The Auctioneer

“They’ll go to good homes. That’s what he says. ‘Good homes. Anyone willin’ to buy them must really want them. Mostly they can’t have them.” Agnes laughed. “Think of that. And here I am. Half buried in them. But you’d never be bothered countin’ someone else’s all night long. You couldn’t care like that but for your flesh and blood. Not when the floors get cold. And you wouldn’t put up with the clickin’. It ain’t regular like a clock and it always catches you the hardest when you want to sleep.”

“Agnes?” Mim asked, rubbing her hand across the back of the new rock maple sofa. The colors were all very bright, though the blinds were down and the room was in shadow. Then, as if she weren’t thinking right herself, she found she had no words for the question pressing on her throat. She said instead, “The room is done over real nice. Did you fix it yourself?

“This ain’t such a bed of roses that I can see,” Agnes said, her big jaw drooping. “Now there’s Jimmy Ward. He just up and left. Mick don’t know I know, but I heard it from my Joanie. Joan’s the only one tells me what’s goin’ on. She says he just up and went. Not all that deputy business and bein’ a selectman and a deacon both at once could keep him.”

“You don’t mean he left Liza after all this time?”

“No, no. All of them in the truck, with what all they could carry. Not a soul knew they was gone till next day when one of the Pulvers noticed the cows bellowin’ in the field near crazy. Seventeen he’d got too, with the extras, though he never took much interest in stock.”

“Where’d they go?” Mim asked.

“They ain’t leavin’ tracks.” Agnes paced across the room to the front window, fitted one eye to a small hole in the shade, and looked out. “He was pickup man for Carroll and Carroll’s pretty itchy. You can’t hardly blame him. Then his boy, Ward’s boy, took a bullet in the leg up huntin’, and Ward, he don’t think it was no accident. He must have got to thinkin’ the way I been thinkin’. There’s two ways most anythin’ can fly.”

“Jimmy Ward’s boy took a bullet in his leg?” Mim asked. She was still standing just inside the door in her coat, leaning on the wall.

Suddenly Agnes straightened up again and came toward her. Her eyes were wide and her face blotched with color. Mim straightened up, expecting the weight of the other woman to land on her. “Where’s Hildie?” cried Agnes. “Oh my God, where’s little Hildie?”

“She’s home,” Mim said.

Agnes retreated. “You hadn’t ought to leave her out of sight. You got to hang on for dear life, Mick’s never gone a minute I don’t expect him back in a coffin. And then what? Ain’t like I could drive. You’re real smart the way you can do for yourself. And I always thought you was so queer.”

Mim rubbed her face and the backs of her hands on the rough wool of her jacket. She felt as though everything had frozen in place, and the question had to come up from somewhere very, very far away. “What happened to Tucker’s boy?”

“If I had my way,” Agnes said, “we’d pile the kids in the truck just like Ward done, and load in what we can take, cash out whatever... Jimmy Ward’s nobody’s fool. But Mick... He’s never been a tight man except when it comes to his land. Like there was some kind of spell on those particular acres.”

“What happened to Molly Tucker’s boy?” Mim asked again, her voice grown hoarse.

“The land. Never a speck of sense, my Mick. Now it’s the land. I left the land all right where I was reared. Never a backward glance. He says, ‘You don’t do that. Up and leave your land.’ And I say, ‘You’ll get killed, all for the sake of your precious land.’ And he says, Six kids, Agnes. Six kids.’ And I say, ‘You think they love that piece of rock and sand—that never grew nothin’ right but weeds and berries? You think that’s better than a livin’ breathin’ father?’” Suddenly Agnes was gulping on big sobs, haphazardly.

“The land, Mim. Why the land?” She stopped. “Shhh,” she said and crossed the room again to look out of the hole in the shade. “They’re listenin’.”

“I guess you got your own problems,” Mim murmured and she walked toward Agnes, thinking to kiss her goodbye, forgetting the poison ivy.

But Agnes turned and screamed as she approached. “What are you after?” She stumbled across the room out of Mim’s reach. “Get your hands away from me.”

Mim turned, frightened, and collided with Jerry as he opened the door with the shotgun in his arms again. “Good Lord, be careful,” Mim said, backing off and sidling past him as he motioned to her.

In the hall, she reached out to touch Joan, who was as big as Jerry now, but Joan eluded her with an angry flip of her shoulder.

“Joanie,” Mim whispered. “Tell me what happened to Molly Tucker’s boy.”

“He drownded in the well,” said the child, with a hard frightened stare. “The little one.”

“But why?” Mim asked.

The four smaller children huddled behind Joan ready to skitter away like beetles if Mim moved. Jonathan sucked his thumb and Mim could hear the clicking sound.