The Auctioneer Read online

  “Makes her seem old, don’t it?” John said. “To take it all so peaceable like it’s nothin’ to do with her. But she was always that way. It struck home with her, his pullin’ a gun on me. Time will tell how peaceable she is at heart.”

  Hildie was not always so cooperative. She hated to leave her warm corner to go with John and Mim into the woods for firewood. She whined and complained until Mim screamed at her and she threw herself on the floor and cried. Each morning they headed into the woods in silence, John carrying Hildie on his shoulders, still pouting and working hard to shiver.

  John would notch a tree with the chain saw. Mim would set Hildie firmly out of the way. Then, while John sawed through the heavy trunk, Mim put pressure on the wedge to make sure the tree fell where they intended. The trees seemed incredibly long stretched out on the ground. Mim limbed them with the ax, and John, measuring with a pole, sawed them into nine-foot lengths. Together they lifted them onto the wood sledge. And when they had a load, they hitched up the tractor and dragged it back to the woodshed. After the snow came and there was little else they could do, they would split the big sections, then cut the green wood into eighteen-inch lengths and pile it in the woodshed, in a separate pile from last year’s dry wood.

  “Best we saw it up this week,” Mim said one Tuesday. “You wait. He’ll be after the saws this time.”

  “Not the saws,” John said. “I draw the line at the saws.”

  “When you didn’t for the cows?” Mim asked.

  The next day, without splitting the logs first as they usually did, and without discussing what they were doing, they spent a long day, each using one of the chain saws, cutting the wood to lengths. And on Thursday John let the saws go with barely a glance. After that there was no point to going into the woods, so they spent the week splitting the wood and piling it.

  John climbed up and put a patch on the tin roof where it was rusted through, and Mim dug a barrel of potatoes from the icy soil, packed them in straw, and rearranged the cellar to hide them behind an empty set of shelves. They continued to cook and can the last late pumpkins and some chard. They drew Ma’s couch up closer to the parlor stove, and kept a fire going in the kitchen range all day. Hildie drew patterns in the first frost on the windows, and they all kept a lookout for the first snow.

  Hunting season started on a Tuesday. Cars lined the road, some of them with out-of-state plates. Hildie stood on a box at the window watching the silent red figures moving in and out of the woods. Hildie was not allowed out of the dooryard, and the grown-ups stayed in, occasionally answering the summons of a stranger asking if he could park in the yard. From time to time, the}- heard the hard flat report of a single shot in the woods.

  On Wednesday night, they woke to rifle shots nearby—a dozen of them and so close together they had to be made by several guns. Hildie came into her parents’ room, dragging her blanket. “Mama,” she whispered. “Do the hunters come at night?”

  “Sometimes, Hildie. If they want to shoot a deer too scared to run,” Mim said, straining her ears toward the dark woods. “There, lovey, don’t you be frightened,” she added, but she wasn’t sure whether it was she or the child who was shaking. The shots had broken open a dream in which she was being hunted down. She pulled Hildie in under the covers.

  But it was John who gathered the child to him and buried his face in her hair. Hildie fell back into a heavy sleep in the comfort of his arms, but he lay planning the moves he would have made if he had had his guns still, craving the shotgun very specifically. He hadn’t touched it from one year to the next; yet, as if he had carried it with him always, he could conjure up the precise heft and balance of it in his hand, the chill of the inky barrel, the smoothness of the stock.

  When it became clear that John was not going to get up, Mim folded back the blankets and crept out of bed. Touching the cold plaster walls and the banister with her fingertips, and feeling for the chipped edges of the stairs with her toes, she made her way downstairs in the dark. At the door to the front room she could hear Ma’s breathing, heavy and uninterrupted and weary.

  Mim stood at the foot of the stairs looking out through the glass in the front door. The sky glittered with stars and the pond was outlined like a dull pewter plate. But the land was so heavily swathed in dark that she could not see the road. They could be standing in her very yard, fooling with their jacklights and their guns, moving in that slow silent way of hunters, so as not to frighten her away from the doorway before they had a chance to paralyze her with the light and the dozen gunsights.

