The Auctioneer

The moon was down and it was darker than when he had come. He used his hands, feeling as much as seeing his way along the wall, watching intently for the landmark quartz, stopping now and then to stroke a pale granite boulder that looked, in the dark, as if it might be quartz. The way was endless. He kept listening behind him for the dogs he expected, for the alarm, for the sound of people leaping and shouting. All he could hear was the racket of his own body, panting and crashing through the dense undergrowth. Then, finally, his groping hands were caressing the quartz, its crystal faces slippery as ice.

He started running down the creek bed, slipping and floundering in the confusion of rocks. Before he had traveled twenty yards, his feet flew up before him and he fell backward on his spine and the base of his skull. He lay on his back across the rocky bed of the brook, looking into the wavering dark gray of the sky beyond the darker lace of branches.

At first the noise seemed a new dimension to the pounding in his ears, or the water running underneath the rocks. But stock still and listening as he came to, he recognized the sound fighting its way upwind from the far edge of the world. It was the alarm in the Parade, clanging from the top of the firehouse to rouse the firemen.

As he lay, almost peacefully now, he knew that in town people were throwing off covers, setting bare feet on cold floors. The volunteer firemen, many of them deputies as well, were pulling boots and rubber raincoats over their pajamas. Their wives were covering their curlers with kerchiefs and following more slowly, pouring out into the Parade to see the fire, his fire. Calmly he hoped, the way he hoped a cow would calve without trouble, that someone would think to wake up Adeline Fayette. But the image he fastened on was that of the auctioneer, gliding fully dressed into the road, Dixie waving her tail at his left heel as he indicated with a raised eyebrow just what he had in mind for the firemen to do. He would wait only until his eye, like a fisheye lens, had gathered in the whole scene.

And then he would start. It would be foolhardy to expect flames or underbrush to slow down Perly. He would simply slither through, silently following the dog along John’s trail. It was a matter of minutes now.

John struggled to his feet and floundered on. As he got closer to the pond, dark patches of ice kept giving way beneath him, trapping a boot and yanking him to a stop. When he reached the path around the pond, he started to run again. If they were there already, he would see the commotion in the dooryard: the state police with radios blaring, perhaps Captain Sullivan himself questioning Mim. Perhaps taking her from Ma and Hildie. Perhaps taking them all as hostages to coax him out of the woods. He paused to listen. He could no longer hear the noise from the Parade, but he realized that the sky had brightened from navy to royal blue. He went on, clinging to the edge of the pond, his left foot skidding on the embankment from time to time. Finally, he rounded the twin oaks by the swimming place and came out in view of his own house and yard.

Dark. Peaceful and dark. No light, even in the kitchen. He slowed to a walk and let the empty gas can swing at his side.

But when he got to the road, he started to think about the dark. Mim asleep, or gone without him, or running in the dark somewhere searching for Hildie. He ran up the path to the door and leaned against it. Locked. The sounds of his body beat against the familiar wood. He had no key and was afraid, even in his own yard, to call out. Then, in a burst, the door gave beneath his weight and Mim caught him as he fell in.

They stood a moment in each other’s arms. Ma moved laboriously across the front room in the dark.

“Are you all right?” asked Mim, supporting him.

“Don’t know,” he said, his voice foreign to him.

As a child, he had come running up the path from school, burst in at the door, and let the dammed-up stream of failure overflow. “Be a man. Be a man,” Ma had crooned in the way of comfort. And now he longed to be a small boy, to overflow, to refuse the command to be a man.

“You been runnin’,” Mim said.

John straightened himself up away from her and leaned panting in the doorway.

She struck a match. Her jeans and sweater showed she had been waiting up for him after all. She lifted the chimney from the kerosene lamp on the table and put the match to the wick so it flared. John watched the small yellow flame, caught up in the comfort of fire.

“Dear God. You been fightin’,” Ma said, moving toward John for a closer look.

John shook his head, then he thought to set the gasoline can down. By the door were the piles of cartons just the way he’d left them. Not packed! ’ he cried, panic pounding up in him again. He lifted a carton of dishes and turned to go out.

“John,” Mim said, clutching his arm. “Where you been?”

“Let go!” he screamed at her.

Mim let go and John opened the door and faced the cold again.