verymuch, mister. Can I give you a hand getting this to your car?"
Craphound, meanwhile, had re-packed the trunk and balanced the 78 player on topof it. He looked at me, then at the fireman.
"I wonder if I could impose on you to take me to the nearest bus station. Ithink I'm going to be making my own way home."
The fireman and Billy's mom both stared at me. My cheeks flushed. "Aw, c'mon," Isaid. "I'll drive you home."
"I think I prefer the bus," Craphound said.
"It's no trouble at all to give you a lift, friend," the fireman said.
I called it quits for the day, and drove home alone with the truck onlyhalf-filled. I pulled it into the coach-house and threw a tarp over the load andwent inside and cracked a beer and sat on the sofa, watching a nature show on adesert reclamation project in Arizona, where the state legislature had traded aderelict mega-mall and a custom-built habitat to an alien for a local-areaweather control machine.
#
The following Thursday, I went to the little crap-auction house on King Street.I'd put my finds from the weekend in the sale: lower minimum bid, and they tooka smaller commission than Sotheby's. Fine for moving the small stuff.
Craphound was there, of course. I knew he'd be. It was where we met, when he bidon a case of Lincoln Logs I'd found at a fire-sale.
I'd known him for a kindred spirit when he bought them, and we'd talkedafterwards, at his place, a sprawling, two-storey warehouse amid a cluster ofauto-wrecking yards where the junkyard dogs barked, barked, barked.
Inside was paradise. His taste ran to shrines -- a collection of fifties barkitsch that was a shrine to liquor; a circular waterbed on a raised podium thatwas nearly buried under seventies bachelor pad-inalia; a kitchen that was nearlyunusable, so packed it was with old barn-board furniture and rural memorabilia;a leather-appointed library straight out of a Victorian gentlemen's club; asolarium dressed in wicker and bamboo and tiki-idols. It was a hell of a place.
Craphound had known all about the Goodwills and the Sally Anns, and the auctionhouses, and the kitsch boutiques on Queen Street, but he still hadn't figuredout where it all came from.
"Yard sales, rummage sales, garage sales," I said, reclining in a vibratingnaughahyde easy-chair, drinking a glass of his pricey single-malt that he'dbought for the beautiful bottle it came in.
"But where are these? Who is allowed to make them?" Craphound hunched oppositeme, his exoskeleton locked into a coiled, semi-seated position.
"Who? Well, anyone. You just one day decide that you need to clean out thebasement, you put an ad in the _Star_, tape up a few signs, and voila, yardsale. Sometimes, a school or a church will get donations of old junk and sell itall at one time, as a fundraiser."
"And how do you locate these?" he asked, bobbing up and down slightly withexcitement.
"Well, there're amateurs who just read the ads in the weekend papers, or justpick a neighbourhood and wander around, but that's no way to go about it. What Ido is, I get in a truck, and I sniff the air, catch the scent of crap and_vroom!_, I'm off like a bloodhound on a trail. You learn things over time: likestay away from Yuppie yard sales, they never have anything worth buying, justthe same crap you can buy in any mall."
"Do you think I might accompany you some day?"
"Hell, sure. Next Saturday? We'll head over to Cabbagetown -- those old coachhouses, you'd be amazed what people get rid of. It's practically criminal."
"I would like to go with you on next Saturday very much Mr Jerry Abington." Heused to talk like that, without commas or question marks. Later, he got better,but then, it was all one big sentence.
"Call me Jerry. It's a date, then. Tell you what, though: there's a Code you gotto learn before we go out. The Craphound's Code."
"What is a craphound?"
"You're lookin' at one. You're one, too, unless I miss my guess. You'll get toknow some of the local craphounds, you hang around with me long enough. They'rethe competition, but they're also your buddies, and there're certain rules wehave."
And then I explained to him all about how you never bid against a craphound at ayard-sale, how you get to know the other fellows' tastes, and when you seesomething they might like, you haul it out for them, and they'll do the same foryou, and how you never buy something that another craphound might be lookingfor, if all you're buying it for is to sell it back to him. Just good form andcommon sense, really, but you'd be surprised how many amateurs just fail to makethe jump to pro because they can't grasp it.
