bob Gore’s visits to hear him talk about the things that were happening just beyond the edges of their farm.

  “That’s what I always said,” claimed Ma. “That all them people are comin’ here on account of this is where America began. They get to see that all that fast livin’ ain’t worth the trouble it starts.”

  “That’s why you watch all them jack-a-dandies on your programs like they was givin’ out the word of God,” John teased.

  “And what would you have me do, with my legs no more use than two popple sticks?” Ma cried.

  “If the auction checks came out to just a mite more,” Mim said, “could be we’d get our bathroom after all.”

  But finally they decided, as they always did when the days grew warmer and lazier, that any change should wait until they had the money in hand.

  One Saturday morning, their curiosity got the better of their list of chores. John and Mim and Hildie took a bar of Ivory soap down to the pond and cleaned up. Afterward, scrubbed from scalp to toes, they dressed to go to town—John in clean khakis, Mim in a flowered skirt and yellow blouse, and Hildie in a hand-me-down dotted swiss dress from one of the Cogswell girls. Mim gave Ma a sponge bath and helped her to pull her lisle stockings over her lumpy legs and lace up the black dress shoes.

  Secretly, Mim liked going to town, but she wondered if her clothes were right, if she would say something foolish to somebody. She remembered the way people had looked at her when she first came to Harlowe, and she brushed furiously at her hair, as if that would somehow soften the laugh lines around her eyes and make her seventeen again.
Now that it was too late, it would have been all right to be admired. Although she had grown up in Powlton, only one town away, she had always felt out of step in Harlowe. John did not hunt or play poker, and she, in turn, did not take part in bake sales or sewing circles. When the others her age had been raising babies, baking, and fancying up their homes, she had known only planting and milking and cutting wood. “No children,” she knew they had commented over their sewing. “Too pretty, that’s why.” Then, when the others, with children in high school, were putting in formica counters and central heat, she was finally raising a baby, continuing to cook and heat with wood, and finding things quite all right and cheaper the way they were. And, although she and John sold flowers to the church, because Ma always had sold flowers to the church, they didn’t feel the need to attend.

  If anyone had asked, Mim would have said she was friends with Agnes Cogswell. In summer the Cogswells were their nearest neighbors. Two or three times a year—at least once during blueberry season and once at Christmas—Mim went over and spent a day there. And occasionally Agnes called her up with some question or tidbit of gossip. Agnes wasn’t fashionable either, though not because she didn’t try. Agnes’ problem was that she overdid everything to the point where she scared people away. But Mim, in a quiet way, appreciated her affection and enjoyed visiting in the harum-scarum household with its six noisy children.

  Four abreast on the seat of the old green truck, the Moores were all silent as they rattled over the dirt road toward town— Ma with discomfort, John and Mim with their thoughts, and Hildie with eagerness. The auctions were being held on the Parade like the firemen’s auctions. Although they were early, the road that circled the green was parked solid on all four sides, and a good group of people milled around examining the things for sale clustered around the bandstand.