The Auctioneer

Cogswell stopped but didn’t turn. “Emily Carroll went out of control on Route 37 night before last,” he mumbled.

“She had an accident?” John reached for Cogswell’s shoulder to hold him. “Bad?”

“She’s on the danger list,” he said, turning. “Her back or something.”

“Emily Carroll! She’s got four kids—”

“Five,” Cogswell said. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face.

John watched. “But these things happen,” he said quickly. “You make it out an accident, don’t you?”

“I just wish it was someone... not Emmie,” Cogswell said. She’s just about Agnes’ best friend. The steering bust.”

“She alone in the car?”

Cogswell nodded. “Thing is, Carroll quit us two weeks ago. Let everybody know it too. And when they sent me and Mudgett round to collect from him last week,” he said nothin’ doin’.”

It was an hour and a half before John could bring himself to face the women. When he did enter the kitchen, Mim whirled from the sink to face him, her normally soft features set hard in rebellion. “I don’t care,” she said. “You got to give it to him. You’re just wrong to think you can...” She stopped. “Oh my God, John,” she said. “What happened? Hildie...” But Hildie was sitting at the kitchen table facing her father, her dark blue eyes round with fear.

“Somebody’s goin’ to kill him,” John muttered. “Somebody’s goin’ to kill him.”

Mim caught her lower lip in her teeth and unconsciously grasped Hildie by the shoulders. “What did he do?” she whispered.

5

Now that regulations made it too complicated to sell milk, John churned what Hildie didn’t drink and sold the butter to Dr. and Mrs. Hastings. The doctor and his wife had only been in Harlowe since a little before Hildie was born. But they were educated people and came from the outside, facts which might, John thought, help them know how to deal with the situation.

The doctor was a short bald man who wore glasses that magnified his eyes in such a way that he seemed to listen with them. He gave his patients—and everyone in town was his patient—the impression that he saw everything and probably understood it too, though he never said a word more than necessary. He asked what questions he had to, but never gave people any names for what was wrong with them. And when he wrote out an illegible prescription, he never said what it was for, only repeated the directions, usually the same ones: “Three times a day now, after breakfast, lunch, and supper, till the pills are gone.”

The doctor had delivered Hildie, but John himself had never had any reason to go to him for help, and when he took the butter down, the doctor only glanced at it, blinked at John nearsightedly, and paid him. Nevertheless, John was determined somehow to break through and talk to him.

Thus, when he rang the back bell on Friday morning, he was distinctly disappointed when it was Mrs. Hastings and not the doctor who answered the door. She’d been to college, as everybody knew, and had friends up from the city almost every weekend. Her children, all but the youngest, went to boarding school. She talked enough to make up for the doctors silences. In fact, she was always as nice as could be, if anything a little too jolly, as if she were restraining an impulse to slap Johns flanks and cry, “Off with you, Bossy!”

He waited on the far side of the kitchen table while she stood at the counter and weighed the butter on her scales.

“Doctor home?” John asked.

Mrs. Hastings looked up sharply. “You sick?” she asked.

“No,” John said. “No, not me.”

“Your children?”

“No, Hildie’s well.”

“Then what do you want to see the doctor for?

“Something I wanted to talk to him about.’

“The doctor doesn’t handle emotional problems, you know. He’s far too busy. If you just want to talk, his nurse will refer you to a psychiatrist in Concord.”

John raised his shoulders and thrust his hands into his pockets. The butter, he noticed, weighed over. He took a breath. “Been attendin’ the auctions?” he asked.

“A few,” she said, turning to face him. Her features were large, pointed, and subtly pockmarked. “Where on earth are they getting all that beautiful stuff week after week?”

John paused. “People like me,” he said.

“That so?” she said and laughed, her chest heaving. “Well, isn’t that generous of you. I, for one, wouldn’t care to part with my furniture.”

“No,” John said slowly. “You wouldn’t.”

She raised her chin suspiciously, no longer smiling. “Well, why do you do it?” she asked almost angrily.

John flushed with embarrassment and didn’t move. He couldn’t go because she hadn’t given him his money. Everyone knew that Mrs. Hastings hated Harlowe and Harlowe people and, for that matter, everything about the country. Harlowe and Mrs. Hastings, in fact, tolerated each other only for the sake of the doctor. Clearly, she must find the auctioneer classier than the people she bought butter from. And, if she did, probably the doctor did too.

“Well, why do you?” she repeated, her black eyes full of accusation. She reached over to the counter, picked up a half-empty wine glass, and drank.