There was a long pause on the phone. Hershel asked, “Was the place locked up when you got down there this morning?”
“Yeah, why?”
Hershel thought of the girl. Susan—that was her name. “I let someone stay in the apartment upstairs last night. I wasn’t sure if she was still there.”
“Haven’t seen anyone.” Carl seemed not to know what to say for a moment. “Want me to check on her?”
“No. She might be sleeping.”
“Okay.”
“If you run into her, her name is Susan.”
He turned his attention back to the paper, pausing over the Living section and a story about a young woman who made filbert candies and desserts and sold them at the Portland Farmers’ Market. His mother had been fond of filberts, too, but she called them hazelnuts, claiming that only filbert farmers called them filberts. His mother baked, too, but her specialty was cinnamon rolls, which she made every week for the Ladies Sunday School at her Baptist church. The thought of those sweet confections and the way she slathered them with creamy white frosting made him miss her. He hadn’t seen his mother in … in … Hershel stared down at his hands. When had he last seen his mother? It wasn’t the first time he’d asked that question, but it still surprised him that he didn’t know the answer. She lived in Baker City; that he knew. So did his older sister, Rachel. After his father died, his mother had returned to eastern Oregon, where she’d grown up, and Rachel followed her there. But how long ago these things had happened was unclear. He’d had a strong sense of his mother during these past few months, almost as if he’d awoken from the trauma as a twelve-year-old boy.
When he was in the hospital recovering, he’d asked if anyone had called his family. One of the regular attending nurses, a harsh middle-aged woman, went uncharacteristically soft and said, “Yeah, we called them.”
He had waited for her to elaborate, the silence gathering around him like thick wads of cotton.
Finally, she said, “They declined to come. I’m sorry.”
Silvie peered down the dirty stairway at the patch of cement floor in the warehouse below. She had hoped she might dig the box out of her car, but a steady parade of people wandered past, gawking at the Charger sitting next to it. It would be trouble enough to take everything out with that combine blocking the back, but the last thing she wanted was an audience. Her stomach was rumbling with hunger, and her most pressing concern now was searching for something to eat. She’d watched for Hershel, hoping to thank him and apologize once again, but he was nowhere in sight.
With her backpack slung over her shoulder, she bolstered herself for strangers. As she descended the stairs she forced herself to her fullest height, and set her feet down with conviction. Charlie, the bar owner where her mother worked, had once instructed her not to look like a victim.
“Hold your head up,” he had said with grave seriousness. It was just after she’d met Jacob, and Charlie was suddenly full of advice, most of which was too late by then. “Make people think you can kick ass, even if you can’t.”
To Silvie’s relief, it was the hippie she encountered in the warehouse and not the other. The other was a familiar sort of man—someone she wanted nothing to do with. The hippie smiled as if he’d been expecting her. He was missing his front teeth, but his face was crisscrossed with laugh lines. His eyes sparkled.
“Good morning. You must be Susan,” he said, setting a cardboard box down on top of a dented chest freezer.
“Sorry. My name is Silvie.”
His smile broadened. “Leave it to Hershel to get your name wrong.”
Silvie smiled, too.
“If you’re looking for something to eat, I put some dogs in the cooker a few minutes ago. I’d make popcorn, but I don’t know how that contraption works.” He picked up the box and started toward the concession stand in the corner of the large room. “But if that’s what you want, I can figure it out.”
“No thanks. I’m okay.”
“Oh, you gotta eat something.” He turned and scrutinized her. “Course, you probably want real food. You can get a sandwich at the South Store, and they have some produce at the Berry Barn across the way.”
An apple was what she craved. “Where is this place?”
He deposited the box on a stack of others that looked just like it. He pulled a grease marker from his dirty jeans, uncapped it, and scribble “67” on the flap.
“Gotta write the lot number down or I’ll forget it,” he said, sliding the pen back into his pocket. “The Berry Barn and the South Store are across from each other. ’Bout a quarter mile down the hill. North.” He leaned in close and pointed in the direction of the auctioneer’s stand. He smelled vaguely of patchouli oil and jalapeños, with an undertone of grimy buildup and unwashed clothes.
Silvie stepped back, but smiled. She entertained the idea of asking him to help her with her car. But it would only lead to questions about where she was headed, and why she was moving in the first place.
“Aren’t you staying for the sale?”
She sized up the mountain of used goods all around them. It was odd, she thought, that she’d grown up in a farming community and had never attended an auction. Her father was always picking things up at estate sales—dressers, lawn mowers, used cars. Where others had kept neatly cut lawns, her family had amassed a dense junkyard—at least, that’s how it was before the divorce. She could still remember the day she was finally old enough to understand that the school-bus game the kids played at her stop was not so much intended to be fun as to bring attention to the inordinate clutter. Count the Washers one day and Find the Stray Cats the next. Hanley, Wyoming’s very own version of Where’s Waldo. No one seemed to hold it against Silvie that she lived there, but that didn’t change how she felt about it. After her parents’ divorce, she and her mom moved into town and lived in the one-bedroom apartment above the old Sew & Vac store, where she relished the modest anonymity.
