Ontario is _beautiful_ in the summer.
"There!" Craphound shouted. I hit the turn-off and down-shifted and then we wereback on a paved road. Soon, we were rolling into a country fire-station, an uglybrick barn. The hall was lined with long, folding tables, stacked high. Themother lode!
Craphound beat me out the door, as usual. His exoskeleton is programmable, so hecan 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'vegot my wallet.
Two blue-haired grannies had a card-table set up out front of the hall, with abig tin pitcher of lemonade and three boxes of Tim Horton assorted donuts. Thatstopped us both, since we share the superstition that you _always_ buy food fromold ladies and little kids, as a sacrifice to the crap-gods. One of the oldladies 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 ofthe 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 Icame, 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'dthink he was reading the news.
The biddie _blushed_ and _giggled_, and I felt faintly sick. I walked off to thetables, trying not to hurry. I chose my first spot, about halfway down, wherethings wouldn't be quite so picked-over. I grabbed an empty box from underneathand started putting stuff into it: four matched highball glasses with goldcrossed bowling-pins and a line of black around the rim; an Expo '67wall-hanging that wasn't even a little faded; a shoebox full of late sixtiesO-Pee-Chee hockey cards; a worn, wooden-handled steel cleaver that you couldbutcher a steer with.
I picked up my box and moved on: a deck of playing cards copyrighted '57, withthe logo for the Royal Canadian Dairy, Bala Ontario printed on the backs; afireman's cap with a brass badge so tarnished I couldn't read it; a three-storywedding-cake trophy for the 1974 Eastern Region Curling Championships. Thecash-register in my mind was ringing, ringing, ringing. God bless the EastMuskoka Volunteer Fire Department Ladies' Auxiliary.
I'd mined that table long enough. I moved to the other end of the hall. Timewas, I'd start at the beginning and turn over each item, build one pile ofmaybes and another pile of definites, try to strategise. In time, I came to relyon 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-tippedevening cane; a hand-carved cherry-wood walking stick; a beautiful black laceparasol; a wrought-iron lightning rod with a rooster on top; all of it in anelephant-leg umbrella-stand. I filled the box, folded it over, and started onanother.
I collided with Craphound. He grinned his natural grin, the one that showed rowon 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 bentover the cowboy trunk.
I sucked air between my teeth. It was magnificent: a leather-bound miniaturesteamer trunk, the leather worked with lariats, Stetson hats, war-bonnets andsix-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 tinyStetson, a pair of scuffed white-leather cowboy boots with long, worn spursaffixed to the heels. Craphound moved it reverently to the table and continuedto pull more magic from the trunk's depths: a stack of cardboard-bound HopalongCassidy 78s; a pair of tin six-guns with gunbelt and holsters; a silver starthat said Sheriff; a bundle of Roy Rogers comics tied with twine, in mintcondition; and a leather satchel filled with plastic cowboys and Indians, enoughto 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 overheadfluorescents.
"I got a 78 player here," said a member of the East Muskoka Volunteer FireDepartment 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 myBilly's things, Billy the Kid we called him. He was dotty for cowboys when hewas a boy. Couldn't get him to take off that fool outfit -- nearly got himthrown out of school. He's a lawyer now, in Toronto, got a fancy office on BayStreet. I called him to ask if he minded my putting his cowboy things in thesale, and you know what? He didn't know what I was talking about! Doesn't thatbeat 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 theerstwhile owners of crap that I'm trying to buy, so I smiled and nodded andexamined 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 BobWills and His Texas Playboys grinning on the front. It was the kind of recordplayer that folded up like a suitcase when you weren't using it. I'd had one asa 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 byhorse-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 theDuke 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. Soldindividually, I figured I could get over two grand for the contents. Then Ithought about putting ads in some of the Japanese collectors' magazines, justfor a lark, before I sent the lot to the auction house. You never can tell. Abuddy I knew had sold a complete packaged set of Welcome Back, Kotter actionfigures for nearly eight grand that way. Maybe I could buy a new truck. . .
"This is wonderful," Craphound said, interrupting my reverie. "How much wouldyou like for the collection?"
I felt a knife in my guts. Craphound had found the cowboy trunk, so that meantit was his. But he usually let me take the stuff with street-value -- he wasinterested in _everything_, so it hardly mattered if I picked up a few scrapswith which to eke out a living.
Billy's mom looked over the stuff. "I was hoping to get twenty dollars for thelot, 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.
Billy's mom broke the silence. "Oh, my! Thirty dollars for this old mess?"
"I will pay fifty," Craphound said.
"Seventy-five," I said.
"Oh, my," Billy's mom said.
"Five hundred," Craphound said.
I opened my mouth, and shut it. Craphound had built his stake on Earth byselling a complicated biochemical process for non-chlorophyll photosynthesis toa Saudi banker. I wouldn't ever beat him in a bidding war. "A thousand dollars,"my mouth said.
"Ten thousand," Craphound said, and extruded a roll of hundreds from somewherein his exoskeleton.
"My Lord!" Billy's mom said. "Ten thousand dollars!"
The other pickers, the firemen, the blue haired ladies all looked up at that andstared at us, their mouths open.
"It is for a good cause." Craphound said.
"Ten thousand dollars!" Billy's mom said again.
Craphound's digits ruffled through the roll as fast as a croupier's counter,separated off a large chunk of the brown bills, and handed them to Billy's mom.
One of the firemen, a middle-aged paunchy man with a comb-over appeared atBilly's mom's shoulder.
r />
"What's going on, Eva?" he said.
"This. . .gentleman is going to pay ten thousand dollars for Billy's old cowboythings, Tom."
The fireman took the money from Billy's mom and stared at it. He held up the topnote under the light and turned it this way and that, watching the holographicstamp change from green to gold, then green again. He looked at the serialnumber, then the serial number of the next bill. He licked his forefinger andstarted counting off the bills in piles of ten. Once he had ten piles, hecounted them again. "That's ten thousand dollars, all right. Thank you