Sylvia swirled a spoon around the rim of her bowl, waiting for my reply. She was right, I thought I’d glimpsed something secret within her when she’d walked toward me in the park, but I still couldn’t decipher what that might be—how to pick it out from everything I’d learned about her since? It would be like picking out a conversation in the tangled, overlapping words of strangers in the diner around us. Yet as I listened, all that brimming speech became a single echoing voice that rushed along without a breath like an auction caller’s urgent tumbling sales-pitch, and that caller was somehow speaking only to me.
Even though I’d promised myself never to go to another auction, I was ready to reveal a secret that I’d never shown to Kate. “Maybe you’re not wrong. When we’re done here, how about coming with me to an auction?”
Sylvia contemplated the remains of her dessert. She gathered one last spoonful of pudding, lifted it to her lips.
“You never know what you’ll find at—”
“Sure, why not?” she said with a hint of resigned wonder, a question meant for her, not me.
At the cash register we picked up the local paper, and I searched through the classifieds for auction announcements. “Ah, here’s one that’s on for today. A farm estate sale.”
“Sounds a tad dull.”
“Not at all. Usually friends and neighbors show up with their eyes on something special.”
“Where is this big show, anyway?”
“At The Auction Barn—that’s just a hop away.”
We took my car and headed north through long, sloping fields, quiet together until Sylvia, her dark hair swirling from an open window, asked, “So, do you go to this sort of thing often?”
“Used to. And yard sales, too. But not these days … I’ve tried to give it up, actually.”
“Give it up? So this is a relapse?”
“I might be contagious.”
The parking lot, nearly full, surrounded a huge building shaped like an airplane hangar. At the door we picked up bidding cards, and already we could hear the corrugated metal walls echoing with the caller’s racing nasal chant: “Whatdowe have here—waterpump, FIVEdollarbillFIVE dollarbill. It’sBRASSit’sBRASS fivedollarbillgoingup goingupgoingup toSIX.” He paused, then muttered into the microphone, “C’mon, ladies and gentlemen, we’re selling, not renting.”
At the sound of those cheerless words I said, “My God, the auctioneer’s Jack Newly. I can’t believe he’s still at it.”
“You know his name?” Sylvia whistled. “You’re serious about this.”
We made our way among farmers wearing seed company caps, and weary-eyed, white-haired women; a wiry tough guy, biceps blossoming with tattoos beside a stony-faced girl, too young to be the mother of the baby in her arms; and smokers everywhere. This was a crowd of neighbors who knew the objects Jack called out, knew if any stories hid behind a pair of hammers, or a yellow hen tea cozy, a tire iron, a ceramic decanter in the shape of a tasseled Shriner’s hat, or whatever else was up for sale. If there was a story to be found, Sylvia would hear it too.
Jack kept rattling on at the back of a pickup truck that was parked about a third of the way down a tunnel of two long tables. “Whatarewelookingat, what’rewelookingat? TENdollarbill, TEN dollarbill. GoinguptoFIFTEEN—FIFTEEN. What’rewelookingat now, nowwhat’rewelookingat? Needalittlemorethere, morethere. TWENTYthat’sbetterTWENTYthat’sbetter that’sbettermuch betterindeed. TWENTYFIVEthat’stheway, that’sjusttheway welikeit, sowhatare welookingatnow? If we had better light in here, it’d sell for twice that price,”
Everyone about us affected boredom. Occasionally a numbered yellow card flipped up here and there. “If you show interest,” I whispered to Sylvia, “the value of what you want goes up.”
She laughed. “So giving yourself away is pricey?”
“There’s always someone at an auction like this who can’t keep a secret,” I said. “If you examine something on one of the display tables long enough, if you’re patient, you never know who’ll end up telling you a secret about it.”
“A secret?”
“A secret story.”
Jack finished with a section of goods. He signaled to the driver and the truck inched along between the line of tables, the bidders following.
“C’mon,” I said, and Sylvia and I walked ahead of the crowd and past the truck, to see what would be offered later. We passed an ancient food processor, a collection of car cables, two or three shovels, a sewing kit. I paused at a little posse of eight identical John Wayne statues. Why so many? One of the figures had been glued back together from four, maybe five pieces. I picked it up, examined the imperfectly painted-over cracks.
Across the table, a man with a wispy flare of white hair took in my interest. I placed the broken John Wayne back down among his companions, picked up one more and waited.
“You a fan of the Duke?” he asked. His cautious smile barely hid a hunger to speak.
“Oh, just enough to maybe buy one,” I said. “I’m not sure what I’d do with eight.”
The man chuckled. “Old Tim had one for every room in the house.”
“Every room?” I replied, my curiosity now undisguised.
“In his dreams he was John Wayne. You could probably buy the whole bunch for nothing. They’re in good condition, except for that one—”
“I noticed. Clumsy grandchild?”
“Nope. Tim himself. Threw it across the room. I’ve heard.” He paused. “I don’t mean to run the man down, you understand. Tim was the gentlest fellow you’d ever want to meet.”
I regarded the broken figure on the table. “Well, I guess everybody’s entitled to a lapse.”
“That’s the truth.”
Now was not the time to say anything, not if I wanted that hidden story, and Sylvia seemed to understand this—she moved a few steps away and examined an eggbeater, giving the two of us a circle of privacy. I turned that statue over in my hand and waited for this man to restore the reputation of his neighbor.
“It’s a sorry story,” he finally said.
I nodded careful encouragement.
“You remember that Academy Awards when the Duke was dying of cancer?”
“Yeah,” I said after a moment. “Barely looked like himself, if I remember—”
“Tim about cried at the sight. One of his daughters, the lippy one that went bad, saw him on the verge and said something mean. He grabbed the nearest thing, that statue, and threw it at her. Missed and hit the fireplace. At least, that’s what his wife told mine.”
