Yard Sale
by
Eric Stuteville
A few hours after daybreak and the blacktop street in front of the two-story house on 4999 Roselawn Avenue already sizzles with a rude awakening of June sunshine and humidity. The colored balloons tied to the mailbox hover listlessly in the still haze of the morning and the poster board Yard Sale sign below flaps forward, it’s scotch taped binds corrupted by the damp evaporation of early dew.
Megan Pampf wipes her face with a tattered paper towel. She wads it up and tosses it into the tiny wastebasket she’s put under the card table she sits at. She just got back from the bank and placed the $100 in change in her aluminum cashbox and now considers herself ready for business. She was up at 6:15 unfolding card tables and lugging boxes of her ex-husband’s books and CD’s out into the neatly trimmed front yard. She’d needed to shoo away a couple of early birds who were quite obviously unimpressed with Megan’s whole operation. One of the old biddies Megan waved off had given her a stare and said, “Shameful. Just shameful,” to which Megan, mostly distracted by sorting a box of winter clothes, had happily chirped, “No, no! Please come back at nine!”
She sips her coffee and wonders when her son Iver’s going to wake up and help her lug her ex’s free weight set out. She thinks back to last summer when Iver was eleven and up and at em early in the morning with a smile on his face and sadly thinks what a difference a year makes. Iver hardly came out of his bedroom anymore. And when he did it was only to stare vacantly at the computer and eat her food. She curses Iver’s dad and blames him for her son’s rapid exploration of depression and embrace of apathy. Getting rid of Bruce’s old crap would do a lot to help him, she thinks. We can get rid of these constant reminders and move on.
Megan cracks her fingers and fans her face. Customers arrive. An old boat length Buick pulls up to the curb. An aged couple marked by huge wrap-around BlueBlockers over their eyes creak out of the vehicle and shuffle their way to the wares. A thirty-something woman pushing a stroller along the sidewalk looks over the tables and the racks of clothing (as well stocked with some of Megan’s old garments). She waves at Megan and approaches the hangers, browsing.
She hears the front door of the house slam. Good, she thinks, Iver’s up. Her son steps out into the sun. He looks up and scrunches his face at the sky. The bright light roasts the surface of his black jeans and t-shirt. He jams one iPod headphone into an ear and lets the other dangle limply on his chest. He walks over to his mom and she hears the scraping sound of unintelligible rap hissing from the speaker. He sits down in a metal folding chair beside her and yawns. Spreads his legs. He looks just like his dad, Bruce.
“I’m glad you’re up,” Megan says.
“Yeah. I’m up. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
She looks at Iver. She can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not. Another bit of fallout from Bruce’s departure, she figures. Add passive aggressiveness, mood-swings, and outright rudeness to the litany of changes to occur in the Pampf household over the past year. She tries not to be bothered by him. She knows that the kid misses his dad and is acting out, but she doesn’t know where the line between emotional reaction and burgeoning hooliganism is drawn.
“I was hoping for more people,” Megan says. “Did you hang up all those signs I told you to make?”
“Yeah, Mom,” Iver says. He says it in a way that makes it sound like ‘Yeah, bitch.’ “I made them all up on the computer and I hung a bunch of em up last night. “
“Well, good. I hope we get a crowd. Maybe we can make some money. If we make enough, maybe we can go to the water park in Atlanta.” She smiles at him.
“Why? So the black kids can beat me up and take my money?”
Megan grabs his shoulder sharply. “That’s your dad talking and your dad can be a goddam fool sometimes. We don’t talk like that. Not in this house.”
“Whatever.”
“Well, you tell me. You’ve already got every game in the world. I’m just trying to make sure you have a good summer.”
“I would’ve had a better summer with Dad.”
“Can we not do this here?” Megan asks.
The woman with the stroller stands nearby and gives Megan a commiserating smile. It just comes off pitying. She looks at some exercise DVD’s. “We’ve got work out equipment in the garage, too, if you want to see it.” The woman shakes her head and pets her baby’s hair. Megan remembers when Iver was little and sweet like that. “My son was supposed to bring it out here.”
Iver glares at Megan.
“I can’t believe you’re just going to sell all his old stuff.”
Then like a cloud blotting out the sun, the idyllic shimmer of happy homespun commerce darkens as everyone on Roselawn Avenue feels the ground vibrate. Everyone at the yard sale hears the Seville long before they see it. The deep wub-wub of subsonic bass shakes every window and awakens every car alarm along the street. Megan cranes her neck to see the car cruise down the road and stop in front of her house. She puts her hands on her hips and gapes openly as the car stops and the dazzling rims gyrate with no indication of halt or retreat.
The car is a purple ragtop stuffed with four young men. They all wear sunglasses and only one wears a shirt. The ornate and lurid tattoos scrawled about their muscled arms and chests ward off the specter of sunburn. The men all look angry and serious. Except for the one who’s grinning and staring right at Megan. The sun glares off the gold-encrusted grille of his jackal’s grin. The car is turned off. The street goes quiet, buffered only by ubiquitous lawnmowers and chanting cicadas as the crew steps across the road.
Iver stands up next to Megan. He turns off the iPod and shoves it down his pants. He cocks his head toward the hard looking dudes mashing his mom’s geraniums and the corner of his lip curls up in anticipation. Megan can’t decide whether to keep standing in order to assist these, ahem, patrons or to sit down in order to appear collected and unafraid- the exact opposite of how she feels. The older couple shuffle back to their car, trundling away like tiny insignificant insects.
