The Auctioneer

Mudgett stood in the front doorway snapping his gum. Ma’s program rattled on unheeded. Suddenly Mudgett’s dark eyes came into focus. He swept across the room and unplugged the television set so that the picture of Dr. Rebus and Susan shrank to a point and disappeared. “Grab an end, Bob,” he said.

Gore side-stepped warily around the room, keeping John within his sights, and picked up one end of the console.

“Just hold on half a minute,” Ma cried, struggling across the room to block the door.

Gore put his end of the console down, which forced Mudgett to put his down as well.

“Ain’t nobody goin’ to just walk off with my TV set like that,” Ma said.

“Want to put money on it?” Mudgett asked.

“I’ll put money on it,” John roared. He lunged for Mudgett, but Mim caught him and stopped him momentarily.

Gore backed into a corner and, fumbling, unsnapped his holster and pulled out his gun. John shook himself free of Mim, but stood where he was, watching Gore.

Mudgett sneered, leaned over, and picked up the console himself. He was a small man and the set was so big it gave him the look of an ant struggling beneath an enormous crumb. He staggered toward the doorway where Ma stood.

“Oh no you don’t,” said Ma, but even as she spoke, the corner of the set caught her in the shoulder. She grabbed at her cane for balance, but the cane slid out sideways on the floor and tangled in Mudgett’s legs. Ma, her weight on the cane, fell headlong to the floor. Mudgett struggled, his feet encumbered by the cane and Ma’s housecoat. The television set swayed precariously. Finally, he freed a foot and groped for the floor ahead of him. When he stepped, he landed on a pile of Hildie’s marbles. His foot flew up in front of him, the television set leaped from his arms and smashed against the stairway, and Mudgett fell swearing into the debris.

“Jesus, Red,” Gore gasped, still standing in his corner watching as John lifted his mother and led her to the couch.

Mudgett picked himself up and kicked at the wreck of the television set. The glass was smashed and the cabinet broken open, revealing a tangle of transistors and tiny colored wires. Mudgett had cut his forehead and a slow trickle of blood started down beside his eye. “I’ll get you for this,” he said to John.

Suddenly Mim came running at him. “Get out,” she screamed. “Get out of here.” Mudgett stepped back to avoid her fists and sidled out the front door. “You too,” she screamed at Gore. “Get out. I just can’t stand it.”

Gore backed around the room past John and his mother and hurried down the path after Mudgett.

Mim leaned against the wall and sobbed. “I can’t stand it,” she moaned. “I just can’t stand it.” Hildie clung to her legs, crying loudly.

John looked up from his mother, his face fierce. “Then why’d you grab me when I went for him?”

Lassie came in and started to whimper.

Ma patted her hair into place as John rearranged her on the couch. “Stop that,” she said coldly, sitting bolt upright on the couch. “You stop that wailin’ this minute, the lot of you. If there’s one thing I won’t have in my house, it’s hysterical women.”

Mim and Hildie looked up, startled into silence.

“I’m quite all right, and so are you,” Ma said, smoothing her housecoat over her knees. “Quite all right.”

But that was not the end of it. For three days, Mim looked after the remnants of the household and tried to create a sense of normalcy for Hildie in the midst of a silence as unnatural as that which precedes a hunter through the woods. John sat before the kitchen range and Ma sat on her couch near the parlor stove and neither said a word.

On Sunday, John brought in a load of wood and dumped it in the woodbox behind the kitchen stove. He chose two sticks, lifted the lid on the range with the handle, and added them to the fire. Then he sat down and leaned silently into the heat once more.

Hildie was building a village in the corner with kindling chips and didn’t look up, but John and Mim heard Ma coming. She moved slowly, thumping the floor with her two canes and dragging her feet in their felt-soled slippers. She stopped in the doorway and leaned on her canes. Her gray hair stood out around her head in stiff curlicues and the rope around her flannel dressing gown was tied in a knot at the waist.

Mim brushed past her and came back with her pillows and blankets which she arranged in the lawn chair. But Ma did not take the arm she offered. She stood steadfast where she was. “I expect I can do without my television set, son,” she said, “if you can do without your ax.”

Mim glanced at John, but he watched Hildie as though his mother had never spoken.

“What’s your plan now?” Ma went on. “You figurin’ to cut down the forest with your teeth?”

Hildie came over and leaned against her father. He took her into his lap and stared at the front of the stove.

“We had bears and Indians and winters that lasted all summer. We had dry spells and floods and wicked men before too. But I don’t recall as our people ever run away before.”