The Auctioneer (30 page)

Sally Rouse sat with her parents in the back part of the hall. People craned to see her. She was a tall clear-featured girl with a long blond braid down her back and a grace that stood out in the plain crowd. She raised a strong chin and let her blue eyes rove slowly around the room, meeting the stares of the people, then coming to rest on Perly.

Dunsmore met her gaze for a long moment before he spoke. “I don’t think this is quite kind,” he said gently. “Is it such a terrible sin? Would you have her wear a scarlet letter just because she wants a better—”

“Oh, Sally, Sally,” cried Agnes Cogswell and rose out of her seat, her hair and eyes wild. She would have stumbled over to Sally to comfort her, but Jerry pulled her back. “What did he do to you, Sally?” she sobbed.

“Out of the goodness of my heart,” Perly said, standing straight now and lifting his shoulders in the beginning of a shrug, “I took responsibility for some other man’s child.” He leaned toward the people, his voice gaining momentum. “I said I’d find a home for it. And now you’re—”

“He never said he was a goin’ to
sell
her,” wailed Sally’s mother, a broad pale woman, flushed now with anger. “Poor babe. Poor tiny girl. She fell sobbing against her husband’s shoulder. He didn’t move. Sally sat erect, her dry eyes firmly fastened on Perly.

“And was it
you
got the money, child?” asked Ma.

Sally turned to Ma. “Me?” she said. She looked back at Perly and gave a short laugh.

“Not a cent,” said Dan Rouse, standing slowly in his place. He was a tall man with a heavy stoop as though he had spent his life with his head bowed to keep the sun out of his eyes. “Not a cent,” he repeated. “And he used his power over the child to make us keep contributin’.” He spoke slowly. “I’m a fool. I should have let him shoot me. I thought I could save Sally, somehow. But now that’s gone, I say it out. The man’s a devil. Sally ain’t the only one as did his bidding. Scarce a soul left in Harlowe can call hisself a man.” And Dan Rouse stood in his place, looking at Perly from under his brows.

Perly cocked his head to one side and said casually, “Sit down, Dan. You’re making a fool of yourself.”

But Rouse remained standing.

This time Perly fixed his eyes on him and commanded him. “Sit down.”

Rouse didn’t move. Slowly, Sally rose to stand beside her father, her head thrown back as if to avoid the curiosity of the townspeople. She was almost as tall as her father, and her figure, under blue jeans and a loose shirt, was still full from childbirth. Her mother tugged at her shirt but she didn’t move.

Then Sam Parry rose, his figure straight even at his age. “They half got me once,” he said. “Let them finish me now.”

Mudgett had his hand on his gun.

“How would you have had me dispose of the child?” Perly asked, almost in annoyance, his eyes darting over the crowd.

“Oh Emmie. Poor Emmie,” moaned Agnes Cogswell.

Without a word, Frank Lovelace pulled himself to his feet. And John tugged at Mim’s elbow to make her stand too, with Hildie in her arms.

And people noticed that the doctor was still standing in the back where he had been all along, standing casually with his arms folded, watching the proceedings.

Sam Parry began, slowly, to smile.

The silence stretched. Dan Rouse stood bolt upright, his brown eyes on Perly. His wife switched from side to side in her chair. Finally she stood up and cried, “He never gave her nothin’ for all her pain—nothin’ but that child itself, and used that agin us too. And soon’s she was born, he took her too.”

The crowd began to whisper.

“He come in here,” the mother went on, “with that animal way of his. And he fastened his eye on Sally, her only just fourteen and headstrong. Nothin’ ever to suit that child. And he come in here with all that power and money and a knowin’ full well what he wanted. Well, our Sally, she went a dancin’ off after him like he was the Pied Piper. Ain’t like we didn’t try to teach her right...”

Perly stood on his toes, his chest thrust out and his head back, his mouth open with his answer before the mother finished. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Let’s get one thing clear. That’s not
my
child,” he said. “I came to this town exactly two hundred and eighty days before that baby was born. Count for yourself. The doctor here can tell you the human gestation period is two hundred and eighty days. You give me too much credit. No man on earth could arrive in town, search out Sally Rouse, seduce her, and conceive a child at the first shot—all between sunup and sundown. I’m flattered you think I could, but it’s not humanly possible. And that child was eight and a half pounds—full term or over. This is one accusation that just isn’t feasible. You’ll have to dream up something better than that.”

