Damaged Goods (6 page)

Carl hadn’t seen a doctor in decades. No need to. He listened to the people around him, especially the ones near his own age, talk about their aches, their blood pressure, their arthritis. It fascinated him, but it also repulsed him. He had abused his body in ways most people would never dream of, yet he rose every morning feeling more or less the same, worked through his day, and fell into bed at night with nothing more urgent or disturbing than a minor case of heartburn. And then only when Yolanda, his neighbor across the common courtyard, made extra-spicy tamales and shared them around Campo Rojo.

He had slowed a bit;
that
he had noticed. He couldn’t quite lift the same amount of weight as he once had, but he was limber and hadn’t bulked up around the middle like most people his age.

Carl had his eye on an old KitchenAid mixer this evening with Yolanda in mind. He picked it up and carried it to the concession stand. It would probably go for more than he could afford. They’d come back into fashion lately, and the older ones had a fifties sort of charm that made them highly sought after by secondhand dealers. He plugged it in and shifted the lever on the side. It spun the whisk attachment smoothly, so he turned it up to the highest setting, listening to it whir. It was built to last—a real workhorse for a serious cook.

Yolanda had been at Campo Rojo almost as long as he had, and longer than any of the other migrant workers. She’d become like a den mother, taking care of the entire village in addition to her own two boys, who were not actually boys but fully grown men. On Sunday afternoons, she whipped up Mexican wedding cakes, little round cookies smothered in powdered sugar, among other treats. She mixed everything by hand, though, and complained about bursitis in her shoulder. Carl had been delighted to find this mixer on the floor when he came in this morning, lying in the doorway on its side. He turned it off and pulled the plug, examined the cord for fraying. Satisfied, he placed it behind a chest of drawers at the back of the sale floor. He’d wait until the crowd was thin and the dealers had checked out, then bring it out for Hershel to sell. Most bidders wouldn’t get back in line for the cashier after they’d paid their bill unless the item was particularly choice—the KitchenAid was missing its bowl.

Carl wondered if he’d persuaded the girl to stay for the sale. He’d never known Hershel to offer a kind hand to anyone, and Carl thought it was odd that he’d not only assisted her with her broken-down car but offered a place to stay. He hoped she’d be back. But then maybe she had a low tolerance for auctions. Lots of people were like that—a character flaw, in Carl’s opinion. That anyone would buy new when the world was chock-full of perfectly good, inexpensive necessities was an affront to Mother Nature. A raping of natural resources. A shortsighted, selfish act.

Hershel took the muddy shortcut through the filbert orchard at three o’clock, getting himself mentally ready for the evening auction. He’d decided to walk through the sale barn and memorize the names of items that he wanted to sell while the crowd was good, rather than leaving it up to his floor men to randomly pull merchandise from the nearest heap. He could maximize his commission on the premium items if there was more competition for them. He also suspected that his employees hid some of the best stuff until the end, then picked it up for a fraction of what it could have brought. He’d taken to running up the price with a fictitious bidder, which sometimes forced him to buy the item and resell it later.

Hershel paused mid-stride to think about that. It was a common practice in the business—shill bidding, they called it. But also one that could get an auctioneer boycotted if he did it too often, or poorly enough that the bidders caught on and realized they’d never get a bargain on anything at his sales. And auction-goers were hopeless bargain hunters.

The fall air and the chilly temperature gave him energy as he trudged along under the low canopy of tree branches. The filberts had already ripened and fallen to the ground. Steve Thompson, the farmer who leased the orchard from Hershel, had sucked up the nuts with his giant vacuum-like machine, separated them from the leaves and debris, and moved them to his drying plant in McMinnville to ready them for sale during the holiday season. Thompson took good care of the trees he leased, as if they were his own. Still, Hershel ran his hands along the bark as he went, poking around for signs of blight. It was an old orchard, nearly thirty years. It wouldn’t produce like this for much longer, and then it would need to be replanted. Soon enough Hershel would have to make the decision between replanting filberts and moving into the newer crops of wine grapes that were rapidly transforming the landscape of the Willamette Valley. He loved the glorious yellow
display of those hillside vineyards in the fall before the leaves fell. They were much prettier than filberts, which weren’t especially showy. The clean lines of the vineyards brought an orderliness to the valley that he enjoyed. He didn’t imagine he’d go in that direction, though. Not because pinot noir didn’t interest him but because the filberts provided a wide berth of privacy between his house and Scholls Ferry Road that grapevines would not.

He thought of the girl as he neared the sale barn. “Sophie,” he reminded himself. He should have checked on her earlier, but he doubted that she was even still there. She didn’t need him, and she wasn’t his responsibility. She was a big girl, traveling solo.

At the edge of the orchard, Hershel walked out of the trees and into the gravel parking lot. At the sight of the Charger, the air rushed from his lungs as if he’d been slugged hard in the gut. He’d forgotten about it. There it sat, like a wadded-up piece of bright, glossy paper. Hershel flexed his hands. The feeling had momentarily left his body, yet his forehead throbbed.

“Floyd,” he growled to the wreck. “You look like hell.”

Hershel pressed his palm against the painful scar at his forehead, feeling betrayed for the second time by the car he’d saved from the wrecking yard. This hunk of metal harbored the secrets of that night forever lost to him. For all Carl’s efforts to spare him, Hershel had forgotten and stumbled right onto it. He shoved his shaking hands into his pockets and strode past like a man with a million important things to do.

“Hey, boss,” Carl called from across the warehouse as Hershel entered the building.

Hershel waved, then ducked into the cashier’s booth and slumped down in the chair, still struggling to get his bearings. Trying to let go the image of Floyd’s spidered windshield, wondering if his own head had made it so.