“I don’t know if I’ll stay,” she said.
A growing number of people meandered through the warehouse, pawing through boxes, turning items under the light in search of defects.
“Oh, you should come,” he said.
“I’ve got more than I can carry now. What would I do with any of this?” She laughed and gestured toward the stuff.
The hippie gazed at her, his eyes soft, his lips turned in a curious smile. “Hershel can use a friend tonight,” he said quietly. The grimy man walked into a tiny booth with a Plexiglas window that had a small semicircle pass-through just above the counter.
Silvie didn’t know whether to follow him. The conversation didn’t feel over, though he’d walked away. Was this man implying that she could thank Hershel by staying?
He returned with a notepad and pen. “He’s gonna be a little off tonight. My guess, anyway.”
“Why is that?”
“He’s selling that Charger.” He looked around him and began to jot down the names of items that were in close proximity.
“Did he lose someone in that wreck?” she asked, curious now about her Good Samaritan.
“Could say that. That was the car he was driving the night of his accident.” The hippie moved forward through the warehouse a few steps and scribbled down more items. There didn’t seem to be any order or logic to what he chose to capture, but more like a random inventory.
“He was driving that car when it was wrecked like that?” Silvie realized, too late, that she was gaping at him.
“Probably why he messed up your name.” The hippie glanced at her, then back to his page. He sketched out the warehouse and divided it into quadrants, then numbered them.
“That would explain why he couldn’t figure out which key opened the door last night.”
“He was doing almost eighty when he hit a cow full-on. Spent three weeks in intensive care.” He divided the list of items into four brackets and labeled each with its corresponding number on the diagram. The hippie tore the page out and placed it on the auction
eer’s podium. “You should stay for the sale,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” Then he wandered away, leaving her alone in the midst of all that junk.
5
Carl had been working for Hershel exactly ten years this month. But Hershel wouldn’t remember that, and it had nothing to do with the accident. Though Hershel’s brain injury had been cause for Carl to take a hard look at life. The deaths, or near deaths, of friends and acquaintances always made him wonder why he was daily spared. He should have died in a jungle. He should have been dead now more times than he could count, but for some reason he trod on through like some well-armored insect.
Carl hadn’t seen a doctor in decades. No need to. He listened to the people around him, especially the ones near his own age, talk about their aches, their blood pressure, their arthritis. It fascinated him, but it also repulsed him. He had abused his body in ways most people would never dream of, yet he rose every morning feeling more or less the same, worked through his day, and fell into bed at night with nothing more urgent or disturbing than a minor case of heartburn. And then only when Yolanda, his neighbor across the common courtyard, made extra-spicy tamales and shared them around Campo Rojo.
He had slowed a bit; that he had noticed. He couldn’t quite lift the same amount of weight as he once had, but he was limber and hadn’t bulked up around the middle like most people his age.
Carl had his eye on an old KitchenAid mixer this evening with Yolanda in mind. He picked it up and carried it to the concession stand. It would probably go for more than he could afford. They’d come back into fashion lately, and the older ones had a fifties sort of charm that made them highly sought after by secondhand dealers. He plugged it in and shifted the lever on the side. It spun the whisk attachment smoothly, so he turned it up to the highest setting, listening to it whir. It was built to last—a real workhorse for a serious cook.
Yolanda had been at Campo Rojo almost as long as he had, and longer than any of the other migrant workers. She’d become like a den mother, taking care of the entire village in addition to her own two boys, who were not actually boys but fully grown men. On Sunday afternoons, she whipped up Mexican wedding cakes, little round cookies smothered in powdered sugar, among other treats. She mixed everything by hand, though, and complained about bursitis in her shoulder. Carl had been delighted to find this mixer on the floor when he came in this morning, lying in the doorway on its side. He turned it off and pulled the plug, examined the cord for fraying. Satisfied, he placed it behind a chest of drawers at the back of the sale floor. He’d wait until the crowd was thin and the dealers had checked out, then bring it out for Hershel to sell. Most bidders wouldn’t get back in line for the cashier after they’d paid their bill unless the item was particularly choice—the KitchenAid was missing its bowl.
Carl wondered if he’d persuaded the girl to stay for the sale. He’d never known Hershel to offer a kind hand to anyone, and Carl thought it was odd that he’d not only assisted her with her broken-down car but offered a place to stay. He hoped she’d be back. But then maybe she had a low tolerance for auctions. Lots of people were like that—a character flaw, in Carl’s opinion. That anyone would buy new when the world was chock-full of perfectly good, inexpensive necessities was an affront to Mother Nature. A raping of natural resources. A shortsighted, selfish act.
Hershel took the muddy shortcut through the filbert orchard at three o’clock, getting himself mentally ready for the evening auction. He’d decided to walk through the sale barn and memorize the names of items that he wanted to sell while the crowd was good, rather than leaving it up to his floor men to randomly pull merchandise from the nearest heap. He could maximize his commission on the premium items if there was more competition for them. He also suspected that his employees hid some of the best stuff until the end, then picked it up for a fraction of what it could have brought. He’d taken to running up the price with a fictitious bidder, which sometimes forced him to buy the item and resell it later.
