The Auctioneer

by Joan Samson

  Cogswell glanced at John, and then smiled faintly at Hildie. He fished in the pocket of his faded blue sweatshirt and got out his cigarettes. He cupped the match against the weather, his hands shaking so he could hardly bring the match to meet the cigarette. Then he drew on the cigarette and flipped the match to the ground. He was a tall narrow man, with long hands covered with reddish hairs like electric wires.

  “Still got the same old truck,” John said.

  “I’ll drive to my grave in it,” Cogswell said.

  John raised his brows and waited for whatever news was coming.

  “Good of you to call on Agnes,” Cogswell said to Mim.

  Mim held tight to Hildie who was squirming to be free. “She’s not right,” she said.

  Cogswell shook his head, then looked down at them with a crooked smile. “Who is?” he asked.

  John stood before him, his hands sunk deep into the pockets of his overalls, his shoulders drawn up against the cold.

  “Your ma all right?” Cogswell asked him.

  “She’s not her old self,” John said. “But she’ll weather winter all right, if she don’t starve.”

  Cogswell shook the ash off his cigarette onto the ground and spread it carefully over the earth with the toe of his shoe.

  “Hear you done over your house,” John said. He took his hands out of his pockets and folded his arms, the muscles between his jaw and his ear working.

  “At too much cost,” Mickey said.

  “If there weren’t nobody jumpin’ to be deputies, Dunsmore wouldn’t a got so far.”

  “Ain’t nobody jumpin now,” Cogswell said. “Not anyway since last night.”

  “You mean the auction?” Mim said.

  “That and Sonny Pike gettin’ shot.”

  “Pike?” John said and lifted a corner of his thin mouth.

  Mickey shook his head. “He’s all of a piece, I expect. But he’s got a good hole in his shoulder.”

  “Shakes you up a bit, don’t it, Mick?” John said.

  Cogswell put his free hand in his pocket and leaned back against the cab of his truck.

  “It’s not so much you, Mickey,” Mim said. “It’s just the auction and what he said.”

  Cogswell turned to her and spoke quickly. “He sent you this,” he said, pulling a roll of bills from his pocket. “To get you off the land. Three hundred ain’t enough, I know. But its enough for you to set up in your truck and go.”

  John looked past Cogswell to the pond. Then he spit on the ground. “Never mind, Mickey,” he said, but he wasn’t angry any more. “You got your own brood to fret over.”

  “John,” Mim said and John turned on her too quickly. “If we could go...” she said, ignoring the rising anger in his green eyes.

  “It’s time, John,” Cogswell said. “He’s got his eye peeled right on you.”

  “It don’t seem like you’re about to scamper,” John said.

  “It’s gettin’ to that point,” Cogswell said. “He’s bankin’ on it. After you, then us.”

  “Keep your money,” John said. “I ain’t movin. He turned and started back toward the house.

  Cogswell took a step after him. “John, you’re a fool,” he said. “You always was that proud you’d cut your nose off before you d give an inch.”

  John stopped and turned. “You’re okay, Mickey,” he said. “I don’t forget a turn like this.” His face colored up as his eyes locked with his neighbor’s. “It’s just that I aim to stay.

  Cogswell held out the money. “You got it comin’ from one cow alone,” he said.

  John looked at it. Mim held her breath. “Guess my land’s still firm enough to carry us,” he said and walked slowly into the house. Mim noticed that his body was bent with age and work and care. He walked as if he were very heavy.

  She turned back to Cogswell, eying the roll of bills in his hand, her desire tangible.

  He turned to her. “You’re a good woman, Mim,” he said. “You keep tight to your sense of things. Make him see sense too. He thrust the bills into her hand and clouded her with the thick smell of soured whiskey.

  Feeling them against her palm, warm still from his, she felt the relief flood over her and longed to fall into his arms. She let her eyes fall into his. Weak with gratitude and the sweetness of the man, she said, “I’m real sorry about her, Mickey.”

  He watched her tears come up for him and turned abruptly away. He walked around the truck, got in, and started it with a burst.

