Damaged Goods (5 page)

Another man came and stood next to the deformed car. He gazed up at it with a sense of awe.

“He ain’t even here to witness its homecoming, the dumb fuck,” the stout man commented.

The second man, a skinny, aging hippie with graying hair pulled back in a braid, turned and gave him a withering glare.

“Has he thanked you for taking care of things for him?” the stout man said, and proceeded to loosen the straps that had cinched the car in place. He looked at the hippie, waiting for an answer. “Bet he hasn’t even paid you,” he said, turning his attention back to his task. “You can’t fucking trust him. That ain’t changed. Besides, he screwed us both over. That recording unit was exactly what I needed—been looking for one for eight months, and he damn well knew it. Asshole calls Kuykendahl down here to run the price up on me.”

“You’re still working for him,” the hippie pointed out as he collected the cinch straps and rolled them into neat circles for the driver.

The stout man shrugged. “All I’m saying is that he’s lucky to be alive, and more than a few people wish he wasn’t.”

Hershel sipped his coffee and thumbed through the
Oregonian
, not reading it but simply giving his fingers something to do. The
Charger would already be there when he got to the auction barn today. He folded the business section and set it aside for later, then turned the corners back on the classified pages, reminding himself to read through them for prices. He didn’t really want to see the car. But it had salvageable parts, and they were worth money. He couldn’t let the prospect of making a buck, however small, pass him by. He blew across the surface of his coffee. His business was built on small profits. He would have to set his feelings aside, something he’d long ago become proficient at doing. He just needed to get through tonight, get the car sold, and he could forget about it forever.

Carl had called to find out where he wanted them to put the car. The conversation had sent Hershel on a deeper, but still futile, search of his memory for what sort of man Carl was. The tenor of his voice denoted concern—something Hershel hadn’t felt from anyone else. But his only recollections of Carl were mere impressions of the man, like postcard snapshots. A derelict who lacked ambition or purpose. Old enough to be retiring and not a damn thing to show for himself. Hershel kept a folder for each of his employees. Carl’s folder included a handwritten note about Campo Rojo, the migrant village tucked along the Tualatin River, far off the road—out of sight of the chartered limos carrying rich wine connoisseurs through the valley. Who would rent a single-room cabin for five dollars a week, including electricity? White people didn’t live down there, except for Carl. Hershel didn’t begrudge the migrants anything, because they slaved for what they got, but a white man could do better in this place without having to put a lot of effort into it. He guessed Carl had to work at being so destitute, and he had no idea why the man did it. If he’d ever known the reason, it was among those facts—significant and not—that were lost to him now. Hershel returned to his paper, imagining dark-headed Mexican children playing King of the Hill on rickety donated picnic tables and chasing after chickens and stray dogs. Was that a memory or an idea of the migrant camp?

These past weeks Hershel was coming to see that Carl minded the little things, though. When he called that morning, he’d very cautiously said, “The car is here. You want me to put it out back where you won’t have to see it? We can get it in and out of here without you having to deal with it … except to sell it.”

“Thanks” was all Hershel said. Knowing it was there now only made him think about it. Maybe he did want to see it, after all—stare death in the face one more time. And maybe not. The broken car stood testament to his damaged brain. Just as the car could not be restored, it was likely that neither could his life. He couldn’t explain that to Carl. “Out back is fine.”

There was a long pause on the phone. Hershel asked, “Was the place locked up when you got down there this morning?”

“Yeah, why?”

Hershel thought of the girl. Susan—that was her name. “I let someone stay in the apartment upstairs last night. I wasn’t sure if she was still there.”

“Haven’t seen anyone.” Carl seemed not to know what to say for a moment. “Want me to check on her?”

“No. She might be sleeping.”

“Okay.”

“If you run into her, her name is Susan.”

He turned his attention back to the paper, pausing over the Living section and a story about a young woman who made filbert candies and desserts and sold them at the Portland Farmers’ Market. His mother had been fond of filberts, too, but she called them hazelnuts, claiming that only filbert farmers called them filberts. His mother baked, too, but her specialty was cinnamon rolls, which she made every week for the Ladies Sunday School at her Baptist church. The thought of those sweet confections and the way she slathered them with creamy white frosting made him miss her. He hadn’t seen his mother in … in … Hershel stared down at his hands. When had he last seen his mother? It wasn’t the first time he’d asked that question, but it still surprised him that he
didn’t know the answer. She lived in Baker City; that he knew. So did his older sister, Rachel. After his father died, his mother had returned to eastern Oregon, where she’d grown up, and Rachel followed her there. But how long ago these things had happened was unclear. He’d had a strong sense of his mother during these past few months, almost as if he’d awoken from the trauma as a twelve-year-old boy.

When he was in the hospital recovering, he’d asked if anyone had called his family. One of the regular attending nurses, a harsh middle-aged woman, went uncharacteristically soft and said, “Yeah, we called them.”

He had waited for her to elaborate, the silence gathering around him like thick wads of cotton.

Finally, she said, “They declined to come. I’m sorry.”

Silvie peered down the dirty stairway at the patch of cement floor in the warehouse below. She had hoped she might dig the box out of her car, but a steady parade of people wandered past, gawking at the Charger sitting next to it. It would be trouble enough to take everything out with that combine blocking the back, but the last thing she wanted was an audience. Her stomach was rumbling with hunger, and her most pressing concern now was searching for something to eat. She’d watched for Hershel, hoping to thank him and apologize once again, but he was nowhere in sight.

