THE

YARD SALE








A Short fiction


By


David A. Archer

02/15/1968








09/26/2006

We were sitting around the other evening. Some of us sipping our wine and others imbibing of beer, as usual. The wine was alright, of good quality as it always is but seldom noticed beyond knowing that it tastes like wine after the third glass. And the beer was much the same, higher priced labels being swilled as if it were just that.

All in all it was just another gathering we seem to do out of habit to perform some social ritual so as to keep in step with the expectations of our peers.

As it normally transpires, we managed the same old conversations with different words. Pleasing one another though nowhere near as much as in the effort to please ourselves, just knowing that we were fulfilling our duties to one another. At every chance embracing the opportunity to pretend at being impressed or even better, impressive to the swarm of hollow compliments sure to follow.

We clucked and oink-ed and moo-ed the evening away until those in attendance not of a certain unspoken seniority “stature” had done their part in leaving in a timely manner. This of course left the veterans… the “sheppard element” of our grouping to lounge and begin the gossip and snits pertaining to the “young blood” rising in the ranks.

For some reason this evening was different. Some began the mechanized notion of upper classmen reasserting themselves when together about their superiority to those fledglings in their midst through out the evening, but then for some reason everything just kind of got quiet. Pensive if not introspective.

No one even had to say a word about what had just befallen the now lounging group, some even beginning to show compliments in wisps of gray around their temples and most all now adorned with the slight glaze one finds toward the end of an evening. Lethargy wouldn’t be far from accurate in describing the motion in mood.

Then someone just said it as someone usually does, just as reserved as usual. Most definitely just as distant… as if the conversation hadn’t happened numerous times before. As if there were still some answer they longed for, even having known their part within the transition.

“He was here for quite some time” you heard a quiet voice break through the suspended mood as if to move and change the atmospheric pressure within the enclosed living area itself.

Everyone knew who she was thinking about, but as was customary and just as predictable as was the conversation itself, the response came in a similar tone; “Who do you mean?”

“Okay, so it wasn’t a really long time… but it was rather productive.. where do you think he ended up?” the question rang through and hung in the moment.

No one seemed ready to even address that question. As if none were prepared to even venture a guess.

The quiet then resumed as it became obvious through several subtle shifts in the heavy air. Even so much as to move through the thin drapes with the chill in the new autumn breeze as the cracks yet weatherized for the season, breathed along the edge of the window.

“We know he still isn’t working anywhere…at least not in the industry” someone nearly whispered, “we would have heard about it for sure.”

“Is it just me” began another soft tone to match the mood and time of day, as if any loud noise might shatter into some other reality somewhere, “or did he really never freak out about anything?”

“Yeah” came a response, “there was just always this ease about him…. Even in the heat of it… a calm and uncomplicated ease that made you want to cling to him or at least stay close when the shit was hitting the fan….it was like you just knew he was always going to get through it…. Smooth…….”

“Yeah…. And then that smile when it was all done… that calm and that smile…. Like he was catching his breath to jump back in…”

“Man that pissed me off” then chimed a voice… “but in a fun way now that I think back on it…. Here I would be dragging my ass and look over at his sweat drenched body looking like he was ready to move past the warm ups….”

“Maybe we aren’t ever supposed to even hear of him again?” said a voice as the gentle volley began to pick up. “Like he was a secret…. Or something.. something we aren’t supposed to understand from someone else’s explanation… like the question that wasn’t on the crib sheet back in college….?”

“I hated that question!” clambered an exclamation in a slight slur which was accented with the shifting clunk of the end table in response to sudden motion. "What did we pay our money for if we have to worry about passing and stuff…." Grumbled the voice in motion to somewhere away from the conversation.

"Some of us… some of the guys that lived with him… would even sneak into his simple and rather humble bed chamber when he was out and about living his seemingly mundane and un-interesting life…" yet another voice added to the growing conversation that managed more substance now, still without volume. "Every one of us had a good reason we thought… but every one of us did it for much the same reasons I guess… maybe the biggest of which was to associate ourselves somehow with how we saw him… that simplicity we still sit here and contemplate as if he may walk in again any minute…but knowing he probably won't."