A dozen people wandered around the warehouse, looking things over in anticipation of the sale. Hershel always opened his doors at noon on Tuesdays to give bidders a chance to preview the offerings. The more time they had to think about any particular
item, the more likely they were to convince themselves that they couldn’t live without it. Through the Plexiglas window where people collected their numbers and paid their bills, Hershel listened to a pair of farmers talking about the combine.

A tall, familiar-looking man wearing coveralls and a John Deere hat approached them. “You get a look at that Charger out there?”

The two nodded a greeting, as if they all knew one another. “Yep,” the slighter of the two replied. “Belongs in the U-Pull-It, you ask me.”

“My son wants it,” the other said. “Thinks he can restore it.”

The second man laughed. “Yeah, with a new body, a new rear end, a new transmission, and probably a new engine, he might be able to make it roadworthy again.”

All three laughed.

“I suspect he wants it for its legend. The two tons of metal that tangled with Swift, and who comes out on top?” He shook his head and whistled.

“I can’t believe that bastard survived,” the third man said. He lifted a grease-stained ball cap off his head, ran his fingers through his thinning hair, and replaced the hat.

“Tougher than any goat I know. Hardheaded and mean,” the familiar man scoffed. “People like that are hard to die off.”

Hershel waited for them to laugh again, but there were grunts of agreement all around and then silence.

Hershel listened, amazed by the contempt people carried for him. He didn’t feel as mean as a goat. In fact, he felt downright charitable. He thought again about Sophie and got to his feet. He should check on her. But he had to wait for the throb in his head to recede before he walked out into the warehouse and past the three men. They nodded at him as he passed, looking slightly ashamed. Hershel didn’t make eye contact or acknowledge them.
“Fuckers,”
he muttered when he was far enough away.

He found Carl and helped him push a dusty riding lawn mower out into the aisle for another man to inspect.

“That gal Silvie left a little while ago,” Carl said. “She wasn’t interested in the dogs I threw in the cooker.”

“Silvie?”

“I think that’s what she said, boss. Said her name was Silvie.”

“That’s right, Silvie. She coming back?”

Carl shrugged. “I invited her to stay for the sale.”

Hershel wanted to ask Carl about the comments he’d overheard, not just today but last week between Linda and Stuart and others. He pressed his hand idly to his forehead.

“You okay, boss?”

Hershel jerked his hand away. “Yeah. Fine.” He busied himself straightening boxes and picking through items, looking for treasures to sell early in the night. He stepped up to the lectern, looking for a pen and some paper, but found that someone had already listed the best items for him. He turned to Carl, who had followed him but turned away when he saw the page.

Carl said in a low voice, “I put that Glock on your desk in the back office. I see you didn’t have it in the ad this week.”

Hershel vainly searched his spotty memory. He stared at Carl as if seeing him for the first time. “What Glock?”

“Came in right before your—” Carl lifted a shoulder in a half shrug, as if that filled in the missing words. He scribbled numbers on boxes, making himself too busy to look at his employer.

“Thanks,” Hershel said.

He stood outside the office door at the rear of the building and fumbled with his wad of keys, looking for the right one. Irritated, he studied them. He needed to spend an afternoon identifying and labeling each key. The sixth key fit the lock and snapped the latch open. He glanced over his shoulder, but Carl was nowhere in sight, and the men browsing the floor were too busy picking through the sale merchandise to pay attention to him.

Just as Carl had said, the gun lay in the middle of Hershel’s
wide oak desk. Hershel picked it up and inspected it. It wasn’t in top condition. The metal was pocked and dull; it had seen some hard use. But that didn’t matter. It would bring a nice price, and Hershel knew it. Out of the haze of his past life, the ritual connected to this and many other firearms came back to him. He stared down at the cold gray steel of the German pistol and finally remembered something. Carl had scanned the ad in the
Hillsboro Argus
, and the conspicuously missing reference to such an easy-to-sell weapon served as his instructions to leave it on Hershel’s desk.

He’d been selling guns through his auctions since he opened his doors. Though he couldn’t recall their names or faces, his sales drew a wide network of buyers. Hershel would collect his commission and pay the consigner with a single check and a vague receipt that failed to specifically list the gun. This gun would have to be part of a larger lot that included the mundane articles of daily life. Furniture, farm equipment perhaps, tools, whatever. And because Hershel hadn’t advertised this gun the buyers would understand that he had no intention of filing the paperwork stating that it had been sold through his business. If it was ever traced, it would be traced back to the consigner, not to the buyer. And, if questioned, Hershel would shrug and state that a lot of things came through his auction business. But if there was no paperwork on a Glock, a Glock had never been here. He kept deliberately careful records of other items, antiques and appliances, and especially the guns he advertised. His business was credible in all the ways it needed to be. If a single gun was consigned, or a group of guns without the usual junk that accompanied them, he advertised them in the paper and publicly notified bidders that he would file the paperwork. No official could look through Hershel’s records and prove dishonesty. He had followed the letter of the law enough times to make sure of it.

He laid the gun down in the mess of papers that had accumulated over the months. Carl was the only one with a key to the
office; Hershel realized that he trusted his hippie employee that much. Carl collected the mail, sorted the financial stuff out for the accountant, and stacked the remainder here in this chilly, dim room. Carl, it seemed now, was like a loyal servant caretaking business as Hershel struggled first to survive, then to regain some recognition of his own life. It was Carl who had given him the forecasted tonnage for the filbert crop that year. Carl was the one who had reported the number of delinquent units at the mini-storage Hershel owned over in Sherwood. Hershel picked up the diagram of merchandise he’d found on the auctioneer’s lectern. The backward-slanted script familiar. It was Carl who had gone out to Hershel’s house to check the locks, cut the grass, pick up the newspapers. And paste notes to the refrigerator with simple information like garbage day. He let the paper float back to his desk.