The Auctioneer (7 page)

“And that’s an end to it,” John said. “An end to it once and for all.”

Mim didn’t answer until they were following Hildie down the path to the pond to bathe. Then she said, “Well, they got eyes in their head to see with. There’s just no point to pesterin’ us again.”

John didn’t answer.

“Do you think, John?” she asked.

“If you’re so positive, why you askin’ me?” demanded John.

4

On Thursday, John and Mim were up in the garden picking the first of the peas and Hildie, squatting near the tangle of vines, was busy shelling and eating them. From time to time all day, in the course of their work, they had paused to listen. Gradually now the sound of a truck grew unmistakable, and one by one they all stood up and watched the road.

“It’s just Cogswell,” breathed John.

“Might be he needs a hand with a job,” Mim said!

Cogswell jumped down from his battered green truck, waved, and started up the pasture to meet them. He was a tall rangy man with a looseness to the way he moved that was only partly related to his drinking. Like everyone who knew him, the Moores felt a kind of fond protectiveness for Cogswell, and at the same time a sense of awe, for he was a man who was always out of step.

Nevertheless, the Moores moved toward him slowly. They met in the meadow, where the rank grass was up to Hildie’s shoulders, and faced each other as if they had met by accident.

Will you look at Hildie? Cogswell said at last. “She’s spindled since I seen her. Pretty near big enough to milk a cow.”

The child clung to the pocket of Mim’s jeans.

Cogswell fished in the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a wad of tissue paper. “For you,” he said and held it out to Hildie.

Hildie took the offering and unwrapped it. It was a small green plastic marine kneeling behind a gun. Hildie gave Cogswell a dazzling smile. “A hunter,” she said-.

“That’s mighty nice, Mick,” Mim said.

“One of the kids dropped it in the truck. Benjie got a whole bagful for his birthday.” Cogswell put his hands in his pockets and looked around at the pond and the house and the cows further up in the pasture. “Appears the crows got a fair amount of your corn,” he said.

“Always do, the beggars,” John said, and they turned together and headed down toward the bridge over the stream. What’s the occasion, Mickey?” John asked. “You ain’t been down since your separator broke after that big snow.

“Well, it’s the Fourth of July auction this time,” he said. “They had a meetin’ and Perly there convinced the firemen to split the profits from this here auction fifty-fifty with the police, instead of havin’ their own affair. You know, they voted, and it was the firemen that’s deputies against them that ain’t.”

They moved through the stile between the barn and the shed. In the dooryard they stopped and Cogswell looked down over the pond.

John stood with his arms folded.

“Well, I think they already took the last scrap we care to part with,” Mim said.

“Mighty nice place to be situated,” Cogswell said. “Always did think that. Right smack on Coon Pond like this. My kids think this is livin’. Set them loose here for a summer and I calculate they’d all turn into pickerel. I been takin’ them over to Deckers Pond, but the water ain’t half so sweet.”

“Is this a good thing to be mixed into, Mick?” John asked.

“You ought to sign up,” Cogswell said. “They’re still takin’ on deputies.”

“How many big shots we got these days, Mick?” John asked.

Mickey dug his hands into his pockets, then took them out and let them dangle at his sides. “Well, I’m not sure,” he said.

“Not sure!” John said.

“Well, they ain’t advertisin’ any more. It’s only us first ones left hangin’ out there for everyone to see.”

“The rest’d rather hide in their closet,” John said. “Can’t say I blame them. The whole thing’s beginnin’ to give off a bad smell.”

“Still,” Cogswell said, folding his arms, “I have it on Gore’s sayso they’re still takin on men. Course it’s got to end somewhere, and I think soon, but if I talk to them...”

“We’ll take our chances,” Moore said.

Cogswell leaned over them. They could smell the whiskey on his breath. “Listen,” he said. “I could get you off the hook maybe.” “Off the hook!” Mim said. “First I heard we was on it.”

“But why you, Mickey?” John pressed.

Cogswell shrugged and forced a chuckle. “Well, at first I liked the sound of what he said. Still do, I guess. But lately I been sayin to myself, ‘If you can’t lick ’em, better join ’em.’ Think about it, Johnny.”

“Not me,” John said. “I can’t say as I feel no needs in that direction. Nor no attractions neither.”

