Cougar Highway

Chapter 14: Conversing With A Snake-In-The-Grass

    Wyatt's "Rummage Sale Extravaganza" was a town-wide event held each summer, and my mother attended it with a religious fervor.  She would jump in the LTD and head into town early in the morning so she could be the first one there when people opened their sales, and she would dicker like a pro when it came to getting an item for the lowest price.

    It was Friday morning, a week after the Plan "B" incident at The Dead Zone, and Mom was off on her annual pilgrimage to the yard sales.  I didn't go with her on that first trip, but when she came home just before noon, she told me she had purchased a nice old cedar closet for next to nothing, and wondered if I could help her fetch it home with my truck.

    After lunch, we climbed into my pickup and I drove her back to Wyatt. When we got to the place where Mom had bought the closet, there were dozens of people combing through all the stuff strewn across their front yard. The cedar closet was in the row of items that lined the driveway and I pulled in and parked next to it.

    We got out and I sized it up, lifting one side slightly to test the weight. "Woof!" I said. "We should have brought Dad along."

    "I'll go see if the proprietor will be able to lend us a hand," Mom said as she started toward their garage.

    While she was gone, I decided to look around. I had never been an avid attendee of rummage sales, but seeing the wide variety of items that this particular yard had to offer, I reasoned that there must be something there for just about everybody. I spied a pair of pink, fuzzy dice, the kind people used to dangle from their vehicle's rear view mirrors, and when I saw the twenty-five cent price tag, I figured they would be the perfect accessory to my old truck.

    A minute later, I saw a car speaker in the middle of the yard, sitting between a pile of board games and a rusted old basement jack. It was just one lone speaker, and I thought it looked similar to the one Mike and I had inadvertently crushed the previous week. I picked it us and examined it, but it didn't seem to have a price tag.

    About then Mom showed up with the owner in tow, and he said he would help us load Mom's cedar closet into the back of my pickup. I held up the car speaker and asked him if he knew what its price was.

    "Make me an offer," he told me. I stood there wondering how much it would be worth, when he said, "Everyone keeps asking if it works, which it does, but since I have no way of testing it to show them, nobody wants to take a chance on it." He reached for the speaker so I handed it to him. He looked it over and commented, "This came out of the Buick two years ago, when its mate stopped working. I bought a new pair so that's why this is just a single speaker." He handed it back to me, saying, "Nobody wants to buy just one. I'll tell you what, if you've got a use for it, why don't you just take it. I'm tired of seeing people pick it up and set it back down, and when the rummage sale is over, I don't want to store it back in the garage."

    "So I can have it for free?" I asked.

    "Sure," he replied. "Your mom bought the closet, so I'll throw the speaker in as a bonus."

    I thanked him, then remembering the fuzzy pink dice I was holding, I fished around in my pocket and handed him a quarter. He took the money and laughed, saying he was glad the fuzzy dice were going to a good home.

    "I'm not so sure it's a good home," I wise-cracked, ""They'll be hanging from the mirror in that old rust heap!" and I gestured to my truck.

    He smiled and told me, "I'm confident they'll dangle there with pride!"

    He helped Mom and me load the closet into the back, and we headed home. I was tickled that I had found a possible replacement for Mike Scholl's mashed speaker and looked forward to giving it to him later that evening.