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part 1 of the story
Penny Candy

© Carl Parsons, May 2022

1. The Village

    In the village of Locust Hill, West Virginia, stands Crandall’s General Store. Most in the area consider it the very heart of this rural village, a village that began to take its shape and purpose in the late 1830s, attempting, as though directed by divine intention, to satisfy at least some of the needs of the surrounding farm families. Foremost among these efforts was that of Bryson Crandall, great grandfather of the current store owner, Charles. Bryson Crandall believed he could save his neighbors the time and trouble of provisioning themselves from stores in the nearby town of Parkeston by bringing the provisions to them and selling such goods in a general store. He further believed that he could make a good living for himself and his family by doing so. And he was right.
    Instead of each farmer hitching up his team of work horses to the farm wagon and making a monthly trip of eight miles or more one way—for some nearly twenty miles—into Parkeston, the nearest town, Bryson made just one trip for everyone. He’d deliver his orders to the Parkeston wholesalers, who then collected the goods and lashed them onto sturdy broad carts for draymen to haul out to Bryson’s store in Locust Hill the next day. There Bryson and his wife Lily received, displayed, and then sold the goods along with a multitude of local fare: produce from nearby fields, fresh baked goods from village kitchens, plus local eggs, milk, and meats stored in an ice-chilled display box. All of it offered up inside of a brown wood-framed store with a wide front porch covering a brick and dirt entrance, replaced years later with a floor of poured concrete.
    When the store opened in 1882, the Crandall’s neighbors quickly showed their gratitude by making it the local meeting place, hitching their horses to the rail in front of the store or pulling their wagons into the open lot beside it, going inside to buy their goods and gossip a while, and returning home in just a few hours instead of losing an entire workday away from their fields and gardens and barns.
    Not only did Bryson’s store prosper, but eventually attracted other commerce and conveniences to the village as well—a blacksmith’s shop, a barber shop, an elementary school, and churches—the Baptists at one end of Lowery Lane and the Presbyterians at the other, both churches established on property donated to them by the Lowery family, whose large dairy farm sprawled across the Appalachian foothills across from the store. In modern times came the Locust Hill Farmers’ Cooperative located directly behind the store and facing Shawnee Highway. And flanking the Cooperative soon came a diner on the north side, also owned by the Lowerys, and to the south Doc Willis’s veterinarian’s clinic and later still a medical clinic.
    While the churches were the village social centers on Sundays and Wednesday nights, the Crandall General Store was the hub of talk and trade six days a week. It became as reliable to the villagers as the crowing of their own roosters at sunrise. So much so that that the children in Locust Hill learned to count money by making purchases from the store’s penny candy jar. Every Locust Hill child learned to count this way before starting at the elementary school, which was just a short walk down the lane. By 1890 no one could name a single child who was an exception.

