Mark Schweizer - Liturgical 12 - The Cantor Wore Crinolines Read Free Page B

for $154,000 by Jeff and Helen, obviously determined to score some property. I thought they’d overpaid. This house was in much worse shape than the one on Oak Street and would take quite a bit of money to fix up. They seemed to be satisfied though and didn’t even stay for the third offering.
    The third house was on Maple Street set on the back of the lot right next to Holy Grounds, the coffee shop. Holy Grounds was the third incarnation of the old two-story, American Foursquare house since I’d moved to St. Germaine. It was a design popular in the early 1900s consisting of four square rooms on each floor and a central hallway connecting the front and the rear of the building to take advantage of the mountain breezes in the summer. A long front porch stretched across the front and was perfect for rocking and enjoying a cup of coffee anytime of day. The house had belonged to Mrs. McCarty for as many years as anyone could remember, then bought by a couple from Virginia who opened a spa with adjoining coffee shop. Kylie and Bill Moffit bought it from them, closed the spa, but kept the coffee shop going.
    On the other side of the property for sale was a law office housed in a one story bungalow.
    The house that was for sale was smaller, but more charming than either, with a real Arts and Crafts look about it. The upside was, that the block was zoned for either commercial or residential use. The downside, if you were looking for a home, was that it was flanked by businesses on either side.
    “Ten dollars,” yelled Skeeter.
    “The city bids eight thousand forty dollars,” said Monica.
    “Dadburnit!” yelled Skeeter. “Eight thousand forty- one! ”
    “This is the one?” Bud said, sidling up beside me. He already knew the answer. He was just nervous, nervous as any other twenty-two year old kid right out of college getting ready to bid on his first house.
    “This is the one,” I said. We’d already talked about our strategy. The house was listed on the tax roles for $218,000. Eleven hundred square feet, two bedrooms, one bath.
    “Go on,” I urged, grinning.
    “One hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars,” Bud called out.
    “ What? ” screeched Skeeter. “ Illegal! ”
    “Quiet, Skeeter,” said Cynthia into the mic. “I have a bid of one hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars. Is there any advance?” She looked over the crowd. People were looking frantically at their papers. The previous two houses had taken thirty minutes each to sell, the bids going up incrementally with everyone taking their time and mulling over the previous bid. Now, all of a sudden, it was put up or shut up.
     
    * * *
     
    Bud McCollough was the eldest son of Ardine McCollough and the older brother of Pauli Girl and Moosey. I’d known them a long time and helped the family financially when I thought they needed it, not that Ardine would ever ask. Ardine had been a single mother for the better part of a decade now, her husband PeeDee choosing to make his home elsewhere. “Elsewhere,” according to some folks in town, being under a pile of rocks in some unnamed holler far up in the hills. PeeDee, by all accounts, had been an abusive husband and father and when Ardine had had enough, she’d had enough. That was that. There were those folks in the hills that didn’t ever bother calling the law to settle family disputes. Of course, PeeDee might just have easily relocated to the Florida panhandle to start over with a new family. Hard to say.
    The one thing he’d insisted on was naming his children after his third favorite thing, behind his truck and his hunting dog, that being beer. The name Bud was okay, Pauli Girl was a stretch, but Moosey (Moosehead Rheingold McCollough) got the worst of that deal. It didn’t really matter in Moosey’s case. By the time you knew Moosey, the name kinda fit him.
    Bud, though, had always been an odd duck, but as luck would have it, a wine savant. He had a Bachelor’s degree in business from Davidson