#
There was a bunch of other stuff at the auction, other craphounds' weekendtreasures. This was high season, when the sun comes out and people start toclean out the cottage, the basement, the garage. There were some collectors inthe crowd, and a whole whack of antique and junk dealers, and a few pickers, andme, and Craphound. I watched the bidding listlessly, waiting for my things tocome up and sneaking out for smokes between lots. Craphound never once looked atme or acknowledged my presence, and I became perversely obsessed with catchinghis eye, so I coughed and shifted and walked past him several times, until theauctioneer glared at me, and one of the attendants asked if I needed a throatlozenge.
My lot came up. The bowling glasses went for five bucks to one of the QueenStreet junk dealers; the elephant-foot fetched $350 after a spirited bidding warbetween an antique dealer and a collector -- the collector won; the dealer tookthe top-hat for $100. The rest of it came up and sold, or didn't, and at end ofthe lot, I'd made over $800, which was rent for the month plus beer for theweekend plus gas for the truck.
Craphound bid on and bought more cowboy things -- a box of super-eight cowboymovies, the boxes mouldy, the stock itself running to slime; a Navajo blanket; aplastic donkey that dispensed cigarettes out of its ass; a big neon armadillosign.
One of the other nice things about that place over Sotheby's, there was none ofthis waiting thirty days to get a cheque. I queued up with the other pickersafter the bidding was through, collected a wad of bills, and headed for mytruck.
I spotted Craphound loading his haul into a minivan with handicapped plates. Itlooked like some kind of fungus was growing over the hood and side-panels. Oncloser inspection, I saw that the body had been covered in closely glued Lego.
Craphound popped the hatchback and threw his gear in, then opened the driver'sside door, and I saw that his van had been fitted out for a legless driver, withbrake and accelerator levers. A paraplegic I knew drove one just like it.Craphound's exoskeleton levered him into the seat, and I watched the eerilyprecise way it executed the macro that started the car, pulled theshoulder-belt, put it into drive and switched on the stereo. I heard tape-hiss,then, loud as a b-boy cruising Yonge Street, an old-timey cowboy voice: "Howdypardners! Saddle up, we're ridin'!" Then the van backed up and sped out of thelot.
I get into the truck and drove home. Truth be told, I missed the little bastard.
#
Some people said that we should have run Craphound and his kin off the planet,out of the Solar System. They said that it wasn't fair for the aliens to keep usin the dark about their technologies. They say that we should have captured aship and reverse-engineered it, built our own and kicked ass.
Some people!
First of all, nobody with human DNA could survive a trip in one of those ships.They're part of Craphound's people's bodies, as I understand it, and we justdon't have the right parts. Second of all, they _were_ sharing their tech withus -- they just weren't giving it away. Fair trades every time.
It's not as if space was off-limits to us. We can any one of us visit theirhomeworld, just as soon as we figure out how. Only they wouldn't hold our handsalong the way.
#
I spent the week haunting the "Secret Boutique," AKA the Goodwill As-Is Centreon Jarvis. It's all there is to do between yard sales, and sometimes it makesfor good finds. Part of my theory of yard-sale karma holds that if I miss oneday at the thrift shops, that'll be the day they put out the big score. So I hitthe stores diligently and came up with crap
ola. I had offended the fates, Iknew, and wouldn't make another score until I placated them. It was lonely work,still and all, and I missed Craphound's good eye and obsessive delight.
I was at the cash-register with a few items at the Goodwill when a guy in a suitbehind me tapped me on the shoulder.
"Sorry to bother you," he said. His suit looked expensive, as did his manicureand his haircut and his wire-rimmed glasses. "I was just wondering where youfound that." He gestured at a rhinestone-studded ukelele, with a cowboy hatwood-burned into the body. I had picked it up with a guilty little thrill,thinking that Craphound might buy it at the next auction.
"Second floor, in the toy section."
"There wasn't anything else like it, was there?"
