The Auctioneer

Eventually, the small walled cemetery under the cherry tree emerged through the fog. “Look out,” Mim warned as they approached, catching Hildie before she stepped into the brown remains of last year’s poison ivy. “We ought to spray that,” she said, before it gets a hold this summer.”

“Before Ma goes,” John murmured. “Now there would be a pretty mess.”

“Might not suit your pa either and all the ones before him to be lyin’ like that in such a bed of poison.”

But the child had turned to look down again. “It’s gone!” she cried. “The house is gone!”

“No more than you’re gone from it.” John laughed. He caught her up to carry on his shoulders. “Look at the willows, pet. See that smudgy yellow? They’ll be greenin’ up and we’ll have spring before we’re halfway ready.” They headed toward the high back wall of the pasture, scanning it carefully for broken places. But most of the granite chunks remained in their accustomed places, fastened by a sinewy net of Concord grape vines.

“All things considered, I don’t half mind,” Mim said.

“What?” asked John.

“Bein’ the way we are,” she said.

2

As mud gave way to black flies and black flies to mosquitoes, Bob Gore came again, and yet again.

The Moores heard about the auctions at Linden’s store. Every week more people came, more people smitten with the romance of a country life, part of the same blind force that, since before Hildie was born, had been tearing up the hillsides with bulldozers and setting in the trailers and tiny modular houses designed to look traditional. Some of the new people drove halfway to Boston every day to work along the outer belt highway. Some manned the bright glass and steel factories going in along Route 37 as it made its way south. And more and more summer people poured in off the interstate every weekend, invading Linden’s store in flimsy striped and polka-dot clothes, complaining about the price of produce, and gobbling up the plastic balls and pinwheels and inflatable elephants that Hildie loved so.

When Gore came, John led him down under the barn to the cavernous area that housed a century’s collection of broken rockers, tables with legs missing, cracked mirrors, rusted cider presses, and outdated tools. “How long you figure you can get people to buy this rummage, Bobby? John asked one week.

“I wonder myself sometimes,” Gore admitted. He stopped to light a cigarette and watched the smoke curling up into the cobwebs overhead. “Perly’s like a magician, but still...

“Hard for me to figure people with nothin’ better to do in spring than go to auctions.”

“Well, they ain’t farmers,” Gore said. “Sets you on your heels to see all the city folk pourin’ into the Parade on a Saturday. The towns around here are growin’ all right. And even the people just drove up for a weekend can’t seem to think what to do with a Saturday. Mow the lawn, cart the garbage to the dump, complain about the bugs. What the hell? I guess Perly’s right. The auctions make them feel a part of things.”

“I can’t say the checks ain’t welcome,” John said.

“What Perly says is it’s just buyin’ and sellin’ in the best American tradition, and we give them a better show than a discount store, which is where they’d be in the city on a Saturday. Guess some people just like to part with money.”

“You plannin’ to goldplate your cruiser, or what?” John asked, unearthing an old soapstone sink and indicating that Gore should lift one end.

“Manpower,” Gore said. “I’ve got me five deputies now.”

“Five!” John said.

“Well, like Perly says, ‘Prevention’s the best cure,’” Gore said, running his hand over the gray stone appraisingly. “I told you we got Mudgett, and now we got Jimmy Ward, Sonny Pike, Jim Carroll, and your neighbor there, Mickey Cogswell.”

“Tough lot,” John said, frowning.

“Perly says,” Gore said, looking up at John, “it’s men like that make people want to bring up their sons in Harlowe.”

John lifted his end of the heavy sink and helped Gore carry it out to the truck.

“When you goin’ to come and see our man in action?” Gore asked. He’s a regular wizard. Puts a spell on a crowd so they can’t help what they do.”

“But, Bobby,” John said, “you come to us every Thursday bustin’ at the seams with every slick thing that man’s said all week. What do we need to see him for?”