2. Day of Doubt

    The sun was soothing the chilly autumn morning when the last generation of Crandalls left their home across the lane from the elementary school. Husband and wife, Charles and Lorna, walking side-by-side toward their store. It was a routine they’d followed together for thirty-seven years, the entire span of their marriage. Charlie, even longer, for the store and house had belonged to his parents and before them to his grandfather Crandall and thence back to its founder Bryson Crandall.
    It was a short walk, no more than a hundred yards, always made on foot in all weather. Ahead of them today trotted the current set of store cats—Furlin, the male calico, rare as a snowflake in design but sterile as a steel bar, and Maggie, a plump orange tabby and mother to millions. Both with their tails erect and tips kinked, already anticipating the salmon kibble that would be their reward for nothing more than being faithful companions once they were inside the store.
    This morning Lorna found herself easily keeping up with her husband, whose natural stride often left her a few steps behind. “Something wrong, Charlie?” she asked as he bent over to insert his key into the store’s ancient brass lock while the cats circled impatiently at his feet. “Not feeling so good today?” she asked him again, since he hadn’t answered. Concern darkened her voice this time, holding all the while against her waist a white bakery box she had carried from home. Charlie still concentrated on the lock.
    “Your heads been drooping over so much since we left the house, I thought at time or two it’d fall off your head and roll back down the lane.”
    “Just thinking, hon,” Charlie replied somewhat reluctantly. “Been thinking a lot the past few days about that new convenience store.” He fumbled with the key some more, scratching at the brass lock before pushing his glasses up to find the keyhole. When he finally opened the door, the cats whooshed inside ahead of their owners to take up their accustomed feeding spot next to the coal stove at the center of the store.
    “Well, what about it?” Lorna asked. “We can’t make the new store go away.”
    “I know we can’t, but I’ve been thinking what it might mean for us.”
    She was startled hearing him talk this way, in such doleful tones, not joshing her as he usually did. She shivered and stared at him, struck suddenly by a fear people recognize when they’ve encountered a decisive but unanticipated moment in life, something they sense could completely alter their lives. Charlie ushered her into the store ahead of him with his hand gently pressing the small of her back, already regretting what he’d said. Inside, the store’s faint but familiar smell of old wood and coal ash greeted them.
    “And why’s that?” Lorna asked, looking at him over her shoulder as she stood at the opening between the dairy cooler and candy counter. “What could it mean for us? Is the new store a danger to ours? Is that what you’re saying?”
    “Think it could be,” he said reluctantly.
    “But why? We’ve been here so much longer than it has, for heaven’s sakes,” she declared, for she couldn’t yet understand his reasoning. “We know everybody in Locust Hill and they don’t.”
    He put his hands on her shoulders to take her jacket, just as he always did, but stopped a moment today to kiss her hair, at the crown, wishing to soothe her, realizing that perhaps he had said too much or said it too abruptly. In the kiss his lips could feel the difference in texture between the silky black hair of the girl he’d married at nineteen and the drier, coarser grey hair of the woman she’d become. Still, he risked going forward with the truth, felt he had to, since they no longer held in their hands the time together they once had. And she understood the meaning of his kiss. She turned to him and said, “I’m all right, Charlie. I really am. I won’t let us down this time. I won’t.”
    “I know you won’t, darling,” he said, patting her shoulder while holding her jacket. “It’s just that we can’t compete with them.” He was speaking now as gently as he could, almost pleading for her to understand without being frightened by the truth.
    “Especially not in food products,” he continued. “We’re not near their prices. Nor their variety, either. Their company can buy in bulk to supply each store in their chain, like the ones they’ve got in Parkeston. That allows them to bargain with their wholesalers and manufacturers for lower prices. We just can’t do that. Nor can we afford to carry the variety of goods they do. Why, they got that big, refrigerated display unit with all those ice cream confections in it. Kids swarm around it like ants around honey, while we only got a few popsicles and fudge bars in our little freezer. The world’s changing, Lorna, changing fast.” She said she understood and said it calmly.
    They began their daily routines without another word. Charlie carried their jackets to the storeroom and hung them on the two black metal hooks fixed on the backside of the door. The wooden floor of the store’s center aisle creaked in spots as he went.
    Lorna fed the cats, shaking the salmon kibble into two ceramic bowls she kept behind the food counter, a blue bowl for Furlin, a green one for Maggie. When she placed the bowls near the coal stove, the cats had the first chunks of kibble in their mouths before either bowl could touch the floor. Then Lorna returned to the candy counter. In just a few minutes the cats, their stomachs quickly sated and their mouths perfumed with salmon, leaped into the store’s display window to catch the morning sun and slumber, making themselves as sure a signal to customers that the store was open for business as any neon sign could ever be.
    As Lorna cleaned the glass on the candy counter, she watched Charlie. Watched him as he returned from the storeroom with the coal scuttle, empty of coal as yet but containing his leather work gloves, an ash scoop, and a short-handled soft black brush. With persistent glances she watched him, her eyes moving back and forth between her own work and his. He placed the scuttle beside the stove, pulled on his gloves, then grasped the coiled spring handle of the stove’s ash pan and withdrew it from the bottom of the stove. She watched him dump yesterday’s coal ash into the scuttle—careful not to get any of it on the floor—and then cleaned more dust from the pan using the brush.
    She watched him. Done with that chore, he replaced the pan, picked up the scuttle, and walked back to the storeroom, making the floor creak again. Out the back door he went and into the yard where the coal lay on the ground. She could hear the rear door slam shut, could hear him banging the ashes from the scuttle into the trash can, could hear the fresh lumps of coal crash into the scuttle. Soon he returned, the load of coal swinging from his right hand while his left grasped a bag of charcoal briquets and his forearm pressed a can of lighter fluid against his stomach.
    Although the candy display now squeaked beneath her cleaning cloth, Lorna continued to wipe the glass while watching her husband. She watched him as he charged the stove. Soon enough, flames leaped up inside its firebox. Then he closed its door and adjusted its flue. The fire sparked and flashed and popped as new bits of coal ignited before the flames settled into a quiet, steady, familiar glow, dancing across the lumps of coal now with only an occasional snap and pop. The glow of the stove was so much loved by the store’s patrons that it had become its own “hello,” “good morning,” and “how are you.” Soon the store, from front to back, would be warm again and stay that way until evening. And all the time that Charlie worked to make it so, Lorna watched him.
    But he watched her, too, with his own glances and occasional stares of concern. Watched her place a large crystal jar atop the candy display, a jar with a slanted, large-mouth opening and a chrome lid and matching knob, the lid set aside just now for filling. Then, with the practiced slash of a box cutter, Lorna opened the fresh carton of penny candy she’d just lifted to the work shelf behind the display case. Using both hands, she scooped the loose candies into the jar—a cascade of chocolate kisses and mints wrapped in silver foil; white nougats dotted with bits of tiny multi-colored gumdrops, bulging blue and red jawbreakers, all in clear cellophane; taffy and butter mints and bubble gum in bright waxed paper wrappers—all these and more tumbling into the crystal jar, some clinking against its sides.