Perly shrugged, mischief spreading across his face. “Not that I deny that I’ve had my times with Sally Rouse. A tough little number she was too, whatever her age. Not much I could teach her. Look at her.”

Some of the townspeople turned and looked. Sally forced her head back further still and held her blue eyes hard on Perly, though now the color was rising through her fair skin.

Look at her, Perly repeated. “What red-blooded man could possibly refuse?”

Mrs. Rouse stood in her place. “And then... And then...” she screamed, unable to finish.

Perly shook his head and frowned. “Still, my fault or not, I offered to do the honorable thing—”

“To kill the helpless babe, not marry her,” shouted the mother. “Evil upon evil.”

“No girl ought to marry a man nearly thirty years her senior,” Perly said softly.

There was a muffled undercurrent of talk and motion in the hall.

Perly stood perfectly still beneath the town shield, watching.

With the help of her canes, Ma got shakily to her feet and leaned against the chairs in front of her.

Perly’s face flushed darker and darker.

John reached to support his mother and cried, “And what about that four-year-old blond beauty you promised for next week? What about the barn and the steep pasture?”

“What, just what, did you think you was a goin’ to do?” Ma demanded.

“Silence!” shouted Perly. “You’re wrong. You’re all wrong! You misunderstand everything. I’m only one man... only—

“I say we understood too damn much for too damn long and kept too damn quiet,” cried Mickey, his words slurred. He pulled Agnes up to stand beside him.

“There’s no law,” cried Perly. “Nothing I’ve done is against the law. You have no authority to put me on trial like this. What are you charging me with? With having ideals? With teaching Sunday School? With falling in love with...”

Silently Walter French stood up, then Arthur Stinson, and Ezra Stone.

Now the color began to drain from Perly’s face. “Ezra...” he said.

And one by one the men and women in the room stood up. The rustling in the hall grew to a babble.

Perly stood as if frozen in place, watching the turmoil beneath him spread. “Just remember this,” he said in a deep voice that cut neatly through the confusion. “Whatever I’ve done, you’ve let me do.”

Then, after one last survey of the people of Harlowe, he turned adroitly on his heel and headed swiftly toward the wings on the side of the New Hampshire flag, with Dixie trotting at his heel.

Perly took six steps before the crowd began to push at one another to get into the aisles, shouting at him to stop.

Then he drew himself up short.

In the shadow of the flag, Bob Gore, in his usual sagging denim shirt and Levi’s, blocked his way. He held the gun awkwardly in both hands, pointing it at Perly, just as he had pointed it at Hildie’s bedroom window.

Across the stage, Mudgett leaped nimbly out from behind the American flag, and everyone saw that his gun was also drawn.

Gore swung his gun away from Perly and onto Mudgett.

The noise in the room vanished, sucked in on the breath of the crowd, and for long seconds nobody moved at all. Perly stood facing Gore. Gore and Mudgett stared into the muzzles of each other’s guns.

Then Dixie sprang through the air, a tan streak, and landed on Gore’s shoulder. His gun arm flew into the air and the gun went off. The town shield over the center of the stage shattered and crashed to the stage in a cloud of plaster dust. Gore roared and rolled over and over, embracing the snarling dog. Mudgett stepped forward and danced after them, keeping his gun on Gore.

There was another shot, and the children cried out. Mudgett shrieked and dropped his gun to the stage with a thud.

“Red!” shouted Perly and rushed forward, his arms stretched toward Mudgett. But instead of stopping to tend him, he ran past him without a pause, off the stage and out through the wing by the American flag. Dixie, who had turned at the shot, abandoned Gore and galloped after Perly.

A shout went up in the hall. Mudgett stood white-faced, grasping his right arm. Blood soaked through his sleeve and dripped to the floor. And Gore got shakily to his feet to search for his gun in the swirls of plaster dust.

It was Ezra Stone who raced up the stairs to the stage two at a time, his gun drawn, and headed toward the wing where Perly had disappeared.

Gore picked up his gun and followed him. Then a number of other men detached themselves from the crowd and rushed for the exits.

