The Auctioneer (28 page)

“Where are Mim and Hildie?” Perly asked.

“Gone,” John said.

Perly raised an eyebrow and considered. “Harlowe’s filled with trouble lately,” he said.

“Guess you heard about the fires all right, seven of them in a week and a couple more that never got goin’ good,” Mudgett said in his quick high voice. “And that bloody fool of a Gore took off.”

John said nothing. He stood perfectly still with his hands in his pockets.

“That makes Red here, as first deputy, the acting police chief,” Perly said, looking Mudgett over as if for the first time.

Mudgett stood rocking nervously on his toes as if to the rhythms of a transistor radio in his head. “Relax, Johnny,” he said. “We ain’t collectin’.” He gave a short laugh. “Unless collectin’ people counts.”

Both John and Ma listened impassively.

“People are getting panicky,” Perly said. “With good reason. We have to do something to keep the town safe. Somebody clearly has to take some initiative to straighten things out. And I’ve grown so attached to this town...”

“We want to know who’s settin’ them fires,” Mudgett said. “I hear tell you been lettin’ your temper hang out lately, Johnny. You got any idea who it could be?”

“Who, me?” John said.

“It’s the lightning strikin’, Red Mudgett,” Ma said, turning on Mudgett almost with relief, her voice confident against the man she had known as a child. “It’s the lightning strikin’, and it’s a goin’ to come after you too. Just you wait.”

“Mrs. Moore,” Perly said reproachfully. “Red lost the ell on his house last night.”

“And it ain’t lightning neither, Mrs. Moore. It’s some twolegged skunk. One that ain’t long for this world, I promise you.”

“We haven’t decided yet what to do,” Perly said. “We’ve called a meeting for tonight in the town hall to talk things over. We really need you as one of the old families. All of you,” he added, looking around, “if Mim and Hildie come back.”

Ma took a step toward Red Mudgett. “Goin’ to set fire to the whole lot of us at once, that’s what,” she said. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Mudgett snapped his fingers. “Maybe we oughta take the truck after all, Perly.” he said, watching Ma.

Perly turned half-hooded eyes on Mudgett. “We can’t do a thing for the town till we get it back to normal,” he said. “Just keep that in mind.” He kept looking around the kitchen as if he half expected to find Mim and Hildie hidden in some corner—at Ma in her flannel robe leaning on her nicked canes, at the mutilated kindling stick on the table, at Hildie’s hair ribbon and rag doll in Mas lawn chair. “You will come?” he asked John. “We need all the input we can get. And what we don’t need is more trouble.”

John took his knife from his pocket and began absently stabbing at the table with it.

Mudgett gathered himself together and stood still, but Perly, his eyes on John’s face, continued to wait for an answer.

“I’ll think about it,” John said without looking up.

“Good enough,” Perly said, showing his teeth in a smile. He turned back toward the door. “See you there.”

“If not...” Mudgett said, and flicked the gun in its holster with his trigger finger so that John reflexively stepped back. Mudgett grinned.

Perly moved quickly down the path without a backward glance. Mudgett danced behind him, side-stepping and wheeling to keep a constant eye on John.

14

The Parade was so crowded they had to park the truck half a block away. Hildie danced on ahead, but not too far, excited and a little awed by the experience of being out after dark. Mim and John, one on each side, helped Ma as she limped down the road and up the long sidewalk toward the door of the town hall.

“I got a feelin’ there’ll be nothin’ but cinders left to go home to,” Mim said.

John said nothing.

“That there’s a man thinks he’s God. Thinks he can move the mountains and dry up the seas,” Ma said. “And there’s them as believes him too.”

“Not me, Ma,” John said. “But you might’s well sign a confession as stay home.”

Ma snorted. “He thinks we’re nought but a passel of witless ninnies, and we ain’t done nothin’ to show him otherwise.”

They moved slowly. People piled up behind them and stepped around them. A number stopped to say, “Why, Mrs. Moore, how you doin’?” as if they were half surprised to find her still alive. The men she had taught as boys in Sunday School, and the women she had made bridal bouquets for—some were deputies and some were not, but they all greeted Ma as if she were part of some prior life, before the town had been drawn off into parties.