    As she filled the penny candy jar today, she remembered her own trips to the store when she was a child. How her parents had brought her here. A long jolting ride over the gravel of Zion Ridge Road, up from their farm overlooking the Ohio River, a dusty or sometimes muddy trip, but a special treat nevertheless. She remembered how her father would hoist her up in his arms so that she could reach into the penny candy jar, this same one, and make her selections. “But just two pieces, Lorna darlin’,” he’d warn her each time. “I know, Dad,” she’d say, for in her other hand she grasped the two pennies he always gave her. Charlie’s mother would walk around the counter and bend down to receive Lorna’s coins and thank her. Each piece of candy then truly was a penny. Now each was a nickel.
    On one of those long ago trips Lorna first saw young Charlie as she entered the store with her parents and big brother, Monty. Charlie was sweeping the cement porch with a broom. Its handle reached clear above his head and twirled there as he worked. He was wearing a little grey and green apron his mother had sewn for him. It had his name embroidered on it. And behind his right ear he sported a stubby yellow pencil, for he was eager to show the world that he too could take orders and cipher just like his parents. Lorna was impressed that little Charlie had a job other than farm chores at such an early age. After all, in those days every child in Locust Hill had farm chores. Many still do.
    The two of them were in fourth grade then, both in the elementary school that still stands directly across from the Crandall’s home. Of all the kids she knew in school, only Charlie had a job and a pencil behind his ear. He seemed so competent and resourceful and proud at just ten years old. And all these years later, she knew he still was. She shouldn’t worry about the store, she knew she shouldn’t. But she did.
    Next she turned to the white bakery box filled with bonbons she’d brought from home. It was tied shut with white butcher’s twine. She’d made the batch the previous evening and carried it to the store this morning. She snipped the twine with scissors and carefully opened the box. A sugary fragrance rose up from it as she spread apart the waxed paper covering the confections. Then she took a large white lace paper doily from the envelope of doilies she kept below the counter and centered it on a crystal pedestal dish. She positioned the dish carefully in the display case since she knew she wouldn’t be able to move it again once she had arranged it with bonbons.
    Charlie, now counting the day’s seed money as he placed it in the cash register located on the hardware side of the store, across the aisle from his wife, watched her more intently than he watched the money. Watched her for signs or symptoms.
    She snapped on latex gloves and began removing the confections from the box, grasping each bonbon carefully with just a forefinger and thumb, daintily, as though the bonbons might crumble at just her touch if squeezed a bit too tightly, and well they might for they were very soft and fresh and fragile. First a coconut-white bonbon, then a strawberry-pink one, then a bourbon-brown one, a lemon-yellow one, a dark chocolate one, a cherry-red one, then back to a white one—and so on, carefully alternating the colors for best effect, forming a circle of bonbons for the bottom layer. Then placing a waxed, white cardboard disc over the bottom layer before building another, a smaller layer, atop the first, carefully constructing the succeedingly smaller layers into a cone, finished at the very top with a single lemon-yellow bonbon. Always a yellow one, like a bright star atop a Christmas tree. It was worth a visit to the store, people said, just to see Lorna’s pedestal of bonbons.
    Charlie watched his wife do all this. Marveled as he always did at her motions, so meticulous and precise. She’d built this display of bonbons every week for nearly thirty years now, but today he really watched her do it, more intently than ever.
    Lorna’s bonbons were famous throughout Locust Hill. Every Monday Travis Lowery, for one, would stride down the long stone walk from his plantation-style house directly across the lane from the store, seat of the Lowery dairy empire. Stride down as though he were the king of Locust Hill, which he very nearly was. He’d cross the lane and come straight into the store to buy the whole lot of bonbons, bourbon ones included (despite the Lowerys being Baptists). Buying them for his elderly father, he’d always say, for the old family patriarch, stashed away as he was in an upstairs bedroom, nearly toothless now and trapped in his senescence. The fragile bonbons were something he could still enjoy, Travis would always point out, though the Crandalls knew who really ate most of them. Yes, he’d take them all, Travis would, bourbon ones included. And why not?
    But this was not Travis’s day, so the bonbons would sell a few at a time to other customers. Many of them offering suggestions as Lorna would hand them a white paper poke folded across the top, containing the five or six bonbons they’d purchased. “Make more of them lemon ones next time, Lorna,” someone would say. “I love them lemon ones.” But someone else loved strawberry and still another loved chocolate. The Catholics and Episcopalians patrons loved the bourbon. So Lorna always made the batches the same, equal portions of all the flavors with just one extra lemon bonbon to go on top. And after just a day or two, the bonbons were always gone.
    Life in Locust Hill is filled with routines, Charlie was thinking as he watched her, his hands still on the register drawer he’d just closed. Comfortable routines. Even if some of them don’t make much sense, like buying bourbon bonbons when you’re a Baptist. Still they’re our routines and make us who we are, I guess. The comfort of their sameness winning out each time over common sense or sanctity, if there really is such a conflict.
    After he had the cash drawer counted and ready for the day’s business, Charlie crossed over to the food side of the store, where Lorna was still working, putting out the commercial candies now—boxes of Hershey bars and fudge and cellophane tubes of peanuts and cashews, displaying them in their original cardboard cartons. He passed through the opening between the dairy cooler and the candy counter to stand beside her.
    “I think we should get some advice to help us decide what to do with the store, Lorna. Don’t you think we should?” He modulated his tone now because he sensed that he had frightened her earlier.
    She looked at him as she tore apart an empty candy box. “I’m not sure, Charlie. Whose advice you thinking about?”
    “Well, Jim Russell’s for one. He should be in here soon, before he goes off to visit the farms for the day.”
    “Yes. Yes, I can see that,” she said. “Jim sure has made a success of things for himself and Cassie and their kids. And, you have to say, for others besides themselves, too, with that farm alliance. Always willing to help out if he can. Everybody respects Jim.”
    “They do, so that’s why I want to ask him what he’d do if he were us. Maybe he can see a way out we don’t.”
    “Okay, who else you thinking of?”
    “Reverend Evander. He’s our pastor, after all, so we should meet with him and confer about such an important thing.”
    “I agree with that, too. Okay, anyone else?”
    “No, can’t think of anyone else. Those two ought to do, one for the world and one for the spirit, you could say.”
    “I expect Gracie Evans would be willing to offer us some advice,” Lorna could scarcely get the words out without laughing. “But whether we’d want to hear it or not is another matter.”
    “No doubt about that,” Charlie said. “She’s always wanted to see another store open up in Locust Hill—or so she claims.”
    “And now it has,” Lorna added, her voice suddenly losing its brightness. “Well, I guess some advice can’t hurt, whether or not it’s Gracie’s.” As she spoke, Lorna was looking out the window, wondering who the day’s first customer would be, since it wasn’t Travis’s day. Then she saw it.

