The Auctioneer

Oakes paused. “Hell. I’ll go to Concord. I’ll go to the goddamn President if I have to. This is ridiculous.”

Moore nodded. He knew all about Tad Oakes, of course, but he didn’t know the man particularly, any more than he knew anybody who actually lived in town. But now he said, surprised to hear himself, “There’s a three-day calf up to our place. And the water’s nice enough if you ever happen to be round our way with your boys.”

“Thanks,” Oakes said, clearly pleased. “I’ll make a point of it. Perly was starting the auction, talking in that deep singsong voice he saved for auctions.

“It can’t go on like this,” Oakes said, “do you think?”

Moore shook his head. “Two hundred years my people been on that land. They weathered shenanigans before.”

“That’s what I say,” Oakes said grimly. “What’s a few auctions? I didn’t half mind getting the barn and cellar cleaned out. It’s just that you have to draw a line.”

Moore looked up and Oakes followed his glance. From under the trees, Mudgett was staring at them, unblinking as a fish. Without another word, the two men turned away from each other.

That week Mudgett arrived on Thursday driving a brand new Crew Cab International pickup truck, the kind every man in Harlowe admired whenever he passed Tucker’s new showroom up on Route 37.

“What you got for us, Moore?” he asked, fixing John with his flat eyes, while Cogswell shambled around the truck.

“What color’s yours?” John asked Cogswell.

Cogswell shrugged. “There’s them as gets and them as don’t,” he said. “The big boy says I got to swear off the bottle first. He’s after makin’ preachers of us all.”

“He dropped a bureau the other day, with me underneath,” Mudgett said. “Damn near killed me. Never mind the way he drives.”

Cogswell laughed loosely. “You tell him, John,” he said. “Ain’t no use tryin’ to reform me. Agnes been tryin’ all these years. I keep tellin him if he d just join me in a daily bottle for a while, he might grow a head or two.”

“He’s goin’ to get himself tossed out, if he ain’t careful,” Mudgett said. His tongue gets to flappin’ round in the breeze about this time of day.”

John and Mim looked at Cogswell with alarm.

“Well, what have you got?” Mudgett asked.

“How long you plannin’ to keep this up?” John asked.

Mudgett shrugged. “Have to ask the boss about that,” he said. By the by, saw you talkin’ to Tad Oakes Saturday. You a special buddy of his?”

“Just passin the time of day,” Moore said. “Any law against that?”

“You hear he sold out and moved to Manchester? Left yesterday.”

“So quick?” Moore said.

“You know that old dead elm, the one he should have took down some years back? Well, it fell over his two greenhouses and smashed them up pretty good. They was lucky, you ask me. Whole damn family was up to Concord at the time. But I guess Oakes got to feelin’ pretty discouraged.”

“He sell his place already?”

“Dunsmore gave him cash on the barrelhead.”

“How much?”

“How should I know? You know how people clam up when it comes to money.”

John dug his hands into his overall pockets. “Whatever brought you back to Harlowe anyway, Red?” he asked.

Mudgett shook himself with annoyance. “It’s all unreal out there,” he said. “Whole shitty world.”

“So you came round to Harlowe.”

“Naw,” said Mudgett. “I just hate the place more, that’s all. Good a reason’s any for comin back.” He grinned and John saw that his front teeth, leaning together as they always had, had been broken to sharp points.

“You’re no favorite round here either,” John said.

Mudgett continued to grin. “Never was,” he said. “Never want to be.”

That night while Hildie sang herself to sleep, John and Mim sat down in front of Ma’s quiz program.

The M.C. asked a man in a dark turtleneck what year the Cheerleaders’ Association of America was formed. Ma waited until he answered—in the twenties sometime—then she said, “Some things you got no right to. And my bureau’s one of them. And Pas chiffonier is another.”

Mim and John looked at each other and the M.C. awarded two hundred dollars to a girl in leopard-skin tights who must have given a better answer.

“A handout here and there, all right,” Ma went on. “But you don’t go givin’ up every stick you own. Your father would have chased them rascals off the place with a whip, I tell you. Your great-great-grandfather cleared that whole high pasture and then some, when the woods was still filled with Indians too—riddled with them.”

“You got no use for that bureau, Ma,” John said.

“You tellin’ me my time has come?”

“Course not,” Mim said. “It’s just that maybe the bureau will fetch us through without an accident.”

“Accidents,” Ma said. “You should hear the accidents used to happen in the old days. Look what happened to Pa. How about the accidents in the news? Hundreds of people in one fell.”

“That don’t help if you happen to be one of the hundreds,” John said.