"It's more like we want him to walk in again I think" said the quieter voice… probably for the contrary of those reasons we all had before… like we should take something back that we never took the advantage to extend… if that makes sense…. Like we want to take back our having missed opportunities or something…."

“Shut up!” the slurred voice again exclaimed from somewhere outside of the now common area, “I hated that question!”

“Sometimes..” continued the near confessional tone with no regard to anything beyond the current thought now on the tongue, “we would just sneak in there to look around… nose around the knick knacks… which made it even more strange… it was like they spanned decades, and he wasn’t that old… even after nearly ten years… he didn’t seem to be much older.”

“What are you mumbling” came again the softer voice just past pursed lips taking in some drops of wine…

“Yeah…” began the spoken thought again, “like we started to get jealous or something… that’s when we started taking stuff… borrowing it” the voice stressed, “as we told ourselves in our most coveting drenched moments… and I guess it was because they were his” the voice again stressed, “and not ours…. I can’t remember any other reason besides maybe the sense of possibility that was always around him.”

“He was a freaking slob!” said the slurred voice from beyond the conversation… “I went in there once… when I borrowed some rose oil…. And he had just done his laundry… he left it in a pile on the foot of his bed…. Freaking slob…the journals he had on his headboard were boring, too….”

“I had a friend look him up once… on the internet” chimed one of the more quiet tones with a bit of excitement falling from the lips as if just behind the words, “he looked him up on one of those people search things once…. And he said it was some pretty cool stuff… but he didn’t print it… and then when he looked it up again, it wasn’t even there…. Kind of creepy…he never said anything else about it…”

“Yeah.. potentials.. possibilities” another of the softer voices rang through, mixed with the sound of lazy high heels on hard wood moving toward something definitely. “Like he didn’t even know the air about himself…like being normal was his gig…”

“I freaking hated that question!” Again spewed the grumble from elsewhere in the abode… “do you guys know how many chicks wanted to say he was married to them? Fuckin’ asshole…” the voice continued now noticeably roused…

“We might have a guess” replied a more feminine voice with the suggestion of anonymity in her voice… “but if you guys only knew how many wanted to say he was a dad… if you know what I mean” continued the teasing string of words as the issuer of them reached again for more wine while glancing toward the destination having been reached of the clacking heels near the hearth.

“Funny you guys actually borrowed things from him….” The voice said as the clacking stopped and the faint scraping sound, nearly as profound in the blanket of silence as it was pronounced in consequence briefly punctuated the statement. “I got this for seventy five cents” the voice continued as the patron displayed an antique vase just plucked from the mantle as if it contained tradition itself.

“I thought that looked familiar” said one of the more masculine voices.

“Yep… seventy five cents at a yard sale… one of his former roomies was stoned out of his mind and said there might even be a Genie in it… he was so stoned he didn’t even recognize me and kept acting like it was his…..” she continued, “I got it like a week after he just wasn’t around anymore……. I asked the guy what happened to him…. Like I just noticed he wasn’t around anymore.. and the guy was soooo stoned that he actually told me that they tried to frame him.. so he just left. Something about a phony rental contract or something….then he went on about how cleverly disguised the average, everyday appearing Genie vase was….”

“You know…” said the masculine voice in a thought… “he might be right about the Genie thing… there was just something about that guys bedchamber… his stuff and how he arranged it…that vase I remember being on the shelf…and then on the headboard…. It’s like somehow they represent something… his stuff, you know… but not to him…like to other people… like it happens through our own wants and fantasies or something… things we never think about….”

“I remember hearing you guys talk about asking each other what some of the things were when he wasn’t around…. Guys are so stupid” she added with a pause, “you can’t even recognize an average everyday magical Genie vase when you see one…. How dumb do guys get?” the voice chided in the slight echo from a wide rimmed wine glass.

“He really didn’t see them like that, though… which I guess should make our silliness all the more embarrassing…” said the voice with a noticeable blush….”how dumb do guys get?” he then added rhetorically.

