Ask Nothing. Chapter One

Ask Nothing.

The Best Antique I Ever Found

and

How I Found It.

By A. Picker

Chapter One

            “It’s a thousand dollars.  You have to move it.  And You HAVE to get it out.  Today.  Now.”

            I bent over and flipped the section of canvas off the front of the barrel of the cannon.  I gripped my hand in the hole at the front.  Then I pulled on it hard, sort of up and sideways.  The cannon, which was brass, turned slowly as I slid it around a little as I yanked up on the barrel front.  My efforts to lift the barrel up were fruitless.  It was too heavy to lift.  I let go.

            “A thousand.” I said.

            “Right now, right here.  It’s yours.  But you have to get it out now.”  My... salesperson… paused.  Then he looked into my face.  “Can you get it out?” he asked.  He was serious about that.

            I didn’t have to answer.  The Spanish lady (I mean, she wasn’t SPANISH.  She was some sort of Central American or South American that I have no idea what, but, since she SPOKE Spanish and looked like all the other ladies who are always speaking Spanish, I CALL her a “Spanish lady”.) came back through the garage door.  This time she was carrying a broom.  She immediately approached the sales... man who, being about the same size as her, was placed on defensive physical terms by the broom and, as he seemed to understand WHY she had the broom, he began backing around so to get his back to the open doorway while keeping her to his front.

            “GET OUT!  GET OUT!  GO!” the Spanish lady started shouting at the salesman.  “HE’S COMING NOW.  YOU DON’T TOUCH THAT.  HE SAY DON’T TOUCH THAT!”  With this she raised the broom tip slightly from the floor toward the salesman.  As the salesman had succeeded in his backward circumvention of the garage’s open space, he, when the broom went up, retreated outside.  The woman’s attention then turned to me.  I’d sidestepped over the cannon to the rear wall of the garage.  “GET!” she said to me.  As my salesman was only a dark silhouette OUTSIDE of the garage, I decided the deal was off…?  So... I got.

            Outside, we both looked at the Spanish lady who stood guarding the open garage doors with her broom.  “Give me the money and I’ll get this for you.  This is no problem; this woman.  But we must hurry.  Can you get it now?  You MUST take it NOW.

            “Well...  I want it.” I said.  “I’ve got the money in the car.”  I gestured toward my Suburban truck.  “I can get it out of there.  IF I can get IN there.  I can back right to it.  That’s how it got in there.  Someone just dumped it on the floor.  So.  All I gotta do is pick it back up.” I said and then looked hard at my... salesperson… to see if, HOPEFULLY, he understood what I was saying.  He seemed to.  “There’s got to be a board or something in there I can shim it on with”.  We both watched the Spanish lady while I said that.

            “Go get me the money.  Bring your truck up.  I’ll take care of this.”

            The last part of his statement I didn’t trust.  Ever since we’d arrived at the garage, we’d had this Spanish lady hovering over us like a mad bumble bee.  Actually she only hovered over my salesperson.  ME she left alone (except for that “GET”).  We’d pulled in beside this two story old stick house from the 1920’s to get out behind it to this set of eight garage doors on a low slant roofed shed style building that ran the length of the rear between two matching “residential buildings” (shit apartments interposed into converted... old ... stick homes).  The first was the house we drove in by and the second was a similar house past this first one and on the other side of the this garage building.  The garage building butted against an embankment behind these ...homes... and that was the beginning rise of a small hill, covered with trees, scrub and trash that rose and ran behind all of the building all the way down this street.  At the end of this first rise was another street with similar homes and the rectums of these dwellings overlooked this garage and hillside in addition to explaining the source of the trash that cascaded down the hill.  This trash disappeared behind roof line of the garage building, but, in fact, some of the trash had actually landed on the garage roof.  Each garage bay had it’s own locked double door opening outward from it’s own little wooden walled room.  At the rear of each bay was a single window; dirty, neglected and with it’s frame painted black, that looked right into the trash, dirt and debris on the embankment behind it.  This gave a dim light to the floor at the rear of the garage bay.  In this particular bay this light fell directly on the jumbled old & dirty white canvas piece covering the very old brass cannon that... lay on the wooden floor.