  She crept into bed and lay with her teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, sensing in the perfect silence John’s wide eyes. She clasped his fingers where they were cupped around Hildie’s back, but he made no response. “John?” she whispered, but he made no answer. “John?” she said. “Tomorrow, can we bring Hildie’s mattress in here close to ours?”

  The next day Mudgett came with Gore.

  “Where’s Cogswell?” John asked as he met them in the dooryard.

  “Hits the cider a mite too hard,” Mudgett said. “Makes him sentimental.”

  “Can’t have no drunks on the police force,” Gore said. “It ain’t like I got a grudge or anythin’ against Mickey. But the way Perly figures it, maybe if we bust him down a bit now, we can—”

  “How come,” John said, “if you’re so smart, you can’t keep the hunters in line?”

  “You got any complaints?” Gore asked. He shut his heavy lips tight on whatever else he might have said and kept John well centered in the range of his small eyes. His hand fluttered restlessly near the butt of his gun in its holster.

  “They was jackin’ deer up here last night,” John said.

  The lines bracketing Mudgett’s thin mouth deepened and he said, “Feelin’ tender for the deer, Johnny boy?”

  Moore shrugged. “Last I heard there was a law,” he said.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Gore said, straightening up with interest. “You got no idea who it was?”

  “You got good reason to be nervous,” Mudgett said. He folded a stick of gum and shoved it into his mouth, dropping the wrapper to the ground. “Sam Parry got a stray shot in the shoulder walkin’ to his barn. Just missed his heart.”

  John turned to Mudgett. Mudgett’s face was as grizzled and dark from outdoor living as his own. Face to face like that, John still felt the authority of Mudgett’s five-year advantage, and of his cleverness with sums. “Real sharpshooter,” he said under his breath.

  Mudgett considered, chewing his gum as if it were a form of contemplation. Finally, his face cracked into a flat-eyed grin. “You got to admit,” he said, “Harlowe ain’t half so borin’ as it used to be.”

  Mudgett was in high spirits. He toured the entire house and shed, taking his time, loading Gore with every last screwdriver and pair of pliers he could find, as well as the ax, the mallet and wedges, the whetstone, the scythes, the rakes and hoes. Every once in a while he stopped and laughed out loud. “Real sharpshooter, eh?”

  Gore, incapacitated by his armload, kept a wary eye on John and never turned his back.

  While Gore was loading the tools into the truck, Mudgett took John’s big wooden toolbox from the kitchen and practically danced into the front room. “A cuckoo clock!” he exclaimed and lifted it off the wall as Ma watched from the couch. Gore reappeared empty-handed in the doorway.

  “I would just like you to know, Red Mudgett,” Ma said, struggling to stand between her canes, “that when my time comes, I am goin’ to rise up and haunt you the longest day you ever lived.”

  Mudgett chuckled. “Will you look at her?” he said to Gore. Some Sunday School teacher. Nothin’ I could ever do was good enough for her. You should a seen her.” He puffed out his chest, pulled in his chin and intoned in a falsetto not unlike Ma’s, “You children just ain’t a goin’ to come to no good.” He nodded with satisfaction.

  “I remember,” Gore said, making no commitments.

  “
And many’s the Saturday night, Bob Gore,” Ma said, “you shared Johnny’s bed with him and ate at my table—your own pa too drunk to abide you. And just you keep in mind, young man, it’s sorry luck to bite a hand that’s fed you.”

  “Ain’t my idea,” Gore muttered, but Mudgett was already rushing down the front lawn to put the clock and toolbox in the truck. Gore turned to follow him, but, before he could escape, he bumped into Mudgett returning.

  “All we got’s a load of scrap,” Mudgett said. “Not one decent piece.”

  “Tools sell good, Red,” Gore said.

  Mudgett stood in the front doorway snapping his gum. Ma’s program rattled on unheeded. Suddenly Mudgett’s dark eyes came into focus. He swept across the room and unplugged the television set so that the picture of Dr. Rebus and Susan shrank to a point and disappeared. “Grab an end, Bob,” he said.

