The Auctioneer

by Joan Samson

  Then, as if he had found what he was looking for, he broke into a broad smile that swallowed up the disconcerting eyes and turned him into any big well-put-together deeply tanned American businessman. “This is one very special group,” he said, his voice deep and restrained. “A mighty fine-looking group of people. Take a look around you, my friends. See that couple next to you? That handsome happy well-heeled couple? Well, if you buy land today, your son may marry their daughter. Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?”

  Perly’s voice began to rise and fall in singsong cadences, and people stared at him, compelled, as if, before their very eyes, the strange dark man were taking on a gloss and brightness that they dared not turn away from. “I can see it,” he went on. “This crowd here has got the makings of a community you’ll be proud to be a part of. I can see it.” He paused and each person watching felt his own gaze reflected in the speaker’s eyes. “You, you are the first,” he said. “The very beginning. The pioneers. The bold ones. The grain of mustard seed from which the kingdom shall arise. And, within a year, I promise you, there will be a kingdom.”

  Perly threw back his head on his strong neck and laughed. The crowd spread out on the green stirred as if with bad conscience. “Perly Acres is going to be known from Maine to Florida as the most desirable, the most exquisitely preserved, the best-regulated, the safest, the most-coveted little piece of paradise on the east coast of these United States of America.”

  Perly took a breath and continued in a lower, more matter-of-fact voice. “Now I hope that each and every one of you was chalking up the mileage and measuring out the minutes it took you to get up here today. Why, we’re so close to Boston, you can just meander on up here for a swim and an hour or two of that friendly country feeling if a Sunday afternoon is all the freedom you allow yourself in a week. If you want to, you can leave the wife and kids up here for a week or a month or all year long.

  You’re a free man. You’ll know they’re safe and healthy and well looked after in the country. And we’re so close you can check in any time you feel the need.

  “I promise you. One year from today you’ll be toasting yourselves with champagne for being the first to get here. For being at the head of the line. For being the ones to cash in on the good old American way: first come, first served. In a year you’ll be laughing when the fat cats offer you twice what you pay today. Everyone knows there’s no investment like land. Any land. But this here is special land, Perly land. I promise you. The world will be your oyster. They’re going to put Perly Acres on the map and embroider it in gold.

  “Now a lot of you are already chomping at the bit to buy—the ones who’ve been around with my agents to see the parcels. But, let me warn you. Don’t you buy unless you’re head over heels in love. Because, if you don’t fall in love this week, we promise you, you will next week, or the week after that. Because that’s the first thing we’re offering—though it’s only the beginning—a piece of land so sweet, so seductive, it’ll do things for you your first sweetheart wouldn’t.”

  Again Perly stopped and centered himself on his toes, then began again in a deeper, more sober register. “If you want to see the site of the recreational facilities before you lay out cash, come back in a month. By that time, the present owners should be gone and the land freed up for us. But, believe me, my word is gold. And that is the prettiest piece of land of all. That’s why we’re saving it—so the entire community can partake of it together. It’s better than bread and wine. It’s right on a pond with a barn that’s going to make a dandy recreation center, a steep pasture behind will make you swoon if you’re a skier, and acres and acres of woods for snowmobiling and cross-country skiing. It’s even got an enchanted forest—pines big enough to keep you hidden if you want to see the fairies dance. In a few weeks too, we’ll have the roads bulldozed through all the parcels, and you’ll be able to drive right up to every single lot.

  “But just keep this one hard fact in mind. The whole world is already waking up. Millions of people are realizing that they lost something priceless when they left the countryside. And they’re coming back in droves. Land around here has quadrupled in value in the last ten years. When people see what we’re up to here, when they smell that air, feel those rolling fields swelling beneath them, they’re going to quadruple the value again in as many weeks. If you wait, you may find yourself in a duel to the death with someone who’s fallen as hard as you have for that little homestead of your dreams. If you buy now, you’re just paying for the land. All the frills—the recreational facilities, the true old country community—they’ll all come along to you as a free bonus, a bonus because you were the ones who had the vision to be pioneers.