Hershel paused mid-stride to think about that. It was a common practice in the business—shill bidding, they called it. But also one that could get an auctioneer boycotted if he did it too often, or poorly enough that the bidders caught on and realized they’d never get a bargain on anything at his sales. And auction-goers were hopeless bargain hunters.
The fall air and the chilly temperature gave him energy as he trudged along under the low canopy of tree branches. The filberts had already ripened and fallen to the ground. Steve Thompson, the farmer who leased the orchard from Hershel, had sucked up the nuts with his giant vacuum-like machine, separated them from the leaves and debris, and moved them to his drying plant in McMinnville to ready them for sale during the holiday season. Thompson took good care of the trees he leased, as if they were his own. Still, Hershel ran his hands along the bark as he went, poking around for signs of blight. It was an old orchard, nearly thirty years. It wouldn’t produce like this for much longer, and then it would need to be replanted. Soon enough Hershel would have to make the decision between replanting filberts and moving into the newer crops of wine grapes that were rapidly transforming the landscape of the Willamette Valley. He loved the glorious yellow display of those hillside vineyards in the fall before the leaves fell. They were much prettier than filberts, which weren’t especially showy. The clean lines of the vineyards brought an orderliness to the valley that he enjoyed. He didn’t imagine he’d go in that direction, though. Not because pinot noir didn’t interest him but because the filberts provided a wide berth of privacy between his house and Scholls Ferry Road that grapevines would not.
He thought of the girl as he neared the sale barn. “Sophie,” he reminded himself. He should have checked on her earlier, but he doubted that she was even still there. She didn’t need him, and she wasn’t his responsibility. She was a big girl, traveling solo.
At the edge of the orchard, Hershel walked out of the trees and into the gravel parking lot. At the sight of the Charger, the air rushed from his lungs as if he’d been slugged hard in the gut. He’d forgotten about it. There it sat, like a wadded-up piece of bright, glossy paper. Hershel flexed his hands. The feeling had momentarily left his body, yet his forehead throbbed.
“Floyd,” he growled to the wreck. “You look like hell.”
Hershel pressed his palm against the painful scar at his forehead, feeling betrayed for the second time by the car he’d saved from the wrecking yard. This hunk of metal harbored the secrets of that night forever lost to him. For all Carl’s efforts to spare him, Hershel had forgotten and stumbled right onto it. He shoved his shaking hands into his pockets and strode past like a man with a million important things to do.
“Hey, boss,” Carl called from across the warehouse as Hershel entered the building.
Hershel waved, then ducked into the cashier’s booth and slumped down in the chair, still struggling to get his bearings. Trying to let go the image of Floyd’s spidered windshield, wondering if his own head had made it so.
A dozen people wandered around the warehouse, looking things over in anticipation of the sale. Hershel always opened his doors at noon on Tuesdays to give bidders a chance to preview the offerings. The more time they had to think about any particular item, the more likely they were to convince themselves that they couldn’t live without it. Through the Plexiglas window where people collected their numbers and paid their bills, Hershel listened to a pair of farmers talking about the combine.
A tall, familiar-looking man wearing coveralls and a John Deere hat approached them. “You get a look at that Charger out there?”
The two nodded a greeting, as if they all knew one another. “Yep,” the slighter of the two replied. “Belongs in the U-Pull-It, you ask me.”
“My son wants it,” the other said. “Thinks he can restore it.”
The second man laughed. “Yeah, with a new body, a new rear end, a new transmission, and probably a new engine, he might be able to make it roadworthy again.”
All thre
e laughed.
“I suspect he wants it for its legend. The two tons of metal that tangled with Swift, and who comes out on top?” He shook his head and whistled.
“I can’t believe that bastard survived,” the third man said. He lifted a grease-stained ball cap off his head, ran his fingers through his thinning hair, and replaced the hat.
“Tougher than any goat I know. Hardheaded and mean,” the familiar man scoffed. “People like that are hard to die off.”
Hershel waited for them to laugh again, but there were grunts of agreement all around and then silence.
Hershel listened, amazed by the contempt people carried for him. He didn’t feel as mean as a goat. In fact, he felt downright charitable. He thought again about Sophie and got to his feet. He should check on her. But he had to wait for the throb in his head to recede before he walked out into the warehouse and past the three men. They nodded at him as he passed, looking slightly ashamed. Hershel didn’t make eye contact or acknowledge them. “Fuckers,” he muttered when he was far enough away.
He found Carl and helped him push a dusty riding lawn mower out into the aisle for another man to inspect.
“That gal Silvie left a little while ago,” Carl said. “She wasn’t interested in the dogs I threw in the cooker.”
“Silvie?”
“I think that’s what she said, boss. Said her name was Silvie.”
“That’s right, Silvie. She coming back?”
Carl shrugged. “I invited her to stay for the sale.”
Hershel wanted to ask Carl about the comments he’d overheard, not just today but last week between Linda and Stuart and others. He pressed his hand idly to his forehead.
Damaged Goods Page 4