“Well, I ain’t sayin I can come back with the same chance later,” Cogswell said. He felt restlessly for the steel flask in his back pocket. “But maybe I’m shootin’ off my mouth again. None of my business, eh?”

John folded his arms and didn’t answer.

“I hear your mother’s doin’ poorly,” Cogswell said.

“Not so poorly,” John said, and they stood in silence midway between the house and the truck. Hildie was off across the road aiming her hunter at brown and yellow butterflies.

“Well, they sent me here,” Cogswell said. “They’d be mighty glad if you could give just this once again. You don’t want to be the only holdout.”

“There’s always Pa’s big chiffonier,” Mim said softly. “It’s not like we used it so much now he’s gone. Only to look at.”

And, because it was Cogswell, John led the way upstairs and helped him carry out the heavy old piece. When he was ready to go, Cogswell stood by the open door of the truck, working the door handle up and down, looking at the door and not at John.

“Hear about Caleb Tuttle?” he said. “A heart attack got him just as he was headin’ into the barn to do the milkin’. Somethin’ must’ve startled him. The coroner over to Powlton says it seems he took a fall.”

“I heard,” Moore said. But he hadn’t.

Cogswell wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “A man just does what he has to do,” he said, mostly to Mim, but she was staring at him as if he were a stranger.

After the truck had rattled out of sight, John and Mim stood where they were. Then, in a rare gesture, John put his hand on his wife’s back and turned her around to see the pond flattening out to a mirror now in the calm that preceded evening.

Ma was fretting because Cogswell hadn’t come in to see her. “He was the sweetest, funniest one of the lot of you,” she said. “And he always had ideas in his head. Nobody likes to let Mick Cogswell get away without a word.”

“He asked after you, Ma,” Mim said. say why he ain’t been down this long time? she asked. Cogswell’s land abutted Moore’s on the high side and they were neighbors in the summer when the old fire road between their farms was open. Cogswell had thirty-five acres of blueberries, some stock, and a fair-to-middling skill as a mason, depending on how sober he was.

“Too busy bein’ a deputy,” John said.

“He’d been hittin’ the cider,” Mim said.

“The more’s the pity,” Ma said. “Though there ain’t three men in Harlowe can drink and still work as staunch as Mickey Cogswell. He have a job for you, Johnny?”

“No.”

“Well what was he here for then?”

“He was sayin’ that to his mind it’s a pretty good idea to be a deputy.”

“Him and his schemes,” Ma said. “He’s goin to be the death of Agnes and those kids. How many times have they had potatoes and milk gravy for supper because he was off squanderin’ their cash on some fool scheme? What was it he done that time up to the blueberry field?”

“He was goin’ to make an airport of it,” Mim said.

“How about the pond for raisin’ ducks?” John said.

“It breeds dandy mosquitoes,” Mim said. “They’re head and shoulders worse up there than they ever used to be.”

“After all that money,” said Ma. “What a crazy man. If he’d just stick to buildin’ his chimneys, him and you’d do just fine. What d you show him up there overhead? Thought maybe you was lookin’ at our chimney.”

“He was collectin’ for the auction, Ma,” John said.

“Collectin’ for the auction?” Ma said. “Thought that attic was plumb empty.”

Nobody answered. Mim was peeling carrots at the sink. Hildie was still outside. John was standing at the back door peering up into the pasture.

Suddenly Ma banged her cane on the floor. “What’d you give that man from up in my room, without so much as a by your leave?” she cried.

“Pa’s chiffonier, Ma,” John said, whirling to his mother, the temper piled up and heavy in his stance.

Ma leaned to him over the table as if to plead with him. “Pa’s chiffonier?” she said in a small voice.

“Must be others gettin’ low on patience,” Mim said the following Thursday as they did the morning milking. “We don’t need to be the ones to start a fuss. And we can spare another piece or two. Must be some who can’t.”

“Oh, we still have enough to spare,” John said, slapping a big cow on the flank, “providin’ the garden comes in good, and Sunshine here stands by us.”

“So you’ll give them something,” Mim said. “My dressin’ table, maybe?”

John filled a pail and leaned into the rhythm of filling a new one. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sparin’ it’s not what hurts.”

But the day remained peaceful until almost five o’clock. Mim was shelling peas in the kitchen, Ma was watching her programs in the front room, and John, who was making butter, had just begun to whistle to the rhythm of the churn.

