The Auctioneer

On the days when nobody went to town, John walked the quarter of a mile to the mailbox as he had since he was barely bigger than Hildie. Usually it was empty. But on the Friday after Gore’s second visit, when he lifted Hildie to look, she pulled out a letter. She ran home ahead of him in the sunshine, so agile now that John could no longer keep up with her without breaking into a run himself, and he was some years past that. His boots crunched rhythmically in the sandy mud as he followed, his broad face content as his child widened the gap between them, waving the letter high over her head like a flag.

Hildie threw the letter triumphantly into Ma’s lap and waited for John to sit in the rocker so she could climb into his lap. Mim leaned against the piano in her apron. Ma read aloud:

Dear John, Miriam, Mrs. Moore, and Hildie:

The wheels you contributed to the policeman’s auction brought a surprisingly good price. I would like to remit some of the money to you as a recompense for your generosity.

Bob thinks the auction was a great success. I certainly hope it will contribute to Harlowe’s future safety.

As you no doubt know, I am the new owner of the former Fawkes place on the Parade and very much hope that we will meet as neighbors soon and see a lot of one another.

Sincerely,

Perly Dunsmore

Enclosed was a check for three dollars. “More than the firemen ever do,” John said, turning the check over and righting it again.

“He’s sure got Bob Gore all wrapped up and tied with a yellow ribbon,” Mim said.

“That’s nothin’ to sneeze at,” Ma said. “For all his talk, Bobby got the share of sense for the whole nineteen of them Gore kids. And if he’d a lit out of Harlowe like the rest, we’d have old Toby on the dole sure.”

“How ’bout the cows, Ma?” John said, winking at Mim. “We’d of had the cows on the dole too. Might’s well shoot Toby outright as take his cows away.”

“Crazy how that barn don’t fall on them,” Mim said.

“Everybody from Harlowe knows it’s goin to stand as long as Toby,” snapped Ma.

“Bob’s not the worst cop you could have,” John said. “He’s sure to be up in a flash if you call.”

“He’d be scared of missin’ somethin’,” Ma said.

“Kind of mean, ain’t it?” John said. “All these seven years he’s been dreamin’ of havin’ a real honest-to-gosh crime to solve. And now he’s got a whopper—a stranglin’—not to mention the break-in and the holdup. And poor old Bobby ain’t scared up so much as a suspect.”

“Fanny says he was so cross he wouldn’t even talk about it,” Mim said. “Not even when he’d had a few. Not that I blame him. Downright humiliatin’, right there in the biggest house in town like that.”

Ma turned to John. “Do you recall that spell back when old Nicholas Fawkes used the big barn for auctions? she asked. That makes a sort of a tradition, don’t it? Maybe this Perly Dunsmore ain’t such a fool after all. You ought to go on down to the store a bit more often. See what you can find out.”

John shook his head and grinned. “You’re workin’ up a powerful curiosity about this fellow, Ma,” he said.

“Can’t say I ever thought about it just like that before, did you, John?” Mim asked. “That what they’re really after is to get to be like us?”

“Who?” John asked.

“All the people movin’ from the city to the country,” she said.

John and Mim were climbing up the pasture to replace any fallen stones in the back wall so the cows wouldn’t stray into the woods. It was always a good hike to the top, but that morning there was a fog curtaining their progress, and it seemed a journey. The child walked between them, subdued, keeping their hands tight in her own. An invisible phoebe called over and over as if counting their quiet footsteps up and up on the steep brown island fading into whiteness, and occasionally crows cried in the distance.

Halfway up, they turned, as they always did, to look out over the pond, but it was lost completely in the fog. “Look at the house,” Hildie whispered.

“Looks nice,” Mim said.

What they saw was a white cape set into the side of the hill with a fence of tall hand-carved pickets across the back. The mist bleached away the weathering on the paint, the rusty tin over the woodshed, the missing bricks in the chimney, the plastic over the windows, even the tangle of last year’s morning-glory vines still clinging to the fence.

“Looks all polished up,” John said.

“Like summer folks had got their hands on it.” Mim laughed and turned to climb again.