Well and Good For You

As a rule, Peter didn’t like to get up early. He was a night-owl. It wasn’t uncommon for him to stay up until two or three in the morning, and there had been a period in his life after college where he’d been known to go to bed at five a.m. and not rise until the clock’s hands had made one complete rotation.

Nevertheless, every Saturday and Sunday morning, he’d set his alarm for a quarter to six in the morning. On a weekday morning, Peter would hit the snooze button a few times and eventually pad his way into the bathroom for an extended shower. But not on a Saturday or Sunday. On a weekend morning, he would hop out of bed at the alarm’s first insistent beeps. He’d rush into the bathroom with staccato steps and clean himself with great haste. Some twenty minutes later, he’d be out the door, hair damp from the shower and a piece of toast clenched precariously between his teeth. By the time he was chewing and swallowing his last bites of toast, Peter was cruising slowly through his neighborhood.

You see, Peter had a somewhat unique outlook on materialism for a young man of his age. Thanks to his mother’s influential and effective frugality and his own shrewd penchant for stretching a buck, he could barely bring himself to pay full price for anything. If it wasn’t an essential, why shell out top dollar for it? On the other hand, if it was a necessity for living, how dare they charge that much for it? Peter’s was a world of first-Saturday-of-the-month sales at the second-hand denim store, double coupons and club card savings at Ralph’s, guiltily flashing his old UC Riverside ID card for the student fare at the movies, second-hand books, two-for-one deals, and yard sales. He saved a dime here, a dollar there, always with an internal smirk for the rest of the world, and cupidity that drove them to buy everything new.

Ah, yes. The yard sales. How Peter loved them. There was nothing he enjoyed more than sweeping through his neighborhood, looking for a yard sale. He could have easily checked the newspaper to see where they’d be on a given morning, but that was hardly sporting. He much preferred discovering them on his own. Like any good hunter, he had a variety of methods for stalking his prey. Sometimes he’d drive in an ever-widening spiral, spinning around until something caught his eye. Other times he’d snake up and down parallel streets. Every now and then, he’d just drive randomly, turning when the spirit moved him.

Then he’d see it. A yard, glistening with early morning moisture. On their driveway, or spread across their lawn on blankets and tarps, a world of discarded treasures. Books for ten cents. Furniture for a pittance. CDs and VHS tapes for less than what you’d pay to rent them once. Odd or hilarious knick-knacks for the change in your couch. These were things the owners would gladly give away, were it not for society’s capitalistic influence. America had taught them well that only suckers give something to Goodwill for free that they could choke their garage with for three years and finally sell for $1.87. So they’d try and sell it, begrudgingly, looking uncomfortable and out of place in the cool morning air.

Peter wasn’t the slickest young man you’d ever seen. He was no salesman, and his charisma with the ladies was no better or no worse than the median. Still, to watch him talk those lawn capitalists out of their cast-offs was a thing of beauty. He knew the right approach for every situation, the proper tack for whomever he encountered. But it wouldn’t have worked if he were just acting, which he wasn’t. Quite honestly, he was whatever customer a particular seller wanted.

Young people were eager to have it over and done with. They didn’t go the trouble of affixing price tags to the items, and would often assign arbitrary prices on the spot. For them, he was the customer who promised to expedite matters. The best deal in a situation like that was to ask them about multiple items at once. They’d inevitably sell him the lot for much less than they would have asked, had he had them price the items one by one.

With older folks, his age helped him. They’d grown up under the specter of the Great Depression, or their parents had, and they were so impressed to see their own thrifty ways in a young man that they’d price things favorably for him. He might have to weather a story about the grandkids or suck down an oft-proffered soda, but it was—pardon the pun—a small price to pay.

Upper-class yard sales were much rarer, but the potential to hit a mother-lode was much higher. In these neighborhoods, the homeowners were just relieved to have a customer who spoke unbroken English and drove a car less than 15 years old. The WASPs in these areas weren’t used to dealing with the largely Hispanic early-morning crowd in any other way than that which pertained to their lawns or housework. The much more egalitarian relationship of a seller and customer, which favored the latter if it favored either, made them perpetually nervous. Somebody would ask the lady of the house a question in Spanish. She’d blush and stammer out that she didn’t understand, so sorry. Just about then, a bit of Peter’s high school Spanish was just what the doctor ordered.

As Peter turned the corner onto a cul-de-sac he often skipped, he immediately zeroed in on the clot of cars against the curb at the end of the street. Driving closer, he saw a few of his fellow bargain-hunters picking through a cardboard box of what appeared to be baby clothes. He eased his car in behind a rusty white van and put it into park. Brushing the hair back off his forehead and patting his wallet three times for luck, he slid out of the passenger side door and locked it behind him.

