Reflecting on the personal history connected to a set of old coffee mugs becomes the focal point of a man’s reminiscences of his former life as he endures the never-ending tedium of a YARD SALE.

Yard Sale

a 1,341-word short story by Duane M. Engelhardt

Copyright 2022©

“Hey. This one has a crack and a chip.”  A woman held up a coffee mug. “Too bad, I was looking for a set. They’re nice, but three mugs doesn’t do me any good.”

“You could use the cracked one as a pencil holder.”

“I’m looking for coffee mugs, not desk accessories.”  She handed the mug back to the seller and walked away in disgust.

When the woman was safely out of hearing range the man muttered, “It’s a goddamn yard sale, not Macy’s. Buy, don’t buy.”  He shrugged his shoulders.

It was a perfect day for a yard sale, his wife had told him as they set up just after dawn for potential early lookers hunting bargains. He watched as she meticulously laid out items in what appeared to be random patterns but flowed with what she called, “a geometric symmetry.”

After making some adjustments, his wife stepped back, admiring her work as if everything had been arranged for a formal presentation. “Of course, today looks to be a beautiful day to just sit out and lounge in the front yard waiting for customers.” His wife sighed and then looked around as she counted off on her fingers, “Chair, coffee, cash box, something to read. Good. Have fun.” There was a slight pause before she kissed his forehead, jumped in the car, and was gone on a day-long outing with girlfriends to shop the outlets.

For the first hour or so he had played with an old rod and reel set, casting out into the street. When he became bored with that, he tied a practice golf ball to the fishing line, teed up the plastic neon orange ball, and hit it down the block. Then using the fishing pole reeled the ball back again. Next was an old boogie board and a short-lived experiment using it as a sort of grass sled down the hill in the front yard. He checked his phone, setting it down after resisting the urge to just dead-scroll himself into oblivion when various views of a video of a dachshund and a pig, dressed as a man and woman, attempting to buy groceries crossed his timeline multiple times.

In the quiet of the morning, he reflected aloud with a newfound companion constructed of overstuffed clothes, a Halloween mask, garden gloves, and a well-worn knit cap on the philosophical question of when someone should be considered a customer. “Is someone a customer if they don’t buy anything?” The occupant seated in the lawn chair next to him was silent. “More like a nuisance. This entire exercise is a nuisance. No one is out and about. People have better things to do on a Saturday morning than mingle with neighbors they never speak with on a normal day, let alone at an event envisioned to bring the neighborhood together.”  He snickered. “Everyone has better plans, even my wife. Oh yeah, she thought this was such a wonderful idea she went ahead and scheduled a shopping trip with girlfriends.”

The man’s soliloquy was suspended as a sudden rush of people descended upon the scene and mingled among the carefully laid-out items. The requests, the questions came fast and furious, the inquirers often not waiting for an answer as they swarmed about the front yard.

A young obstinate man rushed to the front, “I’ll pay premium for any old vinyl you have. Any condition.”

“Downsizing, huh?”  A woman muttered, as she picked through a box of kitchenware. “Yeah, me and my guy, we’ve got to do that as well.” She held up and examined an electric coffee pot before tossing it back in the box.

“Watches?”

“Jewelry? Real or costume?”

“No.”

“Tools?”

“No.”

“Camping gear?”

“Antiques?”

“No.”

“Guns?”

He shook his head.

They politely looked, examined, touched, then abandoned those items they had set aside showing little or no indications of buying. As quickly as they had massed, they disappeared and once again he was alone.

Picking up the cracked mug he turned to his discreet friend, “One of four. Simple. Decorated with a line drawing of a cityscape. They were from a long time ago. Before marriage. When I was on my own. My run at being a Bohemian in the twentieth century. Writing bad poetry, smoking pot, and drinking cheap wine while working somewhat irregularly at being a carpenter.” He laughed. “The love of my life back then was bartending her way to becoming an actress or an artist or something creative because that’s what we all did.”

“She went on to become a what?” He searched his memory for the last time he had heard from her. “Christmas, maybe six, no ten years ago she sent a card to Mom and Dad’s address. ‘Hope you are well. Sorry for what I put you through. I’m a grandmother of three, own a small weaving company that makes handmade clothing, sing in the church choir, and I’m very happy.’”

“The last time we saw one another, this mug.” He smiled. “The chip. The crack. We fought over something. I hadn’t taken her latest performance art piece with any seriousness and she accused me of being a bourgeois spectator, unable to ascertain the real value of pain that created genuine art. ‘It’s a metamorphosis,’ she yelled at me as she threw this mug. Thankfully, her aim was off that night and the mug and its contents banged against the wall and not my head.” He laughed. “She spent the next hour packing her things, crying, yelling, as she shoved items from the fridge and kitchen cupboards into her duffel bags. ‘Your poetry is garbage, it never rhymes, it makes no sense. You’re a hack!’ She slammed the front door to the apartment and was gone.”

The dummy sitting next to him said nothing.

“That night, that fight, that mug was emancipating. I sat down and wrote an ode, a farewell requiem to being an artist in the modern age. An epiphany that drugs and poetry and being poor were not as romantic as I wanted to believe. Twenty odd pages of bad rhymes and obscure meter tucked away in a box somewhere, abandoned, never to see the light of day.” 

“Hey.” A young woman’s voice interrupted the man’s deliberation with his silent colleague. “Is there a fourth mug to this set? Very retro.”

“Complete set, just waiting for a new home.” He stood and handed her the missing mug.

Holding the cracked chipped mug in her hands as if it was some long-lost fragile treasure, “There’s a story here, isn’t there?”

“Things happen,” Smiling, he shrugged his shoulders.

“I think it’s gratifying to know things are going to a new home, getting a second life. Don’t you?” 

He gave an affirmative nod, “There is a certain satisfaction in giving worn-out memories a new life.”  He strolled around tidying up, fussing at the display as if he was a lifelong shopkeeper of a variety store.

She held up the cracked mug again. “I’ll take them, they are perfect just as they are.”

He carefully wrapped the mugs in newspaper and positioned them snugly into a shoebox before relinquishing them. She smiled, turned, and walked away with her treasure cozily tucked under her arm.

The afternoon passed as slowly as the morning with an occasional browser although no one made any efforts to buy anything. He resisted the urge from time to time to just wrap up everything, toss it all in boxes, grab a beer, and head inside. In the end, he settled for the beer and with apologies dismantled his mute friend.

Burdened with an armload of bags his wife hopped out of the car with her usual flourish and made her way to sit in the now empty chair. In an exaggerated fashion of being exhausted, she slipped off her shoes, took a sip from the beer he offered, and then scanned the yard, “So?”

Reaching for her hand, he smiled, “Just four old, neglected mugs, from the back of the cabinet.”

Originally Published by Freshwater Literary Journal (April 2024)

https://issuu.com/freshwaterliteraryjournal/docs/-2024journalmockup10april