At 8:30 on a Sunday morning in late September, 78 year-old Harold White hammered a sign into his lawn. “Garage Sale,” was all it read. It was unseasonably warm, and the air outside of Des Moines was already thick and humid. Harold pulled a kerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow.
“Harold!
Come inside, the coffee’s ready.” Martha, Harold’s wife, was short and plump,
and she was missing a joint on her left index finger.
“In
a minute, dear, I want to make sure that everything’s out.” Walking around the
lawn, Harold took stock of the 50 odd years that lay across it. With a heavy
sigh, he made his way to the front door, where Martha was waiting for him. She
handed him a cup and gave his arm a squeeze.
The
first person arrived at 9:15. Middle-aged and with a look that reminded him of
Olive Oyl, the woman made a beeline for Harold without even slowing to peruse.
“Do
you have any chickens?”
“Chickens?
Like, real live chickens? No ma’am, I don’t think you can have farm animals in
Des Moines.”
The
woman appeared exasperated. “Not real chickens.
Chicken figurines. Really anything with a chicken on it. Or a rooster.”
“So…
Poultry. Is what you’re looking for.”
“Yes.
I collect them. So do you have any?”
“Well
ma’am, I don’t know that I do, but you’re welcome to take a look.” The woman
glared at Harold, but began to make her way through the boxes and piles anyway.
She flipped through old books and magazines- one on perennial flowers, multiple
copies of Life, a children’s mystery
novel, and a calendar from 1983- as well as a big box filled with odds and ends
for the kitchen.
“What’s
this? Are you selling this box? It’s empty, and honestly not worth a damn
thing.” The box in question had once contained Harold’s “Sunday shoes,” his
only nice pair, worn once a week to church.
“It’s
actually not. Empty, I mean.” The woman peered into the box again, shaking it
as if to dislodge some previously invisible item.
“Look
buddy,” she held out the open box to prove it, “it’s obviously empty, what’re
you trying to pull?”
“It’s a box of
childhood dreams, ma’am. You can’t see them, but they’re there. And they’re a
buck each. A buck fifty for the big ones.”
“Dreams. You want
to sell me dreams.” The woman scoffed, but held onto the box. “Whose dreams…?”
“I’m not quite
sure, to be honest. I been collecting ‘em since I was a kid myself. The wife
said it was time to clean house. Out with the old in with the new and what have
you.”
“You can’t be
serious. You can’t sell dreams.
They’re intangible, they… they don’t exist. Not like that.”
“Well ma’am,
you’re entitled to your beliefs. Find any chickens?”
“Chickens? Oh. No,
no chickens. But um, I’ll take one of these dreams.”
“You want a big
one or a small one?”
“Big, I guess.”
“You got any
preference on the kind of dream, or you want it to be a surprise?”
“Hell, surprise
me.” She was sure she was being taken for a fool, but it was only $1.50.
Harold squatted
down and put on the pair of reading glasses that hung around his neck. Creasing
his brow as he shuffled through the box, he stood a moment later, his hand in a
fist. “I think you’ll like this one,” he said as he carefully placed what was
in his palm into a small brown paper bag and handed it to her.
“So… That’s it? Do
I have to do anything? Say some magic words, keep it refrigerated?”
“No ma’am, just
keep it in the bag so that you don’t lose it, and pull it out whenever you
like. Personally, I prefer right before I got to bed, or on a day I’m feeling
low.”
“Alright. Well,
thanks… Have a good day?” It sounded more like a question than a statement, as
she handed Harold a dollar bill and fifty cents in assorted change.
“You too ma’am,
you too.”
~
Two hours later, Harold had sold various
memories, childhood dreams, and one true love (not his own; he had picked up
someone else’s by mistake years ago at a carnival in Missouri. He figured it
must have been lost during a particularly bumpy round of bumper cars), along
with an almost complete china set- one teacup was missing- and myriad
knickknacks.
John,
a thirty-five-year-old B-Bops employee, was spending his Sunday going to garage
sales, looking for old McDonald’s Happy Meal collectables; glass mugs with
Garfield, chicken nuggets dressed as Dracula, and other fast food
paraphernalia. At Harold’s garage sale, John found a small tin box with faded
lettering. It wasn’t from McDonald’s, but he was still intrigued.
“That
shouldn’t be out here, it’s not for sale,” Harold said from behind John,
startling him into almost dropping the box.
“Why
not? What is it? I’ll give you two bucks.” The fact that it wasn’t for sale
made John want it.
“Like
I said, not for sale. Martha musta put it out. She’s always trying to get rid
of things, thinks I won’t notice.”
John
didn’t know who Martha was, but he knew now he wanted that box. “Ten bucks.
That’s probably triple what it’s worth.”
“No
sir, not for sale.” Harold plucked the box out of John’s hand, holding it close
to his chest.
“Well
will you at least tell me what it is?”
“It’s
an old memory. My memory. Of the best day of my life.” The tears threatening to
form in Harold’s eyes made John uncomfortable, like he had walked in on a
private moment.