* * *

    Like his father as a boy, Colton loved to sweep the store’s porch each morning, even when he was in school and waiting for the school bus to arrive from Zion Ridge and take him and the other boys to the high school in Parkeston on the far side of town. His sweeping made the other boys jump out of his way or lift their feet as they sat on the store’s yellow Royal Crown Cola bench. In good weather the girls, out of modesty and wisdom, also out of earshot, waited by the road near the elementary school, where the school bus stopped. Hearing only the occasional uproar of boyish laughter in the distance, they thought each time that something was surely being said about one or more of them. Still, better to wonder about it than actually to hear it, they told each other, for boys that age could be so crude and vulgar.
    But in bad weather they all gathered on the store porch, boys and girls alike, out of the rain. On the cold winter days they all stood inside, close together, huddled around the glowing coal stove with their gloves or mittens stuffed in their pockets and their bare hands held out to the stove’s heat. On those days the store cats delayed going to the window, choosing instead to mingle with their visitors, rubbing against pant legs and stockinged ankles and accepting scratches and pats on the head while mewing their appreciation. And today Lorna could see them all again, the generations of them, all blended together. Could see especially the girls smiling at Colton as she herself had smiled at little Charlie with the pencil behind his ear and the broom in his hands. Now here, today, Colton was again on the porch. She could see him sweeping away the dust and the years, and she shivered.

    < enter>3. Spirits

    Pastor Evander Beattie was to come by the house at eight that evening. Charlie had called him while Lorna was in the storeroom, not wanting her to hear everything he had to say. She already knew to have the tea the pastor preferred waiting for him along with a few lemon bonbons she’d saved, knowing those too were his favorites. At home, while Lorna was putting away the dinner dishes, Charlie went into the living room, as he always did, to watch the evening news and wait for her to join him. But tonight she didn’t come right away. Instead, he heard her cry out from upstairs.
    “Not here! Not here! Charlie, come quick! He’s gone!”
    By the time Charlie got to her at the top of the stairs, Lorna was on her knees, crumpled, her hands to her face, tears flowing.
    “What’s wrong, Lorna? Who’s not here?” he asked even though he knew the answer.
    “Colton was calling me. Calling me to come upstairs. He was standing up here—right there in that spot, outside his bedroom.” She pointed to the doorway of the empty room. “But when I came up, he was gone. How could he be gone, Charlie?”
    “Oh honey, he’s not here. He can’t be here. You know he can’t be.”
    “Don’t say that, Charlie! Don’t say he can’t be here. He is here. I know it. I saw him. And heard him, too. He beckoned to me to come up stairs. He needs me. Needs his mother, but when I came he was gone! I went into his room, came to help him, but he wasn’t there.”
    Charlie knelt beside her, then helped her to her feet and held her against his chest and kissed her forehead, blaming himself for what once again was happening to her. Then he helped her across the hall and into their own bedroom. “Lie down for a bit, Lorna” he coaxed her. “Do that before Reverend Beattie comes. You’ll feel better by then and be calmer. You’ll see. It’ll be all right. Everything’s going to be all right.”

 

See the January, February, and March 2023 issues of cc&d for the full story...
part 2 of the story
Penny Candy

© Carl Parsons, May 2022

    Lorna didn’t resist and didn’t answer. Charlie partially closed the bedroom door, enough to darken the room, then went back across the hall to Colton’s bedroom and stood there staring at his son’s empty bed, kept made up by his mother as though their son might arrive at any moment and pull down the blue quilt and the white sheets beneath it and fall inside the bed’s comfort again, exhausted from his long exile. Might do it this very evening. But he wouldn’t, Charlie knew he couldn’t, and so did Lorna. Because of the MIA telegraph. “I regret to report . . . your son is missing in action and presumed dead.”
    The telegraph came the very day after Colton’s own letter arrived, saying that he was finally in Vietnam. Thought he would be going out on patrol soon. Which he did. The letter from the Army that followed the telegraph told of an ambush and missing soldiers. Remains not found. It was all so fast and so unreal and so unbearably cold, cold as a grave beneath the winter’s snow. First, the draft notice. Then the sendoff party with Colton’s school chums and their favorite girls attending. Brave words and forced smiles all around. Then a few letters from bootcamp. Then his last letter—“I’m here in Vietnam and good as I can be, I guess.”
    Stress brought it all back to Lorna. “If they didn’t find him, he’s still alive. He has to be,” she reasoned. “They just don’t know where to look, that’s all. Most likely he’s hiding somewhere. He’s a smart boy. A clever boy. Smarter than all the others.” She said this for years afterwards. Wouldn’t even accede to Colton’s being a POW. “No, he’s hiding somewhere, that’s all,” she’d claim, “and as soon as he can, he’ll reveal himself, be found, come back to us! How could a child be taken away like that? Then just disappear? Snatched away by force of a letter and then given up for dead by a telegraph written by someone who didn’t even know him. Someone who has never laid eyes on him. It just can’t be. Such a thing can’t be, Charlie.” She said this over and over again. “It can’t happen to our son. Not to any boy from Locust Hill. At the right time Colton will reveal himself, I know he will,” she maintained. “Just as soon as he can, he’ll come home again. I know it. So must keep his room ready for him. God allows nothing less. Colton will return to us, Charlie, you’ll see.”
    And in her mind, he did return, often, in fact, especially when anxieties mounted for her. On his birthdays he would appear, birthdays Charlie now dreaded for their effect on her. When the war finally ended with no news for them, he appeared to his mother in a vision so real she claimed to touch the hairs on his arms. And when their daughter Evie married and moved away to Charlotte with a civil engineer for her husband and now three grandchildren for the grandparents to adore, their photos all about the house—even then Colton appeared, to be with his little sister and wish her well. For Lorna, Colton’s spirit brooded over all of their lives, even today.
    And now, called home again by this new threat, he beckoned to his mother from the top of the stairs. He needed her, she said. She for certain needed him. Charlie turned and looked at the empty spot where he’d often seen Colton standing to gaze out the window toward Shawnee Highway on the other side of the elementary school, the village’s main route to everywhere else. Planning a future he never got to pursue, Charlie guessed. He continued staring at the spot, until the doorbell rang. The Reverend Evander Beattie, Pastor of the Locust Hill Presbyterian Church, had arrived.

