The Auctioneer Read online

  “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?”

  Mim whirled and ran down the stairs, practically stumbling over Gore, who was still lumbering down the last few steps, carrying the cumbersome dressing table ahead of him.

  As Perly helped Gore lift the dressing table into the van, Mim walked back through the house and stood watching from the kitchen door. Then, while Gore padded the table with the old quilts and tied it securely, Perly walked back up the stone path toward Mim. He opened the screen door and walked in, forcing Mim to retreat. He looked around the kitchen. “I thought Id say hello to Mrs. Moore,” he announced. “She’s something of a favorite of mine.”

  “She’s not up to company,” Mim said loudly.

  “Mim,” he said. She stood with her back to the wall, and he planted himself before her, leaning slightly so that she could feel his coiled tension like the heat waves rising from the pasture in summer. “Does it mean so much to you? I know the pleasuies of a dressing table to a good-looking woman. But there are other things-better schools for Hildie, year-round church, more ready cash, more comforts... I know what I want.

  Mim could not move without flailing out at the man and making him back off, and she trembled from the effort of suppressing her need to do so.

  “Comfort,” he said almost fiercely. “You’ve never known much comfort, have you, Mim?”

  Mim raised her eyes to Perly’s, blue and defiant.

  Perly dropped his gaze to Mim’s hands, pressed flat and angry against the wall behind her. Slowly he raised his eyes to Mim’s again, his face curling into lines of pleasure, perhaps of triumph. “You and I will have to get together someday, Mim,” he said. “I admire a woman with grit.” Then, with his own glittering stillness, he held Mim motionless against the wall while the clock in the kitchen chimed over and over again. When she dropped her eyes, he moved quietly away.

  After the truck began to move, Mim slammed the kitchen door and leaned against it, the chipped enamel on the panels cool against her face.

  Gradually, she began to hear Ma’s calls, and realized that they had started even before Perly left.

  She came to life abruptly and lunged into the living room. “Where’s John?” she shouted at Ma. “Where is he?”

  Ma was standing up halfway across the room. She had abandoned the chattering television set and begun the journey toward the kitchen. “What right had you, you fresh miss?” she hissed. What right had you? This is my house and I had things to say to that man.”

  “What can you want to say to him?” Mim asked. “What can a body say? He don’t care—”

  “No. That’s what,” Ma said. “No. No. No. Not the pair of you together can muster an ounce of gumption. Give the man a chance. You never said a word to hint you wasn’t just as happy to give away your dressin’ table. You never-”

  “It’s not the dressin’ table, Ma,” Mim screamed. “I don’t give a hoot about the dressin’ table.” She turned abruptly and sat down on the piano bench with her back to Ma, staring at the dusty keys that no one knew how to play any more.

  Ma sighed. “Miriam dear,” she said. She turned and hobbled back to her couch. She settled herself with a cushion against the small of her back and her bad leg up on the stool. Then she said, “Was a weddin’ present from your mother, if I remember right.

  Mim nodded.

  “Such a pretty thing you was,” Ma said. “A dressin’ table she gave you. This was a mean place for the likes of you.

  “It was not,” Mim said crossly, standing up and walking to the window so that she looked out over the green lawn, the stretch of garden yellow with the first marigolds and zinnias, the ribbon of field where they used to pasture the work horses, and then the pond, blue beneath the summer sky. “My mother never had a scrap of sense.”

  “Perly ain’t the kind would of gone off with it, child, if you’d let him know.”

  “He knows, Ma,” Mim said, her voice rising. “He knows. John told him. I told him. You just wait. He won’t stop.” She started out the front door, but banged back in to say, “All you can do is run, Ma. There are people like that. Either you give in or you run.”

  Mim ran out and up the path to the garden to face John. He stopped work and stood grasping the shaft of the hoe tightly with both hands. He watched Mim come and thought about catching her at the waist and shaking her until her waywardness came loose like chaff. But when she was near, running the tips of her fingers over Hildie’s face and hair, watching him warily, he took his hoe to the soil again. He would have touched her then, for his comfort and hers, but it seemed a difficult thing to do.