The town hall served also as the theater and the movie house and the gymnasium and the selectmen’s office. It was heated by a crackling wood stove with a bright stainless steel exhaust pipe that ran glittering half the length of the room before it turned into the cinderblock chimney. The folding wooden chairs, the same ones they used for auctions, were set up in rows facing the stage.

They settled Ma in the middle of the hall. She took off her kerchief, unbuttoned her coat, and settled her canes between her knees. Then she peered nearsightedly around her, looking for Hildie.

Hildie had found the French children and tagged after them as they clambered up the stairs of the stage and jumped off of it. The Frenches looked unkempt. The smallest boy had a large rip in the knee of his overalls and his black boots were mended with adhesive tape. The doctor’s daughter, a tall shy child about ten, walked slowly toward the other children, sucking the end of her pigtail. Finally, with a grand burst, Cogswell’s three youngest joined the fray.

Mim fretted. “Fetch her back,” she said to John.

“Let her be,” Ma said. “What harm can come to her here?” Ma hadn’t been to town since the day they’d gone to church. She kept recognizing people and asking about others. And now and then someone would lean over her to ask in a whisper about her health. It seemed to comfort them to find her there. She sat up stiffly in her chair. “Everyone’s here,” she said, “just like always.”

Mim nodded. “Whatever they have in mind, we won’t be alone.”

The adults were subdued, and the shouts of the children stood out in sharp relief. Presently, Walter French approached his children and herded them to their seats on the side, watching the back door from the corner of his eye.

Mim turned her head to see what he was looking at. What she saw was a proper city policeman in a navy blue uniform with a light blue shirt, a peaked cap, and a badge.

John snickered beside her. “Red Mudgett playin’ dressups,” he said. “Bobby had more sense.”

Mim looked again. The policeman was rocking just slightly on his feet and chewing gum. She stumbled into the aisle and ran to the front to catch up Hildie.

With Hildie safely in her lap, Mim felt the strength in her own body. She still had that. She could still run. She felt she had the energy to run for miles—away from everything. As a girl, when she had first known John, she used to run across the fields, through the woods, around the pond. She remembered the way the long muscles had obeyed her. She had known that in some way it would come to this—to the old woman and the child, John and his land, nailing her in place like a deerskin stretched on a wall. And yet she had always come back.

Mudgett stepped quickly up the stairs and onto the stage. His glance flickered from side to side. He moved precisely to the center of the stage and stood on the line where the maroon curtain closed when it was pulled, under the big painted plaster town shield that Linden’s grandfather had designed and donated in the days when the store did a good business and he was one of the richest men in town. To his left was the American flag, to his right the flag of New Hampshire.

His blank-eyed contemplation of the townspeople snuffed out the last noise in the hall so that even the chairs barely creaked. Mim noticed suddenly that Perly Dunsmore was sitting three rows in front of them, way over to the right. He sat as still as the others, his eyes resting easily on Mudgett as though he were watching images on a screen.

When Mudgett spoke, the people of Harlowe found that the man before them was no longer an old schoolmate or neighbor, but a tough vice-squad cop—anonymous, steely, professionally mean—a figure familiar to everyone from the late movie reruns.

“The Harlowe Police Department has called this special town meeting because there’s an arsonist loose in this town,” he began in correct, snarling, radio-announcer English, his usual quick tenor speech lost entirely. “Well, we’re planning to catch him, but we need your help.”

John crossed and uncrossed his legs uncomfortably, and Mim glanced sideways at him in a warning to be still.

“For a start,” Mudgett said, “you’ve got to stop wandering around at night. That way everyone can sleep safe—at least everyone who doesn’t happen to be on the police force. If we find anybody more than fifty yards from home after dark, we’re going to assume he’s up to no good. Until we stop these fires, you’re not going to be in any mood for partying anyhow. So just stay home after sunset. We’ll send someone round every night to make sure you all got home all right.”

Mudgett chewed on his gum for a moment and glanced around the room, touching only on the familiar faces of his fellow deputies. “The other thing we’re going to do is keep track of the people coming in and out of Harlowe. We’re going to put roadblocks on the seven roads out of Harlowe. So try to stay in Harlowe. If you really have to go somewhere, give us a call and we’ll be expecting you.” He paused. “Can’t think why you need to go anywhere though. Linden’s got most everything a body needs.” Mudgett waited as if he expected some response.

