Damaged Goods

by Heather Sharfeddin

  He clicked on the furnace and cool air blew dust through the vents. After a moment it warmed and he adjusted the digital display to sixty-eight degrees. Then he went to the kitchen, opened a bottle of painkillers, and swallowed two pills before making himself the sandwich he might have offered the girl. If he thought it would get him into her pants.

  Silvie nosed around the dingy single-room apartment, looking for a heater. She found nothing. The place smelled of dust and mushrooms. She was coming to associate that rich organic aroma of rotting plants and dampness with Oregon. She peered into the dirty sink in the kitchenette, then ran water into it, creating muddy streaks. She opened the cupboard above the cracked brown counter and found a single coffee cup. She turned a circle where she stood and took in the whole of the tiny room. An orange plaid sofa that folded out into a bed, without sheets or blankets. In the corner stood a console television from the seventies. A small green dinette set was shoved up against the opposite wall, next to the bathroom door.

  She’d been so worried that her Good Samaritan would turn out to be a rapist once they were alone in this place that she’d refused his offer to show her where things were, or to get her something to eat, or even to help her bring some of her things in. He couldn’t remember which key opened the door to the building. She’d stood there as rain began to soak into her jacket, watching him fumble with the lock, cycling through a half-dozen keys—all very distinct in shape and color—until he finally found the right one. This can’t be his building, she’d thought. But before she could get her wits about her and come up with a reason to leave, he’d opened the door and was leading her inside. She’d calmed herself by reconciling the name across the front of the building with the name he’d given her on the highway. SWIFT CONSIGNMENT AUCTION. Hershel Swift. But then anyone can pretend to be someone else.

  She went to the only window in the apartment, a small one in the bathroom, and peered down at her car. A utility light cast a grainy yellow hue across the gravel lot, but the car was sheltered and out of view from the highway. The building sat alone on the road and was enveloped by a large filbert orchard on three sides. When she’d first seen the trees arching into rows of perfectly spaced tunnels, she’d marveled at its vastness: a virtual ocean of trees. It seemed to go on for miles. Now, in the dark, the place felt like the very edge of the world. What lay beyond it? How far was the next house from here? Could someone slip through the trees below and get to her? Would anyone hear her if she screamed?

  The rain had dampened her clothes and she wanted the blanket in her car, but what might lurk in that orchard worried her too much for her to go after it. She returned to the sofa, where she pulled her legs up under her and wrapped her coat tightly around her shoulders, shivering.

  After an hour or so, she got up to warm herself by walking around the room. Her toes felt nearly numb and her limbs were stiff. She checked the lock on the door again, chewing her lower lip at the thought of how easy it would be for someone to break in. So she shoved the dinette against it, imagining that it would give her time to find a weapon, or squeeze through the bathroom window. She thought of the two-story drop and the gravel below.

  Her stomach rumbled with hunger and she dug through her backpack, coming up with a half-eaten Hershey’s bar that had melted and re-formed as an indistinct brown slab shot through with creases and bubbles. She ate it slowly, making it last. She tried to get a channel on the old television, but nothing tuned in. She finally settled for the company of shadowy figures moving through a hazy picture like yetis in a snowstorm.

  As she sat in the eerie apartment, her senses tuned to the sounds an intruder might make, rain began to pound down on the metal roof. It reached a deafening roar, and Silvie found that she could no longer hold back the tears that had stalked her all evening.

  Hershel lay in bed listening to the torrent of rain on the roof and the splashing of the overflowing gutters. He contemplated going to see if she was okay—or even still there. He half expected that she’d packed what she could carry and hit the road as soon as he’d left. She had stared at him as if he were a complete imbecile when he couldn’t remember which key opened the door. Then, when he’d offered to help her with her things, she acted as though he were going to attack her. He didn’t know what to do, so he just left her there. Alone with no heat or food.

  He tried to remember her name. Sandy? Sally? Neither sounded right. Sarah? He got up, stopping short to let the onslaught of pain subside before going to the kitchen and pouring himself a glass of brandy. Sophie?