He walked along the sidewalk and turned onto the driveway. He never walked across somebody’s lawn unless items were on display there or somebody else had set a precedent for it without arousing the occupant’s ire. Just because their belongings were out for everybody to see didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t brutally anal-retentive about their landscaping.

He nodded in acknowledgement as a husband and wife headed down the driveway and back to their car. The woman rooting through the baby clothes was preoccupied with two identical baby jumpers, one blue, one pink. She held them up to one another, unwilling to put either down.

“Good morning,” Peter called, smiling. This was a quick and friendly way to ascertain who was hosting the sale; ninety percent of the time whoever answered back was the person in charge.

A little girl with shaggy blonde hair came running out from behind a pile of boxes. “Hi!” she shouted from inexplicably blue lips. She waved at him with the rubber-wristed way unique to small children, then stuck a half-finished blueberry Otter Pop into her mouth.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Molly,” she said, relinquishing the chewed end of the Otter Pop wrapper just long enough to convey this information.

“Are your mom and dad around, Molly?” Peter asked. Better safe than sorry, he figured.

She nodded silently and pointed towards the house.

“They’re busy with the twins, mister, but you’re welcome to look ‘round,” drawled a voice to Peter’s left. He looked over and saw a oily-faced boy of fifteen or sixteen arranging some beat-up power tools on a work bench. He was a little on the scrawny side, but one look at him had him pegged for the little girl’s brother. The accent was more pronounced coming from him; Molly hadn’t said enough words in a row for him to pick up on it, and he probably would have just written it off to the vagaries of her immature soft palate.

“Thanks,” Peter replied, nodding to him. “Those for sale?” he asked, gesturing to the tools.

The boy looked him up and down. His eyebrows raised fractionally, as if to cast dispersions on Peter’s need for power tools. “Yeah,” he said.

“Good to know,” Peter said.

Peter looked around, inspecting the occasional item in greater detail, but he was really waiting for one of the children’s parents to come out. You couldn’t charm good prices out of a teenage boy, who was duty-bound by the very laws of adolescence to think that yard sales were just the gayest thing ever. Six-year-old girls were no viable target, either. They didn’t even get the idea of a yard sale.

He peered into a shallow box on a card table, drawing the flaps aside with his hands to get a better look. NASCAR mugs. Toys from Happy Meals. Precious Moments statuettes. A dingy plastic something, very utilitarian in appearance, that probably began life as a peripheral for a vacuum cleaner. The other boxes held no better a yield. Women’s clothes. Blank, water-spotted postcards. He opened a old-fashioned hat box, more out of obligation than curiosity, and discovered a curly brown wig.

“Huh,” he said, feeling it for a moment before returning it to its resting place.

Finally, behind a paper grocery bag of romance novels, Peter found what he’d been looking for. It was a small, off-white television set with rounded off corners. It looked like the sort of TV that had lived on a kitchen counter or atop a rickety table in the garage. Peter’s old TV had died a few weeks back without a warning, and while he didn’t watch too much TV, he chaffed at not even having the option. He gingerly pulled the antennas out until they were fully telescoped, half expecting one or the other of them to come off in his hand. He turned the channel knob, which clicked cleanly from station to station. He inspected the back of the set, where the connectors appeared to be firmly attached—as was the power cord, which he gave a subtle, swift tug. Ultimately, he’d have to plug it in to be sure, but all signs indicated a sound piece of electronics.

Having checked out the rest of the TV, Peter finally noticed the screen. Somebody had written “Works Good” in block letters with a black grease pencil.

In that moment, Peter figured out how he’d approach this situation. The accent, the NASCAR mugs and the power tools had been indicators, but Peter had been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until he’d read the TV screen. He was a stickler for grammar. He’d cow the teenager with the old grad school vocabulary. It wasn’t a maneuver he’d tried before, but he wasn’t going to find a better guinea pig than a rural 16-year-old who probably just wanted to end the sale tout-suite. He looked over his shoulder. The boy was thumbing through a dogeared Archie comic book and gnawing his lip.

“Excuse me,” Peter said, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “But I was wondering about this TV…”

“Oh, yeah,” the boy replied, looking up. “It works good.” With that, he returned his attention to the comic.

“Yes, so it says,” Peter said, a little put out by the abrupt answer and the reiteration of the faulty grammar. “I was wondering how much you’d like for it. I’m in grad school, so it’s not like I need a large—”

“Gotta ask her,” the boy replied, pointing to the little girl. She was paying no attention to either of them, busy jumping over cracks in the driveway with more gusto than Peter had thought possible.