When the truck pulled into the yard, Hildie and Lassie burst out the screen door followed by John and Mim. This week Dunsmore himself came, driving a big yellow van, the doors and the big flat sides stenciled in tidy red and black:
Perly’s Auction Company, Inc.

Perly swooped down and caught Hildie as she ran to him, swinging her high so that she squealed with delight. “How’s my plump little goody?” he asked. He held Hildie in front of him where he could look at her.

John pulled Hildie out of the auctioneer’s arms and held her himself.

“That was a fine piece you gave last week,” said Perly, leaning slightly toward the Moores and looking from one to the other.

Gore was making a pile of pebbles in the road with the toe of his boot. “You know the firemen came off with more money than they ever did on their own?” he said.

“We’re goin’ to keep Harlowe a wonderful place to live,” Perly said, “thanks to generous souls like you.”

Bob Gore stood with his thumbs hooked in his belt. “What have you got this week?” he asked.

John stood, Hildie still in his arms, and did not answer. Gore was wearing a small leather holster strapped onto his belt, and the gun. John looked at him. He had gone to school with Gore, only two years ahead of him, in the one-room schoolhouse up at Four Corners where a bunch of hippies lived now. They had had their moments together. “How many of them fancy leather holsters you pay for?” he asked.

“People was good enough to buy their own,” Gore said.

“Which people, exactly?” John asked.

“We got a terrific special,” Perly said, and his face opened up in a grin that showed his straight white teeth. “It’s like having a genie, the way doors open to us around here.” Balanced lightly on the toes of his boots, Perly stood perfectly still like an axis around which pasture, pond, and woods—even the other three adults—revolved.

“That how you see it?” John asked.

Without moving, Perly shifted his gaze to John, his dark face settled in easy contemplation. The silence stretched. John took a breath and kicked at the hubcap of the truck.

Mim touched the auctioneer’s sleeve. “Upstairs,” she said softly.

John turned on Mim, his face coloring deeply. Then, quite suddenly, he turned to Perly and shouted so sharply that a slight echo came back from over the pond, “We got nothin’ for you!”

The auctioneer seemed not to hear. He smiled down at Mim and nodded just slightly.

Mim stood paralyzed, watching as John lurched away from them and marched into the barn, slamming his open hand against the doorpost as he entered. When his form disappeared in the shadows, she looked up at the auctioneer.

“Where?” he asked gently.

She stood still, undecided, her clear eyes studying the auctioneer’s face.

He gave hei a quick smile that embarrassed her, then turned and walked up to the front door, opened it, and bowed to usher her in. She paused, then obeyed, brushing past him in the doorway and leading the way up the stairs. She could hear Perly’s light tread behind her and Gore’s heavy one in back of him.

She turned into their bedroom and indicated the dressing table without a word. It was walnut with a pattern of flowers and leaves stenciled in fading colors on the delicate curved drawers. When he saw it, Perly said, “That’s fine, just fine.” He turned and leaned over Mim, tense and sober. “You’re a very giving woman.”

Gore lifted the dressing table himself and stood in the doorway trying to maneuver it through. Perly and Mim were trapped in the room.

“This is not for me, you know,” Perly said, the strong beat of his voice held down to a murmur. “It’s for the town. For all the things I know you want as much as I do.”

The blood rose to Mim’s face. “I don’t want you to have it,” she said. “It’s special to me.”

He leaned closer to her and spread his broad palm to touch her face, then arrested it an inch away, as if to catch her warmth.

“You know, I’m really sorry Hildie didn’t come to Sunday School again. Now is the time for teaching her right and wrong. You know right well—a woman like you—the day comes when the blood gets high and you can hardly help yourself.” Perly’s eyes gleamed like polished mahogany, and Mim couldn’t stop searching for her reflection in them.

“You frightened her,” she said unsteadily.

“I never frightened anyone,” Perly said, as if reciting something from the very center of his stillness.

“And what about Caleb Tuttle?” Mim whispered.

“Tuttle?” Perly said, without letting her eyes go. He sat down on the bed and made room for her beside him.

Mim didn’t move.

“Was he a friend of yours?” he asked. “Are you grieving for him? I’m so sorry.” He reached out and gripped Mim’s waist in his big hand. “Why do you say this to me? Is there something you want me to do for you?”