  “And let me tell you something about what made our forefathers great. Until you’ve pioneered on a piece of land of your own, you don’t know what life is. You don’t know the rush of sap in the veins that comes of having roots. You don’t know the sense of power that comes from making your own mark. And when I say land, I don’t mean a naked quarter acre in suburbia. I mean wild land—land without a human mark, land where you still hear the fox’s mating call, land where you lose yourself without a compass, land that’s dark at noon. That’s land where anything can still happen—anything at all. Until you’ve taken up an ax and bent your back to marking the wilderness with your own name and labor, you don’t know what it feels like to be a man. And you don’t begin to understand what made America great. We have out here in the country a quality of life, something that money can’t buy, something more important than a new automobile or a new TV or something you’re trying to get for your house. Something we call freedom. We call it opportunity. And it’s a spirit we’ve had from the beginning.” Perly finished with his head thrown back and a high half smile on his face. He ran his hand through his dark hair and bowed his head a moment, collecting himself. The crowd barely stirred.

  “And then there’s financing,” he said quietly. “Forget the bank. If you’ve tried to buy land, you know you can’t get a penny from the bank, not for land, and only a pittance for a second home. There’s one thing past for good, traded in for all our speed and luxury, and that’s the right to a homestead just for the working of it. But here’s what we’re offering you right here today—the chance to buy land, and even a ready-made house if you want, for just thirty percent down.”

  Perly raised his right hand and brought his palm down on the railing of the bandstand with a thump that made the whole fragile edifice shudder. “And now for Parcel Number One,” he cried. “Are you ready? Who is it going to be? Number One. Numero Uno, the very first, the Christopher Columbus of Perly Acres. The beginning of a whole new way of life.”

  He looked down into his briefcase. “Now this house—and I know some of you have already been up to look at it—is the quaint gabled authentic nineteenth-century house up on what we call Gable Ridge Road. The very road is named after the house that can be yours.”

  “It’s Ward’s all right,” John said.

  Perly looked up. “Now this comes complete with twenty-five acres, most of it in open fields and woods, alive all summer long with wild flowers and butterflies, so pretty it’ll take your breath away. This is a house that’ll do it. This is a house that’ll set your head to spinning like it hasn’t since your eighteenth birthday. If you want to spend all your time outdoors, this is for you. Unlike most of what we’ll be offering, this house is completely furnished. The living room and kitchen done over just this year. The owner had a hunch he was going to sell and wanted to get the best possible price. So now, folks, who’s it going to be?”

  Bidding began. It moved slowly. Couples consulted with each other between bids, and several men had out pencils and paper. The contest narrowed, rather quickly, down to a swarthy young man in a checkered overcoat and muddy patent leather shoes, and a lean and nervous gray-haired couple.

  The auctioneer paused to examine the two bidders, then he swung his eyes out over the crowd, looking for others. “The one
s who buy the antique houses on the big old estates,” he said, “will be the aristocrats of Perly Acres. The lords of the manor. The squires. The true gentlemen. Once these houses are a part of our development, they’ll become a symbol—a symbol of the oldtime values we’re all working for.”

  Finally, the young man gave up and the couple got the place for $53,500. The man whooped and hugged his wife, and the wind caught his soft felt hat and blew it across the green. Ezra Stone caught it and brought it back to him, along with a sheaf of documents.

  Perly held an arm out to the man as he pulled a pair of plain rimmed glasses from his pocket to examine the papers. “Before you sign, maybe you want to bid on this too. I have a ten-acre parcel adjacent to what you just bought. It starts at the first stone wall below your pasture and runs down past the brook. Fine trout in that brook too. If you don’t want it, there’s others will. A level place up near the road is just made for a home site, or a person could run a road in and build with complete seclusion and a view of the brook.

