Uninteresting Auction

Jill grabbed the stained cardboard box she’d bid on, loading it into her new gold Camry without looking at the contents. She’d never intended to park such a nice car in a bumpy pasture turned temporary parking lot when she bought it. Turning the air full blast, she stuck her face to the vent before she gunned out of the rutted field. A hot day for an auction--this one had dragged on for hours. Since she’d seen very few things of interest, she’d bid on this lone box that had appeared too late in the sale to inspect. Nothing like not giving the box the once-over to get her interest peaked--time for the famous four dollars that made the crowd of regulars chuckle and shake their heads since they knew that she could have easily won it for fifty cents or a buck. Yep, Jill was never going to hear the end of this, not to mention how the war-worn old-timers would tell others about this till the last one couldn’t talk. Nothing like being a newbie in the hardened rural auction arena.

As she turned onto the paved road at last, Jill wondered about the man all that junk had belonged to. He hadn’t had much of an interesting life by the looks of his estate: his furniture worn and cheap, his dishes mostly cracked and not valuable, his clothes typical of the area--jeans and buttoned cotton shirts for dress and ripped T-shirts for work. No one knew much about him, even though he’d lived there most of his life. A classic loner by all accounts, his possessions were ungodly meager for a whole life’s effort. She wondered how the man had escaped the small town gossips who spread every minute detail about all residents. Definitely odd.

She glanced at the tattered, stained cardboard box in her rearview mirror, wondering what goodies it might contain. Had she just thrown away her cash? She giggled and gave the car more gas as she zipped home.

After an hour she saw her turn-off ahead. She’d been so relieved to escape city life and find her own little farm. Welcoming shade from the enormous oaks in her well-trimmed yard called to her as she parked before putting the box of goodies on the weathered picnic table. Hopping up the three concrete back steps, she darted through the rustic door to her farmhouse kitchen.

Moments later, she returned to the side yard after a quick pit stop and now carried a tall glass filled with ice and soda, which she put down before looking into the box. The auctioneer had said it was just a box of junk, so she didn’t expect much. Standing with her eyes shut tightly, she uttered a small prayer of discovery before digging into her possible treasure box.

The first things out of the box made her laugh: a photo of a woman in a one piece-bathing suit looking back suggestively in what would today be called a cheesy picture of a fat lady. She looked at a long-expired calendar from 1929 and then at a small, leather-bound expense journal and an envelope full of Green Stamps. An cigarette lighter shaped like a beer bottle came next, broken and probably worthless. Next, she pulled out a faded flowered bowl, chipped in several places and a flat paper fan that advertised a long-forgotten feed store. A well-worn paper bag contained screws, nails, and roofing tacks, not exactly treasure.

Shrugging, she pulled out a stack of papers and what looked like molding personal journals. Several tattered, yellowed photos fell out and onto the soft grass. One of the fallen photos instantly caught her eye. She bent, picked it up, and wiped at the years of grime. An elderly couple standing in front of her farmhouse astonished her. She pulled out the unvarnished picnic bench, sat down, and laid out the stack of loose photos like playing cards. One of the photos showed her house while the others contained strange shots of wells and barns that could be on any farm in the area. Grinning, she examined the elderly couple that smiled uncomfortably back. It was an odd smile, but maybe they were shy, kind folks uncomfortable with having their picture taken. Her grandparents had been like that; always looking like someone threatened them with bodily harm when they had their pictures taken.

Turning the photo, she noticed a date: 1944. Ernest and Wilma Sheller, 55th Anniversary, May 1944. She noticed several different sized wooden outbuildings in the photos that no longer existed, but her eye kept going back to their faces. She found it unsettling, but she didn’t have a clue why.

She picked up the stack of loose papers and read them: out-dated receipts, personal letters, and a few get-well cards all dated from different months in 1944. Her eager hands dived back in the box and pulled out a dusty scrapbook, its yellowed pages sticking out at odd angles.

After laying it down on the unpainted picnic table, she opened the dusty cover as a meadowlark called from a nearby fallow field. One large, yellowed headline shocked her: “The Shellers Found Dead--Murdered!” She gasped. The couple’s names on the photo had been Sheller. Grabbing the photo, she looked at them again, turning it over to re-read the names. Sure enough, it was the same. The photo in the newspaper clipping looked almost exactly like the one she looked at. The next photo showed official police and sheriff's cars parked in front of the slain people’s house. Her house!

Jill’s eyes filled with tears as she reeled from the shock of finding out that those people in the photo had been murdered in her wonderful old, post Civil War farmhouse. The light breeze and birdsong faded; the rusted truck rattling by went unnoticed as Jill’s attention turned to the book to read all the clippings.