4. Consolation of Faith

    Charlie led Pastor Beattie, a genuine Scotsman, into the small parlor just to the left of the front door and invited him to sit on the blue settee which stood against the room’s soft grey wall while taking for himself the matching sofa chair across the room. There Charlie knew he could spot Lorna when she came down the stairs, as he hoped she soon would. The parlor was set off from the rest of the house by a glass paneled door for privacy of sound but not of sight.
    “Lorna’s lying down right now, Pastor. Had a bad incident a while ago. Thought she saw Colton again. Expect she’ll be down soon, though. Think I got to her in time,” Charlie explained, with his voice divided between hope and doubt.
    “What you told me on the phone about the store—you’re thinking that’s what’s disturbed her, Charlie? Is that what you’re thinking?”
    “Yes, nearly sure that’s it. Only thing that’s come up lately that might do it.”
    “Sad to hear it, Charlie, tis really sad. Both things, I mean, about Lorna and the store. But Lorna’s a lucky woman to have you to look after her and love her as you do.”
    “Thank you, Pastor. But what worries me most is that there’s likely more stress to come. As I said on the phone, I don’t see how we can save the store this time. We’ve retreated as much as we can. Been doing it for years. Yet somehow I have to keep the worries away from her. Otherwise, she’ll break like fine crystal dropped on a stone, I’m sure of that. It happened before, and I don’t know how to prevent it from happening again.”
    “You want me to speak with her, then? Is that what you’re wantin’, Charlie? That maybe I can help her find a wee bit of God’s peace?”
    “Yes, please, if you would. She trusts you. At the time we lost Colton, Pastor Danford was here. He helped us both so much, but especially Lorna. Perhaps he told you all that before he retired, God rest his soul.”
    “Aye, that he did. Told me she was even hospitalized for a while after it happened. Nervous breakdown, I believe he called it.”
    “Yes, it was, and I never want her to go through that again. But every once in a while, she thinks she sees Colton and loses her way, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for days. That’s what’s happened this evening. These specters or apparitions or whatever you might call them, they may not last for long, but when they do spring up, they have such a strong effect on her. It’s sorrowful to see.”
    “And they’re real to her then, aren’t they, Charlie?”
    “I’m afraid they are, very real. It’s the not knowing what actually happened to Colton, I think, that really distresses her the most and allows her to think he’s come back.”
    “Then we need to deal with these visions as though they are real, Charlie, since to her they truly are. Has she seen a doctor or a psychiatrist since the first time this happened?”
    “No. She did back then, of course, but we can’t afford that anymore. And don’t have insurance for it, either.”
    “I see.”
    “I should also tell you, Pastor, that I’ll be asking Jim Russell for his advice about what to do with the store, business-wise that is. I know he’s rather young still, and a Catholic, definitely not a Presbyterian, but he knows a lot about business. Makes dollars come from dirt every day it seems. And these days helps others do it as well.”
    “Yes, just as good farmers should, sustenance for themselves and the world about. Oh, I don’t blame you at all for asking Jim Russell—no, not at all. I like him, too, you know. He might belong to a different sect but not a different faith, leave us just say that, though some may disagree. And he’s done a lot to help people hereabout, you’re right there too. No one can deny it. One of the Keepers of the Village, isn’t he, this Jim? Just like you and Lorna?”
    “Yes, he is. For his part, he wants to keep Locust Hill as rural as it can be for as long as we can manage it, but without our getting left behind by the rest of the world. Don’t want that, either. Keep its spirit alive if nothing else, I guess you’d say. It’s a hard balance to strike—what to hold on to and what to let go of. But mostly Jim wants to keep the local family farms going. That’s his focus. And he’s had quite a bit of luck doing it, too. As for the other Keepers, their goals are a lot less definite than Jim’s—like just keeping the village tidied up every so often.”
    “And as for you, Charlie Crandall, you’d like to keep that general store of yours going, wouldn’t you?”
    “Yes, I sure would, in some fashion or form. That’s why I want to talk with Jim. That store is my family heritage, after all. I’d surely hate to be the one to close it.”
    “Well, there’s no other place that people see more as the center of life out here in Locust Hill, it seems to me, than that general store. When people think on the one, they’re quick to think on the other. Nary a one of our churches here about can make that claim. You’ve got a unique place there, Charlie—you and Lorna do—and you’re justified in being proud of it.”
