Hot Stuff Auction

Periwinkle County is having its annual “Hot Stuff” July auction. It’s held on Maine Street in Memphjus, the county seat. The stuff to be auctioned has all been stolen by neighbors and family members. If you want it back, you have to buy it. Whoever buys it, former owner or not, gets to designate the charity to which its price goes.

The centerpiece is the Lincoln Continental Helena Bracketer bought just before she could no longer drive. It’s been up on blocks in her barn. Her children have been arguing for years about who gets it when she dies. She got Zeke Domkowski to steal it and put it into the auction.

Now her kids are scandalized that she is putting the Lincoln into the “Hot Stuff” auction. She told them, “You want it, you can buy it.”

She has a particular contribution she wants to make to her favorite charity, and a particular way she wants it made.

Naturally her kids have been going all over PC asking people not to bid on the Continental. That, of course, has sparked a great deal of interest. Groups are forming all over the county to pool their money to buy Helena’s car.

Randall Nathan went to see Helena. “You told me,” he said, “that you told God you’d be satisfied if you got to 90, and once you hit 89 you’ve just been lying low. Now you’re calling attention to yourself. What if God hears about it and wants that car, like everybody else? You’ll be back in the crosshairs.”

“It will be worth it,” she said. “to create all this furor among my children and everybody else. I’m going to buy it back myself, though, and I’ve got the money to do it. I want to give the money to The Harvest Time Soul Savers Church and Pea Party.”

“But you disagree with everything those people stand for,” Randall said.

“Yes, but they get only half the money, and they get it only if they contribute the other half, in their name, to either Planned Parenthood or the NAACP. If they refuse, the whole amount goes to PP and NAACP in their name, and they get nothing.”

“You’re a nasty old woman,” Randall said, with a smile.

“You bet. It’s the only way, in an age when people act only on their emotions, which run the gamut only from hate to fear, to get them to think. There’s nothing as nasty as causing people to use their God-given brains. “