There was none. The people in the hall barely stirred.

“So that’s the deal,” he said, almost lapsing into his normal voice. “And just to show we mean business, Perly’s got a gift for the town. So, uh...” Mudgett scowled at Perly.

Perly stood and side-stepped out along the row, excusing himself to the people he moved past. Wearing his everyday green work clothes, he climbed the stairs up to the stage, with Dixie trotting prettily at his heel. He took over Mudgett’s place in the center of the stage, and Dixie traced out a circle beside him and lay down with a sigh. Mudgett moved over and stood in the lee of the American flag. Perly frowned as he squinted out over the people.

“Some of you have sunk so low, you’ve been setting fire to your own town,” Perly announced sternly, his voice cutting through the stillness in the hall and making everyone sit up a little straighter. Perly looked out into the watching faces, absorbing their expressions as if the proper degree of guilt would register by setting off an alarm in his head.

“Isn’t that right, Paul?” he said.

Paul Geness let the child in his lap slide to the floor. He squinted up at Perly with his close-set brown eyes. Geness had eleven children. He managed by looking after the town dump and salvaging what other people threw away.

“I said, ‘Isn’t that right, Paul?’ ”

Geness opened his mouth but didn’t answer.

“I know it hasn’t been easy,” Perly cried. “But we’re undergoing the fastest change in the history of civilization. All I want to do is harness that change. Make it work for all of us. And I pride myself I’ve made a beginning. A fine beginning.” Perly raised his fist and slammed it down into his other hand. “But since when have the people of Harlowe been so fond of their creature comforts? Since when have the people of Harlowe been afraid of a little hard work? Since when?”

Perly’s voice grew louder and deeper. “A few have even run away. Well, damn it, if they’re that low-minded, we don’t want them. Do we, Frank?” he asked, pointing a strong brown finger at Frank Lovelace, a stocky man who had been a fairly efficient truck farmer before the auctions.

Lovelace was not a talkative man, and now he shifted in his chair, tightened his lips, and swallowed.

“And now this madness,” the auctioneer cried, his voice seeming to come from everywhere at once. “This insanity. This lunacy.” He shook his head as if to rid himself of his vision, then looked out over the people with an intensity that made them turn away from him.

He pulled a sheaf of bills from his shirt pocket. “Well, here’s three thousand dollars,” he said. He held the bills high so that everyone could see that they were hundred-dollar bills. “Three thousand dollars,” he repeated, playing his eyes over the crowd. “Anyone gone by your place at an odd hour? Anyone smelling of gasoline lately? Anyone in your house acting peculiar this last week?”

Perly focused on a heavily made-up woman sitting next to her husband, who had recently had a leg amputated after falling under his tractor. “What do you say, Jane Collins? Do you know anyone sleeping all day?” he asked. “Do you?”

She dropped her eyes and shook her head. Her husband gripped his crutches and looked at the chair in front of him.

“Let us know,” Perly said, his voice low and smooth. “We’ll pay cash and we’ll pay in secret. Trust us.” He snapped the elastic band back around the bills and returned them to his pocket so that the figure “100” poked out with its elegant elongated zeros. “Does anyone have any questions?” Perly asked.

No one made any noticeable move, but no one was quite still either, and the stiff folding chairs gave off a sound like radio static.

“Well, then, we ask you for your own protection to get right on home. The deputies will be making rounds in about half an hour to make sure you all arrive safely.”

The people of Harlowe sat in their chairs as though they had not heard their dismissal.

“Good night,” Perly said more gently. “We’re all in this together. Let’s try to remember Harlowe’s heritage of strength and courage. We’ll make a new beginning yet.”

Perly started off the stage, and very slowly the people in the hall began to pull their coats around their shoulders and stand up.

“Hey there, young fellow,” said a voice from behind the Moores. “Them proposals you’re makin’. They supposed to be laws or what? It was Sam Parry. His sky-blue eyes were as piercing as ever, but he was less ruddy than usual after taking a bullet in the shoulder during hunting season. “We goin’ to get a chance to vote on them new rules?”