The Auctioneer

“John?” Mim called, but her voice was small.

“I got so tired, Mama,” Hildie said and clasped Mim tightly. Then, sensing that she was safe from punishment, she pulled back and said, “Want to know where I hid?”

Mim nodded. She could hardly see Hildie’s face in the dark.

“Under the hay in the loft.” She giggled. “In the horse stall there’s hardly any hay. I’m too big for such a little hay.”

But Mim was pulling her by the hand up toward the house. “Oh but you did give us a wicked turn,” she said.

Mim pushed Hildie in the door of the kitchen so that Ma gasped with relief. Then she chased up the pasture running breathlessly in the near darkness, calling to John.

10

On Wednesday, John did not touch his breakfast, not even his cup of chicory. He sat on the bench still wearing his pajama tops underneath his shirt and brooded into the black wall of the kitchen range.

“When are we goin’?” Mim asked. Then louder, “When are we goin’?”

But John said nothing, weighting the kitchen with his silence.

Finally Mim slammed her palm down on the table next to him. “Will you tell me what to do?” she cried.

John lifted angry eyes to her. “Go to hell,” he said.

Ma stalked out of the room and slammed the door, closing herself into the front room.

“Like it was my fault!” shouted Mim.

Then her eyes lit on Hildie who was rocking from side to side in her corner sucking her thumb. “Hildie,” she said gently. “Poor Hildie. Come on.” And she coaxed the child into her jacket.

Hand in hand she and Hildie went out to the barn and looked around. Mim kicked at the boards under the stairs, then pulled out a couple at random and measured them against the truck. People turned pickup trucks into campers all the time.

She looked up and saw Ma watching her through the front window, her lips moving as if she were reporting Mim’s every move to John. She went into the barn, still trailed by Hildie, and searched for something she could use for a saw. When she came out, Ma was still watching. Mim walked around to the far side of the truck, where Ma couldn’t see her. She leaned against the door and gazed out over the still pond. Hildie jumped into her arms, and gradually she realized that the two of them could manage very well in the cab. They could share the seat. It simplified things, the realization that only she and Hildie would go. At least it simplified the building problem. She hauled the boards back to the barn and moved slowly up the path toward the kitchen door.

But, by Thursday, Mim had not brought herself to make any further move. The day was cold. Mim and John ate their oatmeal, then sat at the table drinking birch tea, almost as if the day were a normal one.

“Is it Thursday?” Hildie asked. “What will they take?”

“The tractor,” Mim answered. “That’s what.”

Perly led the way up the path, his big body sailing in on the Moores with that silent ease that characterized all his motions. He mused without blinking on the little family clustered behind the glass in the storm door watching his approach. He stopped on the granite stoop to wipe his work boots, then opened the storm door toward himself and half bowed to the Moores.

Ma stood a little behind John and Mim, but it was to her that he held out his hands. “How are you, Mrs. Moore?” he asked.

Behind him, even more florid than usual, Gore stood on the stoop, his right hand sticking close to his gun.

Ma lifted her head so that her small features stood out sharply. She looked Perly in the eye and said, “I am bad, since you ask. And it’s all your doin’. You a standin’ here with your manners. And him standin’ there with his gun. I was a few years younger, we’d a met you forehead to forehead from the start, ’stead of walkin’ round you all the while like this.” Ma had been struggling closer and closer to Perly until she stood directly in front of him.

Perly looked down on her, his face drawn together with concern.

He reached out slowly, and with his index finger, brushed Ma’s hair off her forehead.

Ma caught her breath and backed off, almost tripping over John. Then she turned and moved away across the kitchen, her canes banging angrily.

“Sorry to see her slipping,” Perly said to John.

John stood for a long space confronting Perly, then he turned with sudden force and threw the keys to the tractor at Gore. They hit him in the torso and he jumped back, reaching awkwardly for his gun. The keys bounced away and landed in the grass beside the stoop. Gore stood, gone pale, staring at John, his hand finally resting securely on the butt of his gun, the holster unsnapped.

“Some fall guy,” John said to Gore, but Gore still stood, his knuckles white where they grasped the gun.