"Hoo-eee!" I hollered, and spun the truck onto the dirt road. I gunned the
engine as we cruised along the tree-lined road, trusting Craphound to spot any
deer, signs, or hikers in time to avert disaster. The sky was a perfect blue and
the smells of summer were all around us. I snapped off the radio and listened to
the wind rushing through the truck. Ontario is _beautiful_ in the summer.
"There!" Craphound shouted. I hit the turn-off and down-shifted and then we were
back on a paved road. Soon, we were rolling into a country fire-station, an ugly
brick barn. The hall was lined with long, folding tables, stacked high. The
mother lode!
Craphound beat me out the door, as usual. His exoskeleton is programmable, so he
can record little scripts for it like: move left arm to door handle, pop it,
swing legs out to running-board, jump to ground, close door, move forward.
Meanwhile, I'm still making sure I've switched off the headlights and that I've
got my wallet.
Two blue-haired grannies had a card-table set up out front of the hall, with a
big tin pitcher of lemonade and three boxes of Tim Horton assorted donuts. That
stopped us both, since we share the superstition that you _always_ buy food from
old ladies and little kids, as a sacrifice to the crap-gods. One of the old
ladies poured out the lemonade while the other smiled and greeted us.
"Welcome, welcome! My, you've come a long way for us!"
"Just up from Toronto, ma'am," I said. It's an old joke, but it's also part of
the ritual, and it's got to be done.
"I meant your friend, sir. This gentleman."
Craphound smiled without baring his gums and sipped his lemonade. "Of course I
came, dear lady. I wouldn't miss it for the worlds!" His accent is pretty good,
but when it comes to stock phrases like this, he's got so much polish you'd
think he was reading the news.
The biddie _blushed_ and _giggled_, and I felt faintly sick. I walked off to the
tables, trying not to hurry. I chose my first spot, about halfway down, where
things wouldn't be quite so picked-over. I grabbed an empty box from underneath
and started putting stuff into it: four matched highball glasses with gold
crossed bowling-pins and a line of black around the rim; an Expo '67
wall-hanging that wasn't even a little faded; a shoebox full of late sixties
O-Pee-Chee hockey cards; a worn, wooden-handled steel cleaver that you could
butcher a steer with.
I picked up my box and moved on: a deck of playing cards copyrighted '57, with
the logo for the Royal Canadian Dairy, Bala Ontario printed on the backs; a
fireman's cap with a brass badge so tarnished I couldn't read it; a three-story
wedding-cake trophy for the 1974 Eastern Region Curling Championships. The
cash-register in my mind was ringing, ringing, ringing. God bless the East
Muskoka Volunteer Fire Department Ladies' Auxiliary.
I'd mined that table long enough. I moved to the other end of the hall. Time
was, I'd start at the beginning and turn over each item, build one pile of
maybes and another pile of definites, try to strategise. In time, I came to rely
on instinct and on the fates, to whom I make my obeisances at every opportunity.
Let's hear it for the fates: a genuine collapsible top-hat; a white-tipped
evening cane; a hand-carved cherry-wood walking stick; a beautiful black lace
parasol; a wrought-iron lightning rod with a rooster on top; all of it in an
elephant-leg umbrella-stand. I filled the box, folded it over, and started on
another.
I collided with Craphound. He grinned his natural grin, the one that showed row
on row of wet, slimy gums, tipped with writhing, poisonous suckers. "Gold!
Gold!" he said, and moved along. I turned my head after him, just as he bent
over the cowboy trunk.
I sucked air between my teeth. It was magnificent: a leather-bound miniature
steamer trunk, the leather worked with lariats, Stetson hats, war-bonnets and
six-guns. I moved toward him, and he popped the latch. I caught my breath.
On top, there was a kid's cowboy costume: miniature leather chaps, a tiny
Stetson, a pair of scuffed white-leather cowboy boots with long, worn spurs
affixed to the heels. Craphound moved it reverently to the table and continued
to pull more magic from the trunk's depths: a stack of cardboard-bound Hopalong
Cassidy 78s; a pair of tin six-guns with gunbelt and holsters; a silver star
that said Sheriff; a bundle of Roy Rogers comics tied with twine, in mint
condition; and a leather satchel filled with plastic cowboys and Indians, enough
to re-enact the Alamo.
"Oh, my God," I breathed, as he spread the loot out on the table.
"What are these, Jerry?" Craphound asked, holding up the 78s.
"Old records, like LPs, but you need a special record player to listen to them."
I took one out of its sleeve. It gleamed, scratch-free, in the overhead
fluorescents.
"I got a 78 player here," said a member of the East Muskoka Volunteer Fire
Department Ladies' Auxiliary. She was short enough to look Craphound in the eye,
a hair under five feet, and had a skinny, rawboned look to her. "That's my
Billy's things, Billy the Kid we called him. He was dotty for cowboys when he
was a boy. Couldn't get him to take off that fool outfit -- nearly got him
thrown out of school. He's a lawyer now, in Toronto, got a fancy office on Bay
Street. I called him to ask if he minded my putting his cowboy things in the
sale, and you know what? He didn't know what I was talking about! Doesn't that
beat everything? He was dotty for cowboys when he was a boy."
It's another of my rituals to smile and nod and be as polite as possible to the
erstwhile owners of crap that I'm trying to buy, so I smiled and nodded and
examined the 78 player she had produced. In lariat script, on the top, it said,
"Official Bob Wills Little Record Player," and had a crude watercolour of Bob
Wills and His Texas Playboys grinning on the front. It was the kind of record
player that folded up like a suitcase when you weren't using it. I'd had one as
a kid, with Yogi Bear silkscreened on the front.
Billy's mom plugged the yellowed cord into a wall jack and took the 78 from me,
touched the stylus to the record. A tinny ukelele played, accompanied by
horse-clops, and then a narrator with a deep, whisky voice said, "Howdy,
Pardners! I was just settin' down by the ole campfire. Why don't you stay an'
have some beans, an' I'll tell y'all the story of how Hopalong Cassidy beat the
Duke Gang when they come to rob the Santa Fe."
In my head, I was already breaking down the cowboy trunk and its contents,
thinking about the minimum bid I'd place on each item at Sotheby's. Sold
individually, I figured I could get over two grand for the contents. Then I
thought about putting ads in some of the Japanese collectors' magazines, just
for a lark, before I sent the lot to the auction house. You never can tell. A
buddy I knew had sold a complete packaged set of Welcome Back, Kotter action
figures for nearly eight grand that way. Maybe I could buy a new truck. . .
"This is wonderful," Craphound said, interrupting my reverie. "How much would
you like for the collection?"
I felt a knife in my guts. Craphound had found the cowboy trunk, so that meant
it was his. But he usually let me take the stuff with street-value -- he was
interested in _everything_, so it hardly mattered if I picked up a few scraps
with which to eke out a living.
Billy's mom looked over the stuff. "I was hoping to get twenty dollars for the
lot, but if that's too much, I'm willing to come down."
"I'll give you thirty," my mouth said, without intervention from my brain.
They both turned and stared at me. Craphound was unreadable behind his goggles.