The Auctioneer

When it became clear that John was not going to get up, Mim folded back the blankets and crept out of bed. Touching the cold plaster walls and the banister with her fingertips, and feeling for the chipped edges of the stairs with her toes, she made her way downstairs in the dark. At the door to the front room she could hear Ma’s breathing, heavy and uninterrupted and weary.

Mim stood at the foot of the stairs looking out through the glass in the front door. The sky glittered with stars and the pond was outlined like a dull pewter plate. But the land was so heavily swathed in dark that she could not see the road. They could be standing in her very yard, fooling with their jacklights and their guns, moving in that slow silent way of hunters, so as not to frighten her away from the doorway before they had a chance to paralyze her with the light and the dozen gunsights.

She crept into bed and lay with her teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, sensing in the perfect silence John’s wide eyes. She clasped his fingers where they were cupped around Hildie’s back, but he made no response. “John?” she whispered, but he made no answer. “John?” she said. “Tomorrow, can we bring Hildie’s mattress in here close to ours?”

The next day Mudgett came with Gore.

“Where’s Cogswell?” John asked as he met them in the dooryard.

“Hits the cider a mite too hard,” Mudgett said. “Makes him sentimental.”

“Can’t have no drunks on the police force,” Gore said. “It ain’t like I got a grudge or anythin’ against Mickey. But the way Perly figures it, maybe if we bust him down a bit now, we can—”

“How come,” John said, “if you’re so smart, you can’t keep the hunters in line?”

“You got any complaints?” Gore asked. He shut his heavy lips tight on whatever else he might have said and kept John well centered in the range of his small eyes. His hand fluttered restlessly near the butt of his gun in its holster.

“They was jackin’ deer up here last night,” John said.

The lines bracketing Mudgett’s thin mouth deepened and he said, “Feelin’ tender for the deer, Johnny boy?”

Moore shrugged. “Last I heard there was a law,” he said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Gore said, straightening up with interest. “You got no idea who it was?”

“You got good reason to be nervous,” Mudgett said. He folded a stick of gum and shoved it into his mouth, dropping the wrapper to the ground. “Sam Parry got a stray shot in the shoulder walkin’ to his barn. Just missed his heart.”

John turned to Mudgett. Mudgett’s face was as grizzled and dark from outdoor living as his own. Face to face like that, John still felt the authority of Mudgett’s five-year advantage, and of his cleverness with sums. “Real sharpshooter,” he said under his breath.

Mudgett considered, chewing his gum as if it were a form of contemplation. Finally, his face cracked into a flat-eyed grin. “You got to admit,” he said, “Harlowe ain’t half so borin’ as it used to be.”

Mudgett was in high spirits. He toured the entire house and shed, taking his time, loading Gore with every last screwdriver and pair of pliers he could find, as well as the ax, the mallet and wedges, the whetstone, the scythes, the rakes and hoes. Every once in a while he stopped and laughed out loud. “Real sharpshooter, eh?”

Gore, incapacitated by his armload, kept a wary eye on John and never turned his back.

While Gore was loading the tools into the truck, Mudgett took John’s big wooden toolbox from the kitchen and practically danced into the front room. “A cuckoo clock!” he exclaimed and lifted it off the wall as Ma watched from the couch. Gore reappeared empty-handed in the doorway.

“I would just like you to know, Red Mudgett,” Ma said, struggling to stand between her canes, “that when my time comes, I am goin’ to rise up and haunt you the longest day you ever lived.”

Mudgett chuckled. “Will you look at her?” he said to Gore. Some Sunday School teacher. Nothin’ I could ever do was good enough for her. You should a seen her.” He puffed out his chest, pulled in his chin and intoned in a falsetto not unlike Ma’s, “You children just ain’t a goin’ to come to no good.” He nodded with satisfaction.

“I remember,” Gore said, making no commitments.

“And many’s the Saturday night, Bob Gore,” Ma said, “you shared Johnny’s bed with him and ate at my table—your own pa too drunk to abide you. And just you keep in mind, young man, it’s sorry luck to bite a hand that’s fed you.”

“Ain’t my idea,” Gore muttered, but Mudgett was already rushing down the front lawn to put the clock and toolbox in the truck. Gore turned to follow him, but, before he could escape, he bumped into Mudgett returning.

“All we got’s a load of scrap,” Mudgett said. “Not one decent piece.”

“Tools sell good, Red,” Gore said.