The Auctioneer

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.”