  He put the glass down on the dining table, a finely polished walnut pedestal table with ball feet that he’d picked up at one of his many antiques sales. He ran his hand across the smooth grain, admiring the burl figuring, but it imparted something uncomfortable. Another lost story. All that remained of its history for him was that he’d paid one hundred dollars for it—a steal. This table, which might fetch a thousand dollars in an antiques store in Lake Oswego, was his to enjoy until he got tired of it and something more interesting came along. He had only to load it into his truck and take it down to the sale barn to dispose of it. He’d make sure he timed it well. Wait until the right crowd and economic circumstances would bring several times the price he’d paid. It was a beautiful prospect.

  Hershel pointed at the table. “Dining table,” he said quietly. He pointed around the room. “Glass. Newspaper … dining table.” How could he look at an object and register its value in an instant but, too frequently, not its name? Or the names of half the people who would buy these things from him? He was like an Alzheimer’s patient with moments of pristine clarity and stretches of hazy wordlessness.

  He shoved aside the newspapers and magazines that littered the table, sending them cascading to the floor, and looked around at the house now littered with yellow notes. He had been a maniacally clean man before the accident, and the messy state of his home was a reminder that he wasn’t right. It was a testament to his invalid condition. Besides the visual aids, he needed a housekeeper.

  The idea brought back that he’d been married once. It was long ago, and had lasted only a few months. They were both just out of high school. Hershel had only recently attained his auctioneer’s license and was working for a man out in Oregon City. The girl he’d married was local, someone he’d known since the seventh grade who had graduated from Sherwood High School the same year he had. Candice was her name. Tiny. Lovely. Homecoming queen. So enamored of Hershel that she would have done anything he asked without question. The marriage ended almost before it got started, though. He slapped her across the cheek when he came home one evening to find their breakfast dishes still in the sink, soaking in cold, gray water. What had she been doing all day?

  “If I wanted to pay for a maid,” he shouted, “I wouldn’t have gotten married.” He cringed now at those words. Hershel leaned forward on his elbows, staring down into the gold liquid in the glass. “Stupid bastard,” he whispered. He’d revisited that moment at odd times in the intervening years. It was the most pertinent lesson of his life—perhaps the reason it was not lost, as so many others had been. The lesson wasn’t that he shouldn’t have hit her; he already knew that. It was the one and only time Hershel had ever hit a woman, and his meek little worshipper had found some cord of strength neither of them knew she possessed. Candice had had the good sense to leave him that very night, under the protective watch of her father. The lesson she taught him, though, was never to underestimate anyone. No matter how mild or weak she appeared.

  Silvie couldn’t stand the cold any longer. It felt as though the dampness had seeped into her bones, putting a freeze over her that she couldn’t shake. She rifled through the single kitchen drawer, finding only a fork and a stubby little paring knife too dull even to peel an apple. But it was something. She took it, pulled the dinette away from the door, and peeked down the wooden stairway into the hulking warehouse. She felt along the exposed studs, tangling her fingers in sticky cobwebs and yanking her hand back.
Finally, she found the switch for the bulb above the dusty stairs. The snap echoed, and she was certain that she heard someone downstairs. She stood unmoving as seconds passed, listening with every part of her body. But it was still and quiet, save for the continuous patter of rain on the roof. She gripped the tiny knife and stepped watchfully, letting her weight settle against each tread.

  In the warehouse below, the cavernous room was packed with junk—garbage, really. It smelled of dust and grease and stale popcorn. She’d taken note of the odd assortment of tires and appliances, furniture and boxes. It seemed that this place had one of everything, no matter what it was. The path from the stairs to the front door was crooked and littered with strange objects at unpredictable intervals. She brushed against things she was afraid to touch, pulling her arms tighter around herself and walking with careful, tiny steps. Too many places for someone to hide, she thought. Near the front door, her foot caught an electric cord, dragging its nameless owner down from its perch with a metallic clatter. Her heart drummed at her throat. Her hands trembled as she fought with the lock, finally throwing the door open and stumbling out into the parking lot.

