The Auctioneer by Joan Samson Page B

we ain’t volunteered.”
     
    Harlowe shared a preacher with eleven other towns. She spent one quarter in each area, preaching in three different towns every Sunday. It wasn’t a job with much appeal for men with families, and so for eight years they’d had a woman—Janet Solossen. Once a year she called on the Moores, rattling in over their road in an old Willys Jeep, always just when they least expected her. She wore men’s work boots and covered her large uncorseted frame any which way, usually with blue jeans and dark turtleneck sweaters. Before she came in, she always stood and talked cows and tractors with John in the yard, running nicotine-stained fingers through her cropped yellow-gray hair. In the front room, she smoked and talked babies with Mim, and quilts and television with Ma. Nobody thought she was particularly smart, since she always talked about what they knew, but they noticed that she usually had good answers when problems came up, and they had long since concluded that, woman or not, she had a line to God in the proper way of preachers. People had stopped calling her “that lady preacher.” She was just “the preacher” generally, and “Reverend Solossen” to her face. Except for the newcomers and the French Canadians, most of the people in Harlowe still got married and buried out of the Union Church, but there weren’t as many as there used to be who paid attention to it on any regular basis.
    “The first Sunday of the preacher’s quarter here’s comin’ up,” Mim said. “I don’t rightly see how she can come by and not notice.”
    “And when she asks,” John mocked, “I suppose you’ll say you gave it all away because an old man took a stroke, and an elm tree fell on a greenhouse?”
    “I expect the preacher could sit patient for the whole long tale.” And if we tell her and she thinks it’s us is wrong and passes on our tellin’?”
    “I’m goin’ to tell her anyhow.”
     
    Sunday was cold and bright, etched with the fresh hard energy of autumn. Ma was pleased to be going to church. Looking strange and fragile in her navy blue gabardine suit, she sat between Hildie and John on the hard seat of the pickup truck. After Pa died, John had taken her to church until she gave it up of her own accord. “It ain’t the same,” she said, “with you a twistin’ and turnin’ in the pew like a cat in a trap.”
    John and Mim said nothing as they drove slowly past the church with its half-finished steeple. John passed the four shiny new Crew Cab trucks in front, then pulled to a stop by the post office.
    “Don’t stop,” Mim said. “No point to goin’ now. We seen enough already.”
    “Not go!” Ma said. “Just on account of them trucks? They got as much right to the church as you. More. It would a been fittin’ when you took a Harlowe man if you’d a took his church as well. But you was always strong in your ways when it was any but Johnny doin’ the pushin’.”
    “Get out, get out,” sang Hildie, absorbed in the delight of wearing her party dress. “I want to twirl my twirly skirt.”
    And the child’s as wild as a Chinese, added Ma. “You send her to Sunday School once. Then she says no and you let her be.”
    “Look who’s teachin’ it, Ma,” Mim said.
    “Well Sunday School’s Sunday School. And anyway, I say it’s Mudgett’s behind all this.”
    John let the truck idle, staring out at the church. Ma reached over and patted Mim’s knee. “Not that I blame you,” she said. “It’s just you mustn’t let them stop you when you got a plan.”
    In the foyer of the church, the greeters lined up—first Sonny and Theresa Pike, then Mickey Cogswell looking overstuffed and florid in a suitcoat and tie. The Moores shook hands unsmiling with the Pikes and passed on to Cogswell.
    “Where’s Agnes?” Mim asked.
    “Not up to comin’,” he said. He looked down at Hildie and had no greeting for her. “You heard the preacher’s gone?” he