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Devious Intentions
By Carrillee Collins Burke
Ted lowered the top on our Chevy convertible, backed it out of the garage,
down the driveway and into the street. He pointed the car's nose toward unfamiliar territory for a Sunday ride.
Miles
from home we exited the freeway to a blacktop road punctured with potholes. It took us past dairy farms and white Victorian
houses with decorative gingerbread trim. There were pastures of Guernsey cows and Appaloosa horses.
As I absorbed
the Grandma Moses scene around me the blacktop road suddenly changed to deep rutted red clay, hardened from spring rains and
the hot summer sun. The land was scrubby and so was the house ahead on our left.
Ted slowed the car to a crawl when
he spied a "Yard Sale" sign attached to a broken-down, wooden gate that hung sideways between a lattice arch full of rambunctious
pink roses. It seemed nature had not informed the happy looking flowers growing wild all over the weedy lawn to give up the
charade. Ahead of us, a new Buick Le Sabre stood in a shed by a dirt drive that led beyond the house to the barn. There, a
Jeep sat under a huge oak tree.
Dust covered our shoes as we walked the drive to the sale items. An elderly couple
with two young women approached from the field below the barn. The old man stuffed paper bills into his shirt pocket as he
bade the women good-bye with a "thank you." The young women went to their Jeep and the couple walked laboriously toward us.
The man wore bib overalls with a long-sleeved plaid shirt. His crumpled straw hat shaded his eyes. It was difficult
to determine just how old he really was.
The woman was short with delicate features, weathered from too much sun and
wind. She fanned her face with the purple flowered apron she wore over a yellow ankle length, long-sleeved dress. Her white
canvas shoes were torn and dirty. Straggly strands of silver hair from the twisted knot atop her head stuck to her sweaty
face and wire-rimmed glasses. She appeared to have been crying.
The old man wiped his face with a red bandanna and
loudly blew his nose. "What can we do for you nice folk?" he asked.
"Just looking around. Can't resist a yard sale,"
Ted said with a chuckle.
"I know what you mean. Y'all just take a good look and maybe you'll see something you like."
"Are you selling your farm, too?" I asked. They didn't answer but their sad expressions spoke volumes.
We
saw nothing but junk from old tires to a paint-by-number water color of a sailboat all lined up on boards balanced between
saw horses. The boards covered with hardened chicken poop probably had been roosts in the abandoned chicken house that now
leaned dangerously from the hillside.
I felt they were good people, fallen on hard times. The charred rear of their
house probably didn't help. We talked as they followed us to our car.
"You had a fire?" Ted asked, nodding toward
the house.
"Yes sir, we did. A while back Mother stuck too much wood into our old cookin' stove, and poof, we had
us a humdinger of a fire. She knowed better but, well . . ."
"Now, Father, you promised not to blame me fer our troubles."
"I'm sorry, Mother," he said, hugging her against him. "I'm not blamin' you. It gives us an excuse to move away. That
is, when we can afford to."
As we were leaving, two cars passed us coming in. We drove only a short distance when
we noticed "Them."
In the field below the barn, near a patch of white field daisies were three small iron tricycles
with just a smidgen of dried, brittle rubber left on the wheel rims. Although rusted with time, they were still worth a pretty
penny on the antique market. "My gosh," Ted said, "they must be at least fifty years old."
The road was too narrow
to do a U-turn so we backed all the way back to the house. The old couple hurried from the rickety porch as if they had been
waiting our return.
"Say, what are you asking for the three tricycles out there?" Ted asked, pointing to the field.
"Tricycles? Oh my. Well, can't say I'd want to sell them seein' they belonged to our little boys. One year apart in
ages, they was."
Ted told him we'd be interested in buying them.
"Well, now, I don't rightly know. What do
you think, Mother? Wanna put a price on them?"
She pressed her glasses close to her eyes and starred at the ground
for awhile. Then without a word she ran through the weeds to the tricycles. We followed.
"What do you say if I ask
a hundred?" Would you want to sell them?" Father asked her.
Mother collapsed to the ground and caressed first one
little rusted seat then another. "I don't know, Father. They been stuck here in this old red clay for so long I'd miss them
if they was gone. Wouldn't you?" She held her chest while tears rolled down her weathered cheeks and escaped into the collar
of her dress. "Oh, dear." She sniffled and swiped at a tear.
Her husband offered an explanation. "You see,"he said,
"these little trikes belonged to our baby boys who drowned in a flash flood we had in ... from that creek y'all crossed back
there a ways."
"Okay, I can see how you'd want to hang onto them," Ted said, and walked a few steps away, then turned."You
said one hundred. Is that for each?" I knew what he was thinking. It was his way to help these people without embarrassing
them.
"Yes'um, but, I can see you're real good folk, so I'll say a hundred for all three." Without hesitation, Ted
pulled his wallet from his back pocket, drew out a fifty, three twenties and, his last two tens.
The man counted the
money and offered to give back the change, but Ted declined. "You keep it, and you can also keep the trikes. I couldn't take
away your memories."
"God bless you for your good heart," the old man said.
Before driving off, we watched
them limp their way back to the porch. In our rearview mirror we saw a car slow down to take a look.
"They're having
a lot of traffic for such a crummy sale," I said. And Ted said maybe they advertised. That had to be it, I reasoned.
We
took a last look at the little trikes so forlorn against the backdrop of a rotting barn with a faded MAIL POUCH Tobacco sign.
A hawk swooped close overhead, glided near the ground and landed on the seat of the middle tricycle. In my mind's eye I saw
three little boys with bare feet, bib overalls and bare backs bent low over handlebars as they pedaled faster and faster in
a race down the front walk to the rose covered arch over the gate.
I felt good that we had spread some sunshine on
this dear old pair. Ted smiled when I glanced at him. We were in agreement.
We'd driven so far and taken so long at
the farm that it was late evening and too chilly to ride in an open car. We were also hungry. We pulled in to a roadside diner
miles from the farm, parked next to a new Buick Le Sabre and raised the top.
We chose a booth and sit down. We were
still basking in the warmth of our goodwill when the waitress yelled a greeting to the couple behind us.
"How's business?
Still working the same place?"
"Yeah, for a few more days, then we'll move on. Made a potfull today from that ad in
the weekly and our sad tale about three little dead boys. Would you believe we made near a thousand dollars selling those
rusted antiques over and over and no one took them.
"What's the real story with those tricycles?" The waitress asked.
"Don't know, don't care."
"Don't you feel guilty"
"Hell no," he answered.
I peeked over the
back of my seat and saw two young people dressed in jeans and T-shirts who had removed their appearances. Eyeglasses, straw
hats, wigs and fake noses were on the table. "Mother" was busy cleaning her face of makeup.
"I couldn't believe one
sucker was actually proud to overpay us," she said, and snickered. Think we'll take those little moneymakers with us."
"I
think not," Ted whispered to me.
Disillusioned and angry we drove back to the farm. In the dark we walked across the
field toward our purchase with nothing but a sliver of moon to guide us. One by one we pulled the tricycles loose from the
hard red clay and eased them into the trunk of our car.
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