The Auctioneer (32 page)
Go get him, ’ Ma urged. She looked ancient and tired in the quivering light.
A gunshot punctured the hubbub and reduced the Parade to stillness except for the sound of the fire, roaring now through the roof.
Gore looked behind him and began to scuttle down the ladder.
In the window, the figure did not move. He stood erect, his arms still raised against the wooden framework that held him.
“Get up there!” hollered Sam Parry.
Gore hung on the bottom rung. This time, Ian James headed up the ladder, pushing Gore ahead of him.
But before they were halfway up, four or five shots rang out. They came from all directions and they came at almost the same moment. The unbroken panes in the high dormer window shattered. The figure slowly crumpled, clawing at the jagged edges of broken glass as he collapsed, gradually disappearing inside the house.
Bob Gore stepped to the edge of the roof and faced the crowd. The people confronted him without expression and without motion. No guns were visible in the black shadows, and every eye was fixed on the burning house with its empty window.
Gore turned and headed up the ladder. He hit the window frame with his hatchet, splintering the old wood and releasing a wall of smoke. He coughed and ducked. Then he took a deep breath, threw one leg over the sill, and leaned into the room.
The once-graceful limbs in the fresh green work clothes flopped about awkwardly and resisted his efforts to get a grip on them. Finally, he got the arms across one of his shoulders and the legs across the other. James steadied the ladder, and Gore backed down with his burden.
The body jerked from side to side as Gore moved, and the towel around the head, soaked and brilliant now with blood, gradually unwound. When Gore turned at the bottom of the ladder to lower the heavy body onto the porch roof, the towel loosened and fell away.
The hair was not black and curly. It was straight and silky and brown. The eyes, staring now without sight, were not black, but grayish blue. And the face was that of Mickey Cogswell.
With a sigh, the fire broke through the roof of the barn. It rose higher and higher, converging with the fire from the house and ending in a dainty pointed tip a hundred feet overhead. In time, the walls of the house and the barn were transformed into a ragged blanket of orange flame, broken by the outline of the main timbers.
The people of Harlowe didn’t stay to watch as the timbers broke and fell, forming black diagonals and reducing Perly Dunsmore’s mansion to rubble. Each family huddled together and drew away.
John took Ma by the elbow and guided her toward the truck. Mim followed, carrying Hildie.
Ma pulled free of John and limped heavily between her canes.
“You just stood there,” she said. “Mickey Cogswell... and you just stood there.”
Mim pressed Hildie to her. “We loved Mickey,” she said. “We didn’t know.”
Ma turned abruptly, forcing them to stop. “Are you God Almighty to stand there and let a fellow human burn?” she cried.
John stopped. “Wasn’t me shot him, Ma,” he said between his teeth.
Ma raised her cane. “I didn’t see you scurryin’ up there to get him down.”
“John was busy lookin’ out for us, Ma,” Mim said, reaching to touch Ma’s hand.
“No,” John said sharply. “I wanted Perly dead.”
Ma looked at the ground and leaned hard on her canes. “Johnny,” she said, her voice shaking, “I gloried too.”
Presently Ma lifted her face and began to move forward, tears finding the deep creases in her skin. “The only thing we had to stop him with was right,” she said. “Now we gave that too.”
John helped Ma into the cold truck and Mim climbed in after her with Hildie. John started the motor and the family sat in silence as it warmed.
The snow that had been holding up for days was beginning to fall. The big heavy flakes fell into the fire and melted with a tiny hiss. They fell on the tarpaulin pulled up over Mickey’s face, and on the townspeople as they moved away from the Parade. On Constance Hill, they piled up quickly, sticking to trees and roofs, catching on the new skim of ice over the pond, and blanketing the frozen earth. Somewhere, perhaps, they fell on the auctioneer.
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