The taller woman regarded the vacuum. �These take bags,� she said. �You have to buy the bags.� A car went by with heavy thumping sounds that were incredibly loud. It startled the women, and they stared as it raced down the road. �New, new, new. They don�t want anything old! But god forbid you get rid of something. Then mine cry �Mamma don�t!��
They both gave the vacuum another look, and made small sounds of regret. The taller woman clucked her tongue a few times and the shorter woman said �ya� on the inhale, and they moved on down the sidewalk.
The next day, a purple ribbon graced the handle of the vacuum cleaner, and a cardboard sign with larger letters stated the price was now 12 dollars. The women saw it from down the block, but this time, they didn�t stop. They shuffled by and didn�t remark on this effort to attract a buyer.
They came to the church and went through the front doors, down a stairway and into the basement. They walked through a small showroom where rows of shoes were arranged on racks against the walls. Costume jewelry was spread out in an ancient case and wooden boxes held vinyl records. Men�s and women�s clothes were arranged on opposite sides of the room. They walked through a doorway into another room with boxes and boxes of donated items that filled tables and were stacked on the floor. �New, new, new,� the short woman sighed, as she settled into a folding chair and began going through the contents of a box. It contained fine lace curtains and a tablecloth, as well as a few antique Christmas ornaments.
In another box was a bible, stuffed with old, badly worn pictures of children and family gatherings. Photos of one little girl appeared frequently in the pages. A larger photo, marked �St. Johns River, 1938,� showed smiling people at a picnic by the water, all dressed in Sunday clothes. Children were arranged in the front row, squinting at the camera. In a small envelope was a photo of a couple that had been scribbled on with a pen. Someone had pressed hard, driving the point of the pen through the photo so the faces were completely ripped out. On the back of the it was written �Leviticus 26:17 And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.� It had been tucked carefully in a small envelope and stuck between the pages of the bible.
The woman returned the picture to the envelope and put it back in the bible. �They only want new,� she said, sighing.
Their part of the lake was deep. There were stories of Ford Model-T�s that crashed through the ice and were too deep in the water to retrieve. An International truck, a Chevy, and a dozen or so ice houses, left out too long were also told to have sunk to the bottom. Somebody spoke of a giant sturgeon that lived in their part of the lake, and anyone who went down there was sure to see it. Someone in a plane had crashed into one of the larger lake houses, and pieces of the plane were also on the bottom.
Summer had dawned in June with so much promise. He would take the Sunfish out in the morning and then sail in at lunch to help his aunt for a few hours. At three, he�d head back out and stay until eight to catch the last breezes before the wind stopped for the night. But now he was awake every night in the room above the boathouse, and the waves and night sounds didn�t lull him to sleep. He hardly ever took the boat out now.
She had been floating on her back with her eyes open and cloudy in a terrible way. He panicked, dropping, the sheet and tiller. He screamed to a neighbor on shore for help and waved his arms wildly, but the man hadn�t seen or heard him, and walked back up the stairs to his cottage. The boat turned into the light breeze and stopped. As he drifted back along side her he tried to decide what to do. Her mouth was open in an expressionless grin, and he could see her teeth. She was big, having floated up to daylight after spending weeks on the dark bottom drifting between the cars and the ice shanties. A lone fly buzzed around the part of her arm that broke the surface and was turning dark where it had contact with the air. Without touching her, he tied the strap of his life jacket onto her outstretched hand. Now they could find her. He pushed outward on the boom, catching the breeze a little, and turned the small the boat back into the wind.
He sailed straight in and went to the large house by the road where they had a phone. A man in a faded flannel shirt had come from the kitchen where pork chops splattered in a frying pan and the radio was too loud. He had to repeat himself twice to the man before the man understood that there was somebody in the lake. He led him straight to a little alcove in a hallway where a wooden panel obscured an old phone. The man dialed and spoke for a minute. �Tell the Sheriff what you saw,� he said, holding out the large clunky handset.
At night he thought about how he took the phone and spoke. He saw his hand reach out and take the phone, and he felt again how his elbow bent as he brought the phone to his ear. And he could see her face, empty of any feeling and her milky clouded eyes. He saw the fly. He could hear himself talking as the sound of his own voice came back at him through the earpiece. How young I am, he thought, and he would glance at the clock beside his bed, sure that time was slipping by faster than before.