  Then he got out and came slowly back. “Mim,” he said, his head nodding loosely, “if you can’t get him to see sense no other way, take him to the auction Tuesday at three.” Mickey ran a hand over his face. “Oh Christ,” he said, as if he had forgotten where he was. Then he straightened up and focused fiercely in on Mim. “But mind you don’t let on how you heard about it.”

  He got back into the truck and headed up the road over Constance Hill. Mim watched the back of his head through the rear window of his cab. He tipped it back and drank from his flask as the truck swayed precariously up the bad road and out of sight.

  Hildie reached for the money in her mother’s hand, jumping up and down to see it. Mim held it high and, standing where she was, counted it twice. Fifteen twenty-dollar bills. Then she turned to the house to face John.

  He was standing in the doorway waiting for her. “Give it to me,” he said, his face white and deeply lined.

  She gave it to him, feeling the fear that was almost desire touch her fingertips as they brushed his palm. He turned and, in a motion so quick she hardly felt what he was doing, crossed the room, lifted the lid on the range, and dropped in the roll of bills.

  Instinctively, Mim dove for the stove. He caught her. One hand tangled in her hair; the other tightened on her arm. She screamed and he shook her.

  She felt the world turning around her, the familiar piles of dishes on the shelf over the sink, the board bench and table, Hildie’s frightened face by the door. She screamed and struggled toward the stove. Vaguely, she knew that Ma had hobbled to the doorway and stood leaning on her canes, with Hildie pressing her face to her dressing gown.

  “The money, Ma,” she sobbed. “Get the money.”

  Finally John flung her loose of him, and even as she fell she yearned toward the stove. Her head hit the fender with a bump she heard more than felt. John slammed the back door so that the kitchen shook. Mim struggled to her feet and opened the stove. A tuft of smoke rose in her face. Inside she saw a jumble of red coals and one bright lick of flame.

  Mim crumpled on the edge of the bench, buried her head in her arms against the table, and sobbed. She did not hear the hard thumps of Ma’s canes approaching, but she felt the crooked hand catch in her hair.

  “Now, now, Miriam,” she said. “Don’t carry on so. You’ll give the child a fright.”

  Mim looked up. Hildie was leaning over the bench on the other side of the table, whimpering. She held out her arms, and the child came into her lap and cried with her.

  “It don’t mean he don’t love you, Miriam,” Ma said, stroking Mim’s head.

  “Ma,” Mim said. “He’s off the deep end, just like Agnes. He just burned up three hundred dollars.”

  Ma’s hand left Mim’s shoulder and clutched the side of the table. “Three hundred dollars,” she said.

  “You see him, Ma,” Mim said. “He just sets and does nothin’. Nothin’ but snap and growl. He’s not himself at all. It’s the auction yesterday’s the last straw.”

  “Well,” said Ma, “well.” And painfully she took herself back to her chair and settled into it. “It don’t run in our family, bein’ crazy. But then it don’t run in our family, givin’ everythin’ in sight away, neither.” She shook her head. Mim and Hildie were swallowing their sobs, watching Ma. It seemed as if, from the wisdom of her age, she were about to pronounce an answer that would shake the house on its foundations, shake it into order. But all she said was, “With a little luck, it’s the tone and not the other. Wit
h a little luck, he’s just a gettin’ stirred up.”

  “He was ever stirred up over somethin’,” Mim said.

  “A bit of temper shows a man’s got feelin’,” Ma said. “And selfrespect. It’s high time now he got hisself stirred up and movin’”

  “You mean you see we have to go?” Mim asked in a small voice. “No!” Ma cried. “That ain’t what I mean at all. I mean its time and then some he moved hisself to put a stop to all this.”

  Mim started to sob again. “It’s you is crazy, Ma,” she said.

  “No ones stoppin’ you, girl. I see you jumpin’ up and down you’re so antsy. Well go, if go you must.”

  “Oh, Ma,” Mim said, and turned her face to the stove, rocking over Hildie.