Mudgett clutched at his bloodied arm, his eyes glazed with fear. His wife, bulky with his child, stumbled up to him, then stopped, wide-eyed, afraid to touch him.

15

Many of the townspeople had fallen to the floor at the first shot. Now they stood up and reached out to touch the other members of their families. Everyone talked. Agnes wept loudly. Mim cuddled Hildie who had awakened crying at the shots, and John put his arm around Ma.

The double doors in the back of the hall were thrown open and cold air swept over the close hall. Ma untangled her coat and her canes from the jumble of wooden chairs, and the Moores moved slowly down the main aisle. When they reached the doors, they paused. Instead of going home, the townspeople were crossing the green in clusters, drawn as if mesmerized toward the auctioneer’s house.

Lit up brilliantly enough for a wedding or a ball, it cast a glow across most of the green. Every window shone, even in the auction barn. Six spotlights on the front lawn gave a sheen to the new white paint and an icy sparkle to the fretwork under the eaves. The glistening facade was broken only by the unsteady black shadows cast by the bare maples. And overhead, the lynx hunched, as always, restless and shifting on its weathervane.

The Moores followed the others across the Parade toward the house. Bob Gore was shouting at the people, “Stand back. Stand back.”

The Moores stopped at the outskirts of the crowd. Bob Gore, Ezra Stone, and Tom Pulver were moving in on the house with their pistols drawn. They crouched like cats, sheltering behind yew bushes and honeysuckle, and seeking out the denser darkness behind the trees.

Stand back, Gore shouted over his shoulder. “He may be armed.”

The people in front fell back a step or two.

“Who, Perly?” John asked.

“Ezra claims he’s in there,” said Sam Parry, turning to scowl at John.

Ian James came running across the green from the firehouse with a bullhorn on the end of a long cord. He looked up at the dazzling house for a moment, glanced back at the people, then lifted the bullhorn to his mouth. His amplified words seemed to be coming from all corners of the green at once. “All right, Dunsmore. Come on out with your hands on your head.”

The house with its lights seemed to twinkle in the stillness. The lynx on the weathervane turned from side to side, and a few last leaves fluttered down from the tops of the maples.

People waited, scanning the transparent windows.

“Let’s go get him,” yelled a stinging tenor voice from the edge of the crowd.

Turning, the people saw Jimmy Carroll, looking thin and hard in his old denim jacket. No one had seen him since he left Emmie in the nursing home and vanished with their remaining children.

“Jimmy!” cried Agnes.

He began to run. As he approached the front door of the house, he wheeled around and faced the people. “I’m goin’ to kill him,” he warned. “For Emmie.”

“Don’t!” shouted Bob Gore. “Hey!” He ran to the bottom steps of the porch and waved his arms to intercept Carroll. But Carroll leaped into the air with a grating yell and shouldered him out of the way.

Gore staggered and paused.

Carroll hit the latch, and the heavy front door fell open before him. He vanished inside, and moments later the hushed crowd heard the jangle of shattering glass.

“Let’s go!” cried Cogswell, shaking loose from Agnes, but hesitating, waiting for others.

The people began to jostle one another fitfully, but they held back.

Suddenly, they were stilled by a cry like the yelp of a wounded fox. Molly Tucker ran up onto the porch and turned to bang her hand on the railing. She was a small brown woman whose thin wrists and ankles protruded sticklike from a frayed blue coat. Her family had not let her come to town since her youngest son was drowned in a well. Now her whistling syllables shrilled out over the heads of the people, garbled by the commotion and her frenzy.

Mickey broke out of the crowd and galloped up the stairs, past Molly and into the house. Arthur Stinson and Frank Lovelace followed him, running. Ian James and Ezra Stone exchanged a look and moved deliberately up the porch steps together.

John pushed Ma’s hand away from his arm and headed for the house. By the time he reached the porch steps, he was in a crush of bodies trying to get inside. A few people at the edges broke away to try the other doors.

Bob Gore was shouting objections and shaking his gun at the people, his face contorted with frustration. But the noise on the green had risen to such a pitch that his effort to protect the house had no more effect than a dumb show.

Pushed from behind, John could do nothing as he moved past Gore’s gun except eye it warily. Finally, Gore turned away, shaking his head. Already, dozens of dark figures flowed back and forth across the lighted windows.