It was 7:00 am, and the ad had said the sale started at 8:00. A woman got out of one of the cars and came over to me. She told me that it was rude to keep her waiting when the ad said to follow the signs, and here I was just now putting out the signs. I just shrugged and said "Follow me, I have to put out the other signs."
I had to stop and put out six more signs leading out to the farm, at each turn on the country roads…pavement giving way to blacktop, and blacktop to kaliche limestone gravel. A white dust cloud plumed behind my car as I drove the last half-mile and turned in at the house just before the creek bridge. There were six cars trailing behind me, parking in the yard as I unlocked the house.
My sister and I had come and cleaned the house before the funeral, and had made some selections of a few personal items. I chosen an oak curio cabinet I had helped my father pick out, years before his death, for my mother. Julie took the small box with my mother's meager collection of jewelry, some from my grandmother. I had flushed bottles and bottles of prescription medicine down the toilet. Food thrown out, dishes stacked in piles on the kitchen table. I took a 1940s cookbook. A box of photographs taken to my house for sorting.
The vultures had arrived, and began opening cabinets and drawers at random.
"Just ask me the price or make me an offer on anything you're interested in…" I was having a harder time that I had anticipated seeing these strangers invading this space. "…I'll be on the porch."
As I sat on the porch swing, three more cars came into the yard. Over the next two hours I watched as a lifetime's accumulated possessions filtered out into cars that left, and more shoppers arrived. I walked into the kitchen for a drink and the house was a chaotic disaster area. The annoying woman who had approached me at the K-mart made her way across the crowded living room. She thrust an old Mason jar full of buttons in my face. "How much for this?"
I had not seen this jar in years. The noisy scavengers in my mother's small house faded from view and I was once again five years old.
Through the window, I watched my father, now dead for almost 10 years, talking to my uncle. They were leaning against the side of that old red pickup in the driveway. They were drinking a beer and laughing, and it was summertime, long ago. My sister was playing on the tire swing in the oak tree in the side yard. My mother was ironing clothes, stopping occasionally to sprinkle a garment before the hot iron made it steam up. Her hair was curling around her face from the heat and the steam. A big black electric fan oscillated slowly back and forth across the room. The Guiding Light was playing on the old black-and-white TV. My mother watched it while she ironed.
"Honey, go get my sewing basket - this dress has a button that's missing." I went and got the basket and set it near her chair. "That's a good girl, thank you, sweetheart. See if you can find one that looks like this one." She showed me the other buttons on the dress, a mother-of-pearl button about the size of a dime. I sat in her chair, turning the jar slowly.
"What did this one come from?" I held up a black button covered with rhinestones.
"That was from a dress of your grandmother's - it had a lace collar."
"And this one?" It was made of wood, shaped like a little barrel but tapered on each end.
"That's called a frog, and it came from a coat I used to wear."
"Why is it called a frog?"
"I don't know, honey"
"This one has a little anchor on it."
"It was from your Daddy's navy pea coat."
I put it back, not wanting to know why the navy had special coats for that.
"Here's one I think will do." I showed her a mother-of-pearl button almost the exact size. We compared the size and she told me it would do.
"Put it on top of my sewing basket with this dress, honey, and go outside and play with your sister."
Suddenly I was back in the house with a dozen strangers, picking through my mother's life. The moment had been brief, but clear as if it had been yesterday. The woman shook the jar in my face. "How much do you want for this?"
I took it from her hand. "It's not for sale." She glared at me and swooshed out the door mumbling.
A man offered me three dollars for a lamp. I agreed and made change for a five in the cigar box of cash I had accumulated. I held the jar of buttons in my lap as I sat on the porch swing and felt the autumn breeze in my hair.
© Ed Townley
2001