The Auctioneer (19 page)

Perly moved up the center aisle, holding the baby out on one side, then on the other, like an usher with a collection plate. Each couple leaned in toward him and examined the baby. When he came to the Moores, he carefully showed them too. The child was wide awake, staring solemnly up at them from the folds of a pink sleeper, a pacifier stuck in her mouth. She had the deep blue eyes and wrinkled face of any newborn baby and could have belonged to almost anyone.

Perly stood over them until Mim glanced up at him. His eyes were as glittering and impersonal as diamonds.

He returned the child to the car bed and she began to whimper. He leaned over her and she quieted down. Mudgett took the car bed away.

Perly returned to the high pulpit. “God’s ways seem dark,” he said softly, to deprive this perfect child of home and natural kin.” Perly looked out over the people, his eyes gone flat and accusing, as if it were they who had abandoned the child. Finally he leaned back on his heels and smiled. “I’d keep this little beauty for myself, if I could find me a wife,” he said. He shuffled a sheaf of papers before him on the pulpit.

Perly went on, reciting almost in a monotone. “Adoption is a very expensive procedure. In this particular case, we had to pay a good sum to the child’s grandparents to keep for the child’s mother. As it all works out, we can’t let this baby go for under ten thousand dollars.”

There was a gasp from the crowd.

“Now keep in mind,” Perly went on, his voice rising, “this is a white child with the very best racial antecedents. Her mother is part German and part Swedish and her father is English. She promises to be your perfect blond blue-eyed child. If you’ve tried to adopt a white infant elsewhere, you know you have to wait four years or so, and even then, if you have other children, it’s virtually impossible. Independent adoptions like this one are entirely legal, but they’re hard to find—very hard to find—especially if you want your perfect white brand-new baby.”

Perly stopped. He stared at the back of the sanctuary and ran his eyes over every person there, as if he were privately making his choice among them then and there.

“When he finally broke the uncomfortable silence, it was in a hard staccato voice. This baby is available now. Today,” he said. “So unless you want your grandchildren to have slanty eyes or nappy hair, here’s your chance. The fact is that you get what you pay for in this world.”

A couple two pews in front of the Moores exchanged a look. The woman nodded. She was slim and good-looking, but not young.

The man, who had crew-cut salt-and-pepper hair, raised his shoulders slightly and turned back to Dunsmore.

“Now the most economical way to settle the thorny problem of who takes the child is to offer her by the time-honored New England methods of the auction.” Perly banged his fist on the pulpit like a preacher making his point. “So,” he said, “do I hear ten thousand?”

The crowd shifted and made no bids.

“Now I know you feel shy and uncomfortable,” Perly soothed. “It’s an uncomfortable business. But I know you want to be parents or you wouldn’t be here. I wish there were some easier way, both for these children and for you. But remember, even the usual way costs money, with hospitals the way they are. This is a mighty painless way to go home with a brand-new baby. No red tape. No labor pains. No racial problems forever after. So let’s hear some bids. Ten thousand. Do I hear ten thousand for a start?”

This time the woman in front of them looked over at her husband and he raised his hand.

“Ten thousand?” Perly asked, almost as if he were surprised himself.

The man nodded.

“Good. Now do I hear twelve?”

“Eleven,” said a woman in the front row. She was tall and dark with the high cheekbones of a gypsy, and an expensive dark brown coat and matching turban.

“Twelve thousand,” said the man in front of them.

Then a voice on one side said, “Twelve five.” There was a long pause in the bidding. People stared at the man who had offered $12,500. He was standing on the pew in order to be high enough to see. His legs were as tiny as a five-year-old’s, though his head was perhaps even bigger than normal and puffed out further by a generous crop of black curls.

“Come on,” Perly coaxed. “Let’s hear how badly you want to be parents.”

The man in front of the Moores upped the bid to thirteen thousand dollars.

The child finally sold for fifteen thousand dollars to the gypsy woman in the front row, who sat with her head bowed when it was clear that she had won. Her husband, a pale man with cream-colored hair and a white shirt, continued to puff on his pipe as if nothing had happened at all.