The old man looked away, surprised, perhaps, that he’d spoken this much, and with an embarrassed nod he walked off.
Sylvia stepped back and whispered, “So you’re going to bid for that broken one, aren’t you?”
“Well, I’m not collecting—”
“John Wayne. I know. You want a souvenir of that story the old guy told you. An interesting hobby. How come?”
“Oh,” I said cautiously, still not certain of her reaction, “I used to think that objects like these, objects that came with stories, could be a kind of medicine.”
I looked over at the caller’s pinched face, the semicircle of bidders around him, and I began to believe that my intuition to attend this auction might bear surprising fruit. “This is the first auction you’ve ever been to?”
“The very.”
“So, bid for something,” I said. “Anything at all. But bid to win.” Sylvia held up a green-tinted glass bottle and examined its dull sheen. “I haven’t seen anything I like yet.”
“Then let’s keep looking.”
We poked among the remaining offerings until Sylvia stopped at a cardboard box of toiletries and lifted out a cut-crystal atomizer. A long black tassel dangled from the pump, and she flicked at it with a finger. “My mother had something like this. I used to love watching her when she’d spray behind her ears. She’d get this goofy, happy look on her face, like she’d made it to heaven …”
Sylvia pulled back her hair and pumped a little whisper of air from the atomizer. “What do you know,” she said, shaking her head. “I just gave this thing a story, didn’t I?”
“Not a bad one,” I said, and looked down the length of table. “I guess we have a few minutes before Jack gets to this. Let’s go see what he’s up to.”
Back at the pickup truck, Jack pointed to the shiny scoop of a metal scale. “HaveyouWEIGHEDyourbabytoday, weighedyourbaby weighedyourbaby today? FIVEdollarfivedollar, fivedollarfivedollar, doIhearFIVEdollar? WAKE UP, people, you all weren’t up that late last night.”
A hand went up, then another, though the final bid closed at only nine dollars. Even at rest Jack’s face tensed, eyebrows pressed. “Every hand should have been up in the air on that one.”
Sylvia turned to me. “Is he joking?”
“Hear anyone laughing?”
“No. So what’s with him?”
“I’ve never quite figured out Jack. It might simply be a tactic to make people feel they’re getting bargains, but I think his attitude actually tamps down the prices he’s trying to raise.”
Soon one of Jack’s helpers was holding up the atomizer. “Lovelycut crystalcutcrystalcutCRYSTAL, whatdolhear? Bid’em atFOUR bid’ematFOUR bid’ematFOUR, FIVEoverthere, Iseeyou, FIVE.”
Sylvia raised her card twice, warding off the interest of a stout woman in a flowery dress. When the bidding hit seven dollars the woman dropped out.
“OnlysevenonlysevenonlySEVEN?” Jack glanced over the crowd, then scowled at Sylvia as if he wanted her to bid against herself. “SOLD at seven dollars.” He turned to the young woman recording the sales, his voice just audible as he said, “Mark that cheap.”
One of the assistants brought the atomizer over, and Sylvia turned it and watched the crystal design catch light.
“It’s pretty,” I said.
“Mmmm.”
“Hey, how do you feel?”
“Well, to be honest, a little stained.”
“You’re right. Jack can take the pleasure out of an auction.”
When the John Waynes were offered, I picked them up as a single lot, for eight dollars and another of Jack’s cracks. “Step right up folks, we’re giving it all away here,” he said, and I was glad he did, because I realized that Jack—poor, bitter Jack—might have something of value to offer Sylvia.
“He goes after everyone, doesn’t he?” she said.
“I’m beginning to think that Jack has an idea in his head about what something is worth, and he gets annoyed if the bids don’t match.” Then, as casually as possible, I added, “He must have a thing about precise measurements.”
Jack started the bidding on a tea cozy, and Sylvia turned to me with a quizzical smile that slowly widened. “So if this Jack fellow worried less about, say, the exact temperature or barometric pressure for tomorrow, then everyone would be having a much better time at the auction.”
“Well, you’re being a little too hard on old Jack”
“No, I think you’re right. Jack needs to loosen up.”
She picked out my John Wayne statue in the box—his shoulder chipped and waist imperfectly glued in place—and sprayed air behind his ears with the atomizer. “The horoscope, medicinal knick-knacks—Michael, you’re more complicated than you look.”
“Thank you, I think.”
We continued along the tables, past an international spoon collection, swimming goggles, a muffin tray holding earrings and bracelets, when Sylvia stopped and said, “Wait—that tape recorder? The one with the sad voice. Was that one of your objects with a story?”
Shamed at my deception, I could only nod.
Sylvia frowned, hurt. “But why did you say—”
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell the story then, I needed to release it. When you walked by, I was getting ready to leave the tape recorder on the bench, for someone else to find.”
“So it’s gone?”
“As far as I know.”
“Then you owe me its story, don’t you?”
If a story was the price for forgiveness, I gladly accepted the exchange. How easy to imagine this man I’d never met, as he sat on a veranda while the sun set, his face unraveling from the strain of all he felt. “He was in love. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it, because he was already married, and in his culture adultery is impossible. So he was going to—”
“That’s enough,” Sylvia said. “I’m sorry I asked.”
She picked up a set of blue salt-and-pepper shakers and returned them with barely a glance. Her hand briefly hovered over a cat-faced clock, and then she stared off at the crowds milling about the other tables. When Sylvia turned her face to me I saw that odds had already been calculated, the same sort of terrible arithmetic I’d encountered when I first met Kate. She pulled at her turquoise ring, slid it down to the knuckle to show me what it hid: a much thinner, pale band of skin, certainly made by a wedding ring.