The Auctioneer (20 page)

“Why didn’t you come?” Mim wept.

“I wanted you to see how good I was hid. You said to hide most careful of all if it was friends.” The child smiled and would have laughed if it hadn’t been for her sense that she had made a mistake. “I hid so good you couldn’t find me.”

“John?” Mim called, but her voice was small.

“I got so tired, Mama,” Hildie said and clasped Mim tightly. Then, sensing that she was safe from punishment, she pulled back and said, “Want to know where I hid?”

Mim nodded. She could hardly see Hildie’s face in the dark.

“Under the hay in the loft.” She giggled. “In the horse stall there’s hardly any hay. I’m too big for such a little hay.”

But Mim was pulling her by the hand up toward the house. “Oh but you did give us a wicked turn,” she said.

Mim pushed Hildie in the door of the kitchen so that Ma gasped with relief. Then she chased up the pasture running breathlessly in the near darkness, calling to John.

10

On Wednesday, John did not touch his breakfast, not even his cup of chicory. He sat on the bench still wearing his pajama tops underneath his shirt and brooded into the black wall of the kitchen range.

“When are we goin’?” Mim asked. Then louder, “When are we goin’?”

But John said nothing, weighting the kitchen with his silence.

Finally Mim slammed her palm down on the table next to him.
“Will
you tell me what to do?” she cried.

John lifted angry eyes to her. “Go to hell,” he said.

Ma stalked out of the room and slammed the door, closing herself into the front room.

“Like it was my fault!” shouted Mim.

Then her eyes lit on Hildie who was rocking from side to side in her corner sucking her thumb. “Hildie,” she said gently. “Poor Hildie. Come on.” And she coaxed the child into her jacket.

Hand in hand she and Hildie went out to the barn and looked around. Mim kicked at the boards under the stairs, then pulled out a couple at random and measured them against the truck. People turned pickup trucks into campers all the time.

She looked up and saw Ma watching her through the front window, her lips moving as if she were reporting Mim’s every move to John. She went into the barn, still trailed by Hildie, and searched for something she could use for a saw. When she came out, Ma was still watching. Mim walked around to the far side of the truck, where Ma couldn’t see her. She leaned against the door and gazed out over the still pond. Hildie jumped into her arms, and gradually she realized that the two of them could manage very well in the cab. They could share the seat. It simplified things, the realization that only she and Hildie would go. At least it simplified the building problem. She hauled the boards back to the barn and moved slowly up the path toward the kitchen door.

But, by Thursday, Mim had not brought herself to make any further move. The day was cold. Mim and John ate their oatmeal, then sat at the table drinking birch tea, almost as if the day were a normal one.

“Is it Thursday?” Hildie asked. “What will they take?”

“The tractor,” Mim answered. “That’s what.”

Perly led the way up the path, his big body sailing in on the Moores with that silent ease that characterized all his motions. He mused without blinking on the little family clustered behind the glass in the storm door watching his approach. He stopped on the granite stoop to wipe his work boots, then opened the storm door toward himself and half bowed to the Moores.

Ma stood a little behind John and Mim, but it was to her that he held out his hands. “How are you, Mrs. Moore?” he asked.

Behind him, even more florid than usual, Gore stood on the stoop, his right hand sticking close to his gun.

Ma lifted her head so that her small features stood out sharply. She looked Perly in the eye and said, “I am bad, since you ask. And it’s all your doin’. You a standin’ here with your manners. And him standin’ there with his gun. I was a few years younger, we’d a met you forehead to forehead from the start, ’stead of walkin’ round you all the while like this.” Ma had been struggling closer and closer to Perly until she stood directly in front of him.

Perly looked down on her, his face drawn together with concern.

He reached out slowly, and with his index finger, brushed Ma’s hair off her forehead.

Ma caught her breath and backed off, almost tripping over John. Then she turned and moved away across the kitchen, her canes banging angrily.

“Sorry to see her slipping,” Perly said to John.

John stood for a long space confronting Perly, then he turned with sudden force and threw the keys to the tractor at Gore. They hit him in the torso and he jumped back, reaching awkwardly for his gun. The keys bounced away and landed in the grass beside the stoop. Gore stood, gone pale, staring at John, his hand finally resting securely on the butt of his gun, the holster unsnapped.

