The Auctioneer Read online

  But this time the motor was Gore’s. And this time he had Perly Dunsmore with him.

  Hildie started down the hill at a run, and Mim and John walked quickly after her.

  Gore’s truck stopped in the dooryard, the passenger door opened, and the auctioneer’s golden retriever bounded out. Lassie backed off, barking wildly. The retriever moved cautiously toward Lassie. Lassie stopped, and the two dogs circled each other, their tails held high.

  Behind the picket fence that ran between the house and the barn, Hildie stopped, struck shy, as the tall auctioneer unfolded himself from the truck and stooped with a smile to greet her.

  “Do you like your red wagon, Hildie?” he coaxed.

  Hildie nodded and came out from behind the fence, but still stood at a distance sucking her thumb.

  “Come and see what I have for you,” said the auctioneer, digging into his pocket.

  Hildie took her thumb out of her mouth and waited for her parents. She took Mim’s hand, and moved with them toward Gore and Dunsmore.

  Gore was leaning on the door of the truck. “How’d you like the way Perly scared that tourist half to death with the idea of scrub-bin’ off a little rust?” he greeted John.

  Perly opened his palm to Hildie. In it was a piece of pink bubble gum wrapped in green plastic.

  Hildie glanced up at Mim, then smiled and reached for the gum. Perly stroked her cheek and winked at her, then stood up.

  “Sure is a pretty place,” Perly said to John and Mim. “Everything everyone says about it’s true.” He looked out past the house to the pasture with the garden halfway up on the level place. “Just had to come out and see for myself.”

  Hildie was sidling up to the dogs. They were still sniffing each other warily. The hair on Lassie’s broad back was bristled and her short legs were tensed.

  “That’s Dixie,” Perly said to the child. The big fawn dog came to his side when he mentioned her name, though she kept her amber eyes longingly on Lassie. “Shake hands with Hildie, Dixie,” he said. The dog sat down and held out her paw for Hildie. Hildie held her ground for an instant, then turned and buried her face against her mother. The auctioneer winked at Mim as she caught the child and sheltered her.

  “Show them how she says her prayers, Perly,” Gore said. “This here’s the smartest damn dog...”

  Pray, Dixie, Perly ordered. The dog balanced herself on her hind legs like a terrier, pressed her paws together, pointed her nose at the wisp of smoke curling from the chimney of the house, and howled.

  Hildie laughed and jumped up and down with delight, bouncing into Gore’s knee in her excitement.

  “Mind yourself now, Hildie,” Mim scolded. But her own face was bright with pleasure. ‘ Would you come in and say hello to Ma?” she asked, raising her eyes shyly to meet the auctioneer’s.

  While Mim and Hildie led the auctioneer inside like a visiting dignitary, John and Gore went to fetch the boxes of tools from under the barn.

  “Sign on any more deputies?” John asked.

  “Jack Speare and Ezra Stone,” Gore said.

  “You must be plannin to start a circus,” John said, taking up a wooden crate and tossing in the rusty odds and ends still scattered around among the rat droppings and stale bits of straw.

  “Somethin’ like,” Gore said.

  John shook his head. “Your business, I guess,” he said. “Long’s the auctions pay and my taxes don’t go up.” He dropped one crate by the door and picked up a bushel basket for what was left. “I just hope you know what you’re doin’.”

  “You oughta thank me,” Gore said. “This place looks a whale of a lot better’n six weeks ago.”

  John straightened up and looked around. “Guess well sweep out and put in some chicks down here,” he said.

  He took the basket and Gore took the box. They carried them out and set them in the bed of the truck next to a peeling blue bureau. “Well, that’ll be it for this year,” John said.

  Gore slammed the tailgate shut. “You mean you ain’t got nothin up there in that attic?” Gore asked, squinting up at the little window under the roof over the kitchen.

  John followed his gaze to the dusty window, then looked back at Gore, who was studying the hairs on the back of his hand. “Might and I might not,” he said. “But I guess that’s all for this year when it comes to me and the auctions.”

