How to Read an Unwritten Language (26 page)

There the catalog entry ended, though again there was more to this man's story that I kept to myself. After he died, his family found a newspaper clipping in his desk drawer, a daily science feature reporting that when lightning strikes a person, the victim's clothes are almost always torn off from the blast. Perhaps he hadn't sought only death but some sort of unmasking—the business suit he always wore in the rain exemplified a life of deals and payoffs that he wanted blasted away. Though he often stood only a moment away from a terrible flash, redemption proved elusive, as if his desire had created a magnetic field that repulsed its satisfaction.

*

A few glossy pages ahead was a dark green plastic figure I'd found in a box brimming with old toy soldiers—a pioneer pointing his rifle at some unseen threat. His shoulders were hunched in concentration, the tail of his coonskin cap dangled down his back to a crossways slash that had nearly cut him in two, twisting him enough so that he couldn't balance on the flat, undamaged base. Another cut had nicked off a tip of his cap.

This plastic pioneer belonged to a boy who owned many such soldiers: gladiators, Revolutionary War combatants, the Civil War's Blue and Gray, medieval knights, the doomed defenders of the Alamo. But this pioneer had been his particular favorite. So no one understood why the young man threw the figure into the front lawn one day and then, for the first time in his life without being cajoled, pulled the mower out of the garage and cut patient swaths through the grass
.

I suspected the reason. The man who'd sold me the figure was the father of that boy, now grown and living far from home. “He should have chopped up the rest of them,” the fellow laughed. “He was nearly in high school, much too old to be playing with toys.” As the man voiced his approval of the way school bullies had teased his boy out of a bad habit, I'd barely listened, wondering instead what liberating battles that son had fought with his soldiers, what inner violence he'd organized into play.

*

Finally, I lingered over the last photo: a silver serving plate, its surface embossed with flowery filigree much like an Oriental rug that Kate had drawn so long ago. That's why I'd stared at it so closely as it gleamed in the afternoon sun beside the yard sale cash box.

This serving plate once belonged to a sleepwalker, an elderly woman living with her son's family. Though once a devoted and accomplished cook, she was barely able to make a pot of tea. But at night, in a dream-like state, she set places for her family in the dining room. This silver plate was always in the middle of the table, always empty and yet, in her eyes
,
filled with delicacies she tried to serve to invisible guests until her son or daughter- in-law led her back to her bedroom
.

As with all the other objects in this catalog, there was more to this story: one night, the family decided to attend one of those midnight feasts. Three generations sat together, passing out portions that weren't there from the serving plate, praising the grandmother's descriptions of what they ate. They all willingly entered her dream, and she sat at the head of the table, transfixed with pleasure.

I closed the book and thought of some of the other people inside: the woman who let her teakettle howl its shrill whistle whenever her husband was late from work; the girl who filled the drawers of her toy cash register with shredded photos of her prettier cousins; the man who, continually afraid of losing his place, kept a bookmark in everything, even the television guide. They had once been my own extended family, passing another sort of sustenance along a secret table.

I returned to Preston's Introduction, to the sentence he'd included despite my initial protests:
Those collectors who wish to purchase one of these objects should be aware of its potential as well as its past. For who is to say that one of your own stories won't someday attach itself to your new possession?

My collection belonged to others now, no matter what remaining secrets I'd withheld of their stories. I set aside the catalog and gazed outside: no mowers in sight, yet still that restless keening continued. A jaunt through the peace of a nearby park was what I needed. I passed through the living room, pausing at the hutch and what few objects I'd kept to myself: half a scissors, its single blade dulled with age; an earring in the shape of a straight-back chair; a tiny toy TV, its plastic screen painted bright blue with an airplane soaring in a corner; a nest of interwoven twigs and leaves with a child's clay version of a bird nestled inside; and that old, battered tape recorder and, still inside, its tape of that doomed man that had both saved and cast me adrift.

Extended family or not, it was finally time to let all these go, just as I'd let go of my father, my brother, my sister. I hadn't seen the Zombie Twins since my wedding day, couldn't bear the thought of visiting them, and wherever Laurie might be, she no longer sent postcards. As for Kate, Kate was a husk in my heart.

I considered the remains of my collection, and picked up the deceptive lightness of the nest with its clay bird. This would be the first. I'd take it along to the park, and leave it behind on a bench when I left.

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.”