The Auctioneer

She stumbled out to the truck in front of Jerry’s gun, rubbing her face. The thin dogs crouched growling on either side of the door, ready to leap if she should decide to come back.

There was a new brown Crew Cab pickup in front of Linden’s. It turned out to be Ezra Stone’s. The jangle of bells when Mim opened the door made Ezra look up from the fishing tackle at the back of the store, and she met his yellow eyes full on across the shoulder-high rack of cupcakes and potato chips. Without greeting her, he went back to fiddling with the boxes of fishing hooks.

“Where’s Hildie?” Fanny asked, and Mim turned to find her sleepy blue eyes uncharacteristically awake.

“Home with Ma and John,” Mim answered.

“Oh,” said Fanny, and her eyes went back to sleep. “What’d you get into?”

“Poison ivy up to the top of the pasture by the gravestones,” she said.

“All by yourself?”

“All by myself,” Mim said. “Some people ain’t got the sense they was born with. I need some calamine.”

Fanny opened a glass cabinet over her head and rummaged.

“You got any bottles smaller than a dollar?”

“Nope,” Fanny said.

Mim hesitated, fingering the dollar bill in her pocket. “Been to any auctions lately?” she asked softly.

“Oh they’re still goin’ strong,” Fanny said. “They move them into Perly’s barn when the weather’s foul, is all.” Mim thought her eyes flickered at Stone in the back of the store. “But me, I mind my own business. Run the store the way I always done and mind my own business. She plunked the bottle of chalky pink liquid down on the counter. “That’ll be a dollar.”

Mim stood at the counter. She didn’t want to go. “Any news?” she asked. “I ain’t been to town in ages.”

“Yeah, thought maybe you was gone, too,” Fanny said.

“Too?”

“Lot of people movin’,” Fanny said. “Guess maybe it’s the times.” But she took a big bag and put a Boston Globe in along with the calamine.

Mim opened her mouth, but Fanny said softly, “Yesterday’s. We been all through it. You was askin’ after news.”

John took the paper immediately and went to work on it, starting at page one. He read laboriously, shaping his lips around the words and rereading each sentence. When it got dark, he spread the paper out on the table, brought the kerosene lamp up close, and went on reading. Ma had them pull her chair up to the table so that she could work 011 the back half of the paper. John told Mim about anything that interested him as she moved around him, tending to the fire, chopping onions and potatoes for the soup, admiring the fragile edifices Hildie was erecting with the kindling.

“You know that lot of forest fires in California?” he asked. “It says here, ‘Over eight hundred homeless. The American Red Cross, with the aid of the citizens of nearby communities, is providing food, clothing, and temporary shelter. Three hundred fully equipped mobile homes are being transported to the area.’ ” He stopped with his finger under the last word. “They just give them to them?”

“Anybody give you one, son,” said Ma, “you’d be givin’ it away again the followin’ Thursday. ‘Sure. Sure. Help yourself. Take it away. Me? My child? My wife? My old Ma? The silver linin’s all we need.’ ”

Still holding his place with his finger, John looked up at his mother. The lamplight under his chin deepened the lines in his face and seemed to bend them grimly downward. “You got complaints, Ma?” he said. “You got complaints about the way I been keepin’ you these ten years?”

She said nothing more. She bent over the classified pages with her magnifying glass, commenting occasionally on the outrageous price that someone wanted for a used upright piano, or a pickup truck with a plow on it. Eventually it was she who found an ad with a Harlowe telephone number.

Under Machinery, New and Used:

Secondhand Farm Machinery to be auctioned off Saturday in Central N.H. Call 603-579-3485.

But when Mim leaned over her shoulder to look, what caught her eye immediately was the big ad. “Listen to this,” she cried, taking the paper from Ma. “Says ‘Harlowe, New Hampshire,’ right here.”