Citizens by Meyer Levin

Author:Meyer Levin [Levin, Meyer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-625670-65-6
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

7. LIFE TIME JOB

WHEN RANDY CAREY was nine, the farm was sold off from under the family, at an auction. There was a secret hiding-place he had for himself, in the barn. An old buggy stood there, with broken shafts, and rents in the black leather top; a buggy never used, the years he could remember. The back of it was built out to a trunk box; he could lift the lid, curl inside, and cover it down on himself. Randy bedded that box with straw; there he hid when he was mad. The buggy was backed against a partition, and on the other side were the stalls of Pa’s pair of mules. When Randy lay hiding, he could hear the old mules bumping their noses against the wood as they licked the last grains from their feedbins.

When the auction started in the house, and men carried the plush rocker from the parlor onto the porch, and sold it, and he saw them carrying other things, coming nearer and nearer to the bed he slept on though his mother had promised the bed would not be sold, Randy boy fled to his hiding-place; but after a long while in the warm dark he heard the pack of people nearing the barn; he curled himself smaller; men passed so near that the buggy quivered; but they went beyond, and led out the old mules, and sold them. They dragged things from the barn, harness and the old grindstone, all those things he heard being sold; and at last he felt the buggy jarred; he felt hands against the wood of his box like hands seizing hold of his own body; he put his fist in his mouth to hold from hollering. They pushed the old buggy into the yard; strains of light came through the joints of the box in which he lay.

He heard his father say: “Used to be a smart contraption.”

And his mother telling: “Ben took me riding in her, ‘fore we was married. Sparked me in that buggy.”

People shook it on its springs, said the shafts were broken, said the roof was tore, said nobody wanted with buggies nowadays; and his father in his whispery voice said: “Wouldn’t take much fixing up, easy fix her up, good springs, good box in back, good for carrying feed and groceries.”

Randy heard Mr. Ritchie, the toothless old buzzard, say he’d give a dollar for her, maybe. And someone was pulling at the lid of the box where he lay; in one last frantic panic Randy tried to hold it shut, but it was yanked from his hands. The sun came in on him, and all the people saw him there, huddled in the box, his face pressed against the wood so his crying wouldn’t be seen.

His mother, lifted him out, saying: “You can’t stay there, Randyboy. She belongs to Mr. Ritchie now.”

They took up a place in the next county, cropping for Mr. Gladstone, but the furnish was scant; all year

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