  She stood in a steady rain, panting, no longer cold.

  “Everything okay?”

  Silvie shrieked. It was him. He was standing beside her car, a black shadow against the filbert trees.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you. You okay?” He walked toward her.

  She held up the little knife. “Don’t come any closer,” she shouted, her voice quavering.

  He halted. Confusion worked over his face. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just …” He turned toward the orchard, then back to Silvie. “I just worried about you being here without any food or … or anything.”

  “Where did you come from?” Silvie demanded. “Where’s your truck?”

  Hershel held up a sizable flashlight, and shined it on a paper bag in his other hand. He cast the beam out across the murky orchard. “I came through there. I live on the other side. It’s a shortcut—well, not really a shortcut. It’s almost a half mile. But I take it all the time.”

  “A shortcut?”

  “Yeah.” He stepped closer, but stopped. “I’ve frightened you. I’m sorry.”

  “Or maybe you didn’t want anyone to know you’re here, that’s why you came through the trees,” she stuttered.

  “See me here? I—” Hershel looked around again, as if there might be some explanation for her behavior written in the darkness. “I own the place.”

  He took a tentative step forward, holding the bag out to her as if she were a cornered animal. “I brought you a sandwich. I thought you might be hungry. I’ll just be going. I didn’t mean to scare you. Really.”

  She squinted at him, knife still poised. “A what?”

  “A sand-wich,” Hershel repeated. “It’s … cheese. I think.”

  Silvie dropped her hand to her side. “I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I thought. You just scared me. I didn’t see you there.”

  “It’s okay.” He set the bag on her car and headed toward the orchard, clicking the flashlight on and off as he went.

  “Wait,” she called after him. “Please.”

  He turned back, but didn’t come any closer.

  “You’ve been so nice, and I’ve treated you awful. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t know me. It’s okay.”

  Upstairs, Silvie wrapped herself in the blanket she’d dug from her car and sat remorsefully on the sofa, holding the soggy paper lunch bag on her lap.

  “He must be wishing he’d never stopped to help me,” she muttered.

  In the morning, when it was light, she would pull everything out of her car to get to the box, then leave Hershel a thank-you note and head for the coast on foot. But she wouldn’t go to Lincoln City. She’d already left a trail. She’d go north, to Astoria, cross into Washington, and head up the Olympic Peninsula. She’d have to risk it hitchhiking. She wouldn’t stay here for two more days; she couldn’t even imagine facing Hershel in the morning.

  She opened the bag and pulled out a cheese sandwich on whole-wheat bread with mustard. She also extracted a Bosc pear and held it to her nose for a long moment, inhaling its sweetness. Pears were her favorite. She peered inside the bag and found at the bottom a small package of candy corn with a black jack-o’-lantern and HAPPY HALLOWEEN printed across the cellophane.

  “He gave me candy corn.” She held a piece up to the light, as if examining the man who’d brought it.

  4

  Silvie was awakened by a loud clatter below, and for a brief, panicked moment she couldn’t remember where she was. A man shouted something, then the floor beneath her vibrated as the overhead door in the warehouse went up. She flew from the foldout bed into the bathroom, craning to see down to the parking lot below.

  She’d overslept. The sun was well up, and two men were unloading some sort of combine or swather from a flatbed truck. A third shouted directions as they placed the hulking piece of green equipment so snugly against the rear of her car that she would never be able to get to the hatchback.

  She forced the window open and pressed her face against the dusty screen, ready to shout down to them. Cool, moist air rushed in at her. Sweet with the scent of rotting cedar and mist.

  “We’ll put the Charger right there,” one of the men hollered across the lot. He was stout, with a neatly trimmed beard, and he pointed at the space on the other side of her car. “It’s what people will want to get a look at, I expect.” He planted himself with a cocky, wide-legged stance and spotted the driver.