  Gore side-stepped warily around the room, keeping John within his sights, and picked up one end of the console.

  “Just hold on half a minute,” Ma cried, struggling across the room to block the door.

  Gore put his end of the console down, which forced Mudgett to put his down as well.

  “Ain’t nobody goin’ to just walk off with my TV set like that,” Ma said.

  “Want to put money on it?” Mudgett asked.

  “I’ll put money on it,” John roared. He lunged for Mudgett, but Mim caught him and stopped him momentarily.

  Gore backed into a corner and, fumbling, unsnapped his holster and pulled out his gun. John shook himself free of Mim, but stood where he was, watching Gore.

  Mudgett sneered, leaned over, and picked up the console himself. He was a small man and the set was so big it gave him the look of an ant struggling beneath an enormous crumb. He staggered toward the doorway where Ma stood.

  “Oh no you don’t,” said Ma, but even as she spoke, the corner of the set caught her in the shoulder. She grabbed at her cane for balance, but the cane slid out sideways on the floor and tangled in Mudgett’s legs. Ma, her weight on the cane, fell headlong to the floor. Mudgett struggled, his feet encumbered by the cane and Ma’s housecoat. The television set swayed precariously. Finally, he freed a foot and groped for the floor ahead of him. When he stepped, he landed on a pile of Hildie’s marbles. His foot flew up in front of him, the television set leaped from his arms and smashed against the stairway, and Mudgett fell swearing into the debris.

  “Jesus, Red,” Gore gasped, still standing in his corner watching as John lifted his mother and led her to the couch.

  Mudgett picked himself up and kicked at the wreck of the television set. The glass was smashed and the cabinet broken open, revealing a tangle of transistors and tiny colored wires. Mudgett had cut his forehead and a slow trickle of blood started down beside his eye. “I’ll get you for this,” he said to John.

  Suddenly Mim came running at him. “Get out,” she screamed. “Get out of here.” Mudgett stepped back to avoid her fists and sidled out the front door. “You too,” she screamed at Gore. “Get out. I just can’t stand it.”

  Gore backed around the room past John and his mother and hurried down the path after Mudgett.

  Mim leaned against the wall and sobbed. “I can’t stand it,” she moaned. “I just can’t stand it.” Hildie clung to her legs, crying loudly.

  John looked up from his mother, his face fierce. “Then why’d you grab me when I went for him?”

  Lassie came in and started to whimper.

  Ma patted her hair into place as John rearranged her on the couch. “Stop that,” she said coldly, sitting bolt upright on the couch. “You stop that wailin’ this minute, the lot of you. If there’s one thing I won’t have in my house, it’s hysterical women.”

  Mim and Hildie looked up, startled into silence.

  “I’m quite all right, and so are you,” Ma said, smoothing her housecoat over her knees. “Quite all right.”

  But that was not the end of it. For three days, Mim looked after the remnants of the household and tried to create a sense of normalcy for Hildie in the midst of a silence as unnatural as that which precedes a hunter through the woods. John sat before the kitchen range and Ma sat on her couch near the parlor stove and neither said a word.

  On Sunday, John brought in a load of wood and dumped it in the woodbox behind the kitchen stove. He chose two sticks, lifted the lid on the range with the handle, and added them to the fire. Then he sat down and leaned silently into the heat once more.

  Hildie was building a village in the corner with kindling chips and didn’t look up, but John and Mim heard Ma coming. She moved slowly, thumping the floor with her two canes and dragging her feet in their felt-soled slippers. She stopped in the doorway and leaned on her canes. Her gray hair stood out around her head in stiff curlicues and the rope around her flannel dressing gown was tied in a knot at the waist.

  Mim brushed past her and came back with her pillows and blankets which she arranged in the lawn chair. But Ma did not take the arm she offered. She stood steadfast where she was. “I expect I can do without my television set, son,” she said, “if you can do without your ax.”

  Mim glanced at John, but he watched Hildie as though his mother had never spoken.

  “What’s your plan now?” Ma went on. “You figurin’ to cut down the forest with your teeth?”

  Hildie came over and leaned against her father. He took her into his lap and stared at the front of the stove.

