The Auctioneer

He headed, at a leisurely pace, toward his house, allowing himself to be stopped by various people who had bought things. When he passed the Moores, who were staring at him as if they themselves were invisible, he stopped so abruptly that Gore walked right into him.

“Nice to see you folks out,” he said. “Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. How’s your mother?”

“Goods can be expected,” John said, glancing sideways at Perly.

Mim stepped back a pace and looked down past Dixie to the hard ground, her face flooding uncontrollably with color.

“Maybe I’ll be by next week to see for myself,” Perly said, waiting for Mim to glance up. When she did, he nodded seriously as if to confirm some carefully negotiated bargain. “Yes,” he said, “I’ve missed my friend Hildie. An old bachelor like me gets very attached to little girls.”

John and Mim waited in the truck. Even before the people from the morning auction had packed up their machinery and driven off, a new set of cars was pulling in around the green-foreign sports cars this time, polished hard-top convertibles, and family-sized station wagons. A big Travelall pulled up in front of the Moores’ truck. All four doors opened at once and four boys went tearing across the green toward the bandstand. A paunchy father trudged along after them, hugging a football to his chest and scowling at the sky.

At one o’clock exactly, by the clock on the half-finished church steeple, Perly reappeared on the porch of his house, paused to look over the situation, then headed across the empty Parade. He was wearing a black suit and a metallic gray tie that caught the wind and blew over his shoulder as he moved easily toward the bandstand. Gore ambled after him wearing a hunting jacket over his usual denims, and carrying a square black briefcase.

The cars began to empty out with a slamming of doors, and people filled up the green—families and older couples mostly, with a few clusters of young people in faded blue jeans and long hair. The strangers, many of them carrying blankets against the chill of the day, sat obediently on the chairs set out for them. Perly stood at the base of the bandstand watching until a fair crowd was assembled, then he climbed up onto the bandstand, opened the briefcase on the railing in front of him, and once again squinted out over the heads of the people as if searching the distance—for whales on the horizon, perhaps, or enemy ships, or help.

Then, as if he had found what he was looking for, he broke into a broad smile that swallowed up the disconcerting eyes and turned him into any big well-put-together deeply tanned American businessman. “This is one very special group,” he said, his voice deep and restrained. “A mighty fine-looking group of people. Take a look around you, my friends. See that couple next to you? That handsome happy well-heeled couple? Well, if you buy land today, your son may marry their daughter. Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?”

Perly’s voice began to rise and fall in singsong cadences, and people stared at him, compelled, as if, before their very eyes, the strange dark man were taking on a gloss and brightness that they dared not turn away from. “I can see it,” he went on. “This crowd here has got the makings of a community you’ll be proud to be a part of. I can see it.” He paused and each person watching felt his own gaze reflected in the speaker’s eyes. “You, you are the first,” he said. “The very beginning. The pioneers. The bold ones. The grain of mustard seed from which the kingdom shall arise. And, within a year, I promise you, there will be a kingdom.”

Perly threw back his head on his strong neck and laughed. The crowd spread out on the green stirred as if with bad conscience. “Perly Acres is going to be known from Maine to Florida as the most desirable, the most exquisitely preserved, the best-regulated, the safest, the most-coveted little piece of paradise on the east coast of these United States of America.”

Perly took a breath and continued in a lower, more matter-of-fact voice. “Now I hope that each and every one of you was chalking up the mileage and measuring out the minutes it took you to get up here today. Why, we’re so close to Boston, you can just meander on up here for a swim and an hour or two of that friendly country feeling if a Sunday afternoon is all the freedom you allow yourself in a week. If you want to, you can leave the wife and kids up here for a week or a month or all year long.

You’re a free man. You’ll know they’re safe and healthy and well looked after in the country. And we’re so close you can check in any time you feel the need.