People from the Sheller’s church had been concerned when the couple hadn’t shown for services; one of the members had stopped by to see if one of them was ill. Mr. Byron Rogers had been horrified to find the couple in their room with their heads bashed in, the whole house splattered with blood. The county paper theorized at great length that the couple had put up quite a fight with the killer because of the blood. The local doctor who had examined the bodies claimed that they had been hit repeatedly with a heavy metal or wooden object that had rounded bumps all over it. Many people speculated about what kind of a weapon had been used in the murders or whether it’d ever be found. Jill paused in her reading, wondering what in the world the killer had used. Then she shivered and knew she’d never sleep again during a stormy night when all noises sounded like someone breaking in.

Jill, surprised at how much detail the newspapers gave about the crime scene and the bodies, shrugged as she thought about it, shaking her head. She guessed that it must have been big news here in this small community.

The articles also said the whole town had been shocked, had demanded that the sheriff do something to find the killer or killers. The sheriff’s department had interviewed several men, but they’d quickly decided that their chief suspect was a retarded man who had worked for the couple for ten years. He had been fired two days before the murders; the paper said that there had been hard feelings between them. Jill snickered at the naiveté of the reporter and that anyone would print such a silly statement. Who could get fired and still feel friendly? The creak of the rusted hinge on the listing barn made her pull away from the papers. See, she was scared and paranoid even outside. What would it be like when she tried to sleep?

Swallowing her fear and laughing at herself, she read on. One reporter said officials thought the farm worker was the killer because he had a large amount of money they’d found in the room he rented. All the money from Mrs. Sheller’s flour canister had vanished, and it was reasonable to think that the killer had taken it. A carload of teenagers, the Volks Wagen thumping rap, zipped down the gravel road, the dust shooting up like a tail behind.

Pausing, she stretched her back and neck, her tense vertebrae snapping like microwave popcorn. She hadn’t realized how intensely she’d hunched over her finds. She should just toss the whole box before she found out too much and wanted to move. Then she decided she was certainly brave enough to continue. Inwardly, she laughed at herself, but it was a hollow laugh.

The article also talked about the killer’s bizarre actions of defiling the Sheller’s photo album, the killer taking their fifty-fifth wedding anniversary photo as a souvenir. The officials had searched the handy man’s apartment extensively but hadn’t found the photo. She read that the retarded handy man, easily tried and convicted for the slayings, had been sent to the gas chamber one year to the date of the deaths.

Jill’s stomach turned at the thought of anyone going to the gas chamber as she read the joyous mentions in the paper from the townspeople about how judgment day had come for the condemned man. Glowing summer days like today had vanished for him forever.

Jill put the scrapbook down, taking a deep breath. This murder story was anything but what she had expected to find in that box. Troubled by the whole affair, she wondered what Mr. Davis had to do with it all. Was he a ghoul who enjoyed death? Or just thrilled by the crime of the century in this sleepy country place? Did she really need to know? Shouldn’t she just leave it alone? No. Her curiosity had to be satisfied. She loved her farmhouse. Didn’t she owe that old couple some respect and time? She decided to read some of the journals to see if this Mr. Davis had some position with the courts or with the newspaper since he had documented the event so completely.

She read several of the journals but didn’t get much out of them other than Mr. Davis didn’t like the Shellers and thought that they put on airs anytime he saw them. This opinion hit Jill as odd since he’d mentioned the Shellers so many times in his journals, stating how angry he was with them over what seemed like very little. Maybe Davis lived alone because no one had liked the hateful man.

When she picked up the letters next, she noticed that the postmark matched the time of the killings. She read them, shocked at what they contained. Davis’s mother and aunt had been concerned when they heard about the killings. His mother had begged him to write to her and promise on the bible that he hadn’t had a thing to do with it. His mother also mentioned that he was out of prison and that he mustn't do anything to bring more shame on the family.

Jill, sitting the brittle letters down, stared off into the clouds as she considered all the things she had just read. This Mr. Davis sure had a lot of interest in the killings and had done a great job of documenting them. He also seemed to have mentioned them in his journals many, many times. Why would his mother beg him to promise her that he’d had nothing to do with the killings if she hadn’t thought him capable? Had he been to prison for violence? She leaned on the table, her elbows digging into the rough wood; she lay her head on her slim arms to think.

Deeply in thought she didn’t hear a truck crunch into her circular gravel driveway and park beside her car.

“Hello, there. Did I catch you napping?” An older man, whom she recognized as the auctioneer, got out of his extended cab white truck, holding a box similar to the one she’d purchased. He smiled at Jill, waiting for her to invite him into her rose-covered yard.