  “We had bears and Indians and winters that lasted all summer. We had dry spells and floods and wicked men before too. But I don’t recall as our people ever run away before.”

  “You see me runnin’, Ma?” John asked, jolting to his feet so that Hildie slid to the floor.

  “Like a jack rabbit, boy,” said Ma, her hands white on the knots of her canes. “Where you think it’s goin’ to get you to?”

  “Next time I’ll stand up and let him shoot me,” John shouted. “Then where’ll you be?” He yanked the door open.

  Ma took a step toward him. “And that’s just another way of runnin’,” she shouted back.

  He slammed out the back door of the kitchen, and Hildie, thrust to one side in his rush, began to cry. Painfully, Ma turned herself and started on the journey back to the couch.

  “Stay with us, Ma,” Mim said. “You still got us.”

  “We still got plenty of wood too,” Ma said, refusing Mim’s help. “And I’d as soon sit by myself. That way I’m sure of where I’m at.” Mim came back to the kitchen and took Hildie into her arms to rock. Through the window over the sink she could see John climbing quickly up the dry brown pasture in the dusk. She worried about hunters.

  7

  The clocks were gone and the old Moore place was silent, but every human motion seemed to mark off an interval in their inexorable approach to Thursday. The usual list of autumn chores dissolved. There were no cows to care for, no spare dollars to buy paint, no tools to gather wood or mend furniture. Even the endless knickknacks for dusting and polishing were gone. Now that the television set was gone, the Moores had the electricity turned off to conserve cash. Their routines took on a primitive rhythm which would soon have acquired a comfort of its own, had it not been jarred anew with every Thursday visitation.

  Their best moments were the sleepy ones first thing in the morning when they lay on their mattress with Hildie cuddled between them, letting some time pass before they got up and ran barefoot down the icy stairs to stoke the stoves and dress, to eat oatmeal without milk, and wait for something to happen. There had always been times after the snow came when they had a few hours a day to sit by the stove and let the flurry of summertime wear off. On stormy afternoons of other years, Mim and John and Ma had played hearts in between trips to the barn. But this was different. John sat on the bench in overalls and a sweatshirt faded to pink and shrunk so that it pulled halfway up his back when he rested his elbows on the table behind him and his feet on the fender of the stove, examining day after day the dust settled into the
cast iron leaves and flowers. He spent hours scraping and digging with a hunting knife at a stick of maple from the woodbox. Uneasy at his furious silences, the women avoided conversation themselves, and whole hours went by broken only by Hildie’s fantasy chatter, the settling of the fire in the stove, and the rough scratching of John’s whittling.

  It was Mim who disconnected the water pump, now that they had no electricity to drive it. And Mim who went out to the bell pump behind the barn and brought in milk pails full of water, two a day for the kitchen and two to flush the toilet. And Mim who cleaned the kerosene lamp each morning. Even so, by ten o’clock most days, she could find nothing more to do. She dressed Hildie in red and led her out protesting into the cold sunshine. She sought out dandelions and dug them for the roots and drying leaves. She gathered the tubers of day lilies and dug through the garden for the last small carrots and beets. She dug chicory and gathered black birch twigs for tea. There were still chrysanthemums in the garden but she didn’t bother to cut them. “All the mums in Harlowe won’t make one decent soup,” she said.

  On Sunday Hildie climbed into her father’s lap and wouldn’t budge. “I want to stay in where it’s warm,” she said, “like Pa.

  “Tell her to come,” Mim said to John when she was dressed and ready to go out. “Not healthy for a child to sit all day and watch you brood.” But John looked at her as if he had not heard and kept his arm crooked protectively around the child. “Cant you do anythin’ but set?” Mim cried. * Day after day like you lost all your yeast?”

  There was a silence while John rocked Hildie and Ma watched Mim from her chair at the table.

  Finally Ma said, “You needn’t act like it wasn’t you first begged him to give it all away. It was you went and gave your ma’s dressin’ table, as I recall, right when John was up for sayin no.

  “And what if he had, Ma?” Mim shouted. “What if he had said no? You think we’d be better off?”