    Then they heard the squeak of footsteps on the stairs. Lorna was creeping down the staircase. Charlie smiled in relief and lifted his forefinger to his lips to warn Pastor Beattie before calling out, “Lorna, that you?” Presently, without an answer to Charlie, she opened the door and popped her head inside the parlor, one hand on the door, the other on the sill.
    “Yes, it’s me.” She smiled brightly and seemed okay. “Good evening, Pastor Beattie. Sorry to be so late to welcome you. Would you like some tea? Got Scottish Blend.”
    “Oh yes, Lorna, that would be lovely, if it’s not any trouble for you.”
    “Not at all. I’ll be right back with it.” She went off to the kitchen, leaving the door ajar. Charlie began clearing items from the coffee table in front of the settee, a ceramic cow from Tom Lowery and a photo album with Colton’s graduation picture inside the photo slot on its cover. Pastor Beattie scooted to his right to make room for Lorna on the settee.
    She soon returned with a large pewter tray loaded with a steaming teapot, teacups and saucers, small dessert dishes, napkins, and a plate of five lemon bonbons. Charlie took the tray from her and placed it on the coffee table as she sat down next to Pastor Beattie.
    “You look as lovely as ever, Lorna, that I must say. Mrs. Beattie and I are always so amazed at you, how you manage to be so pert and pretty yet work six days a week. It’s a miracle, indeed, that’s what it is!”
    Lorna blushed before replying, “Maybe it’s the work itself—or more likely the people who come to the store who boost me up. The days fly by, I know that for certain. And so do the years.”
    “Charlie was telling me you had a bit of a fright this evening. That so?”
    “I guess you could call it that. I saw our son again.” Now she paused and lowered her head as though she were ashamed of her experience and uncertain about how to relate it.
    “I believe you, Lorna, I truly do. I believe you did see Colton. It’s entirely possible. He called to you, did he?”
    “Yes, he needed me for something, something upstairs. But when I got there, he was gone. It always happens that way.” Her voice broke a bit now. “And then I called for Charlie.” She looked across the room, looked into Charlie’s eyes, eyes turning moist now with sympathy for her. He nodded to her with a sad smile. She smiled a bit herself now, realizing that he needed her, too. “Guess I always turn to Charlie when I’m frightened—or ashamed.”
    “Ah, but no need for you to be either, Lorna. No, not at all, I say. What you saw was given to you, just to you, as a gift from God. Given just for you because of your special relationship with your son. It grew out of that relationship, you see. God allowed it to. And one day in Glory you will be with your son again, and he’ll tell you then all you’ve longed to know about his fate in this imperfect world of ours. God will see to it. These visions you have are but a preview of that time, I believe. Just a preview to give you a wee bit of relief, not at all meant to break you down. So don’t fret over them when they happen. No, dinna do that, for there’s no need for it. They’re meant instead for a comfort.”
    With her head still lowered, she replied, “I’ll try not to fret. I really will. I do see what you mean. It’s not been put to me like that before. Thank you, Pastor.”
    “But the reunion must come in its own good time and its own good way,” Pastor Beattie continued. “There’s nothing we can do, or should do, to try to change that or hasten it. Such things are in God’s hands, not ours. They are part of His Providence and Will, and well beyond our doubtful reach. And a good thing that is, too, when you think about it, Lorna, for what we suffer today, if we remain faithful and true, will be recompensed one day in Glory. Recompensed many times over, Lorna. That you must believe.”
    “I do believe it, Pastor Beattie, but it’s been so hard not to know about Colton and what happened to him. If he suffered at all. Or still does. Even when he appears to me, I don’t get a word from him about it. Just when I think I will, like this evening, he’s gone, vanishes without a word to me or his father. I thought for sure tonight when he called me to his room he’d tell me this time, but then, once again, he was gone, vanished. It’s a cross bigger than I can bear sometimes and so I slip back into my grief and can’t get out again. Just as though I’ve fallen into a deep dark well.”
    “Oh, but you can come out again, Lorna, rise up and stay in the light, too. Just be patient. Grief in such a case as yours is right and proper, but dinna grieve beyond measure. You’re a strong woman, I know you are. You’ll get through it all. And Charlie, good man that he is, he’s here to help you with all that comes your way. And so am I. And the others all around you at the church and in the store. There’s good people here in Locust Hill, as you yourself just said. So many angels, all in their own way. As good as any I’ve seen in this world, I can say that for certain.”
    “I know that’s true, Pastor Beattie. They come visit us every day at the store.”
    “Aye, that they do! So don’t you worry so, Lorna. You’ll be just fine, you will.”