  “Just leave me the shotgun,” Ma said, watching Mim, her eyes stormy underneath the spray of pale hair. “This land’s been Moore land since before the likes of us was born and it’ll go on bein’ Moore land after the likes of us is gone. John’s grandfather and his great-grandfather and his great-great-grandfather, they didn’t fight for this here land just to have—”

  Mim lifted her head and shouted through her sobs at Ma. “Big talk, Ma. The shotgun’s gone.”

  John did not come back until Hildie was in bed. When he appeared at the door, Mim left the room. His supper was on the table, though everything else was cleared, as if life had made its sweep and left him out. Ma watched him without speaking. He ate the cold pea soup and the baked potato, troubled by her silent attention. When he finished, he took his dishes to the sink, scooped up a dipper of water from the pail under the sink, and rinsed them. “Well?” he asked.

  “She’s fearin’ for your mind,” Ma said. “With good reason, I say.”

  John moved to the back door and looked at his reflection in the dark glass.

  “That was a bad mistake about the money,” Ma said. “You got to feed a child somethin’ more than pea soup and potatoes.”

  John leaned his forehead against the door and looked up through the dark toward the pasture. In the stove, the fire settled and a green stick gave a long high whistle of complaint as it hit the coals and burned.

  “I’ll give you a hand to your couch, Ma,” he said.

  “Take the lamp yourself,” Ma said. “I’ll manage. You go make your peace with her.”

  In the bedroom, John felt Mim’s presence on the mattress, although she was so still he could not hear the rise and fall of her breath. But the sheets, when he moved between them, were warm with the heat of her body in the chill room. He lay beside her for a moment, hoping she would speak.

  Then he said, the words piling high on each other with the difficulty of saying them, with the horror of having done it, “It was a bad mistake, burnin’ Mickey’s money.”

  And his wife turned to him sobbing very suddenly, as though she had been crying all along and he had not been able to hear it.

  9

  On Tuesday at two-thirty, the Parade was deserted except for Cogswell and James, sitting on the edge of the bandstand smoking, with their feet dangling over the edge. Cogswell did not seem to notice John and Mim sitting in their truck, though James eyed them soberly. James had a thermos of something steaming. They passed the plastic cup back and forth and stared out over the empty green toward the post office. Cogswell drank from his flask and offered it to James who shook his head.

  A red Mustang and an Oldsmobile were parked in front of the Moores’ truck, near the small church at the edge of the green. In each, a couple the Moores had never seen before sat waiting. After a few minutes, a station wagon with yet another couple pulled in behind them.

  “Remember how we planned?” John said. “A flock of children, another barn for all the stock, more pasture clear, maybe a serious orchard. Pa would never listen.”

  “There’s no need to do such things,” Mim said. “We’re all right the way we are.”

  “You know your weddin’ dress?” John asked. “With the yellow flowers you embroidered on? You embroidered since?”

  Mim shook her head. “Guess I’d rather be outdoors.”

  “I’d like to live that long to see Hildie married in that dress,” John said. “Seemed so simple before the auctions started.”

  “Not likely she’d want to wear my dress,” Mim said. “Anyhow, it was in the trunk—the one that was my mother’s. They took it with the others.”

  “You just let it go?”

  “It was me said let them take the attic stuff. And then to make a fuss...”

  Three cars and station wagons at once pulled in around the Parade. In each, a man and a woman sat moving their lips in conversations silenced by rolled-up windows. They stared curiously at the post office and the houses ringing the Parade, and passed their muted judgment on to one another.

  “Who are they, John?” Mim asked, somehow fighting tears. She had a need that was physical to touch her child and feel her land beneath her feet—as if she’d traveled a thousand miles and couldn’t get back. “What can be worse than Saturday?”