Perly leaned down over the edge of the pulpit. “Congratulations,” he said, beaming. “I’m so happy for you.” The woman looked up idly but did not smile and the man continued to contemplate the auctioneer as though he were an insect under a microscope.

Perly grinned at the crowd as if to apologize for the couple. “It’s enough to stun an elephant,” he said. “To find yourselves parents as suddenly as all that.

“But I know you’re eager to know about the next child,” Perly went on. “This is a little boy named Michael. He has a smattering of freckles and a wonderful laugh, though these are pretty hard times for him. His mother was in a tragic accident and lost the use of her legs. She’s going to be in the hospital probably for the better part of a year and she’ll always be in a wheelchair. Since she has four older children, she feels that the best thing for Michael is to find him a home with loving parents who are capable of giving him the care and attention he really needs. She’s especially worried about Michael because of his really extraordinary intelligence. He’s only three and already he knows the alphabet and can count to twenty forwards and then count back to one again. He really needs a good nursery school, or maybe first grade. With a little help, he could be reading in a month. Because they knew that they couldn’t give their child what they wanted for him, his parents have signed him over completely, and the adoption can be final in a year. If you doubt whether he’s had the very best of loving, just think what it means to sign away your child in his own best interests. What’s more, this is not an illegitimate child. This is a child begotten in a marriage bed and brought up, to date, in a proper loving family.

“Now I’ll bring him out for you to look at. But, mind you, if he looks a bit down at the mouth, remember this is pretty tough for little Michael. You take him home and cuddle him a bit, feed him a hamburger and a Coke, and put a baseball bat in his hands.

“He’ll be laughing in no time—and hitting homers for the Little League besides.”

Perly himself went out the side door. He was gone so long the door seemed to go in and out of focus under the intensity of Mim’s stare. Finally it opened and Perly appeared carrying a small fairhaired boy sucking on a lollipop. When the child saw all the people in the church, he put his arms around the auctioneer’s neck and hid his face against his neck.

“You see how eager he is to love someone.” Perly smiled. Come on, Michael. Look at the nice people. See how they’re smiling? And all for you.”

Perly waited, and presently Michael peeked out. He was clearly a Carroll, the down-sloping brown eyes unmistakable.

“Emily had an older brother Michael,” John murmured. “Killed in the war.”

Michael rested his head against Perly’s chest, but allowed himself to be carried slowly down the aisle so that people could get a good look at him.

The bidding this time started at five thousand dollars. Couples conferred with each other frequently, and there was a murmur underlying the whole procedure. Except for the dwarf, the group that bid this time was a different one. It narrowed down, eventually, to the dwarf and a middle-aged couple in back of the Moores. They bid angrily and quickly toward the end and finally the middle-aged couple quit. The dwarf and his rather faded but perfectly normal blond wife had won for $9,800. The little man stood up on the pew and made a victory sign to the people while his wife burst noisily into tears.

The auctioneer laughed and said, “All power to you. The deputies stirred, but the people stayed put.

“Now don’t be discouraged if you aren’t one of the lucky sets of parents,” Perly said. “We’ll be having another adoption session sometime in the next few weeks. We’ll mail you a notice. I know of at least two other children who are coming available—one not yet born and an exquisite four-year-old girl—eornsilk hair and royal blue eyes—prettiest thing you ever saw.” He paused as if he were waiting for people to go, but nobody moved.

“And now,” he said, “I think it would be appropriate if we all bowed our heads in prayer again for the newly formed families in our midst.”

Again people bowed their heads. Finally Perly said, “Amen. Now if the happy new parents would like to be my guests over at my house, I’ll have the children brought in so you can meet them in the comfort of my parlor. And we can take care of the formalities as well.”

Perly stepped down from the pulpit. Dixie stood up and stretched, then trotted to his side as he held out his hands toward the couple who had bought the little girl. They stood and waited obediently to follow him, nodding distantly to his questions. The dwarf, in his turn, stood wringing Perly’s hand on and on, his other arm stretched up to circle his wife’s waist as she stood laughing now and red-faced.