“Uh…Molly?” Peter asked, plucking her name from his short-term memory. “But she’s—”

“It’s her TV. Figure it’s her place to sell it,” the boy said, simultaneously answering and discouraging Peter’s question. “Molly!” he called to her. “C’mere!”

She walked over dutifully, stopping to make a wide semicircle about halfway up the driveway. She stood in front of her brother, sucking the dregs from the Otter Pop wrapper.

“There was a snail, Tristen!” she said, pointing back to where she’d cut around.

“That’s fine, Molly,” he said. He pointed at Peter. “This fella wants to buy your TV.”

“Buy my TV?”

“Yeah, he does.”

“But it’s mine!”

“Right. But you don’t need it anymore, remember? Mom and Dad told you that.”

“Um…yeah.”

“So, you gotta sell it.”

“Okay!”

Peter smiled benignly at this, but on the inside, he was groaning. Bargain with a little kid? This could only end badly. How could a person with no conception of worth name a reasonable price? She’d probably want a million dollars for it.

“So, Molly,” he said, resting his hands on his knees and hunching down to Molly’s altitude a bit, “how much do you want for your TV set?”

“A million dollars!” she squealed, and laughed.

Peter’s knuckles went an imperceptible shade whiter on his kneecaps. “I don’t know, Molly. That’s a lot of money. A person could probably buy a new TV set for that much.” She nodded. “Maybe you’d sell it to me for a little bit less?”

She thought about this a minute, then nodded her head broadly.

“Sixty-four thousand dollars! Like on the TV show!” she giggled. “‘Member that TV show, Tristen?” she yelled over to her brother. He nodded, not looking up. Peter looked over at him, hoping to enlist his aid. Wouldn’t he tell her to be realistic? Tristen finally did look up.

“Help you with something?”

“Um…well, no,” Peter said, sighing. He figured he’d give it one more try. He got down on his knees and sat back on his haunches, eye to eye with Molly. He gave her his most earnest look and set one hand on the TV set.

“Molly,” he said slowly. “This looks like a really good TV—”

“It works good!” she exclaimed. “Tristen even writ it on the screen.” She pointed out the words with one pudgy little-girl finger.

“I know, Molly,” Peter said, nodding in agreement. I looked all over at it, and it looks like it works…good,” he finished, having to force the word out. “I really want to buy it.”

“Sometimes, when I didn’t feel good, Mommy and me’d watch the soaps!” she said, daintily placing her empty Otter Pop wrapper on the ground.

“That must have been nice, Molly,” Peter cooed. “Will you sell me the TV?”

Molly nodded again. “Two hundred dollars.”

Peter sighed and looked at his watch. The morning wasn’t getting any earlier, or cooler. This obviously wasn’t going to work. Besides, he told himself, second-hand TVs weren’t a rarity. If he left now, he could easily snatch one up by the time noon rolled around.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s too much for a little TV, Molly.” With that, he rose to his feet and walked down the driveway.

“It works real good, mister!” Molly called from where he’d left her.

Peter just shook his head at her and shrugged. A few moments later, he’d climbed back into his car. He pulled away from the curb in a sharp U-turn and headed towards the cross-street. A right turn later, and he was gone.

Molly and Tristen watched him go.

“Hey, throw that away proper,” Tristen said to his sister, nudging her abandoned Otter Pop wrapper with the toe of his boot. She picked it up and ran into the house. Half a minute later, she was back, sucking on a sticky, blueberry-flavored finger.

“We sold my hospital bed,” she said.

“Un-huh,” he nodded.

“And my ivy, too.”

“Ain’t ivy, Molly,” he corrected. “You gotta say it, eye-vee.”

“Even sold my wheelchair?” Molly asked, squinting up at her older brother.

“Yup. Even that.”

“What’ll happen to my TV if it don’t sell?”

“I reckon we’ll give it to the Goodwill. That’s where we got it.”

“Can I have another Otter Pop, Tristen?”

“Not before lunch, Molly.”

“Daddy said that there’s Otter Pops in the freezer for ever and ever,” she said, scowling. “So why cain’t I have one now?”

“It’ll taste better if you wait for it,” Tristen said absentmindedly, scratching at a pimple just below his hairline. He turned to see how she’d react to this subjective wisdom, but she’d already left his side, the promise of future Otter Pops momentarily forgotten. She was running through the thick summer lawn on nimble, cancer-free legs.

Tristen smiled a rare snaggletooth smile. He walked over to the little off-white TV set and fished a grease pencil from out of his overalls. He underlined the word “good” and added two exclamation points.

“You sure do,” he said to nobody in particular.

June 24, 2003