“Some fall guy,” John said to Gore, but Gore still stood, his knuckles white where they grasped the gun.

“Keys to the tractor?” Perly said and cocked an eyebrow. “Must be. Hope it’s running good.” He hadn’t moved from the tight group in the doorway, not even to dodge when the keys flew by his nose. “Now don’t be anxious,” he said. “I just have to give my little friend here some loving.” Without effort, he leaned past Gore and past John until his face was close to Hildie where she sat in Mim’s arms.

Diverting her eyes, Mim tried to turn Hildie’s head into her shoulder, but the child turned to the auctioneer with a dazzling smile.

“Well, Hildie,” Perly asked. “How’d you like to be rich? Fancy clothes and toys. Trips downtown to see Santa at Christmas? Almost like being a princess. Bet you might even get a dog like Dixie.”

Hildie beamed.

“Did you know I’m a magician?” he asked with a smile. “I’ll see what I can do.” He was well into the room by now, and he turned back toward the door to address John. “Such a pretty place,” he said. “How many acres did you say you have? That pasture—about thirty-five right there—and what else? How much in pine?”

“You’re hankerin’ to know my business,” John said, “go look it up in the county seat.”

Perly smiled, his straight teeth bright in his dark face. “Two hundred thirty-four, more or less, if my memory serves me right.”

He leaned back against the table and looked around the kitchen. “Nice range,” he said. “Real antique. It sure does keep the room warm too. People are buying those nowadays to decorate their game rooms.” Perly stood still for a moment, assessing the room with a half smile that was almost nostalgia.

Finally his eyes caught on Hildie’s curious gaze and he reached out and ran a palm over her bright hair. “I thought I’d feel so much at home here,” he said, just a touch of wistfulness softening his voice. “Here and in Harlowe.” He turned a long look on Ma and one on Mim, then turned and stepped toward the door.

With the knob in his hand he whirled suddenly to John. “I never asked you for your pretty tractor,” he said sharply. “Just keep that in mind. I’m not sure it’s even a present I appreciate.”

And then, as they watched, Perly swept out the door and down the path.

But Gore with his hand on the butt of his gun and the Moores clustered in the doorway remained where they were as motionless as animals in a spotlight.

Perly climbed into the truck and slammed the door. Still Gore stood where he was, sweat rolling in big drops down the sides of his head.

Perly tooted the horn.

“Jesus,” Gore said, and stepped backward off the stoop.

John snickered. “Back off,” he said. “Go ahead. Just like we was royalty.”

Gore turned and trotted down the path.

“Hey,” John called. “You’re forgettin’ what you come for.”

Gore turned back to the family and side-stepped to the barn, then remembered he didn’t have the keys.

“Not too put together for such a big shot,” John said.

“John, for Lord sake,” Mim hissed behind him.

Gore pulled the gun out of its holster and moved slowly up the path toward John, training the pistol on him. At the doorstep he stooped to pick up the keys, feeling for them blindly in the grass, his small blue eyes straining upward on Moore.

Keys in hand, he backed off toward the barn.

“What happened to all your talk, Bobby Gore?” John asked, following him slowly toward the barn at a distance of ten feet. “Gettin’ tongue-tied in your old age? Lost your taste for gossip?”

“You just stay where you are,” Gore said, and John stopped. He stood as if casually, his hands deep in the pockets of his overalls.

Gore stood indecisively, near the tow bar, not wanting to put his gun away to bend to his task.

Perly backed the truck around to the tractor and poked his head out the window to look back at Gore. “Put that gun away, Bob,” he said. “These are law-abiding people. You’re liable to shoot someone playing around with that gun.”

Gingerly, Gore set his gun on the fender of the tractor and set to work. Perly rolled his window shut and leaned on the steering wheel to wait.

“Dunsmore got bullet-proof glass?” John asked. “He don’t seem to put much stock by you.”

Gore swept the gun off the fender. Holding it with both hands as though it were almost too heavy for him, he trained it at John. Mim screamed.

“Shut up!” Gore shouted at her, then raised his arms and pulled the trigger.

The bullet went through an upstairs window leaving a neat hole in the center of a starburst of cracks.

