The Auctioneer

“Well,” said Ma, “well.” And painfully she took herself back to her chair and settled into it. “It don’t run in our family, bein’ crazy. But then it don’t run in our family, givin’ everythin’ in sight away, neither.” She shook her head. Mim and Hildie were swallowing their sobs, watching Ma. It seemed as if, from the wisdom of her age, she were about to pronounce an answer that would shake the house on its foundations, shake it into order. But all she said was, “With a little luck, it’s the tone and not the other. With a little luck, he’s just a gettin’ stirred up.”

“He was ever stirred up over somethin’,” Mim said.

“A bit of temper shows a man’s got feelin’,” Ma said. “And selfrespect. It’s high time now he got hisself stirred up and movin’”

“You mean you see we have to go?” Mim asked in a small voice. “No!” Ma cried. “That ain’t what I mean at all. I mean its time and then some he moved hisself to put a stop to all this.”

Mim started to sob again. “It’s you is crazy, Ma,” she said.

“No ones stoppin’ you, girl. I see you jumpin’ up and down you’re so antsy. Well go, if go you must.”

“Oh, Ma,” Mim said, and turned her face to the stove, rocking over Hildie.

“Just leave me the shotgun,” Ma said, watching Mim, her eyes stormy underneath the spray of pale hair. “This land’s been Moore land since before the likes of us was born and it’ll go on bein’ Moore land after the likes of us is gone. John’s grandfather and his great-grandfather and his great-great-grandfather, they didn’t fight for this here land just to have—”

Mim lifted her head and shouted through her sobs at Ma. “Big talk, Ma. The shotgun’s gone.”

John did not come back until Hildie was in bed. When he appeared at the door, Mim left the room. His supper was on the table, though everything else was cleared, as if life had made its sweep and left him out. Ma watched him without speaking. He ate the cold pea soup and the baked potato, troubled by her silent attention. When he finished, he took his dishes to the sink, scooped up a dipper of water from the pail under the sink, and rinsed them. “Well?” he asked.

“She’s fearin’ for your mind,” Ma said. “With good reason, I say.”

John moved to the back door and looked at his reflection in the dark glass.

“That was a bad mistake about the money,” Ma said. “You got to feed a child somethin’ more than pea soup and potatoes.”

John leaned his forehead against the door and looked up through the dark toward the pasture. In the stove, the fire settled and a green stick gave a long high whistle of complaint as it hit the coals and burned.

“I’ll give you a hand to your couch, Ma,” he said.

“Take the lamp yourself,” Ma said. “I’ll manage. You go make your peace with her.”

In the bedroom, John felt Mim’s presence on the mattress, although she was so still he could not hear the rise and fall of her breath. But the sheets, when he moved between them, were warm with the heat of her body in the chill room. He lay beside her for a moment, hoping she would speak.

Then he said, the words piling high on each other with the difficulty of saying them, with the horror of having done it, “It was a bad mistake, burnin’ Mickey’s money.”

And his wife turned to him sobbing very suddenly, as though she had been crying all along and he had not been able to hear it.

9

On Tuesday at two-thirty, the Parade was deserted except for Cogswell and James, sitting on the edge of the bandstand smoking, with their feet dangling over the edge. Cogswell did not seem to notice John and Mim sitting in their truck, though James eyed them soberly. James had a thermos of something steaming. They passed the plastic cup back and forth and stared out over the empty green toward the post office. Cogswell drank from his flask and offered it to James who shook his head.

A red Mustang and an Oldsmobile were parked in front of the Moores’ truck, near the small church at the edge of the green. In each, a couple the Moores had never seen before sat waiting. After a few minutes, a station wagon with yet another couple pulled in behind them.

“Remember how we planned?” John said. “A flock of children, another barn for all the stock, more pasture clear, maybe a serious orchard. Pa would never listen.”

“There’s no need to do such things,” Mim said. “We’re all right the way we are.”

“You know your weddin’ dress?” John asked. “With the yellow flowers you embroidered on? You embroidered since?”

Mim shook her head. “Guess I’d rather be outdoors.”

“I’d like to live that long to see Hildie married in that dress,” John said. “Seemed so simple before the auctions started.”

“Not likely she’d want to wear my dress,” Mim said. “Anyhow, it was in the trunk—the one that was my mother’s. They took it with the others.”

“You just let it go?”

“It was me said let them take the attic stuff. And then to make a fuss...”