Part 17 (1/2)
He said nothing more. Finally, after what seemed like hours, she came into the kitchen and without saying a word began making supper. That night we ate quickly. Almost immediately after the dishes were washed we were sent to bed, and for the first time in a long while did not cause the usual protesting uproar.
Late that night I could hear my mother and father talking in low tones in the living room, through the closed door, until I fell asleep.
Somehow the sun always s.h.i.+nes on Sat.u.r.days in Indiana. Outside the bedroom window a yelling crowd of spatsies, the generic Kid name for sparrows, argued, swore, made clattering love. Out in the kitchen water ran and pots banged.
At first when the full delicious impact swept over me that it was Sat.u.r.day-no school today-blessed, fantastic Sat.u.r.day and that this afternoon Flick and Junior and I would ride the range with Roy Rogers and Trigger at the Orpheum, I reached over in ecstasy, belting my brother in the ribs, ready for action. He groaned almost at the same time that I remembered something funny was going to happen today.
I got up and padded into the kitchen where breakfast was already on the table. The Old Man, dressed in his Sat.u.r.day clothes, was halfway through his eggs. Drifting through the kitchen window from somewhere outside came the roar of a truck motor backing and s.h.i.+fting. My mother, over near the sink, looked out.
”They're here.”
My father dropped his fork, circled the table, and peered from the other window. I stood on tiptoes.
At an angle, almost filling the whole of their sandy, weedy backyard stood a tall, gray official-looking truck, behind the Kissel's house. Men in overalls moved in and out the back door, carrying boxes and barrels. Already piled high in the sunlight, warped, cracked, and stained with the chewing of the years, stood the Kissel furniture. The men struggled under loads of nondescript junk, back and forth, from the bas.e.m.e.nt to the attic, from the garage to the kitchen.
The sheriff drove up in a black Ford with a white star on the door and got out. He didn't look like a movie sheriff at all, being fat and wearing a long, grayish overcoat. He really looked more like a dentist than a sheriff. He had two men with him; one a tall, thin, red-faced man with eyes that popped, who began making a list in a notebook. The other set up a kind of platform behind the back porch. It folded, and looked as though it had been used. One of the workmen brought out a microphone and hooked up a leatherette-covered speaker on the ground near the truck. We watched from behind the geraniums.
From behind geraniums all over the neighborhood other eyes watched. Strange people began arriving in dented blue cars, panel trucks; some just wallking, carrying baskets and bags. They were the first Auction Followers we had ever seen. There is a race of Human Vulture that lives off the disaster and defeat of others, picking the bones clean. They perform a necessary function, just as any scavenger does. Those on the scene early were rummaging through the piles of coffee pots, old tires, potted ferns, and Mr. Kissel's toolbox which he carried to the roundhouse on the few days he worked every month.
”There's Mr. Kissel's bottle-capper,” I said, breaking the silence in the kitchen.
”Yeah,” my father answered, continuing to stare into the bright suns.h.i.+ne.
Mr. Kissel made Home Brew and when we played in Junior Kissel's bas.e.m.e.nt we always fooled around with his bottle-capper, capping bottles of water, pretending we were bootleggers. Now the bottle-capper lay in the yard next to Mrs. Kissel's old Hoover vacuum cleaner.
Old furniture under the light of a bright sky seems more tired and worn than anything else I know. In an eerie way more human, too. The crowd was getting bigger by the minute. Some carried lunches; others babies. They were excited and anxious for the action to begin. None of the neighbors showed up. At least they weren't in the crowd that pushed and waited around the platform. They were strangers. It doesn't pay for vultures to make friends.
My kid brother wanted to go out and join in the fun, but the Old Man said: ”We'll go out and play Catch after the people go. You stay here until they leave.”
He was a dedicated Catch player. Any time he announced that we were going to play Catch kids listened, and hunted for their mitts. His slider was the best I've ever seen outside of Comiskey Park.
The sheriff got up on the platform to begin the proceedings, his voice echoing hollowly among the sagging garage doors, the drooping clothespoles, and the limp wetwash. The auctioneer began with a bra.s.s table lamp, the one we used to see through their dining-room window, with the green shade. It was quickly bought. The crowd moved in excitement as the auctioneer went into high gear. Mrs. Kissel's enamel kitchen table went for seventy cents.
Once my father turned to my mother and said: ”I guess they're not home. I don't see them anywhere.”
She didn't answer, but I knew that Junior Kissel wasn't around.
Someone bought Grandpa Kissel's World War I helmet which Mr. Kissel had hung on the inside of the bas.e.m.e.nt door. It was a great thing to play with. I guess someone bought it for their kid. No one wanted the mattress, a lumpy, yellow-stained, blue-striped heirloom that had come down from Mrs. Kissel's parents and had seen the raising of ten kids. It lay under the truck bed, shoved out of the way while the more valuable items were bartered off.
Rusty saws, an old single-barreled 12-gauge shotgun that brought four dollars, a spectacular oil tablecloth with red ornamental lettering: A CENTURY OF PROGRESS. CHICAGO WORLD'S FAIR A CENTURY OF PROGRESS. CHICAGO WORLD'S FAIR, with a gold picture of the Hall of Science. The bidding for this one was sharp and bitter.