“We here, bitch! We here so what the fuck’re you gonna do about that?”
The screaming man is going right at Megan. He advances up her walkway, peppering his steps with further “huhs” and “wassups” pointing and working himself up. The other guys break away from him and start tearing up the merchandise she’s laid out to sell. Megan looks helplessly around at her neighbor’s windows, hoping that somebody sees this invasion, this attack, and calls the cops.
“What are you doing? Stop! Stop!” Megan yells.
“No niggas on ya yard? Know nigga’s money spend, right? Y’all! Fuck this bitch!”
They’re flipping over tables and crushing small collectibles, bending eating utensils and breaking porcelain plates. The man with the gold grille walks over to the table and grabs the cashbox. Megan instinctively grabs the box and the man’s wrist. The man flings his hand back with the cashbox gripped tightly. He drags Megan forward. The man whips the box around and crashes the drawer against her head. It bursts open with a clang, showering her bloodied temple with silvery nickels and tattered bills.
Iver moans instinctively. The man looks at the boy, daring him to challenge him. His nostrils flare. Iver puts his hands up.
“I’m just a kid.”
“You want me to kill this bitch?”
“No.”
He laughs at Iver as the kid slinks down to the grass.
“Gets the fuck outta here!”
The crew backs off the lawn. The woman with the stroller moves her body from over the child in the seat. She trots away across the yards, heedless of any sidewalk, the stroller bouncing wildly. They jump in the car, laughing and whooping. The stereo blares as the car fires up and peels away from the house, befouling the stolid air with rubber fumes and exhaust.
Iver bends over his mother. Tears drip from his face. She rolls over on her back.
There’s a small stream of blood issuing from her skull. She groans.
“Oh mom, I’m so sorry,” he cries.
She puts her hand to her head. She blinks her eyes. She’s concussed, dazed.
The neighbors are stepping out of their homes, rubbernecking and sticking phones to their ears. Leslie Grable from the house next door waddles over to Iver and Megan.
“Oh I saw everything! Everything! What happened? Oh do you need an ambulance? Iver, they didn’t hurt you did they? Go inside and call an ambulance for your mom.”
Iver backs away and runs into the house. He gets Megan’s purse off the kitchen table and rifles through it. Inside, he finds her Blackberry and uses it to call 911. He tells the operator their address and tells her that his mom got hit with a metal box. And they were just here, the bad guys, and to hurry. The operator tells him an ambulance has been dispatched and the police notified. He thanks her.
Iver freezes for a moment. His fingers creep toward his mouth and he nibbles the end of his thumbnail. He stares at the computer in the corner of the living room. Its screen is off and the light of the modem blinks intermittently as if issuing snores. Instead of going back outside to comfort his mother, he goes through the garage door. He presses the button on the wall and the heavy mechanical gears of the garage door slowly open.
Mrs. Grable, cradling Megan, hollers at Iver who sails past them both on his 10-speed.
“Where do you think you’re going, huh? Get back here with your momma!”
He speeds around the neighborhood, his legs pistons on the peddles. He stands up and coasts to the end of the block. He sees one of the signs he hung up for his Mom’s stupid yard sale, one of the eye-catching pink ones stapled to the light post. He bounces off his bike and it crashes into heap. He rips the sign off the post and shoves it in his back pocket. He tilts his head to hear for sirens. Sweat drips into his eye and stings.
He clambers back on his bike and canvasses the neighborhood for all of the signs he hung up. He knows he doesn’t have time to take down the ones he plastered all over Millue Boulevard and why, why, why did he have to put one in Wal-Mart? It had seemed like such a great idea, so funny. The kind of thing his dad would get a real kick out of. A driver in a car sees him messing with a sign and honks at him repeatedly.
He hears the ambulance a block away. He takes all of the pink printed adverts from his pockets and files them down the grates of a storm drain. Iver climbs back on his bike and rides home.
Megan, tended to by kneeling paramedics, is strapped to a stretcher and ramped into the ambulance. Megan is conscious. She’s confused as to where her son’s been the last few minutes, but the incidence of being jumped by four angry black men in her front yard has put most occurrences into question. She sees her sons eyes, ringed with tears and sweat and dark with concern. She thinks things can’t get any worse for the boy. Somehow all of this hurt is the doing of her ex.
Iver stands next to Mrs. Grable. She looks down at him.
“I don’t know where you think you was going, but you’re gonna be in a heap of trouble when she wakes up. Now, come on now. I’m gonna take you to the hospital. Your daddy’s gonna take care of you till your momma gets better,” Mrs. Grable says.
He steps over the shambles of his front lawn and the broken remnants of his family’s consumption strewn about the grass like so many chopped blades. He wants to pick up everything that’s been wrecked and clean it up. Mow the lawn and then rake it. Replant it. He opens the door and sits in Mrs. Grable’s car.
Mrs. Grable listens to talk radio and drives slow. She turns off of Roselawn down the twisty turns of Murry Lane. Hangs a right and hits the busy intersection of Murry and Millue Boulevard and Iver spies another sign, out of reach and irretrievable. At the stoplight, Mrs. Grable sees it and groans.
“Now that is truly in the worst possible taste. Sad there’s still people that think like that.”
The sign:
SATURDAY!
JUNE 11!
ONE DAY ONLY!
SALE! SALE! SALE!
CDS, DVDS, CLOTHING!
4799 ROSELAWN AVENUE!
(whites only)
@estuteville 