The Creston Auction
I walk on hardened mud along a long road through the tree farm and then step between the horizontal wires of the fence. I have a smile on my face, a curious smile, because I can already hear the auctioneers' voices floating on the wind, and I have always had a curious feeling about auctioneers. I'm also smiling because I'm coming to the auction from the rear, on foot. Even the people from Creston probably have to drive to get to the Creston Auction. I am cool. And smart. Cool and smart.
I wander across the prairie grass between the electric fence and the auction in the Creston schoolyard, between rows of trucks and cars, some tractors, a fire engine, numbered tags tied to their windshield wipers. They will be up for auction tomorrow. I don't know what any of them might be worth. I feel like my vision is blurred, or as though I am walking past large signs covered in symbols I have never seen before. I walk past people who can read the signs, people who are looking under hoods and commenting to each other. I nod at them. We have nothing to talk about here. They gaze past my knit dress and go back to their shrewd observations. The wind blows. I walk on. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that a police officer appears to be test-riding a large horse.
People with babies stand outside the portable toilets. We have nothing to talk about.
Inside the fence another world swarms. Rows of household objects stacked high - televisions, dryers, recliners, chests, mowers - give me an eerie feeling that everyone is moving out all of a sudden. For some reason, and nobody's saying why, everything must go from this place. Please, take it away. These are objects that formed the intimate geography of lives that once were, of people now fleeing, refugees from their memories.
Four crowds are bunched in semicircles around four stages, dispersed throughout the lot, where the selling is proceeding full-gale. Everything else is very still, the amplified chants reverberating off a nearby school's walls. I've drifted under the spell. This man is magic. Did he have to practice to get his mouth to make that "ibbity" sound that flits between his words? No, no, he was born saying ibbity. Ibbity was his first word, and a specialist came to the house and said, Sheila, Gus, I'm afraid your son is an auctioneer. And then they sent him away, like a magical beast, to do what he was put on this world to do. And that is to save people.
Stray clans - couples, surly-looking families, posses of middle schoolers - roam around the objects, drifting slowly, as though floating on the breeze, or swirling across the surface of a pond. A saggy woman slouches in an overstuffed chair, sipping at a straw protruding from the plastic top of a Coca-Cola cup. I imagine her eyes are slightly open under her wraparound shades, grazing over my white socks while she waits for her hubby to return with a horse collar that has been turned into a stool.
Gangly white boys, skinny and sullen, crowd-stunned, glassy-eyed, wander among the rows of things like mourners among the graves. They wear the official title "Runner" on their neon yellow t-shirts - they actually WORK here - but nobody is running. They don't appear to know where to look, let alone where to run. They don't appear to know whether they are awake or asleep. They might be asleep. Maybe they are for sale.
I look up at the mountains, always so solidly mine, always my personal escorts as I drive alone down the highway, and I stand under them today in strange company. I drift among these people, my neighbors, my countrymen, with a feeling that there might be something good that we could all share, if only we had words strong enough for that. "Truckload of manure" may be one such word.
We drift past each other like messages in bottles on the surface of the sea. They drift before me, and I drift back away, through the field of vehicles, between the wires of the fence, letting the breeze bear me back toward a solitude, a forgetting.
I wander across the prairie grass between the electric fence and the auction in the Creston schoolyard, between rows of trucks and cars, some tractors, a fire engine, numbered tags tied to their windshield wipers. They will be up for auction tomorrow. I don't know what any of them might be worth. I feel like my vision is blurred, or as though I am walking past large signs covered in symbols I have never seen before. I walk past people who can read the signs, people who are looking under hoods and commenting to each other. I nod at them. We have nothing to talk about here. They gaze past my knit dress and go back to their shrewd observations. The wind blows. I walk on. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that a police officer appears to be test-riding a large horse.
People with babies stand outside the portable toilets. We have nothing to talk about.
Inside the fence another world swarms. Rows of household objects stacked high - televisions, dryers, recliners, chests, mowers - give me an eerie feeling that everyone is moving out all of a sudden. For some reason, and nobody's saying why, everything must go from this place. Please, take it away. These are objects that formed the intimate geography of lives that once were, of people now fleeing, refugees from their memories.
Four crowds are bunched in semicircles around four stages, dispersed throughout the lot, where the selling is proceeding full-gale. Everything else is very still, the amplified chants reverberating off a nearby school's walls. I've drifted under the spell. This man is magic. Did he have to practice to get his mouth to make that "ibbity" sound that flits between his words? No, no, he was born saying ibbity. Ibbity was his first word, and a specialist came to the house and said, Sheila, Gus, I'm afraid your son is an auctioneer. And then they sent him away, like a magical beast, to do what he was put on this world to do. And that is to save people.
Stray clans - couples, surly-looking families, posses of middle schoolers - roam around the objects, drifting slowly, as though floating on the breeze, or swirling across the surface of a pond. A saggy woman slouches in an overstuffed chair, sipping at a straw protruding from the plastic top of a Coca-Cola cup. I imagine her eyes are slightly open under her wraparound shades, grazing over my white socks while she waits for her hubby to return with a horse collar that has been turned into a stool.
Gangly white boys, skinny and sullen, crowd-stunned, glassy-eyed, wander among the rows of things like mourners among the graves. They wear the official title "Runner" on their neon yellow t-shirts - they actually WORK here - but nobody is running. They don't appear to know where to look, let alone where to run. They don't appear to know whether they are awake or asleep. They might be asleep. Maybe they are for sale.
I look up at the mountains, always so solidly mine, always my personal escorts as I drive alone down the highway, and I stand under them today in strange company. I drift among these people, my neighbors, my countrymen, with a feeling that there might be something good that we could all share, if only we had words strong enough for that. "Truckload of manure" may be one such word.
We drift past each other like messages in bottles on the surface of the sea. They drift before me, and I drift back away, through the field of vehicles, between the wires of the fence, letting the breeze bear me back toward a solitude, a forgetting.
Comments
Post a Comment