  Gore lit a cigarette.

  Hildie, Mim, and the auctioneer came out the back door with a burst of laughter.

  “Doesn’t it beat all the way they keep on buying this junk?” Perly said to John, striding down the path with Hildie at his side and Mim following.

  Mim pushed the hair off her forehead and grinned at John. “Must be the auctioneer,” she said.

  “That it is,” Gore said, relieved. “A real humdinger. You saw yourself.”

  “It’s good healthy fun,” Perly said. He picked up Hildie and peered at her with his dark lively eyes. She giggled and squirmed to be free. “Got a goodbye kiss for your sugar daddy?’ he asked. And Hildie obliged with a quick peck on his dark sideburn, then leaped out of his arms.

  “Any chance that Hildie can come to my Sunday School class starting this Sunday at ten o’clock?” Perly asked John.

  “Oh, how fine,” Mim said. “Would you like that?” she asked Hildie.

  Hildie danced noncommittally, holding tight to Mim’s hand.

  Perly sat on his heels and asked, “Would you like that, little friend?”

  “Will Dixie come?” Hildie asked.

  “You bet,” he said. “And we’ll tell stories too—Moses in the bulrushes, wise old Solomon, King Herod and the baby Jesus. It’s almost like living lots of lives at once, telling stories is.”

  That week John and Mim swept out the lower level of the barn and built a chicken coop to replace the one out back that had fallen in an ice storm three winters before. On Wednesday, John took Hildie down to the Farmers’ Exchange and picked up two dozen baby chicks.

  “In any kind of common sense way, chickens ain’t worth their keep,” Ma said after the cows were milked, supper over, and Hildie in bed. “But there’s somethin’ about havin’ a cock crowin’ out there while it’s still pitch black in the mornin’. Him so full of the devil while you’re still tryin’ to wipe the sticks of sleep out of your eyes...”

  “Now we’re not about to fuss with no roosters, Ma,” John said. They were drinking tea at the table by the window, looking out over the pond, still as glass in the last light.

  “I don’t suppose,” she said. “It’s somethin’ like what Perly says. We lost the old-time values, to go out and pay good money for chicks already incubated when you keep one good rooster and they’ll come along in their own natural way.”

  “I’d like to know by which old-time values Harlowe needs such a heap of deputies,” John said.

  “There you go, John,” Mim said. “Lookin’ for worries again.”

  “Not me,” John said. “We’re quit of the auctions for our part. It’s nothin’ to me what they do in town.”

  3

  But when, on the following Thursday as the Moores were finishing lunch, Gore’s truck came roaring into the yard again, Johns face darkened. “What the hell? he said.

  Again Perly was with Gore.

  Hildie cried out with delight and ran out the door and down the path with Lassie to nuzzle Dixie. Mim was about to follow when John moved in front of her and blocked the door. He cocked his head to one side and waited for the men to come to the door.

  But they moved to the back of the truck. Gore opened the tailgate and climbed heavily into the truck. Perly took the end of a tired red plush couch and guided it to the ground as Gore pushed.

  “You wait here,” John said to Mim and moved slowly down the path.

  Mim followed him.

  “What’s this?” John asked.

  Perly turned to him with a smile. “Well, when this came into the barn, I just happened to notice that it was about the right height for your
mother. When your joints are stiff, you don’t want a couch that’s too low. Thought you might like to trade this for your couch and rest your mother’s bones a little.

  “Course that’s up to Ma,” John said, eying the rather worn upholstery charily. “Could be it’s more comfortable. Hard to say.” Mim said nothing. She was thinking of the new flowered slipcover she had spent three days making for Ma’s old couch only the winter before.

  Confronted with the new couch, Ma looked a little alarmed. Perly helped her to her feet. “If it’s not right,” he soothed, “we’ll take it back and keep on watching till the right one comes along.” While Perly watched, Ma sat herself on the new couch with the help of her canes, then she got herself up out of it. Then she sat down on it again, and burst into a full smile. “Why, you’re right, Perly Dunsmore,” she said. “I never noticed it myself. But I can get out of this ever so much easier, and I can get into it without fallin the last little way like I been doin’ these past few years. It always jars me so.” She got up and down again. “Well, I’ll be,” she said. And you know, I think I can set here easier too. It don’t tilt me back so much.”

