Garage Sales

“I went out last weekend, just for a walk, I find I can’t run anymore. I get a little way from home and I just about can’t get back. 

It was later on Saturday afternoon. I was up near the public school and the power poles had all the usual garage sale signs plastered to them and then I passed one that was still going. 

There was a little boy sitting in the shade with some trestle tables arcing towards the footpath in front of him. There wasn’t much left by that time, I think he was just hoping he might be able to sell a few last trading cards or something. His mum and dad were long gone, probably having a well-earned drink inside after a morning of haggling. 

But there were some beautiful dark glass pharmacy jars, very old. If I try to picture them I think they were shoved in between a baseball glove and a couple of cans of tyre black, you know how random those sales are. 

I said hello to him and picked one of the jars up. I was really tired by then and the sun gets to be too much for my eyes. I couldn’t make out the marks on the bottom of the jar and I held it out and asked if he could read the inscription. He couldn’t either so I picked up one of the other ones and held that out too, and he bent down to see if he could decipher it. 

I have forgotten all about the cuts on my arms. They don’t mean anything to me anymore. But I guess his mum looked out the window and saw a guy with big dark rings around his eyes and marks up his arms asking her son to come a little bit closer. 

She came out and stood behind the boy, put a hand on his shoulder so that he turned to look up at her. “You can have those”, she said. She put her other hand on her hip and stood up straight.

I said, “I must pay you for them though, they’re lovely. We were just trying to see the names on them.”

She didn’t look at the boy at all, she just kept looking at me. And I can’t really hold anyone’s eye these days. “You can have them, just take them and go please.”

I didn’t take the third jar, I just nodded thanks and turned and went, and walked home with a jar in either hand. I was too embarrassed to put them on the shelves where I had imagined them, I just put them away in one of the kitchen cupboards.

I don’t know what made me think of that now, I haven’t thought of them since.”