“It doesn’t get much dumber than his roomie that day…. all stoned…” continued the voice now gazing upon the vase between somewhere and her comments…”a few minutes after I talked to him about the vase… he then retold me the story…probably suspecting I had known him at that point…. But he changed it up to be that they actually tried to frame him so they could have a really cool yard sale with all his neat stuff…like it was a good idea or something…. Stoned. No question about it” she said as she placed the average, everyday mystical vase back on the fire place mantle and simultaneously joining her closest conversation companion in a deep swill of the beverages in hand. “I totally scored” she then stated looking again at the vase… “seventy five cents.”

“I got it!” said the distant voice now noticeably drawing nearer.

“Speaking of stoned” said the deft yard sale hound.

“I know what it was about his neat stuff…” continued the traveling voice now nearly booming in a slur. “We thought something that they were because of what we thought… what ever it was they really were, which we know….knew.. them to be.. while not knowing what they really were in our decidedly authoritative authority and knowledge…and of course with some help from the slight mental illness which we incurred when thinking about what we thought they were… in thinking them something other than what they were, to begin with…which as we all know, through the wisdom of the cool stoned guy, were really very cleverly disguised articles of personal possession that had an essence of average everyday neato things….”

“I just think he knew how to arrange… now that I think about it…. It made the place interesting just in how he would even pile his laundry…” said the beer swiller next to the lazy heels…. “now that I think about it…. I always hated that question, too…. What kind of guy knows how to decorate a place…”

“He was gay..” said a voice that had been silent until that moment in a drone that made it hard to recognize as a voice.

“No he wasn’t” came an immediate response with a pronounced firmness, “guys just say that about any guy that happens to have a touch…even if they aren’t trying to have a touch... he definitely wasn’t gay… reserved, sure.. gay… ummm…” the feminine voice then seemed to dwell “not a chance in any form of hell...”

“And how do you know” stated the drone…

“I watched” she replied..

“You watched?” the drone again posed in question.

“Not like that, perv…” she again responded with a firmness, “I watched… allot of us did… we even chatted about some things now and then…. Definitely not gay…” she then seemed to stop before adding a finishing note, “but maybe that makes it all the worse that we played so stand offish….. maybe it’s better if we just say he was gay and leave it at that?” came the statement indicating far too much to describe in far too many ways followed immediately with uproarious laughter from others near the hushed exchanged.

“Will you guys stop talking about that guy… he will probably turn up in some magazine somewhere, some day and we will all have to put up with you going on about having known him and listen to that story about the seventy five cents thingy until we all want to die…” touted the booming slur now down the hall way somewhere… “Did I mention how much I hated that question…” came a audible blur seeming to bounce from wall to wall in the tunnel like passage.

“Yes you did… a few times… and no, he probably won’t….” came a slightly louder response as if to reach the ears down the way, which was concurred by several motions and grunt like sounds in the quiet of everything else, “just wasn’t his style… anyone could have told you that…just wasn’t the spotlight kind of guy…..”

“He was a sissy” came the booming voice again…

“No… just reserved” again an immediate response, “reserved, diligent and committed…. Not to mention rather nice in most cases as well.”

“He was a drunk… I got him drunk a few times…” again came the slurred booming voice.

“You’re jealous…everyone gets shnockered…least wise most people without some other hang ups….” Said the drone in a slightly louder drone…”I got drunk with him a few times, too… just to see…”

“See what?” asked one of the more feminine tones still rather quiet to match the whisper of the space.

“See if I could throw him off his game… I guess… see how much he could drink?... I don’t know… just to see.. nothing wrong with that is there?” plied the drone.. “the chicken crossed the road, didn’t he?” he continued as he then glanced toward the lazy heels now leaning against the fireplace and meeting his glance momentarily.

“Yeah, I guess the chicken did cross the road” she said without an ounce of meaning or suggestion which acted to lay heavy on the suggestive elements of it. Then turning her head and slightly stroking the vase in a single motion to move away from it to somewhere else, even the blotto down the hall could hear the whisper becoming air; “I really hated that question, too.”