  “Well, I have to hand it to you,” Mim said to Perly, still thinking the new couch was not so pretty as the old one. “We none of us ever even noticed.”

  “Your own never do,” Ma said.

  Perly stood in the doorway with his arms folded and accepted their comments. “Sometimes a new set of eyes...” he said, and lit up with a beaming smile.

  “Well, I do thank you, Perly,” Ma said, in a glow with pleasure. He went over and took the hand she offered in both of his.

  In silence, John helped Gore carry the couch down the front path to the truck. Gore wedged it securely into the end of the truck bed and padded it with a couple of tattered quilts.

  “You got no new tales this week?” John said. “It’s amazin’.”

  Gore leaned on the couch where it rested in the truck, its bright slipcover hidden now. He fished in his pocket for matches. “Come round to the house, you’re lookin’ for talk. You know there’s always some of the old bunch around on a Sunday. But you never was one to come round much.”

  “Thought Perly’d got you all tied up these days,” John said.

  “Nope,” Gore said. “Things’re about the way they always been, exceptin’ the auctions on Saturdays.” He climbed out of the truck and glanced up at the attic window.

  Dunsmore appeared in the doorway with the women. Even Ma had struggled to the door with her canes to say goodbye.

  “Well, thank you,” John said as he approached the truck. “That was nice of you.”

  “My pleasure,” Perly said. “Your mother’s quite a woman. She’s really a symbol of what this country stands for. I can see that.”

  John stood with his arms folded, watching the auctioneer. Perly’s motions were quick and easy, a little too quick and easy, John thought with a twinge of dislike.

  Gore climbed into the truck. Perly opened the door on the passenger side and held out his hand to John. “See you next week,” he said.

  John placed his hand in the other man’s momentarily. “What for?” he asked as the strong hand gripped his.

  Perly cocked an eyebrow. “Well the auctions aren’t over,” he said. “Someone will be around.”

  “Like you said,” Gore announced from his high seat. “We got enough cops for a circus now. Got to keep them busy.

  Smiling, Perly pulled the door shut and Gore stepped hard on the accelerator.

  “Hey!” John cried, but the truck was backing and turning, so that he had to move aside to let it pass.

  Mim was mending overalls on the treadle sewing machine in the front room. From where she sat, she could watch Hildie on the lawn struggling to do cartwheels, tumbling over and over and over.

  John and Ma sat with her, waiting for the seven o’clock news to begin.

  “He has a way about him that makes you feel like gettin up and doin’ things, Perly does,” Mim said. I like to think its not us that’s left behind, but just the other way around.”

  “Well, I guess if it sets you to mendin’, it can’t be a total loss,” John said.

  “My but he was pleased with hisself about that couch,” Ma said, running her hand over the worn red plush. “Didn’t it seem to you that he was halfway settin’ on hisself to keep from bustin’ or dancin a jig? It’s partly that makes you feel like up and doin’.” That child’s goin to break her neck,” John said, frowning at Hildie through the window.

  “Well, he was as good as his word,” Ma said, “far’s that Sunday School’s concerned. Now there’s one old-time value I’m sure was better than what we got today.”

  “But Hildie’s a chip off me,” John said, chuckling. “She don’t take to Sunday School.”

  “That’s because he told them about Abraham that was all ready to cut up poor little Isaac,” Mim said. “I expect she’s worried about what you’ll be up to next time you get het up. Now that’s one story no mother could ever understand.”

  “That’s just because you got no faith you think that way,” Ma said.

  “You’re the only one left around here as has much faith, Ma,” John said. Poor Hildie. God don’t ask for things like that nowadays, and I’m hard put to think He ever did.”

  “No, its just the little things He asks the likes of us,” Ma said. Like noticin’ when an old woman needs a higher couch to ease a worn-out back.”