  Alone in the house, Ma sighed. “It’s that crazy streak comin’ straight down the line from her ma.” She settled back to catch the last wisps of her program. She had missed the whole scene where the doctor told Angela that Dirk had leukemia. And now, in the last few minutes, Angela was staring wildly, balling up a handkerchief, screaming, “No! Oh, no, no, no!”

  “You’ll pay worse if you try to say no,” Mim said, scraping her chair back from the supper table and stamping to the sink.

  “If I’d spent my life doin’ what other people had in mind for me, I wouldn’t be settin’ here right now and neither would you,” Ma said. Ain’t nobody goin’ to tell me to give away nothin’ I prize.”

  “He’s not tellin’ you, Ma. He’s makin’ you.”

  “He’s just doin’ his job. There’s never any harm in askin’. But you needn’t keep answerin’ the call. If you was a real Moore, you wouldn’t be so eager to give away our belongin’s.”

  “I’m a Moore as much as you,” Mim said. “It’s you that’s on his side, refusin’ to see what he is.”

  All week the women wrangled, while John sat, sometimes with his head buried in his arms. When he could stand it no longer he shouted and they sulked in silence.

  At night, after they were alone in bed, he pressed himself on Mim. “What happened with him? What did he do?”

  “It’s not the table, Johnny,” Mim said. “And it’s not the fact he took it. It’s what he is all through. He just made that clear as clear.”

  “Well tell him no,” John said, “both of us—no bickerin’ this time to let him get his way.”

  “You can’t, Johnny,” Mim said. “You can’t just tell him no. He’ll bring a world of trouble down on us.”

  “I can tell him what I please.”

  “Johnny, give him something. For me. Give him something. Hold him off. It can’t go on for long.”

  “Funny how it’s all gone sour,” John said. “Even his way with Hildie. I hate it when he swings her up like that.”

  Just give him somethi
ng, John. The extra bed in Hildie’s room. Promise me. Just one thing every week to hold him off. Promise me.

  But John made no promises. He touched his wife and when she clasped him harshly to her, hiding her face against his neck, the excitement rose in him quicker than his habits said it should. And nothing was clarified.

  On Thursday, John checked the guns—the shotgun and the .30-’06—and the square steel box of ammunition. Dull with dust, they lay side by side in plain sight on the top shelf in the pantry back of the kitchen. He didn’t jar them. They looked as comfortable and natural as the tall glass jars of flour, sugar, corn meal, and dried beans. He turned away and went upstairs. From the doorway of Hildie’s room, he pondered the extra bed. It was a rather plain but pretty rock maple bed exactly like Hildie’s. The two beds used to belong to his parents. He must have been conceived on one of them.

  Finally he went out to the barn and started the tractor. Up in the cornfield, he ran it back and forth cultivating between the rows under the hot morning sun until he was bathed in sweat. The hours of work had not helped him to any decisions when he saw Hildie race down the path from the back door and stand by the road watching.

  It was not the bright yellow truck that he had expected that rolled down the hill and into the yard, but Cogswell’s dusty old Chevy pickup. John covered the field in long strides and joined Hildie.

  Cogswell got out of the driver’s side and faced John without a smile or a word. Red Mudgett climbed out of the other side and came around to join the pair of neighbors. Mudgett was wearing the gun again.

  Before any of them spoke, the front door opened and Ma appeared. Leaning on both canes, she began to struggle down the rough stone steps.

  “I ain’t a goin’ to let you get away this time, Mickey Cogswell,” she called.

  Cogswell and John jumped to help Ma out to the single wooden chair sitting in the middle of the lawn.

  Hildie danced with delight to see her grandmother outside, and Mim came slowly down the path from the kitchen and stood by John.