Posterior - Part Two - "A Flea Market Beyond"

Posterior

Part Two

"A Flea Market Beyond"

            “Where did you say you found that?”

            “At the flea market.”

            Or is it... was it... “A”...

            Flea Market. 

            I didn’t remember to mentally structure that (those) (flea markets) for

            Clarity.  I just stood looking up

            Then down

            The vendor’s isle I didn’t

            Have a thought beyond my self center

            (and an unbounded superficial whirligig) I call my

            “I collect”

            And there didn’t seem to be anyone having that today; my “I collect”.

            There is no far end game passing “I collect” so the bigger the (flea) market place; the acreage, vendor isles, distance of the drive/travel time, food court, Port-“oh”- Potties and the “I forgot my wallet”.  Smart phone

            Aren’t you.

            Didn’t notice me... peeing in the woods behind a tree. 

            That flea market was too small to “make me stop”?

            It was, wasn’t it.

            “Animals.  A lot of them (vendors) are almost animals”.

            Actually they are animals just like you are an animal.  You just do a better job of covering it up with sun screen

            Stuff;

            Being your little life so it doesn’t ever count that there could be... counted...

            A flea market ‘beyond’.  And maybe it is not a big one (a large flea market)

            After all.

            The smaller flea markets allow a vendor’s wares to force a larger table top of exposure to the other animals.  So small is better.  The Port-“oh”-Potties are cleaner... with no waiting line.  The food may actually be inspired.

            That part (food court) is an old Maine fact of life in action.  Simple... but applies to the ‘a flea market beyond’:  If the old girl makes chowder the same as her mother made it who made it the same as her mother and

            Lives up the road “BY CARRIE’S” and reaches her battle worn arm with its crinkle skin, slight tan, slight burn out of her “I didn’t think about it THAT much” dress top... down into the fish muck as she calls out “CHOWDER READY” across the (flea market’s) field.  I seen the old man vendor sipping, spooning, sipping, spooning

            His

            Cup.  Bowl.  His whole day right there when she reached her ladle to the bottom.  Not just for him.  She serves every bowl that way; just the way her grandmother did. He knows that.  “Good chowder” he said.  “Good coffee too”.

            He has his black. “Can stand a spoon up in it”.

            “Where did you say this flea market is?”

            “You drove by it asshole”.

            They (a flea market beyond) gets a lot more interesting when you get to the beyond.

            What do you think?  We don’t know that?  The old gent with his chowder and coffee don’t know that:

            “A flea market beyond”?  He sits there with his “I JUST BOUGHT” Official Boy Scout hatchet (with the scout insignia on the sheath).  Come up with it... brought it up to me... to “SEE IF” if I heard of the hatchet maker.  “ODD ONE” I said.  “That’s what I think too” he said.  “Never seen it”.  Then he went back down cross isle to his table.  Only one table top.  I always get two because I can ‘cover that’).  Sipped, standing over it, the black coffee.  Then sat back down.  Under his (sun screen) umbrella  The empty chowder bowl sat on his table’s edge.  “GONNA TAKE IT BACK UP TO HER (the food court)” he said.

            So you missed the Boy Scout hatchet but ‘caught eye’ on my Chippendale looking glass?  I guess you did.  Slowed right down in your time and space to look.  Like you’d never looked before.  Yep:  Walk right by Chippendale looking glasses most of the time don’t you

            Wish you could say that is not true but some how this one ‘caught eye’.  “It’s a busy one” I said passing you off as stump in a woodlot ‘there’.  You didn’t know quite what about that so you went on up the isle.  I know I’m the only one whose got one of those here ‘for sale’; a (New England ‘country’ made 1790) (emulating ‘formal fashion’) Chippendale ‘courting glass’.  (boy – girl – looking glass); a ‘got one here’.  “Busy” means its cutouts; the ‘Chippendale’, are... tight cut plentiful to the eye yet still subtle and understated; the looking glass ‘dances’ to the eye.  Don’t worry, it takes years to get that ‘to eye dancing’ “right”.

            “Most of them are clunk”.

            You don’t know and that’s not what I was speaking of.  Anyway.

            If you don’t get beyond.  See ‘a flea market beyond’... you miss it... all.  I mean:  You can come back down the isle and talk to me about the looking glass... and such.  Let us just see how expert... WHAT?

            Well we did see you pull off the road and park.  It’s not like there’s a whole lot of cars in the parking lot.  This ain’t a BOX STORE parking lot.  We seen you all get out.  Everyone has to pee... we know that.  We see you looking around like you need a map.  There’s only two isles with four rows of vendors (one vendor row on each side of the isles).  And they peter out.  So it’s ‘up and back’ twice.  Think you can make it?  Oh don’t worry; they (the vendors) don’t care.  They’re not there for you.

I am not there for you. 

            It’s ‘about the stuff’

            And protection

            Of a flea market beyond

            The old man’s empty chowder bowl... at the edge of his vendor’s table... with the spoon resting in it... saves me from ‘eternity’ and... you.  Go back and get in your car and drive away.  “Thank you”.  Okay you even bought my looking glass and paid me too.  No cash but finally “would you take my check”

            “Yep”.

            What state are you from?  “I didn’t even know there was a state there”.  “NO:  BEYOND”.

            A flea market beyond.  “There?”  I already bought two eighteenth century side chairs (Part One) and sold an eighteenth century mirror (looking glass) TODAY.  That’s right and that’s NOT ‘a beyond’ either.  THAT’S MY JOB.  I’m an antiques dealer:   An ‘it’s what I do’.  BEYOND

            YOU.

            So what.  I moved my umbrella to increase my shade spot.  I sat in my folding lawn chair.  And figured out.  So I said “I suppose”.  I got up and went down cross isle to see the old gent.  He’d returned his chowder bowl to the food court.  And refilled the coffee mug.  “BILL” I said.  “That HATCHET have the (scout) emblem on it.  NOT the sheath.  The HATCHET”.  He started fumbling under the table then reached out over the top of the table to “WHERE I PUT THAT DAMN THING”.  Brought it into the umbrella shade.  Slipped sheath open.  No scout emblem.  On the hatchet.  “Someone put that hatchet in a scout sheath.  That hatchet don’t go with the sheath.  Originally”.  He looked up a me.  I went back up cross Isle to my tables.  A little breeze came in across my shade spot.  I sat in my chair nice.  Another two cars pulled into the parking lot.  They got out.  They had to pee.  One of ‘em had a dog too.  It peed right way.

            “I guess it’s better

            That way”.

            I don’t want you to have to think that there some sort of philosophy or humanity at a flea market.  I don’t want you to hear talk like that.  Bill says to me “That’s a pretty good book.  You ever read it?”  He was referring to Thoreau’s’ IN THE MAINE WOODS.  “I bought it for a dollar off of Eddie’s table.  Pretty good book”.

            “That’s an abridged edition” I said.

            “I know.  Still reads good.  You ever have it (meaning ‘have a rare book edition’)?

            “Yep.  Here and there over the years.  Four hundred dollars

            Here and there”.

            We both looked past the vendor row below us and on into the parking lot.  A car was turning around.  Another was turning in.  Neither of us said anything.  I’d put the two 18^th century chairs up in my truck and had an old blanket tossed over them to ‘keep the sun off’.   I left a piece of them sticking out just for someone who ‘knows’ to spy when they come along.  Then Bill says “I think your right about the hatchet. Its not a scout hatchet.”