Chapter Seven
Seven
The days passed.
Dew silvered the cobwebs in the morning.
Cold winds combed leaves from the branches, the rivers swelled with every rain.
In the lot at school, the buses came and went, the children pouring from the doors and funneling past the waiting teachers.
The grounds grew quiet, the crows hopped through the playing fields, the squirrels scurried to their stashes, a marmot peered out from the hedge.
Then a bell rang, the children swarmed back out, the crows lifted, laughter rose from the field, the swings, the courts of foursquare, again a bell, again the school received the children, quiet settled, a single aide went here and there, collecting coats and hats and balls lost in the hedges.
The crows watched. The sun declined, again the school gave up its children.
They streamed onto the buses, and into the waiting cars.
The cars went, one by one, from street to street until they reached the edge of town.
The crows climbed higher. Far below, scraps of color chased each other in the ball fields, the wind whipped swirls of damp October grass and lifted leaves in fugitive shoals.
The sun declined, little men drove out of little houses on their mowers, the mowers went across their little squares.
The grass lay down, the leaves left blushes across the meadows, the meadows yellowed and turned brown.
At home, the dog lay out in the sun and twisted in the litterfall, the leaves from the oak drifted down with each passing breeze, and from the window Miles watched him, already half buried, disappear bit by bit, over the morning, until all that remained was a dog-shaped lump in the middle of the lawn, which could have been anything, a stone, more leaves, a wildcat, a fox.
—
Good afternoon, it’s two o’clock, and welcome to The Miscellaneous Minute, or, as we like to say, the only Minute that’s actually an Hour. It’s Tuesday, October 24, and I’m your host, Don Martel.
Today is one of our most popular shows, “Antiques.” Have questions about that old jug, that piece of furniture, the portrait you always thought was Grandma?
What is really in that patent-medicine bottle, and is it safe to drink?
We’ve got Hank Bush from Greensbury Valley Antiques and Appraisals here to answer all your questions.
You know the number. 1-800-555-9225. Hank, welcome back to the show.
Great to be back, Don. Feels like just yesterday.
It does. I’ll tell you, I’ve been on the air for twenty-seven years, and I don’t think I’ve seen the lines light up quite like they do when we have you on. Any thoughts on why this is so? Is it just a matter of there being so much crap out there in the world?
Well, we tend not to think of it as crap, Don. These objects can have extraordinary value, and those that won’t sell for a lot of money still are deeply meaningful.
Sure, but sometimes I gotta wonder, there must be days when you get sick of dealing with so many hoarders, right?
So, yes, certainly there are times we find ourselves appraising the belongings of an estate of someone who might have had difficulties parting with their possessions, but, for the most part, my job is really a rewarding one.
What’s the worst?
Sorry?
Like, what’s the worst thing you’ve come across when you do your appraisals? Don’t people collect their urine, their toenails, that kind of thing?
Well, I don’t know about those, Don. I sell antiques.
Right, but people must bring you everything.
I see where you are going, but, no, no urine, no toenails. We do get the occasional lock of hair.
No kidding. Like a scalp?
No, just locks. People keep them as mementos, of loved ones, of famous people. Sometimes you find them in little lockets, or in the pages of a book. It’s quite touching, really—it’s a connection to the past.
A creepy one, I’d say. Listen, our lines are already as cluttered as Grandpa’s garage. Let’s go to Bev in Corbury Junction. Bev, you’re on.
Hi, Don. Thanks for taking my call. So I have this old thing, it’s like a box, but it doesn’t have an opening or anything, it’s like a cube. Any idea what that is?
Stumped me, Bev. Hank?
Don, I guess I’d need to know a little more. Is it old, Bev?
Well, I don’t know. It’s wood. Or I think it’s wood. It’s heavy.
Okay. And this is an heirloom?
A what?
You got it from a family member.
No, I just found it. Or my son found it.
Always finds them. The best I can describe it is if you were to take a photo and cut it up into little squares, but this is 3D.
Part of it is blue, like sky, and there’s part of a leaf and a branch, and the corner of a bird’s wing, just a corner.
Like someone just went and froze the world and cut it up in cubes and strewed them all about, so one part doesn’t necessarily fit with the other parts.
So there is more than one.
Here and there. Like I said, my son often brings them back.
And, sorry, what makes you think it’s an antique?
They certainly don’t make stuff like this nowadays, do they?