With her backpack slung over her shoulder, she bolstered herself for strangers. As she descended the stairs she forced herself to her fullest height, and set her feet down with conviction. Charlie, the bar owner where her mother worked, had once instructed her not to look like a victim.

“Hold your head up,” he had said with grave seriousness. It was just after she’d met Jacob, and Charlie was suddenly full of advice, most of which was too late by then. “Make people think you can kick ass, even if you can’t.”

To Silvie’s relief, it was the hippie she encountered in the warehouse and not the other. The other was a familiar sort of man—someone she wanted nothing to do with. The hippie smiled as if he’d been expecting her. He was missing his front teeth, but his face was crisscrossed with laugh lines. His eyes sparkled.

“Good morning. You must be Susan,” he said, setting a cardboard box down on top of a dented chest freezer.

“Sorry. My name is Silvie.”

His smile broadened. “Leave it to Hershel to get your name wrong.”

Silvie smiled, too.

“If you’re looking for something to eat, I put some dogs in the cooker a few minutes ago. I’d make popcorn, but I don’t know how that contraption works.” He picked up the box and started toward the concession stand in the corner of the large room. “But if that’s what you want, I can figure it out.”

“No thanks. I’m okay.”

“Oh, you gotta eat something.” He turned and scrutinized her. “Course, you probably want real food. You can get a sandwich at the South Store, and they have some produce at the Berry Barn across the way.”

An apple was what she craved. “Where is this place?”

He deposited the box on a stack of others that looked just like it. He pulled a grease marker from his dirty jeans, uncapped it, and scribble “67” on the flap.

“Gotta write the lot number down or I’ll forget it,” he said, sliding the pen back into his pocket. “The Berry Barn and the South Store are across from each other. ’Bout a quarter mile down the hill. North.” He leaned in close and pointed in the direction of the auctioneer’s stand. He smelled vaguely of patchouli oil and jalapeños, with an undertone of grimy buildup and unwashed clothes.

Silvie stepped back, but smiled. She entertained the idea of asking him to help her with her car. But it would only lead to questions about where she was headed, and why she was moving in the first place.

“Aren’t you staying for the sale?”

She sized up the mountain of used goods all around them. It was odd, she thought, that she’d grown up in a farming community and had never attended an auction. Her father was always picking things up at estate sales—dressers, lawn mowers, used cars. Where others had kept neatly cut lawns, her family had amassed a dense junkyard—at least, that’s how it was before the divorce. She could still remember the day she was finally old enough to understand that the school-bus game the kids played at her stop was not so much intended to be fun as to bring attention to the inordinate clutter. Count the Washers one day and Find the Stray Cats the next. Hanley, Wyoming’s very own version of Where’s Waldo. No one seemed to hold it against Silvie that she lived there, but that didn’t change how she felt about it. After her parents’ divorce, she and her mom moved into town and lived in the one-bedroom apartment above the old Sew & Vac store, where she relished the modest anonymity.

“I don’t know if I’ll stay,” she said.

A growing number of people meandered through the warehouse, pawing through boxes, turning items under the light in search of defects.

“Oh, you should come,” he said.

“I’ve got more than I can carry now. What would I do with any of this?” She laughed and gestured toward the stuff.

The hippie gazed at her, his eyes soft, his lips turned in a curious smile. “Hershel can use a friend tonight,” he said quietly. The grimy man walked into a tiny booth with a Plexiglas window that had a small semicircle pass-through just above the counter.

Silvie didn’t know whether to follow him. The conversation didn’t feel over, though he’d walked away. Was this man implying that she could thank Hershel by staying?

He returned with a notepad and pen. “He’s gonna be a little off tonight. My guess, anyway.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s selling that Charger.” He looked around him and began to jot down the names of items that were in close proximity.

“Did he lose someone in that wreck?” she asked, curious now about her Good Samaritan.

“Could say that. That was the car he was driving the night of his accident.” The hippie moved forward through the warehouse a few steps and scribbled down more items. There didn’t seem to be any order or logic to what he chose to capture, but more like a random inventory.

“
He
was driving that car when it was wrecked like that?” Silvie realized, too late, that she was gaping at him.

“Probably why he messed up your name.” The hippie glanced at her, then back to his page. He sketched out the warehouse and divided it into quadrants, then numbered them.

“That would explain why he couldn’t figure out which key opened the door last night.”

“He was doing almost eighty when he hit a cow full-on. Spent three weeks in intensive care.” He divided the list of items into four brackets and labeled each with its corresponding number on the diagram. The hippie tore the page out and placed it on the auctioneer’s podium. “You should stay for the sale,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” Then he wandered away, leaving her alone in the midst of all that junk.

Carl had been working for Hershel exactly ten years this month. But Hershel wouldn’t remember that, and it had nothing to do with the accident. Though Hershel’s brain injury had been cause for Carl to take a hard look at life. The deaths, or near deaths, of friends and acquaintances always made him wonder why he was daily spared. He should have died in a jungle. He should have been dead now more times than he could count, but for some reason he trod on through like some well-armored insect.