“Oh, hi, I didn’t hear you pull up. What are you doing here?” Jill’s face turned red when she realized how rude she sounded; she jumped off the bench, came up to the gentleman, and offered her hand. She realized that he couldn’t shake because of the box he carried.

“I’m Roger from the auction. There was a mistake at the sale, and I stopped by to see if I could get it straightened up. The box you bought wasn’t for sale. The family wanted to keep those things, you know. Family history? So I rounded up what was left and brought it to see if you would be willing to trade boxes. What do you say?” He held out the box as if giving her an award. His smiling eyes shifted from Jill to the picnic table behind her.

“Sure, no problem. I just hope it is happier than this one has been. I mean, I just found out that a double murder happened in my house in the nineteen forties.” She tried to smile, but she forced it.

“Oh, yeah, that did happen here, didn’t it? It’s been so many years ago I’d almost forgotten about it. Did that box have something to do with the murders?” He pushed back his gray, well-worn cowboy hat and looked squarely into her eyes, his deep voice easy and friendly.

“Yeah, it did. Did you know Mr. Davis? He was such an odd man according to what I just read. Come here and look at this stuff.” She strode over to the table, waving her hands over the moldering scrapbook and journals.

“You could say I did know of the man, but he kept to himself mostly. Let me see this stuff.” He sat down on the bench, took off his hat, and skimmed the journals and scrapbook.

Jill hurried into the house to make herself a new soda and bring one out for the auctioneer, too. She threw a few ginger snaps on a milk glass plate before returning to the picnic table. Roger sat where she’d left him and smiled when she approached with the cool drinks.

“You're right; he did have a lot to say about the Shellers, didn’t he? Odd that he mentioned them so many times and seemed to have been watching them, too.” He pointed to a page he read and offered it to Jill. She gladly sat the acrylic, butterfly-covered tray down, handed him his drink and took the journal from him. The auctioneer stood with his hands deep in his back pockets as he pondered what he’d just read.

Jill read:

“June 25th, 1944. It is so hot for June, and I’m not sure I can stand any more. At least I won’t have to put up with either old so- and-so snooping around me and my past any more. Not after tonight. I said all I had to say, and he denied how they was snooping around, like I made it all up. It was fun to watch them flounder and squawk as I showed them my pal. I’m so glad to have that taken care of that problem. I better go to bed now. I hurt my back when I swung my friend so many times. There will be a lot of action around there tomorrow, I expect, and I want to watch the whole circus.”

They stared at each other; then she looked back at the journal. Something nagged at Jill, something that she had seen on one of the documents or the scrapbook. She shook her head, grabbed the scrapbook and found the date they had been killed: June 26th, 1944! She sat down before grabbing the stack of receipts to look at the dates on them: June 25, 1944. She filed madly back through the scrapbook and reread one of the articles that talked about a photo that the killer had ripped out of the old couples’ photo album: a photo of them in front of their house on their 55th wedding anniversary. Jill looked at the auctioneer and then back at the pile of stuff on the table. She’d read about the killing in the killer’s own hand! It had to be him! The other photos that’d been in the journal flashed back in her mind as she wondered aloud, “Could those other photos show where the weapon or the bloody clothes the killer wore are stashed?”

“Interesting thought to be so right. You see, my mother‘s family had already been through so much with my father’s rather violent streak even before this incident. Yet I’m sorry to have to keep my family’s honor again. It’s nosy people like you and the Shellers that make my family take such drastic actions to keep our secrets private,” he growled from behind her.

Jill’s heart lurched at the instant recognition that a killer stood behind her. A sudden rush of pain shot through her head as she fell to the ground. She felt another heavy blow before she blacked out.

The killer stood, looking around to make sure that no one saw what he’d done. He strolled over to the picnic table to grab his hat. He put the loose papers, the scrapbook, and the photos in the original box and set it on the bench. He put the almost identical box on the picnic table, setting a few things around as if she had been looking at them. He put the other box in his truck before coming back to where Jill lay. He bent down and put the early Renaissance, long-handled mace with its many rows of four pointed studs on each side on her back and wiped off as much of the head splitting blood and tissue he could. He treasured the weapon that’d been handed down for centuries on his mother’s side, especially since in was still being used for what it was meant to do: kill. At least there wouldn’t be any further shame brought to his grandmother or his mom.

He pulled her up into a lawn chair and put her hands on her stomach like she napped. He would have taken her in the house, but he just couldn’t stand to go in there again. After all, he could still see the blood splatters from the first killings, the glorious red so shining and hot. He had been such a young kid when his daddy had killed the old couple, but he never forgot the beauty of blood.