  As it approached three, pickup trucks and dusty old American sedans began to join the newer cars of the strangers, bringing the Harlowe men who had been at the Saturday auctions—deputies most of them, without a doubt. James and Cogswell sat on the bandstand silently now, watching. A foreign station wagon pulled up. The door opened and let out a man in horn-rimmed glasses and a tweed topcoat. He walked around the car and opened the other door for his wife. As he did so, he perceived the dozens of eyes on him and looked up startled. His wife stepped out, a small woman in a beige cloth coat and a tidy felt hat. He said something to her and she glanced quickly at the other cars, then motioned to the church. The man put his hand on the small of her back and hurried her toward the church, hunching his shoulders against the gaze of the people in the cars. He pulled at the door, then leaned back against the knob and pulled harder. It was locked. For a long moment he and his wife stood staring at the blank door before them. Then slowly the man turned again toward the unlikely collection of people watching him.

  But even as he hesitated, the door opened inward and Pulver and Stone stepped out and ushered the couple into the church.

  Then, as if at a signal, the deputies and the strange couples got out of their cars and trucks with a great slamming of doors and moved toward the open door of the church—the deputies abruptly, looking straight ahead, and the couples tentative and clinging to each other.

  Rather suddenly, Perly’s big yellow van backed out of his driveway, turned, bumped a hundred yards along the road, and backed into the church driveway, up to the side door of the church. Gore got out of the driver’s seat and climbed into the back of the van.

  “It gives me a creepy feelin’,” Mim said, “havin’ to go inside walls with the likes of them.”

  “With all that pile of outsiders,” John said, “what can happen?” So John and Mim climbed slowly down out of their truck and followed the couples up the walk toward the church. A woman in front of them was so fat she moved by rocking from side to side like a mechanical toy. She dropped a cigarette, still lit, and John stepped, out of habit, to grind it out, though it wouldn’t have set fire to anything there. The woman tapped another out of her purse, and her husband, who was only somewhat less fat, stopped and turned to cup a match against the wind. John and Mim passed them as they struggled to light the cigarette.

  “We shouldn’t have come, Billy. I don’t think so.”

  “What’re you goin’ to do?” the man said. “The agencies said no, didn’t they?”

  “It’s not goin’ to be to his taste, findin’ us here,” Mim whispered. “I can’t tell no more what’s meant to be,” John said. “Could be he planned on us comin’.”

  Inside the wide church doors, Pulver and Stone sat at the table like ticket takers at a church supper, asking the names of the people as they filed in, checking each couple off on a list, then letting them by. John and Mim simply walked by them. Tom Pulver’s eyes followed their progress across the foyer to t
he swinging doors that led to the sanctuary, but he said nothing.

  There were no greeters and there was no organ, only the nervous shifting of the silent people on the horsehair cushions in the pews. The couples were scattered around the church, and evenly dispersed among them were the deputies. John and Mim took a pew near the back, and Ian James moved in immediately behind them with a stealth that set Mim’s scalp to prickling.

  They sat for what seemed hours. Afraid to turn and look, they listened to the strangers rustling behind them, and focused with sharp-edged intensity on the slow motions of those in front of them.

  At last the side door at the front of the church opened, and Perly began walking slowly toward the high central pulpit. His crisp black hair was combed back so tightly it barely curled, and the silver cuff links at his wrists glittered as he gestured to the crowd. Except for the gentle golden dog at his heels, he looked like the chairman of some important board of directors, or possibly a middle-of-the-road evangelist. He stepped into the high pulpit and Dixie disappeared behind its balustrade.

  Perly scanned the assembled people, reducing them to perfect stillness. Mim thought his gaze caught on hers momentarily and had to pull away as if snagged. Without moving, she let the heat of embarrassment and anger wash over her and fade.

  When Perly finally spoke, it was in the deepest range of his voice, a soft rumble like thunder that spread through the sanctuary and bound people together as if against a distant storm. “We will start with a moment of silent prayer,” he said, “asking God’s guidance and seeking God’s love that we may spread it to these innocent children. Let us pray.”

  Mim’s hand tightened on John’s knee. Around them the strangers bowed their heads. Perly raised his eyes toward the rose window at the back of the church and the red and yellow bands of light stained his face. The deputies did not pray, but looked around them like errant boys. The woodwork in the old church snapped and clicked as if to mark off the passing seconds.

  “Amen,” Perly said, releasing the people before him to stir and gaze back at him.