Lucky's '47 Fleetwood, painted money-color green, pulled up to the pumps of the new Shell station at Bardstown Road and Eastern Parkway. A kid with an amazing combination of freckles and pimples pumped gas at 24.9, while the station owner came from the lube rack.
"Lucky," he said, "you working or drinking?" The guy looked toward the Cad, saw Lucky's jacket and tie draped across the seat. "Or, where you been preaching?" He grinned. A youthful guy but experienced. Behind him sat a couple of cars for sale, blue '38 Chev at one-seventy-five and a black '41 Hudson at two-and-a-quarter.
"Laid a guy to rest," Lucky told him. "How's business?" A polite question. Anybody could see that business was singing.
"I'm for sale." The guy's brown eyes showed trouble. His dishwater blond hair carried a dab of grease from the lube rack. "Business is too good. Those horses' asses at Shell will find an excuse to break lease. Another six months, and this is a company station."
Behind the station, oaks and maples rose above houses on the parkway. An occasional white spot of magnolia peeped through dark leaves. Sun pinioned traffic to the street and a young woman came from the drugstore carrying the latest novel, rental 5 cents a day. She dressed in southern pastels, and walked stylish, knowing she was pretty.
The filling station guy watched the girl. "I'll open a drugstore. You never see a drugstore going broke."
"Sell down the inventory." Lucky looked the place over. "You can't break the lease, but dig a foxhole." He pointed toward the street, down toward the auction, then at the Chev and Hudson. "Dump everything. Leave Shell with what the little boy shot at."
The young guy also looked in the direction of the auction. "Twenty percent commission."
"He's new," Lucky told the guy. "Offer ten, pay fifteen."
Lucky looked over the lot, looked at inventory in lube and repair area: belts, parts, brake shoes . . . .
"If you discount," Lucky advised, "Shell will catch on. If you peddle to another station the word will get around."
"Where did that noisy bastard come from?"
"Hicksville," Lucky told him. "It's somewhere in Indiana. Maybe Illinois."
A polished gray '48 Plymouth pulled onto the island. The kid on the pumps didn't know whether to stand and collect for gas, or pump the Plymouth. Lucky passed him four dollars, accepted change.
"I'm headed that way now," Lucky told the filling station guy. "Auction is setting up for a week from Wednesday." He looked at the freckled kid pumping the Plymouth. "Good help?
"For a kid, yep. Kids have got everything to learn."
"Honest?"
" . . . near as I can tell."
"When you lay him off, tell him to come see me."
"Where you're situated . . ." the station guy said, " . . . he won't. Those niggers will scare crap out of him. No offense."
"None taken," Lucky told him. "On the other hand, you're both singin' in the dark." He grinned, touched the guy on the shoulder just to watch the guy flinch. "A customer," he told the guy, "is a customer."
When he parked across the street from the auction house he saw that someone was dead. A hearse stood at the curb. Two guys in dark summer suits climbed steps of the house next door to the auction. When the door opened, the two guys spoke to a tall, thin-faced man who rubbed his hand across his cheek, then his brow. He had been crying and he sniffed back snot. When he turned back to the house, he limped.
The mortuary guys entered. Lucky told himself he'd had enough funerals for one day. He murmured condolence beneath his breath, then headed for the auction house. Later, he would bitterly regret his haste.
* * *
Certain rhythms attend superior cussing. Few men, and almost no women, own them. The rhythms start out lento, move steadily to con brio and end up forza, as follows: "This Goddamn sonovabitchin' hunk-a-holiest-of-holies crap is blocking the fornicating and bag-balmed door to the shithouse. Get it moved." Mark Twain once had that kind of rhythm. Billy Sunday had that rhythm, but not the vocabulary; at least not in public. Wade proved proud bearer of the tradition. As Lucky entered, the cussing swelled, dwindled, came to conclusion. Two kids—a boy and a girl—yawned, while a quiet woman behind a desk made entries in a ledger. The boy pushed a five-drawer chest across the smooth-tiled floor. It was an awfully nice chest. Cherry wood, pre-Revolution, probably.
"Lucky," Wade said, "How's business?" He seemed ready to extend a handshake. Then he looked at his hand, saw soil and dust from merchandise. "Take my word for it."
Wade wore his thick hair cut short in no-nonsense country style. His nose looked half-English and half-Hebrew. He had Scots-blue eyes and broad hands. Women thought him handsome, men thought him loud, and his boy thought him a pain-in-the-old-patooker. Lucky looked at the kids. The girl was pretty and probably thirteen. The boy was a year older, skinny, brown-haired and sullen.
"You're walking around during business hours." Wade looked to the front of his store where the hearse sat parked. He pointed toward the hearse and spoke to the boy. "Go see what's happening." He turned back to Lucky. "Who's minding the store?"
"Charlie Weaver's funeral," Lucky told him.
"I sent flowers." Wade watched his kid as the kid trudged to the front door and out. "Didn't seem quite right to attend." He sounded the least bit uncertain. "Charlie and I kept our distance."