"'Fraid not," I said, and the cashier picked it up and started wrapping it innewspaper.
"Ah," he said, and he looked like a little kid who'd just been told that hecouldn't have a puppy. "I don't suppose you'd want to sell it, would you?"
I held up a hand and waited while the cashier bagged it with the rest of mystuff, a few old clothbound novels I thought I could sell at a used book-store,and a Grease belt-buckle with Olivia Newton John on it. I led him out the doorby the elbow of his expensive suit.
"How much?" I had paid a dollar.
"Ten bucks?"
I nearly said, "Sold!" but I caught myself. "Twenty."
"Twenty dollars?"
"That's what they'd charge at a boutique on Queen Street."
He took out a slim leather wallet and produced a twenty. I handed him the uke.His face lit up like a lightbulb.
#
It's not that my adulthood is particularly unhappy. Likewise, it's not that mychildhood was particularly happy.
There are memories I have, though, that are like a cool drink of water. Mygrandfather's place near Milton, an old Victorian farmhouse, where the cat drankout of a milk-glass bowl; and where we sat around a rough pine table as big asmy whole apartment; and where my playroom was the draughty barn with hay-filledlofts bulging with farm junk and Tarzan-ropes.
There was Grampa's friend Fyodor, and we spent every evening at hiswrecking-yard, he and Grampa talking and smoking while I scampered in thetwilight, scaling mountains of auto-junk. The glove-boxes yielded treasures:crumpled photos of college boys mugging in front of signs, roadmaps of far-awayplaces. I found a guidebook from the 1964 New York World's Fair once, and alipstick like a chrome bullet, and a pair of white leather ladies' gloves.
Fyodor dealt in scrap, too, and once, he had half of a carny carousel, a fewhorses and part of the canopy, paint flaking and sharp torn edges protruding;next to it, a Korean-war tank minus its turret and treads, and inside the tankwere peeling old pinup girls and a rotation schedule and a crude Kilroy. Thecontrol-room in the middle of the carousel had a stack of paperback sci-finovels, Ace Doubles that had two books bound back-to-back, and when you finishedthe first, you turned it over and read the other. Fyodor let me keep them, andthere was a pawn-ticket in one from Macon, Georgia, for a transistor radio.
My parents started leaving me alone when I was fourteen and I couldn't keep fromsneaking into their room and snooping. Mom's jewelry box had books of matchesfrom their honeymoon in Acapulco, printed with bad palm-trees. My Dad kept anold photo in his sock drawer, of himself on muscle-beach, shirtless, flexing hisbiceps.
My grandmother saved every scrap of my mother's life in her basement, in dustyArmy trunks. I entertained myself by pulling it out and taking it in: her MouseEars from the big family train-trip to Disneyland in '57, and her records, andthe glittery pasteboard sign from her sweet sixteen. There were well-chewedstuffed animals, and school exercise books in which she'd practiced variationson her signature for page after page.
It all told a story. The penciled Kilroy in the tank made me see one of thoseCanadian soldiers in Korea, unshaven and crew-cut like an extra on M*A*S*H,sitting for bored hour after hour, staring at the pinup girls, fiddling with acrossword, finally laying it down and sketching his Kilroy quickly, beforeanyone saw.
The photo of my Dad posing sent me whirling through time to Toronto's MuscleBeach in the east end, and hearing the tinny AM radios playing weird psychedelicrock while teenagers lounged on their Mustangs and the girls sunbathed inbikinis that made their tits into torpedoes.
It all made poems. The old pulp novels and the pawn ticket, when I spread themout in front of the TV, and arranged them just so, they made up a poem that tookmy breath away.
#
After the cowboy trunk episode, I didn't run into Craphound again until theannual Rotary Club charity rummage sale at the Upper Canada Brewing Company. Hewas wearing the cowboy hat, sixguns and the silver star from the cowboy trunk.It should have looked ridiculous, but the net effect was naive and somehowcharming, like he was a little boy whose hair you wanted to muss.
