weekend treasures. This was high season, when the sun comes out and people start to clean out the cottage, the basement, the garage. There were some collectors in the crowd, and a whole whack of antique and junk dealers, and a few pickers, and me, and Craphound. I watched the bidding listlessly, waiting for my things to come up and sneaking out for smokes between lots. Craphound never once looked at me or acknowledged my presence, and I became perversely obsessed with catching his eye, so I coughed and shifted and walked past him several times, until the auctioneer glared at me, and one of the attendants asked if I needed a throat lozenge.
My lot came up. The bowling glasses went for five bucks to one of the Queen Street junk dealers; the elephant-foot fetched $350 after a spirited bidding war between an antique dealer and a collector -- the collector won; the dealer took the top-hat for $100. The rest of it came up and sold, or didn’t, and at end of the lot, I’d made over $800, which was rent for the month plus beer for the weekend plus gas for the truck.
Craphound bid on and bought more cowboy things -- a box of super-eight cowboy movies, the boxes mouldy, the stock itself running to slime; a Navajo blanket; a plastic donkey that dispensed cigarettes out of its ass; a big neon armadillo sign.
One of the other nice things about that place over Sotheby’s, there was none of this waiting thirty days to get a cheque. I queued up with the other pickers after the bidding was through, collected a wad of bills, and headed for my truck.
I spotted Craphound loading his haul into a minivan with handicapped plates. It looked like some kind of fungus was growing over the hood and side-panels. On closer 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’s side door, and I saw that his van had been fitted out for a legless driver, with brake and accelerator levers. A paraplegic I knew drove one just like it. Craphound’s exoskeleton levered him into the seat, and I watched the eerily precise way it executed the macro that started the car, pulled the shoulder-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: “Howdy pardners! Saddle up, we’re ridin’!” Then the van backed up and sped out of the lot.
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 us in the dark about their technologies. They say that we should have captured a ship 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 just don’t have the right parts. Second of all, they were sharing their tech with us -- 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 their homeworld, just as soon as we figure out how. Only they wouldn’t hold our hands along the way.
~ * ~
I spent the week haunting the “Secret Boutique,” AKA the Goodwill As-Is Centre on Jarvis. It’s all there is to do between yard sales, and sometimes it makes for good finds. Part of my theory of yard-sale karma holds that if I miss one day at the thrift shops, that’ll be the day they put out the big score. So I hit the stores diligently and came up with crapola. I had offended the fates, I knew, 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
My lot came up. The bowling glasses went for five bucks to one of the Queen Street junk dealers; the elephant-foot fetched $350 after a spirited bidding war between an antique dealer and a collector -- the collector won; the dealer took the top-hat for $100. The rest of it came up and sold, or didn’t, and at end of the lot, I’d made over $800, which was rent for the month plus beer for the weekend plus gas for the truck.
Craphound bid on and bought more cowboy things -- a box of super-eight cowboy movies, the boxes mouldy, the stock itself running to slime; a Navajo blanket; a plastic donkey that dispensed cigarettes out of its ass; a big neon armadillo sign.
One of the other nice things about that place over Sotheby’s, there was none of this waiting thirty days to get a cheque. I queued up with the other pickers after the bidding was through, collected a wad of bills, and headed for my truck.
I spotted Craphound loading his haul into a minivan with handicapped plates. It looked like some kind of fungus was growing over the hood and side-panels. On closer 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’s side door, and I saw that his van had been fitted out for a legless driver, with brake and accelerator levers. A paraplegic I knew drove one just like it. Craphound’s exoskeleton levered him into the seat, and I watched the eerily precise way it executed the macro that started the car, pulled the shoulder-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: “Howdy pardners! Saddle up, we’re ridin’!” Then the van backed up and sped out of the lot.
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 us in the dark about their technologies. They say that we should have captured a ship 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 just don’t have the right parts. Second of all, they were sharing their tech with us -- 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 their homeworld, just as soon as we figure out how. Only they wouldn’t hold our hands along the way.
~ * ~
I spent the week haunting the “Secret Boutique,” AKA the Goodwill As-Is Centre on Jarvis. It’s all there is to do between yard sales, and sometimes it makes for good finds. Part of my theory of yard-sale karma holds that if I miss one day at the thrift shops, that’ll be the day they put out the big score. So I hit the stores diligently and came up with crapola. I had offended the fates, I knew, 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
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