Finally it was over. It didn't last long, maybe forty-five minutes or so, but when it was over the end was definite. The sheriff got up and announced that the auction was now officially completed. He mentioned an address where another was scheduled in a day or two, on the west side of town. The people got back into their cars, trucks, station wagons and left as quickly as they had come, loaded down with their loot.
Without confusion or hesitation the men and the sheriff packed away their gear like a well-practiced team, and were gone. All that remained in the backyard was a jumble of lunch bags, pop bottles, chicken bones, crushed cartons, empty barrels, and the mattress.
By now it was almost lunchtime and I was already getting hungry. My mother, watching the final truck disappear, said: ”Oh well.”
The Old Man went down into the bas.e.m.e.nt to get his glove for the game of Catch.
Later that afternoon someone said that the Kissels had gone to Lowell, a town a few miles away, to spend the weekend with Mrs. Kisser's brother-in-law and sister. They never came back. Somewhere along about the middle of the next week a FOR RENT FOR RENT sign appeared on the Kissels' front door. Not long afterward a new family moved in. We never saw Junior Kissel again. sign appeared on the Kissels' front door. Not long afterward a new family moved in. We never saw Junior Kissel again.
XXIX
THE POSSE RIDES AGAIN THE POSSE RIDES AGAIN I glanced at my stainless-steel Rolex, noting that it was getting along toward 4:00, s.h.i.+ft-Change time. I could see that Flick was showing the tenseness of a man about to swing into action.
”I'll tell you one thing,” Flick said, ”I keep up with the bills. I don't owe n.o.body. Just a minute; I'll be right back.”
He moved on down the bar, checking his ammunition for the first wave of serious drinkers, which would arrive within the half hour. I looked again at my Rolex. For some reason I didn't quite recognize it at first as belonging to my my arm, and to be honest I wasn't sure that it arm, and to be honest I wasn't sure that it was was even my arm. Somehow that sleeve and that watch all belonged in New York. Another world. Back there they probably would not even believe there even my arm. Somehow that sleeve and that watch all belonged in New York. Another world. Back there they probably would not even believe there was was such a man as Flick. Or Stosh, or Kissel, or Yahkey. They'd probably figure I made 'em all up. such a man as Flick. Or Stosh, or Kissel, or Yahkey. They'd probably figure I made 'em all up.
I fleetingly thought, Maybe I should try to tell Flick about Les Miserables des Frites Les Miserables des Frites, and Henri, the lascivious headwaiter. How could I tell him about the expense account, and how hardly anybody I knew ever paid for anything, ever, and that the vast Gravy Train they were on considered cash itself to be vaguely insulting and out of date. I figured it was no use.
In the booth, the three Sheet-Metal men began hollering at Flick, who looked up from his inventory and yelled back: ”HOLD YER WATER, FER CHRISSAKE! I GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO THAN FEED YOU b.a.s.t.a.r.dS ALL DAY!”
The red-faced one wearing an orange safety helmet shouted: ”TURN ONNA TV, FLICK! WHAT THE h.e.l.l YOU GOT IT FOR?”
This exchange took place at full voice, since the jukebox was shaking the floor.
”I'LL TURN IT ON WHEN I'M d.a.m.n GOOD AND READY!”
I wondered briefly how Flick would get along with Henri, the effete and painfully elegant headwaiter who controlled the entire East Side of New York.
Flick finally reached up and snapped on the switch of the monster color TV set that hung high over the bar mirror. It seemed to warm up instantly. A thundering herd of posse riders roared across the screen. Mister Clean appeared briefly, and disappeared. Again the posse thundered, this time in the opposite direction, their guns roaring above the booming polka. Obviously conversation was out of the question, or at least it had become somewhat hazardous.
There is something about TV sets in bars that makes even sane people look at them. I sipped what seemed to be at least my thirtieth beer of the afternoon, staring upward at a moonfaced cowboy strumming a guitar. Behind him I could see old familiar country that I knew like the back of my hand. Those Hollywood back lots were as familiar as my own backyard, when I was a kid.
Flick finished his bottle-checking, armed himself with a clean bar rag, and stood briefly looking up at another posse, this time roaring directly at us, the puffs of their guns, their square jaws, the flying hoofs blending well with the eternal jukebox. We both watched for a long moment.
”I seen it.”
”So have I. If I remember correctly, Flick, that fat guy on the left is going to get shot. He....”
Just as I said it, the fat guy spun into the air, dying spectacularly as cowboy extras always do, clutching at the clouds, slipping into the sagebrush, milking his scene as far as he could under union rules.
”Yep. I seen it.”
Flick turned back from the set with the air of a man adding a period at the end of a sentence.
I, however, continued to stare at the set. It seemed one of those eerie coincidences that happen once in a while, and that cause ladies who wear tennis shoes to believe in ESP, flying saucers, and swamis. I was not sure whether I should bring it up, else Flick suspect that I had had at least one beer too many. I could see he was the kind of bartender who did not serve drunks, but probably tossed them by the scruff of their neck out into the gale.
”Flick, I have seen that picture, too.”
”Yep. I seen it,” Flick said.
”You know, I have a feeling that I saw it with you.” you.”
He looked back up at the set again for a long moment, as though to check his memory. The posse thundered down a ravine, diagonally this time, from left to right. Finally he said reflectively: ”By G.o.d, I think you're right. It played with Rhythm on the Prairie Rhythm on the Prairie, with d.i.c.k Foran. And they had Bob Steele, in person.”