People stood up and side-stepped out through the pews slowly and absent-mindedly, completely absorbed in staring at the cluster of people around the auctioneer, straining toward the side door for yet another glimpse of Michael and the baby girl.

Mim and John said little as they drove home. The buff gravel road blurred in the last afternoon light and the trees closed darkly overhead. Mim gripped the edge of her seat and planned in detail how they would fix up the back of the truck for the family to sleep in. They would sleep with Hildie clasped between them. John pictured the pasture the way it had been that morning, pale gray with frost, the rank witch grass near the stream crunchy underfoot, Hildie in the big orange hand-me-down sweater and a green stocking cap running and sliding, running and sliding down the hill.

Mim jumped out before the truck was quite stopped. “Where’s Hildie?” she cried to Ma as she burst into the kitchen.

Ma sat perfectly still in the old wooden chair, without a blanket or a shawl, her gnarled hands gripping each other. “I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t know?” Mim said.

“A car fetched up in the dooryard about twenty of four...”

John came in the back door.

“My God, my God,” Mim cried. “She’s gone. They took her.”

“Not them folks in the car,” Ma said, pulling herself up out of her chair. “Strangers, a man and two women. They never so much as opened a door. Just craned their necks and backed round and that was it.”

“Where is she then?” Mim whispered.

“We was playin’ cards when right in the middle she perks up her head, her eyes like saucers, and she says, “A car, Grandma.” Then she picked herself right up and run out to hide just like you told her. The car went off, and I called at the door, but no Hildie. You know when you told the child to hide, you never said a word about comin’ back.”

“You kept a sharp eye on the car?” John said.

“It ain’t the car,” Ma said. “But there’s no end of dangers could strike her right here.”

Mim ran to the barn. In the horse stall, the hay and the old army blanket were flung about haphazardly, but Hildie’s orange sweater was gone. “Hildie!” she called. Then louder and louder. Her voice hit the full hayloft overhead and fell dead. The stanchions were already looped with spider webs as if they’d been abandoned for years.

Mim ran up the stairs to the loft, but Hildie was not in her swing. “Hildie,” she called. She heard the creak of steps and stumbled downstairs crooning, “Hildie, Hildie,” but it was only John. “Hildie,” she screamed.

“Stop,” John said, catching at her shoulders as she ran for the door. “Think. Where would she think to go?”

“They took her,” Mim cried, fighting his arms. “You heard him say they plan to.”

John let go and Mim burst free and ran around the barn toward the sand pile.

John went into the house and called to Lassie. The old dog stood up and wagged her tail. “Go fetch Hildie,” John said, motioning to the door. “Where’s our Hildie, old girl?” Lassie wagged her tail sadly and flopped back down on her rug. John closed the door and leaned against it scanning the yard.

“Hildie?” he called and his voice fell flat on the encroaching night. He picked up the iron bar on its cord and struck the big rusted gong over and over again.

Mim ran up and stood breathless with him.

It was almost dark. The gong stopped sounding and there was nothing but the wind.

“You try the pond. I’ll try up yonder in the pasture,” John said.

Obediently Mim walked down the path toward the pond, her eyes yearning into the underbrush for the bright orange glow that would be her child. Instead, down near the gravel at the pond’s edge, she found Hildie’s wagon, half filled with gravel and topped by a split plastic pail and an old spoon with the silver worn off. “Hildie?” she called, but her voice wasn’t loud any more. She tried to remember whether she had seen the wagon around lately. The pond was a mottled shiny gray like granite polished for a gravestone. She could not see beyond its surface. “Hildie?” she said softly. The water made quiet rhythmic rushes at the shore. And that was all. She covered her mouth with both hands and stood listening. Moment by moment, the pond before her darkened toward night.

And then she heard the quick light laughter behind her and whirled to see Hildie running down the path toward her, her orange sweater spiked with broken bits of hay.

She clasped her in her arms, her head shaking with dry sobs against the child’s soft body.

Hildie pulled away confused. “I hid, Mama,” she said, “the way you said. Just the way you said. I hid even better than the way you said. I heard a car and hid. I stayed hid ever and ever so long. And then I heard our truck. I heard you callin’ and the gong.”