“Always do, the beggars,” John said, and they turned together and headed down toward the bridge over the stream. What’s the occasion, Mickey?” John asked. “You ain’t been down since your separator broke after that big snow.
“Well, it’s the Fourth of July auction this time,” he said. “They had a meetin’ and Perly there convinced the firemen to split the profits from this here auction fifty-fifty with the police, instead of havin’ their own affair. You know, they voted, and it was the firemen that’s deputies against them that ain’t.”
They moved through the stile between the barn and the shed. In the dooryard they stopped and Cogswell looked down over the pond.
John stood with his arms folded.
“Well, I think they already took the last scrap we care to part with,” Mim said.
“Mighty nice place to be situated,” Cogswell said. “Always did think that. Right smack on Coon Pond like this. My kids think this is livin’. Set them loose here for a summer and I calculate they’d all turn into pickerel. I been takin’ them over to Deckers Pond, but the water ain’t half so sweet.”
“Is this a good thing to be mixed into, Mick?” John asked.
“You ought to sign up,” Cogswell said. “They’re still takin’ on deputies.”
“How many big shots we got these days, Mick?” John asked.
Mickey dug his hands into his pockets, then took them out and let them dangle at his sides. “Well, I’m not sure,” he said.
“Not sure!” John said.
“Well, they ain’t advertisin’ any more. It’s only us first ones left hangin’ out there for everyone to see.”
“The rest’d rather hide in their closet,” John said. “Can’t say I blame them. The whole thing’s beginnin’ to give off a bad smell.”
“Still,” Cogswell said, folding his arms, “I have it on Gore’s sayso they’re still takin on men. Course it’s got to end somewhere, and I think soon, but if I talk to them...”
“We’ll take our chances,” Moore said.
Cogswell leaned over them. They could smell the whiskey on his breath. “Listen,” he said. “I could get you off the hook maybe.” “Off the hook!” Mim said. “First I heard we was on it.”
“But why you, Mickey?” John pressed.
Cogswell shrugged and forced a chuckle. “Well, at first I liked the sound of what he said. Still do, I guess. But lately I been sayin to myself, ‘If you can’t lick ’em, better join ’em.’ Think about it, Johnny.”
“Not me,” John said. “I can’t say as I feel no needs in that direction. Nor no attractions neither.”
“Well, I ain’t sayin I can come back with the same chance later,” Cogswell said. He felt restlessly for the steel flask in his back pocket. “But maybe I’m shootin’ off my mouth again. None of my business, eh?”
John folded his arms and didn’t answer.
“I hear your mother’s doin’ poorly,” Cogswell said.
“Not so poorly,” John said, and they stood in silence midway between the house and the truck. Hildie was off across the road aiming her hunter at brown and yellow butterflies.
“Well, they sent me here,” Cogswell said. “They’d be mighty glad if you could give just this once again. You don’t want to be the only holdout.”
“There’s always Pa’s big chiffonier,” Mim said softly. “It’s not like we used it so much now he’s gone. Only to look at.”
And, because it was Cogswell, John led the way upstairs and helped him carry out the heavy old piece. When he was ready to go, Cogswell stood by the open door of the truck, working the door handle up and down, looking at the door and not at John.
“Hear about Caleb Tuttle?” he said. “A heart attack got him just as he was headin’ into the barn to do the milkin’. Somethin’ must’ve startled him. The coroner over to Powlton says it seems he took a fall.”
“I heard,” Moore said. But he hadn’t.
Cogswell wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “A man just does what he has to do,” he said, mostly to Mim, but she was staring at him as if he were a stranger.
After the truck had rattled out of sight, John and Mim stood where they were. Then, in a rare gesture, John put his hand on his wife’s back and turned her around to see the pond flattening out to a mirror now in the calm that preceded evening.
Ma was fretting because Cogswell hadn’t come in to see her. “He was the sweetest, funniest one of the lot of you,” she said. “And he always had ideas in his head. Nobody likes to let Mick Cogswell get away without a word.”
“He asked after you, Ma,” Mim said. say why he ain’t been down this long time? she asked. Cogswell’s land abutted Moore’s on the high side and they were neighbors in the summer when the old fire road between their farms was open. Cogswell had thirty-five acres of blueberries, some stock, and a fair-to-middling skill as a mason, depending on how sober he was.
“Too busy bein’ a deputy,” John said.
“He’d been hittin’ the cider,” Mim said.
“The more’s the pity,” Ma said. “Though there ain’t three men in Harlowe can drink and still work as staunch as Mickey Cogswell. He have a job for you, Johnny?”
“No.”
“Well what was he here for then?”
“He was sayin’ that to his mind it’s a pretty good idea to be a deputy.”
“Him and his schemes,” Ma said. “He’s goin to be the death of Agnes and those kids. How many times have they had potatoes and milk gravy for supper because he was off squanderin’ their cash on some fool scheme? What was it he done that time up to the blueberry field?”
“He was goin’ to make an airport of it,” Mim said.
“How about the pond for raisin’ ducks?” John said.
“It breeds dandy mosquitoes,” Mim said. “They’re head and shoulders worse up there than they ever used to be.”
“After all that money,” said Ma. “What a crazy man. If he’d just stick to buildin’ his chimneys, him and you’d do just fine. What d you show him up there overhead? Thought maybe you was lookin’ at our chimney.”
“He was collectin’ for the auction, Ma,” John said.
“Collectin’ for the auction?” Ma said. “Thought that attic was plumb empty.”
Nobody answered. Mim was peeling carrots at the sink. Hildie was still outside. John was standing at the back door peering up into the pasture.
Suddenly Ma banged her cane on the floor. “What’d you give that man from up in my room, without so much as a by your leave?” she cried.
“Pa’s chiffonier, Ma,” John said, whirling to his mother, the temper piled up and heavy in his stance.
Ma leaned to him over the table as if to plead with him. “Pa’s chiffonier?” she said in a small voice.
“Must be others gettin’ low on patience,” Mim said the following Thursday as they did the morning milking. “We don’t need to be the ones to start a fuss. And we can spare another piece or two. Must be some who can’t.”
“Oh, we still have enough to spare,” John said, slapping a big cow on the flank, “providin’ the garden comes in good, and Sunshine here stands by us.”
“So you’ll give them something,” Mim said. “My dressin’ table, maybe?”
John filled a pail and leaned into the rhythm of filling a new one. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sparin’ it’s not what hurts.”
But the day remained peaceful until almost five o’clock. Mim was shelling peas in the kitchen, Ma was watching her programs in the front room, and John, who was making butter, had just begun to whistle to the rhythm of the churn.
When the truck pulled into the yard, Hildie and Lassie burst out the screen door followed by John and Mim. This week Dunsmore himself came, driving a big yellow van, the doors and the big flat sides stenciled in tidy red and black: Perly’s Auction Company, Inc.
Perly swooped down and caught Hildie as she ran to him, swinging her high so that she squealed with delight. “How’s my plump little goody?” he asked. He held Hildie in front of him where he could look at her.