John stood perfectly still, his arms folded, watching as Gore leaped into the truck and the two men drove away. Perly did not drive quickly, digging out, as Gore might have wished, but deliberately, careful for the cumbersome tractor swaying precariously behind them up the dirt road away from the Moores.

“Now you fixed it so we got to go,” Mim shouted at John when he came back into the house. She flew at him and stopped. “You’ve got no right to get yourself killed,” she screamed. “No right.”

“He’s got no right to lay hands on you and Ma and Hildie.”

“Then take us away,” Mim cried.

“We won’t run,” John shouted.

“We will,” Mim screamed. “We will. We will.”

John looked down on her and began to laugh.

“Stop that,” Mim cried. She reached for him to make him stop, but he twisted away, laughing harder than ever, doubled over with the force of it.

Mim swung her fist out on the end of her arm and landed it against his shoulder, hard.

“Ow, ow,” John said, choking with laughter. “Cut it out.”

Mim stepped back and her eyes filled with tears. She stood crying, not covering her face, staring at John with disbelief.

“Don’t carry on now,” he said, rubbing his arm. “I’m goin’ out to buy us some Thanksgivin’ dinner.”

John threw the truck into gear and set it roaring up the road with a sense of purpose that made him slap the steering wheel in an exuberant rhythm. But instead of fading as he moved away from home, the image of the three pale faces grew more vivid, until he could almost feel the heaviness of their breath waiting on his own.

He did his errands in a hurry. At Linden’s he filled the truck with gas and bought a chicken, a bunch of bananas, and a gallon of milk. Fanny handed him change and bagged his items, dispensing information all the while in her usual bored monotone.

John did not answer, but he heard, and his own breath went short at the thought of his family sitting alone so far away.

As soon as he was out of sight of the Parade, he floored the old truck so that it skidded on the gravel at every turn. He pulled up almost to the door, jumped out of the cab and burst into the room. In the doorway he stopped short. Ma was peeling potatoes at the table, and Mim was sitting on the bench by the stove rocking Hildie in her arms, singing the alphabet song with her. He could see she would say no more about going for now. The lamp cast a cheerful glow in the gray afternoon, deepening the colors of the room.

“Everything’s okay!” he exclaimed, with an unfamiliar shock of pleasure.

“If you can call it that,” Ma said.

John unloaded his purchases onto the table. “For once we’ll eat decent,” he said. “After all, Thanksgivin’s still a holiday. You should a had a whiff of the smells from the kitchen down to Linden’s.” But Mim was counting what was left in the jar when he returned the change. “A hundred and thirty-two,” she said. “Fifteen dollars down in one week. A hundred and thirty-two’s not much to go on.”

“What the hell,” John said. “It’s somethin’.” He was high now. Home had never seemed so precious and so comfortable. “Damn fool Jim Carroll. First he let that child go, and now he’s gone and let his land go too. Him and the kids that’s left, they up and went. They moved Emmie up to that nursin’ home by the Circle, and took off. Even she don’t know where to.”

“That’s what she says,” Mim said. “She knows him and the kids are best off gone.”

“The Carroll place must have a hundred acres clear,” John said. “Dunsmore will make some hay on that.”

“How can you joke?” Mim said wearily.

But John talked nonstop through dinner, and afterwards crawled around on the floor with Hildie on his back, bucking and howling to add to her hilarity. Mim frowned uneasily and Ma took her canes and left the room.

After Hildie was asleep and Ma was settled in the front room, Mim brushed her teeth, wrapped the two remaining bricks on the range in towels to warm their bed and made her rounds, making sure that all the bolts she had installed were securely fastened. At that point, John came in carrying his suit and a white shirt. “I need a bath,” he said.

Mim stood before him with the bricks hugged to her.

John set the hanger with the suit on one of the hooks by the door, poured the water remaining in the pails under the sink into the big kettle on the range, took the empty pails, unlocked the back door, and headed out to the well.

When the cold gust of air from the door hit her, Mim moved. She returned the bricks to the stove, opened the damper so that the fire came up with a roar to warm the kitchen, and got the big galvanized tub down from the hook at the foot of the cellar stairs. She hung a clean towel on the line high over the range to warm.