  Silvie watched as another flatbed backed in. On its platform sat a ruined Dodge Charger. It must have been well cared for at one time—its paint still glossy red, though crumpled and distorted. The tires were intact and new. The roof had caved in and the windows had blown out, leaving ragged chunks of glass along the edges. Clods of dirt and dead grass were lodged into the crevices around the hood and the windshield. No doubt the driver was dead, she thought. The car’s broken body seemed frozen in a scream of horror—unable to let go its last terrified breath.

  The stout man whistled in amazement. “I’d say Mr. Dickhead is one lucky son of a bitch.”

  Another man came and stood next to the deformed car. He gazed up at it with a sense of awe.

  “He ain’t even here to witness its homecoming, the dumb fuck,” the stout man commented.

  The second man, a skinny, aging hippie with graying hair pulled back in a braid, turned and gave him a withering glare.

  “Has he thanked you for taking care of things for him?” the stout man said, and proceeded to loosen the straps that had cinched the car in place. He looked at the hippie, waiting for an answer. “Bet he hasn’t even paid you,” he said, turning his attention back to his task. “You can’t fucking trust him. That ain’t changed. Besides, he screwed us both over. That recording unit was exactly what I needed—been looking for one for eight months, and he damn well knew it. Asshole calls Kuykendahl down here to run the price up on me.”

  “You’re still working for him,” the hippie pointed out as he collected the cinch straps and rolled them into neat circles for the driver.

  The stout man shrugged. “All I’m saying is that he’s lucky to be alive, and more than a few people wish he wasn’t.”

  Hershel sipped his coffee and thumbed through the Oregonian, not reading it but simply giving his fingers something to do. The Charger would already be there when he got to the auction barn today. He folded the business section and set it aside for later, then turned the corners back on the classified pages, reminding himself to read through them for prices. He didn’t really want to see the car. But it had salvageable parts, and they were worth money. He couldn’t let the prospect of making a buck, however small, pass him by. He blew across the surface of his coffee. His business was built on small profits. He would have to set his feelings aside, something he’d long ago become proficient at doing. He just needed to get throu
gh tonight, get the car sold, and he could forget about it forever.

  Carl had called to find out where he wanted them to put the car. The conversation had sent Hershel on a deeper, but still futile, search of his memory for what sort of man Carl was. The tenor of his voice denoted concern—something Hershel hadn’t felt from anyone else. But his only recollections of Carl were mere impressions of the man, like postcard snapshots. A derelict who lacked ambition or purpose. Old enough to be retiring and not a damn thing to show for himself. Hershel kept a folder for each of his employees. Carl’s folder included a handwritten note about Campo Rojo, the migrant village tucked along the Tualatin River, far off the road—out of sight of the chartered limos carrying rich wine connoisseurs through the valley. Who would rent a single-room cabin for five dollars a week, including electricity? White people didn’t live down there, except for Carl. Hershel didn’t begrudge the migrants anything, because they slaved for what they got, but a white man could do better in this place without having to put a lot of effort into it. He guessed Carl had to work at being so destitute, and he had no idea why the man did it. If he’d ever known the reason, it was among those facts—significant and not—that were lost to him now. Hershel returned to his paper, imagining dark-headed Mexican children playing King of the Hill on rickety donated picnic tables and chasing after chickens and stray dogs. Was that a memory or an idea of the migrant camp?

  These past weeks Hershel was coming to see that Carl minded the little things, though. When he called that morning, he’d very cautiously said, “The car is here. You want me to put it out back where you won’t have to see it? We can get it in and out of here without you having to deal with it … except to sell it.”

  “Thanks” was all Hershel said. Knowing it was there now only made him think about it. Maybe he did want to see it, after all—stare death in the face one more time. And maybe not. The broken car stood testament to his damaged brain. Just as the car could not be restored, it was likely that neither could his life. He couldn’t explain that to Carl. “Out back is fine.”