  “Now, for those who are worried about how to go about building a house, we have six different models you can contract with us to build for you. They run from ten to fifty thousand dollars. Or you can design and build yourself. Or you can cut down your own trees and do it the way our ancestors did.”

  The young man in the checkered overcoat started bidding again and the man who had just bought Ward’s house looked distinctly uncomfortable. More people took part in the bidding now. The crowd had swelled to fifty or sixty people. The land sold finally for $5,800 to a young couple in blue jeans who looked very sober when their bid turned out to be the winning one. The new owner of Ward’s house instantly left Ezra Stone and made his way around the chairs to speak to them, while his wife stayed where she was, eying her husband’s conversation nervously.

  “Five thousand dollars for ten acres,” murmured Mim.

  “Five thousand, eight hundred,” corrected John.

  The auctioneer sold one other ten-acre piece and then a number of smaller ones. Even the one-acre plots went for over a thousand dollars each. When he came to the other house,” he said, “Now this has some features you won’t find again in a hurry. It has the real old central chimney with four—I repeat, four—fireplaces. The one in the parlor has a priceless hand-carved mantel and hand-painted tiles. Somebody lavished a lot of love on that fireplace. Somebody knew that the hearth is the keystone that makes a strong family. And then there are some stone animal pens —a real curiosity. Wasn’t every farmer, even in those good old days, who bothered to keep his pigs and sheep in stone pens. But, here’s the best thing of all, for today’s recreation-minded families. There’s a watering hole for the cattle there—small to be sure—but plenty big enough to make a dandy swimming hole.”

  “Prescott’s,” John said. “First I heard he was gone. He always cursed that chimney. Said it took up half the house.”

  The auction went on. There were twenty-eight parcels sold from what were once two farms.

  “Some of them must be swamp,” John said when they got to the lower parts of Prescott’s property.

  “How will they know, this time of year?” Mim said.

  Presently, Perly checked his papers and wound up the proceedings. “Well, now we’re all in this together, folks,” he said and looked slowly around at the intent crowd. Then, suddenly, he laughed, spreading out his arms to include the people before him. “You’re in the most exclusive company,” he cried. “I love you all and I congratulate you. Believe me, this town is going to be the biggest double-barreled front-page gilded rooster of a place you ever set foot in.”

  John and Mim moved slowly in the babbling crowd back toward their truck. The wind had picked up and grown colder, so damp now that patches of water darkened the blacktop on the road. A dozen or so people surrounded the auctioneer in a chattering group as he moved toward his house. Dixie trotted at his left heel, shouldering people’s knees to keep her place, her tail waving just slightly in a suggestion of friendliness. Gore moved behind the group, squinting and nervous, his right hand poised near his hip pocket.

  “They got a wicked surprise comin’,” John said, watching from the truck.

  “Maybe it’s them and maybe it’s us’ll get a surprise,” Mim said. “For my money, Prescott and Jimmy Ward did a smart thing. We ought to clear out too.”

  “Folks with cash to buy a farm or a hunk of land just to play games with, like it was a kid’s red wagon... It must take quite a dent to make them hurt.”

  “They bought that land and now it’s theirs,” Mim said. “He’s not goin’ to stand for Prescott comin’ back and makin’ any claims.”

  “I just know that nobody but a Moore’s goin’ to do with that authentic antique farm on the pond with the steep pasture up behind. He may think it, but he’s wrong.”

  “He got the Wards to go,” Mim said, “for all they were such a big deal in town.”

  “Ward’s a fool,” John said. He started the truck, then sat over the steering wheel watching the Parade ground empty out. “He may think the Moores are nobody, but he’s goin’ to find out different.”

  Sunday morning was icy cold and still, a fragile day. The last oak leaves clinging to their twigs were like blown glass, jingling and shattering at a touch.

  “Snow’s late,” Mim said.