"You made the right move." Lucky looked around the auction house, or at least as much as he could see. The difference between Charlie Weaver's house, and Wade's, was wider than the rolling Ohio River.
It had an upstairs and a downstairs connected by a long ramp. The downstairs room fronted the street and held antique china cabinets with bowed fronts; the cabinets decorated with carved Victorian flowers, or curving and chesty Edwardian lines. The china cabinets were needed because the city boasted large numbers of aristocrats and old money. Sales of estates produced fine glass of every variety from tumbler to chandelier.
Light sparkled along edges of cut glass. It reflected on cranberry pitchers, Meissen statuary, Limoges dining service, bisque, Delft, Wedgwood; blue and cream, or sometimes cream and green. Light brightened sterling silver, and softly illuminated coin silver (sad memory of a war where coins were melted and formed into spoons, so Yankees would not steal them). The definition of 'antique' was: Item must be at least a hundred years old, and the best of its kind when it was made.
Standing against walls, and between china cabinets, stood Victorian wardrobes with carved grapes and lilacs, sleigh beds, four-posters, highboys in cherry and walnut, mirrored oak stands for cloaks and umbrellas, and sidearm bookcases. Arranged in rows down the middle of the house stood dining tables (usually walnut), lamps, end tables, Victorian love seats, roseback and ribbonback chairs, a baby grand and an upright; with small items of worth displayed on the tables.
In the back room, which was long and unpainted and shabby, sat used but useable merchandise: refrigerators, sofas, tables, ordinary chairs and chests, serviceable tools, boxes of clutter, unopened cans of paint. Louisville's small tradesmen came to the back room knowing they could add to their inventories, and profit would ensue.
Because, memory of the Great Depression still dwelt among businessmen and customers. Memory of scarcity during WWII also dwelt. The idea of "Use it up and make it do" had not departed America, and so, even in the first flush of new stuff after the war, there was a grand market for worn goods.
Happy, then, in that back room, was the auctioneer who could become a businessman among businessmen. He could say 'damn' if not 'shit', and he could announce about merchandise: "This poor thing can't help being dinged-up, but it's still got feelings, so do right by it." Or, describing a framed Victorian portrait, "Here's a chance to pick up an ancestor": always a good line because antique dealers were ever present; and antique dealers know that folks with New Money need ancestors.
All that was needed was a short stool, a whistle for quieting the crowd, a grip, and a clerk to write down prices and names of buyers. When the clerk's sheet was filled, Wade's kid carried it to his mom. She used it to make out invoices.
The stool put the auctioneer head and shoulders above the standing crowd. Instead of grips bringing items to the fore, people moved along lines of merchandise. The grip held up small items. This was barnyard selling, tobacco selling, but it worked because a standing and mobile crowd held more tensions than a crowd seated and relaxed. At its height, a sort of "oh, yeah?" atmosphere entered the bidding. Prices soared.
If Charlie Weaver's spirit attended such an auction (which seems likely) it doubtless shook its head, pursed its lips, watched the mounting prices; then, being spirit only, and out of the game, probably shrugged. The spirit might have thought the auction looked like a religious revival in its early stages.
After all, a large and handsome man would be elevated above an attentive crowd. His demeanor would be intense and serious. His eyes would flash, his mouth would pound adjectives onto nouns like a man setting rivets, and his hands would move most expressive.
"The neighbor lady died." When Wade's kid returned he tried to pretend that what he said meant nothin', but he couldn't make it play. His voice trembled. The kid looked at his sister. "Don't go out there."
The girl, of course, went immediately. Then the quiet woman, Wade's wife, looked up from her ledger. She stood. "I'll see if there's anything we can do." She was as pretty as her daughter, maybe prettier, but a little dumpy.
"I got a sale to set up," Wade told Lucky, "and there's a shit-barge hearse in front of the store. How good is that for business?" He looked toward his son. "Don't move an inch. We got work."
The kid swallowed hard. Twice. "Her mouth was hangin' open," he whispered. "I got to pee." He headed for the can.
"My girl is more practical," Wade mused. "If my boy was a girl, and my girl was a boy, it would surely take a load off."
Beneath searing sunlight the mortuary men loaded the sheeted corpse. July heat caused asphalt to bubble. Some of the bubbles would burst, and later, in the cool of the evening, some would sag. The asphalt would carry tiny craters that looked like pockmarks of disease. Traffic would smooth them out next day.
"It's not my place to say it." Lucky sounded apologetic. "But the boy just saw his first dead person. Maybe somebody ought to explain something."
"He'll talk to his mom." Wade was clearly ready to go back to work. "What can I do for you?"
"I want to take a couple of weeks in late August. What's lined up I'd better not miss?"
"Warehouse. Plumbing supply house that went busted, but that's end-of-the-month."
Lucky noted the date of the warehouse sale. "See you in a week." As he left, Wade's wife and daughter returned. The woman suddenly sad and permanently tired. The girl seemed shaken.