The Auctioneer

Thus, whenever she went into the store, she lingered, talking weather, labor pains, and ailments with Fanny the way she always had. Fanny went on and on, her voice as flat as the cheese she made, but Mim could glean few clues. Neither Fanny nor the store seemed changed in any way. She did learn that Collins up on the ridge had fallen under his bulldozer and had to have a leg amputated.

“Course that don’t slow Jane down none,” Fanny said. “She’s in here just as often as ever, all gussied up like she thought we was New York.”

“How could he fall under his own bulldozer?” Mim asked, wishing she could find out where the Collinses stood with the auctioneer.

“Takes talent, don’t it?” Fanny said. “This has been one bad year for accidents.”

Mim frowned.

“Course there’s one good thing come of it.”

“What’s that?” Mim asked cautiously.

“You mean you ain’t heard about the ambulance? Why I thought everybody’d heard by now. They broadcast it loud enough. That happened last Tuesday after Collins got hurt. Some of the money came from the police budget. Guess they got some extra now on account of the auctions. Then Perly Dunsmore dona.ted what was missin’. He went hisself, Perly did, up to Boston and come back with a brand new ambulance. Everything the very best. They was showin’ it out there on the Parade all day Wednesday. Next time someone gets hurt, it’s nothin’ but twentieth-century care for them. That’s how Perly puts it.”

“You think Perly had to donate much?”

“He says so,” Fanny said. “Soft-like he says it, but plenty loud enough to hear.”

“The auctions must be rakin’ in a pretty penny. Young Ike helpin’ with them?” Mim said, trembling at her bluntness.

“Store’s open Saturdays,” Fanny said. “Always was. But we keep an eye on things from here. Don’t hurt our business none, all that flock of outsiders landin’ on our doorstep every Saturday—and all in a spendin’ mood too.”

“Oh,” said Mim, abashed. “I don’t suppose. Do you... have you been donatin’ much?”

“Nothin’,” Fanny said, sitting unnaturally still, even for her. “They ain’t asked and we ain’t volunteered.”

Harlowe shared a preacher with eleven other towns. She spent one quarter in each area, preaching in three different towns every Sunday. It wasn’t a job with much appeal for men with families, and so for eight years they’d had a woman—Janet Solossen. Once a year she called on the Moores, rattling in over their road in an old Willys Jeep, always just when they least expected her. She wore men’s work boots and covered her large uncorseted frame any which way, usually with blue jeans and dark turtleneck sweaters. Before she came in, she always stood and talked cows and tractors with John in the yard, running nicotine-stained fingers through her cropped yellow-gray hair. In the front room, she smoked and talked babies with Mim, and quilts and television with Ma. Nobody thought she was particularly smart, since she always talked about what they knew, but they noticed that she usually had good answers when problems came up, and they had long since concluded that, woman or not, she had a line to God in the proper way of preachers. People had stopped calling her “that lady preacher.” She was just “the preacher” generally, and “Reverend Solossen” to her face. Except for the newcomers and the French Canadians, most of the people in Harlowe still got married and buried out of the Union Church, but there weren’t as many as there used to be who paid attention to it on any regular basis.

“The first Sunday of the preacher’s quarter here’s comin’ up,” Mim said. “I don’t rightly see how she can come by and not notice.”

“And when she asks,” John mocked, “I suppose you’ll say you gave it all away because an old man took a stroke, and an elm tree fell on a greenhouse?”

“I expect the preacher could sit patient for the whole long tale.” And if we tell her and she thinks it’s us is wrong and passes on our tellin’?”

“I’m goin’ to tell her anyhow.”

Sunday was cold and bright, etched with the fresh hard energy of autumn. Ma was pleased to be going to church. Looking strange and fragile in her navy blue gabardine suit, she sat between Hildie and John on the hard seat of the pickup truck. After Pa died, John had taken her to church until she gave it up of her own accord. “It ain’t the same,” she said, “with you a twistin’ and turnin’ in the pew like a cat in a trap.”

John and Mim said nothing as they drove slowly past the church with its half-finished steeple. John passed the four shiny new Crew Cab trucks in front, then pulled to a stop by the post office.

“Don’t stop,” Mim said. “No point to goin’ now. We seen enough already.”

“Not go!” Ma said. “Just on account of them trucks? They got as much right to the church as you. More. It would a been fittin’ when you took a Harlowe man if you’d a took his church as well. But you was always strong in your ways when it was any but Johnny doin’ the pushin’.”