A Town
Grandpa quits whittling, closes his jackknife with a snap, and tells us to fill our canteens and gather up our trash.
I heft Mama’s suitcase. As we trudge up and down hillsides, I gaze at the pelts on David’s back. Might be he’d trade.
Before I can speak, Johnny squirms under his pack. “I swear these here straps is a-rubbin’ agin my bones.”
Switching the suitcase to my other hand, I keep my thinking to myself. When I’m near ready to chuck it beside the trail, we come over a hill to a church.
It overlooks a cluster of buildings—a town. I don’t reckon it’s considered big as towns go, but it out-sizes Skitter Falls by a dozen homes, two stores, and a hotel.
A dog barks, and General answers. Grandpa yanks on Stonewall’s halter, and we head down the steep trail. We tread careful, lest we trip and sprawl headlong into town.
Grandpa stops at a building whose peeling red paint looks more like freckles than paint. A sign above the door says Rockbridge General Store. Leastways it must have said that when the sign was fresh-painted.
A boy about my age sits on the top step to the store’s porch, his cheek swelled with a chaw of tobacco. Judging by the puddle of black spit beside the steps, he’s been there a spell.
Grandpa hands Stonewall’s halter to Johnny, and pulls a red fox pelt from the mule’s bundle. On the first step, he waits for the boy to move, but the boy only spits more tobacco juice.
“Pardon me.” Grandpa tries to edge past the long legs.
The boy leans on one elbow, tilts back his head, and peeps through his eyelashes. He doesn’t move.
A man comes outside, closes the door behind him, turns a key in the lock, and tucks the key in his pocket. The tobacco-spitting boy shoots us a smirk.
“Sorry, folks,” the man says. “I’m closed. Be open again at six in the mornin’.”
“I got some mighty fine pelts I’m a-lookin’ ta sell.” Grandpa runs his fingers through the soft red-orange fur.
The man’s eyebrows show interest, but he says, “Come back in the mornin’.”
Grandpa strokes his gray beard and looks down the dirt street. “I reckon they’ll sell just fine at the Dry Goods.” He touches the brim of his hat.
“Wait,” the man insists. He nudges the boy with his foot. “Rawley, tell your ma ta keep supper hot. I’ll be along directly.”
Rawley mutters under his breath, slowly pushes to his feet, and sidles down the steps past Grandpa the way a rat snake moves around a log. Edging near Stonewall, he touches a piece of gray fox hanging outside the bundle. Without moving his lips, he makes an approving sound.
His gaze hangs on me for several uncomfortable seconds, and he makes that sound again. I flinch. He laughs and ambles away.
Grandpa allows the man to thumb through pelts fastened to Stonewall. Johnny and David shuck off their bundles. While the man flips through them, he grunts and nods and makes sucking sounds between his teeth.
He smiles at Grandpa. “Come inside and talk price.”
I stand in the doorway while they haggle. It’s different from the way Grandpa bargains with Mr. Pender. Louder, less friendly. Twice Grandpa starts to leave and twice the man thumps his fist on his counter.
Finally, they shake hands, and the man opens his cash box and counts into Grandpa’s hand a stack of bills thicker than a beaver’s tail. While Grandpa stuffs the bills in his pocket, the man fishes some salted walleye from a barrel and wraps it in brown paper. Grandpa takes the damp package and answers the man’s final grunt with a tug on his hat brim.