Bev, sweetie, you’ve got our expert scratching his head here so hard that he’s gonna hit brain soon if we don’t move on to another caller. Good luck, though. Hank, this is what I’m saying. You really do see everything in your line of work.
That was a first. Really, it’s mostly furniture and jewelry, Don. Spoons, forks.
Now that I think of it, I had an aunt who saved cooking fat. Jars of the stuff everywhere.
Furniture and jewelry, Don.
So—you’ll pass on my aunt’s cooking fat?
We pass on most of the things people offer us, Don.
Callers, you are warned! Let’s go back to the lines. Jim in Wakefield.
Yeah. Hey, guys. Jim here. So we have this beautiful Colonial dresser, curved lines, cupboard with lock and key, hidden storage, clawed feet.
Got it on Craigslist for three thousand dollars, bargained this old guy down hard from five thousand, which I think was a steep discount to begin with, because this thing’s a beauty, dates back to the Revolution; some of the stuff I’ve seen on auction sites goes for twenty, thirty grand.
But my conscience is really killing me, because the old fellow was parting with it so he wouldn’t be evicted, but I’m not sure what came over me—greed, I guess.
Now I don’t even want the thing. It gives me the chills each time I walk by it, like the story of the guy who puts his wife in a wall, but he can hear her heart.
But when I went back to the house where the old guy had met me in the driveway, the current owner pretended like he didn’t know what I was talking about, that the old guy didn’t live there—never lived there, which I’m thinking means he must have been evicted despite everything, which makes me feel even worse.
We hear you, Jim. Sounds like you made a killing, maybe literally. Hank, whaddaya think?
Tell me, Jim: if you look at the back, does it have any writing?
Hold on. Got it right here. “Winthrop.”
It’s worth about a hundred dollars, Jim.
Sorry?
Maybe two hundred.
This is, like, a beautiful antique. I was looking online, it must be worth, like, twenty, thirty K.
It’s not. It’s called a Governor Winthrop secretary. It’s probably from the 1930s. The factories were pumping those babies out.
I can send you a photo.
You can send a hundred photos, but it’s not going to make it any older.
Ha, ha, ha, Greedy Jim in Wakefield, sounds like the old man took you to the cleaners.
Probably wasn’t even his driveway! Thanks for your call, though.
Okay, time to go to emails from shy people.
This one’s from Todd in Wilmington, it’s about a pool.
Aw, hell, Todd, will you let it go? Every show, brother.
My pool! My pool! Oh no, oh no! The show’s about antiques, Todd, antiques.
Unless Cotton Mather’s out there doing the backstroke, you’ve gotta wait.
All right, next email. This is about rats.
What’s with this, people? You can’t just call because you have any problem.
You’ve got to listen to what the show’s about.
—
Now the forest was mostly bare, and the constant backfiring of cars that Miles heard on his walks with Giuseppe turned out to be the sounds of hunting season.
That explained the pickups at the trailhead, he thought, and the truck beds covered with blood outside the grocery, and the flayed deer on the skinning rack on the way to Olive’s school.
But what was he to do, stay out of the woods? Then he met a man in camouflage in a tree who told him that if he didn’t get some blaze orange on him and his dog, their heads were going to end up on someone’s wall.
The man must have seen that Miles was a little puzzled by this, because he clarified that someone would shoot him.
This was helpful. And Miles hadn’t known blaze orange was a color, but it turned out there were entire lines of clothing in blaze orange, sold at Walmart next to “Doe-in-Rut?,” another product he had never known existed, a fail-safe buck attractant, real 100% authentic urine collected from does in estrus.
He bought four blaze-orange caps, and four blaze-orange vests, and a bottle of Doe-in-Rut? to play a joke on Kate.
But Walmart was out of blaze-orange coats for dogs.
The drive home passed the animal hospital.
This seemed a likely place to get some dog gear; in California, their vet clinic was so packed with merchandise that it seemed more like a pet supplies store that occasionally threw in a neutering.
On first glance, however, the Greensbury Animal Hospital was a no-swag, all-business affair.
And the business that morning was a dog walker whose clients had just mobbed a porcupine.
As Miles entered, he found himself staring at seven dogs, in all the sizes that dogs come in, each of whom seemed to be wearing very large whiskers.
He turned to leave, but the receptionist had seen him.
“Yes?”