5. Consolation of Reason

    They seated themselves on the worn yellow wooden bench with the Royal Crown Cola logo stenciled on its backrest in brown letters, now faded by years of sunlight and harsh weather.
    “The sun sure is warm this morning, Charlie.” Jim Russell was saying as he unbuttoned his khaki barn coat. “Whew, glad you wanted to talk out here. I can see why your cats are always in the window come morning, getting their vitamin D this way.”
    “Lot of generations of cats have enjoyed the morning sun in that window, Jim. No telling how many by now. . . . Oh look, here comes Harriet Bowersock. Bringing her eggs in for consignment.” Charlie looked at his wristwatch. “Yep, and right on time, too.”
    A mud-spattered black Ford pickup pulled to a stop in front of the store. They could hear the stretching of its emergency brake cable before Harriet got out. She was dressed in a blue denim jacket and jeans with a bright orange scarf pulled tight around her face.
    “Mornin’, Charlie, Jim. You fellas enjoyin’ the sun this mornin’ instead of workin’, I see.”
    “We’ve managed it well so far, Harriet,” Charlie called back to her, laughing. “How many cartons you got today?”
    “Eight. I got eight dozen eggs for you ‘n Lorna. Three of ‘em from the Carlsons.” Harriet walk to the truck’s tailgate, pushed back a tarp that covered her cargo box filled with egg cartons. She started to lift the box from the truck bed.
    Seeing what she was doing, Jim got up and after a few quick steps was beside her. “Here, Harriet, let me help you with that,” he said.
    “Thanks, Jim. ‘Preciate you,” Harriet said as Jim took the box from her and carried it toward the door. “My Rhode Island Reds have been right busy lately. Dozens and dozens of beautiful, brown eggs for you and Lorna to sell, Charlie. Best eggs you can eat, you know. Good for the blood.”
    “Well now, I’ll defer judgment on that to my friend Jim there,” Charlie replied, pointing in Jim’s direction. “He’s the one who’s the biologist, after all.”
    Jim grinned. “More difference in the hens that lay the eggs than in the eggs themselves, Harriet. Eggs are good for you though, no doubt about that, brown or white. But lots of folks do prefer the brown ones, you’re right about that as well.”
    “See there, Charlie, you old windbag! Your expert here agrees with me. And polite to carry my eggs, too, while you’re just sittin” there.”
    “Not sure that’s what I heard, Harriet, but either way we’ll be glad to sell your eggs. Let me get the door for you two.” Charlie opened the door. “And Lorna will give you the money for last week’s sales, Harriet. Got it ready for you last night.”
    With Harriet inside and sure to gab with Lorna for at least half an hour, Charlie and Jim sat down again on the bench.
    “Missed you yesterday, Jim. Thought for sure you’d be in.”
    “Yes, I would have, but had to hurry out to the Kesterson farm after our morning conference call with all the farmers in the Alliance. So that took me way out on Zion Ridge. Thought we had an infestation of potato beetles out that way. Late in the year for that. But since everyone in our Alliance shares equipment, we didn’t want to spread the problem. Have to be real careful about things like that when you share farm implements the way we do. Turned out not to be as bad as we thought, fortunately. Frost will probably get them soon anyway. But I do have to say, Charlie, you look a bit troubled today, you and Lorna both. What’s going on?”
    “That new store, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
    “Oh, I see. Well, I’m not surprised. In fact, I feared that’s what it might be yesterday when Cassie told me you’d called. Think it might be too much competition for you guys, is that it?”
    “Yep, it’s the final straw, I’m afraid, unless we can come up with a miracle solution. Despite there being more people in Locust Hill than ever was before, what with all the ones moving out here from Parkeston, our share of business keeps falling. Once people out here got cars, everything changed. Didn’t seem so far to drive into town anymore, so that took away some business way back before World War II. That was my granddad’s big challenge, you could say. In those horse and buggy days, farmers out here would only go into town once a month to stock up on supplies. Remember the seed store and hardware place you could enter right on that rickety old bridge as you went into town? Remember that?”
    “You mean the Juliana Street Bridge?”
    “Yep, that’s it. The city didn’t want so many horses on the downtown streets. Can’t imagine a bridge today with stores on it like that, can you?”
    “No, not at all. I do remember those stores, though, but just barely.”
    “Back then, even with a strong team of horses clip-clopping up ahead of you, you’d spend most of your time just to get to town, get your buying done, load up, and come home again with most of your field chores left undone that day. Maybe even barn chores undone, too, unless your kids did them. Folks couldn’t afford to stay away from their farms that long, not very often they couldn’t. That’s what gave my great grandpa Crandall the idea of building this store—to save folks time. And that worked out to everyone’s satisfaction for many a decade. But now, four generations later, with everybody having an automobile, they can be to Parkeston and back in no time at all and think nothing of it. Probably even prefer to do it if for no other reason than just to say they’ve been to town and had a chance to see what’s going on there.”
    “Well, I can’t remember as far back as you, Charlie,” Jim chuckled, “but I can see you must be right.”
    “Then maybe you won’t remember this part either, but we used to have gas pumps right here at the store. Right over there.” Charlie pointed to the spot where Harriet had parked. “Thought we’d at least sell customers some gas to go to town, if that’s what they wanted to do. But then the service station opened up across Shawnee Highway. Not only sold folks gas but changed their oil and tires and fanbelts and patched a radiator or two. More than we could do for them. That was my dad’s challenge.”
    “So your business has been shrinking by product line, not just by volume, for a long time, is that right?”
    “Oh my yes! Don’t even keep much in the storeroom anymore, not enough volume to justify it. And the Farmers’ Co-op! Jim, you’re might be president of it right now, but it’s been a burden for us, too. None of it your fault, of course. Not saying it is. Plus, the Co-op is a great thing for the farmers in the area, everybody knows that. But it still competes with us something fierce! Took away nearly all our sales of seed, feed, and fertilizer and later on, most of our work clothes sales as well. That was a big hit to us, Jim. Good margins in the clothes, in particular. We can’t compete with your discounts to the farm families. Just can’t do it. And now you’re expanding into hardware items, I hear. Lawnmower and tractor parts and the like.”
    “True enough, we are.”
    “And as if all that weren’t enough, now this convenience store comes along and it’ll likely take away our food sales—just about the last thing left to us other than Travis coming over once a week to buy up all of Lorna’s bonbons and our selling Harriet’s brown eggs! I guess that’s my challenge. But unlike my grandpa and Dad, I fear I’m going to fail at it.”
    “That’s about what I expected you to say, Charlie. Still, I’m sorry for the two of you to hear about it.”
    “Oh, some folks have remained loyal to the store, Jim, for sure they have, and probably will for a while longer. Just because it’s been here so long, I guess, or because we’re all still friends. Maybe a few’ll even stay with us despite our higher prices, but we can’t really expect them to do it forever. So I have to do something and do it pretty quick.”
    “Have you’ve seen a decline in sales already due to the convenience store?”
    “Sure have, better than thirty per cent since it opened. Yesterday, for example, we sold just $283 worth of goods and cleared just under $70 for our ourselves. Stretch that out over a year’s time and it gives a fellow an income of less than $9,000, while having to work six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, to get even that pitiful little amount. Probably going to get a lot worse, too. Soon it won’t be worth turning the key in the lock.”
    “Ouch, that’s a steep drop in revenues and profit!”
    “And with both of us being just fifty-six, Lorna and I still have a ways to go to a reasonable safe retirement. If we cash in now, even if we were able to sell the store and all our goods for a fair market price, I’m guessing we’d still be out of money by the time we hit seventy. Plus, we don’t have medical coverage anymore. Had to give that up several years ago when the premiums got so high. So if one of us took real sick, Jim, we’d be in a world of hurt. Don’t know what we’d do then, I really don’t.”
    “How’s Lorna taking all this? I recall she’s had problems with her nerves in the past.”
    “Well, that’s the other thing that worries me. Fact is, it worries me the most. Last night she started hearing and seeing Colton again. Even said he talked directly to her. She hadn’t had an episode like that for a few years, now here it comes again. Really set us back with medical bills the first time. Can’t afford to have that happen again.”
    “That’s a shame, Charlie, it really is.”