            This “very old” brass cannon had been… cautiously... mentioned to me over a period of weeks (nearing “about six months ago”).  It began with a “Did I buy cannons” and moved to a passing description of “HOW” there was a “cannon” on the floor of this “garage” that the salesperson and his brother, both India Indians who, with true entrepreneurial zest, started by running a newspaper stand but had, as success and calculated capitalism offered, branched into a “the store” and… “rental properties”.  This last evidently included these TWO “residential properties” with this “garage” behind it.  This garage they rented, space by space, separately.  A “very old” brass cannon was truly “on the floor” when I was “take you to see it; EARLY:  We want to sell it for a thousand dollars.  Cash”.

            It was early, about 6:40 in the morning right now and about 6:15 when we’d showed up.  A MINUTE after we’d showed up the Spanish Lady came out of the first house and over to the garage bay that my salesperson had just unlocked after fumbling with a special set of keys in this old black leather key case.  “The right key” had been found, the padlock removed and door opened JUST before the mad bumble bee Spanish lady began to cross the open space between the house and the garage shouting something in Spanish that I didn’t understand except that she was obviously pissed as Hell that the salesperson was there and had opened THAT garage door.  The only English she said was “YOU GO!   YOU GO!  YOU LEAVE!  YOU GO!” and this over and over in between Spanish utterances that my salesperson seemed to understand but ignored.  Then she left but soon returned with the broom.

            Right now, I spent a minute digging a thousand dollars in cash out from the reclusive money bundles I carry for... just such transactions... and then seated myself so to drive, in reverse, the Suburban into the garage.  While I accomplished this I could hear one side of a conversation between the Spanish lady and my salesperson.  This is because she was shouting “GET OUT” over and over toward me while the salesperson was making no progress with her and saying nothing I could hear.  SO by the time I’d started the truck and reversed it to begin a slow arch toward the garage door, the Spanish lady had not moved and my salesperson DID move off to the left side and began to gesture me to back right over this enraged Spanish lady.

            Well.  I wasn’t gonna do that.  And I didn’t have to.  That’s because right then, as I made the slow arch, a man appeared from beside the house and walked directly to my salesperson.  I saw him coming first and so did the Spanish lady who immediately started an escalated screaming in Spanish and pointing which caused my salesperson to turn and see the man so I... thinking ahead, STOPPED driving in the slow arch in reverse.  I sat in the truck with it on and my window open.  I couldn’t understand what was being said.  The Spanish lady left the garage door and stood with the man.  The salesperson stood apart from them.  They were all positioned so I could watch them from my rearview driver’s side mirror.  Which I did.

            They talked.  Actually, they talked AND screamed at each other for about ten minutes.  Then my salesperson, who did not look pleased with the results of the conversation, left them and came over to me.  He got in the passenger’s side of the Suburban.  I had the thousand dollars sitting in the middle of the seat.  I saw him see this.  I picked it up.  “WE come BACK in two hours”. he said.  “TWO HOURS.  “THEN you get the cannon.  I get the money.” and his hand DID begin to extend toward this cute little pile of “American money”.

            “THEN you get it.” I said and casually folded the wad of bills in half to show that I was retaining it.  I could see the salespersons eyes on this money and how they expressed resignation at the folding.  He knew he would not get this money “now”.

            I then continued to back in the reverse arch but kept it up past where I would have straightened to back into the garage.  The Spanish lady and the man; a tall, thin, plainly dressed White man in his mid-fifties but retaining a full head of dark brown hair, stepped away toward the garage to watch us and get out of the way.  Once reversed, I drove out past the first house and ...away.  The two stood watching our departure.