  John sat on the bench in front of the stove. He had shaved a maple kindling stick away to the size of a scallion, then chopped it into quarter-inch slices as if to add it to the soup. Finally he shoved aside the last shards of maple and his knife, and now he simply sat, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, staring through his fingers at his boots and the fender of the stove. Occasionally he rubbed his scalp until his thick gray-brown hair stood out from his head, reminding Mim that he needed a haircut.

  In the front room, Ma sat alone on her couch. Now that the room was bare, it seemed wrapped in wallpaper. The paper had once been yellow behind some sort of bluish vine that had never existed, at least not in New Hampshire. Ma had chosen it because it was springlike, and John had approved because it was cheap. Now it was almost black behind the big parlor stove where fingers of smoke stroked it all winter. It was still a startling canary yellow in patches where the piano and sewing machine had stood, and where the pictures had hung, but everywhere else it had faded to a brownish cream. Mim had potted geraniums from the garden to fill the windowsills, and washed the windows, worrying that the putty was so far gone that even with the plastic they would rattle and perhaps crack in the winter wind. But today sunshine streamed in through the small rippled panes and marked out a warm gridwork on the unvarnished pine floor. Catching the tips of Ma’s gray hair, the light made them shine like milkweed as she sat—perfectly still and years away as she gazed out on the quiet day.

  But Hildie had few memories and could not be still. She raced from the front room to the kitchen, and back to the front room, shaking the house with footsteps and jarring the air with shouts. Mim shook out Ma’s pillows, swept the floors, dusted the hot stoves, and fussed after Hildie. Finally she stopped in back of John, with Hildie still whirling around her.

  “They’ll take the tractor this week, sure,” she said.

  John neither moved nor answered, so Mim repeated her statement in a louder voice. This time John turned his head and looked up at her. She saw that he was trembling with anger.

  She turned without a word and grabbed Hildie’s sweater and her own jacket from the hooks by the back door. She caught up the child and whisked her outside. Hildie huddled and held on to her hand, complaining of the cold.

  “This is just a taste of what we’ll get before we’re through,” Mim said, but she took comfort in the child’s closeness. They walked across the yard and stood behind the truck. The bed of the truck seemed pitifully small. Mim pulled open the sliding door to the barn and stepped into its dank interior. She could hear rats scuttling. She kicked at the heap of old boards under the stairway. A lot of them were rotting. The proble
m of building a house on the truck seemed too immense for her. Hildie shivered and pulled at her hand to go outside again.

  In the yard the sun was almost warm and she walked with the child down to the road and across it to the flower garden without glancing again at the truck. The last chrysanthemums lay trampled on the ground by the cold, but still pink and rust and yellow. The leaves on the rose bushes, a dusty green, were curled and dry on their thorny stalks. Mim stood idly in the middle of the garden. Hildie let go of her hand and marched up one row and down the next until she had worked over the entire garden. Then she climbed on top of the overturned wheelbarrow and jumped up and down. The dark pond beyond the scrubby growth of laurel and huckleberries reflected the puffs of clouds suspended over it. Mim thought she could detect a crinkled rim of ice around the edges. The year was turning. One storm would do it now.

  “Off with you,” Mim said. “I’ll ride you to the barn.”

  Hildie jumped down and Mim righted the wheelbarrow. They bumped over the field, stalling on stones, backing up and trying again.

  Hildie laughed. “Giddap, Sunshine,” she cried, holding tight to the sides of the bucking wheelbarrow.

  In the dark barn, they loaded the wheelbarrow up with hay to bank the roses. Mim was surprised to find that they had everything they needed to do this chore. Mudgett had overlooked the wheelbarrow because, in her carelessness, she had left it overturned in the flower garden. “Nothin’s changed at all for the roses,” she said to Hildie. “Come spring, they’ll green up like nothin’ was changed at all.”

  When they heard the truck coming, they were still in the garden. Mim hesitated, then took Hildie’s hand and turned to watch the opening in the trees. It was Cogswell, alone.

  John came out the back door. Mim approached slowly as the two men greeted each other, Hildie pulling at her to hurry.