  “You think its that he was noticin’? Or that Grandpa’s old one is more like to catch a buyer’s eye since Mim fixed it up so proper?”

  “You never had no faith, son. You young people can’t remember what old-time values was.”

  “Is it old-time values Gore’s usin’, then, when he says he needs a whole troop of deputies?” John asked. “What’s he got in mind to use them for, I d like to know? Is it old-time values tellin’ me I got to keep on feedin’ auctions every week? Before we know it, hes goin’ to have every other man a deputy. God knows what he plans to use them for.”

  “Must be twenty towns in New Hampshire have an auction every Saturday,” Mim said, pushing the denim overalls under the needle and making the machine whir.

  “And I been tellin’ you all week,” Ma said, “you can’t blame Perly for Gore’s prattlin’. Anything said by a Gore, you can put right out of your head. That was ever a topsy-turvy household. Weren’t no one in it ever cared two whoops in thunder for the truth.”

  On Thursday, John was restless. After he had milked the cows and put them out to pasture, he lingered over breakfast, drinking cup after cup of coffee, casting around for chores to do in the house. At every long sigh of wind through the pines, he expected Perly and Bob to burst through into their yard.

  He finished patching a hole in the screen door and turned to speak to Mim. She was blacking the stove, holding her body away from the stove to protect her clothes. Hildie, catching him idle, took his hands and started to climb him like a tree. He sat down by the table and bounced her on his knee, watching Mim.

  Mim turned from the stove and stood at the sink to wash her hands. Afterwards, she took her brush from the shelf and started to brush her hair. She brushed it and brushed it, staring at her image in the small mirror over the sink that John used for shaving every second or third day. Her light hair sprang back from the brush into fuzzy curls. Usually she only brushed it like that when she washed it Saturday mornings. Hildie slid down Johns legs and climbed up again. Mim put the brush down and leaned in closer to the mirror.

  John pushed Hildie away. The heat rose slowly to his head. Ma’s judgment rang in his ears: “Shes a far sight too pretty to make a decent wife to a man.”

  Mim had been seventeen when he married her and so lovely he ached when he touched her. If anyone had asked him why he married her, he’d surely have said that was the reason. But he was pleased when, after a couple of years alone with the fields and the trees, with only his eyes and those of his parents, she forgot she was pretty and didn
’t bother with a mirror from the beginning of the week to the end. It was all for him. And he remembered thinking, from time to time, in those first years—when she was running down the pasture in summer, or diving into the pond, or coming into the kitchen in winter, rosy with the cold—that it showed a man’s worth to have a wife who looked like that.

  He hadn’t thought of such things for years, but now he saw that she was no longer young. Her slender hands on the hairbrush had grown as tough as his own. The good fair skin, which had once stretched so cleanly over the straight features that her face completely hid her thoughts, was faintly patterned now so that laughter, mockery, and her quick characteristic squint of doubt seemed always there, ready to break through. Still, her body had filled out and gained confidence without losing its grace, and her eyes remained the deep clear blue of a winter sky.

  So she had not overlooked the auctioneer’s eye for her. John got out of his chair and moved slowly toward her. She met his eyes in the mirror and stiffened with alarm. His two hands landed on her arms. She froze as she stood. He felt the power in his hands and closed his eyes to stop himself. She wouldn’t struggle. She never struggled. She had let him have his way the first time he tried, when she was fifteen. Sometimes she had run away first, into the darkness under the trees, but if he sat still, very still, she had always come back and let him have his way.

  She bore the bruising grip on her arms with perfect stillness until he himself was trembling. He shoved himself away from her so that she staggered against the sink. “Why you brushin’ your hair?” he shouted.

  Hildie screamed with surprise and ran to her grandmother in the front room, dodging between John and Mim.

  Mim went pale beneath her freckles. “It’s only right to look decent when company’s comin’,” she said. Without moving away, she started taking the dishes from the drainer and putting them away in the shelves overhead. “What are we goin’ to give this week? she asked—a question she’d already asked too often.