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river rat: Sketches from my pervy yard sale
Sadie
She had to have been in her eighties. Liver spots mapping the Aleutian islands covered her hands and forearms, visible at fifty feet even in the dappled sunlight of seventy foot tall Appalachian Palms, elegant hurricane magnets more commonly known as Loblolly Pines towering over our driveway, the site of my second ever yard sale.
“Now aren’t you somethin’ a gal could sink her teeth into.”
Her voice carried a strong southern lilt, riding a confidence reserved for someone who’d just stepped out of a Jaguar, not a woman driving a 1984 Honda the exact model and color of one I drove to Rochester one winter to visit a girlfriend.
“Um…you’re the first one here.” I stammered. “Looking for anything in particular?”
“I believe I just found it.” She winked and closed into my personal space enough to elbow me in the hip. She smelled vaguely of bug spray, ham, and gasoline.
“Oh, honey. I’m just teasing.” She winked again, her bony fingers draping over my hand like a battered and fried soft shelled crab.
“I’m a packrat. I have to walk sideways through most of my house and my entire basement on a narrow path.”
She turned sideways to illustrate, leading me down my driveway with her left hand flattened, palm up and her trailing right hand positioned opposite – palm down – walking the way Pharaohs were depicted ruling over Egypt. I followed, making a note to grab my camera the next time I ducked in the house for coffee.
Carl
“Your ad said videos.”
“Yes!” I had decided the night before that happy salesmen made more money when it came to yard sales, though no empirical data is likely to exist proving my theory. “Third table down in the blue milk crates.”
A tie-dyed tee shirt large enough to fit someone twice his size hung below mid-thigh over slinky running shorts and Birkenstock sandals worn shiny, their soles pronated with one strap duct taped and siliconed to the sole.
“Are there, um.” He looked down the driveway where my mother-in-law sat in a canvas beach chair -- $3.00 or best offer – guarding our Tupperware strong box of ones and quarters. “You know.” He looked around again and nodded his head.
“Star Wars?” I asked. “Jaws III in 3-D?”
“Adult.” He mumbled and lifted his chin. “Any, you know,…hardcore?”
Harry
A woman circled a back massager, a plastic handled beauty with a barrel long enough to hold eight “C” batteries. She hefted it twice before Harry showed up and started circling her.
He watched her like a wolf stalking a rabbit. I watched him like a father and husband who just realized he’d put ads on Craig’s List and in the newspaper inviting every freak for miles around to visit his home.
“Does this work?” The man, somewhere in his late fifties, asked in a high, thready voice that sounded like a kid learning to play clarinet but not really getting it.
I looked at him standing in the area we’d set up as the Maternity Department, between Housewares and cases of cassette tapes and outmoded electronics whose transformers were long since lost or burned up. His hand had come to rest on a very expensive breast pump and, as I closed the distance on him, it was impossible not to notice how his finger tips caressed a tiny translucent stain on the case. An hour earlier I’d tried to remove the stain with a damp cloth but mother’s milk is as fast a stain as it is a necessity to a baby’s development.
“You need a breast pump?”
“It’s…it’s for my sister.” He shifted away from where he stood but kept his hand on the patch of lactic acid stained fabric. “She’s knocked up.”
“It’s four hundred dollars.” The sticker said fifty.
“Is that your wife?” He pointed behind me. “Did she use this?”
I stepped toward him and he spun away, appropriately intimidated. I could taste blood. He kept moving ahead of me up the driveway.
“I’ll get her one somewhere else. Thank you.”
I trailed him. On his way he stopped long enough to pick up the back massager the young woman had been eye balling. He took it from her and sniffed it, handing it back to her, smiling.