“I,
uh… That’s cool, I’ll keep looking.” As John watched Harold carry the tin box
up the front steps and into his house, he wished he had looked in the box, and
wanted to know what the memory had been. Instead he settled for a daydream and
a “#1 Dad” mug, blind to the irony that he had not paid child support in three
months nor seen Jack Jr. in just as many.
~
Rachel returned home tired and hungry after a day of going from garage
sale to garage sale, looking for chickens. Plates with chickens, rooster cookie
jars, aprons with hens on the pockets, really anything poultry related. She
unwrapped her finds and placed them throughout the house. Then she saw the
small bag, which appeared empty but apparently held someone’s dream. She
hesitated, as if afraid that something might jump out from the bag and bite
her. “This is stupid,” she said aloud. “There’s nothing in the damn bag, just
open it.”
Unfolding
the top and slowly opening it, Rachel peered inside. As she brought the bag
closer to her face to get a better look, she could smell a faint musk, like the
way her grandmother’s attic smelled. This immediately made her nostalgic, which
in turn made her skeptical. Was this the old man’s game, keeping old paper bags
in storage, and then selling them as “childhood dreams” or something? She
inhaled deeply, and as she let out a breath, something happened.
It was
subtle at first, the way you can feel the ocean air before you actually reach
the water. Then, all at once, Rachel was overwhelmed; with happiness, with a
sense of lightness and openness she hadn’t known since she was seven. It
smelled like lilacs and felt like a pile of kittens. Rachel fell asleep that
night dreaming of everything that could still be. The next morning, she quit
her job as a dental assistant and went to the post office to obtain her first
passport.
~
John got home that night and poured
Old Crow whiskey into his new #1 Dad mug, without bothering to wash it out
first. He had three messages on his answering machine; two from his
ex-girlfriend, demanding that John a) pay the child support he still owed, and
b) take Jack Jr. to the goddamn park like he promised. He listened vaguely to
these messages, with little interest. Turning on the TV and flipping through
channels hoping to find an old episode of Friends
or Will and Grace, he finally
settled for Frasier. The third message
was from his mother, reminding him to help her repaint the kitchen tomorrow
like he promised. John did not intend on returning any of the calls.
After
two more mugs of Old Crow, John, leaving the television on for background noise,
made his way to bed, passing the kitchen long enough to put his mug in the sink
atop week-old dishes. It was then that he noticed the paper bag on the counter.
In a whiskey haze, he vaguely remembered buying a “daydream” off of some old
geezer. This made him chuckle. Still, he took the bag into the bedroom with
him.
Skeptical,
but also a little drunk, John tucked himself into his unwashed sheets and
opened the bag. Peering in, there was a faint smell of something, which John
took for his own stale breath. Inhaling more deeply, John felt a sudden rush.
It was ecstasy and calm, it was his grandmother’s pasta sauce and a feeling of
accomplishment when he helped knead her homemade dough. He fell asleep, the
paper bag gripped tightly in his hand so as not to let anything out.
John woke up the
next morning feeling inspired. He called his grandmother and they talked for hours.
About how he had loved to cook with her when he was little, how sorry he was
that he stole $5 from her wallet when he was 13, about that time he snuck into
her house when he was 16 and she was in Boca, because he wanted to be alone
with his girlfriend so he could get laid but she only gave him a BJ. Finally,
telling his Nana that he was going to open a successful restaurant and name it
after her, John hung up with his grandmother and called his son.
~
Once the garage sale had ended,
Harold moved everything that hadn’t sold back into storage, and gladly accepted
the iced tea that Martha handed him. They spent the waning hours of the day on
the porch, watching as the sun set over Iowa. After dinner, just the two of
them and long absent of the three children who had gone off to college and
other pursuits, Harold and Martha slipped into their pajamas and pecked each
other chastely on the lips.
As
Martha reached for her book, a biography of Ulysses S. Grant, Harold reached
for the tin box.
“Not
that again. I thought I had finally gotten rid of it,” Martha tsk-ed, eying it
sideways.
“Never,
my darling, no matter how hard you try,” Harold smiled at his wife, kissed her
again, and opened the box. It was haystacks and horses, wild roses and the
faint smell of Martha’s hair. It was their wedding day and, nearly sixty years
later, they were still twenty and had everything to look forward to.
Harold
fell asleep with a smile on his wrinkled old face, a nasal strip across his
bridge to keep him from snoring quite so loudly. Martha, despite her insistence
that he get rid of all the knick-knacks, memories, and dreams that cluttered
the house, was secretly pleased that her husband of decades still went to bed
each night thinking of her; not aged and fragile as she was now, but young and
beautiful and bright. She returned to her book, but took a quick peek inside
the tin box before she turned off the light, and the two fell asleep with their
hands held like teenagers.
***
After receiving an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in
Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts in 2011,
Madeleine Zinn left Oakland for the Rocky Mountains (none of which she skis,
snowboards or hikes). She now lives in Denver with her cats Mr. Pants and Olive
(aka Fatsy Cline). Mistakenly under the impression that there were 100 seconds
in a minute until, like, the third grade; when she’s not waiting tables and
poppin' bottles to make that skrilla, she’s working on her writing and photography.