I found a box of nice old melamine dishes, in various shades of green -- foursquare plates, bowls, salad-plates, and a serving tray. I threw them in theduffel-bag I'd brought and kept browsing, ignoring Craphound as he charmed asalty old Rotarian while fondling a box of leather-bound books.
I browsed a stack of old Ministry of Labour licenses -- barber, chiropodist,bartender, watchmaker. They all had pretty seals and were framed in stark greeninstitutional metal. They all had different names, but all from one family, andI made up a little story to entertain myself, about the proud mother saving hersons' accreditations and framing hanging them in the spare room with theirdiplomas. "Oh, George Junior's just opened his own barbershop, and littleJimmy's still fixing watches. . ."
I bought them.
In a box of crappy plastic Little Ponies and Barbies and Care Bears, I found aleather Indian headdress, a wooden bow-and-arrow set, and a fringed buckskinvest. Craphound was still buttering up the leather books' owner. I bought themquick, for five bucks.
"Those are beautiful," a voice said at my elbow. I turned around and smiled atthe snappy dresser who'd bought the uke at the Secret Boutique. He'd gone casualfor the weekend, in an expensive, L.L. Bean button-down way.
"Aren't they, though."
"You sell them on Queen Street? Your finds, I mean?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes at auction. How's the uke?"
"Oh, I got it all tuned up," he said, and smiled the same smile he'd given mewhen he'd taken hold of it at Goodwill. "I can play 'Don't Fence Me In' on it."He looked at his feet. "Silly, huh?"
"Not at all. You're into cowboy things, huh?" As I said it, I was overcome withthe knowledge that this was "Billy the Kid," the original owner of the cowboytrunk. I don't know why I felt that way, but I did, with utter certainty.
"Just trying to re-live a piece of my childhood, I guess. I'm Scott," he said,extending his hand.
_Scott?_ I thought wildly. _Maybe it's his middle name?_ "I'm Jerry."
The Upper Canada Brewery sale has many things going for it, including a beergarden where you can sample their wares and get a good BBQ burger. We gentlygravitated to it, looking over the tables as we went.
"You're a pro, right?" he asked after we had plastic cups of beer.
"You could say that."
"I'm an amateur. A rank amateur. Any words of wisdom?"
I laughed and drank some beer, lit a cigarette. "There's no secret to it, Ithink. Just diligence: you've got to go out every chance you get, or you'll missthe big score."
He chuckled. "I hear that. Sometimes, I'll be sitting in my office, and I'lljust _know_ that they're putting out a piece of pure gold at the Goodwill andthat someone else will get to it before my lunch. I get so wound up, I'm no gooduntil I go down there and hunt for it. I guess I'm hooked, eh?"
"Cheaper than some other kinds of addictions."
"I guess so. About that Indian stuff -- what do you figure you'd get for it at aQueen Street boutique?"
I looked him in the eye. He may have been something high-powered and cool andcollected in his natural environment, but just then, he was as eager and nervousas a kitchen-table poker-player at a high-stake
s game.
"Maybe fifty bucks," I said.
"Fifty, huh?" he asked.
"About that," I said.
"Once it sold," he said.
"There is that," I said.
"Might take a month, might take a year," he said.
"Might take a day," I said.
"It might, it might." He finished his beer. "I don't suppose you'd take forty?"
I'd paid five for it, not ten minutes before. It looked like it would fitCraphound, who, after all, was wearing Scott/Billy's own boyhood treasures as wespoke. You don't make a living by feeling guilty over eight hundred percentmarkups. Still, I'd angered the fates, and needed to redeem myself.
"Make it five," I said.
He started to say something, then closed his mouth and gave me a look of thanks.He took a five out of his wallet and handed it to me. I pulled the vest and bowand headdress out my duffel.
He walked back to a shiny black Jeep with gold detail work, parked next toCraphound's van. Craphound was building onto the Lego body, and the hood had aminiature Lego town attached to it.
Craphound looked around as he passed, and leaned forward with undisguisedinterest at the booty. I grimaced and finished my beer.
#
I met Scott/Billy three