 

See the January, February, and March 2023 issues of cc&d for the full story...
part 3 of the story
Penny Candy

© Carl Parsons, May 2022

    “I even hesitated to tell her what I was thinking, Jim, about having to close up the store and all, but I knew that sooner or later I’d have to. So yesterday I just went ahead and did it. Tried to make it as gentle as I could, but guess I failed.”
    “I’m sure you did your best, Charlie. None of us wants to see Lorna hurt. She’s been hurt enough. And you, too. But there’s no avoiding the truth.”
    “No, there sure isn’t. Had Pastor Beattie over to the house last night to help with Lorna and get his advice some. I can’t afford to have her break down on me again. She knows it too and tries her best, God bless her, but those visions, over time, keep coming to her and won’t stay away. More than the medical cost, I just don’t think I could go on without her if anything more serious should happen. We been together so long it’s about like being just one person now. If one’s hurt, so’s the other.”
    “What did Pastor Beattie say? Did he help any?”
    “Did what he could, I’m sure. Calmed her down quite a bit, I have to say that, and gave her some hope. She seems better today. More accepting and less worried about the store. And no new visions or voices, at least not so far today, but I’m keeping a close eye on her.”
    “Well, that’s a hopeful sign.”
    “Pastor told her God knows what we need and will provide it in the long run. Told her that her visions are a gift from God, not a curse, something to help her with her loss, not torment her.”
    “Well, that’s a beautiful explanation, Charlie. And here I thought we Catholics were the ones had the market cornered on signs and visions.”
    “No, not always, not with my Lorna around you don’t,” Charlie said with a bit of a smile. “But she does feel like none of that helped when Colton first went missing. Just mention his name at that time and she started to fall apart. Maybe she’ll change now that Pastor Beattie has talked with her as he did. But for now, the best thing is for her to stay as busy as possible. That’s how I see it. Doctor she went to in Morgantown back when this all first happened said pretty much the same thing. ‘Keep her busy’—that was his advice. Then charged us like he’d just told us the secret for turning lead into gold. Anyhow, work really does give her less time to think about Colton coming back to us. I think that’s why she’s took to making bonbons nearly every night instead of just once a week like she used to. Something to keep herself busy. Plus, they’re one thing that still sells for us, every time.”
    “I understand. Well, let me see what I can do, Charlie. No promises, but I do have an idea. In fact, it’s something I’ve been thinking about even before you called.”
    “What is it, Jim?”
    “Rather not say yet, Charlie. Can’t implement the idea by myself. I need to consult with the Co-op Board members and even have them vote on it. And you know how contrary Travis Lowery can be. Yet there’s no way we’ll ever get him off the board, not that we really want to.”
    “Yes, I sure know all about Travis. What’s more, he’d like to buy this store. Did you know that?”
    “No, never heard that! Really?”
    “Yep, buy it and tear it down, that’s what he’d do. Just like he did the old blacksmith forge down the way there, beyond Lem Dietrich’s barber shop. Tore it down and then put up his tractor repair shop in its place. Did that years ago, but seems like only yesterday to me.”
    “I remember my dad talking about the smithy shop. But what would Travis do with your store if he did buy it?”
    “Replace it with an ice cream parlor, he told me. Can you beat that! You can just guess where the milk and cream would come from.”
    Jim laughed. “Well, did he offer you a good price?”
    “Yeah, good for him, but not for us.”
    “That’s Travis all right, to a T. . . . Tell you what, the Co-op Board has a meeting this Thursday night, and I think I have enough votes to do what I’m thinking of, even if I don’t get Travis’s support, so I might be able to tell you something on Friday. Hate to leave you in suspense, but if it all works out as I hope, maybe then you can tell Travis to peddle his ice cream over at his diner instead of here. How would that be?”
    “That’d be nice, not that I have anything at all against Travis, understand. He’s been a good customer to us and always been a good friend to boot. So’s his family before him.”
    “Well, I’ll see what I can do. That’s about all I can say for now.”
    “I know you will, Jim. You always do your best to keep things in Locust Hill from changing too much or too fast, but I want you to know that Lorna and I don’t want charity. No, won’t have that.” Charlie was shaking his head with vigor as he spoke.
    “Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s definitely not charity I have in mind, Charlie. Not at all, but a genuine business proposition instead. Why, are you Presbyterians opposed to charity?” Jim chuckled.
    “Well now, Jim, I’ll admit to a bit of a mean streak in Calvinism on that topic.” Charlie laughed now, too. “After all, needing charity might mean you’ve fallen out of favor with God and, worse yet, that you were predestined to do it. And that doesn’t bode well for the Day of Judgment, now does it? Might put a soul on the down escalator, so to speak. That’s about what Pastor Beattie would say, I guess.”
    “Well, at St. Benedict’s we’re more into the good works school and so don’t think that charity is a sin either in the giving or the getting. Anyhow, as I said, it’s not charity I have in mind anyway. In fact, I’m really glad you’ve talked with me about this problem as candidly as you have. It’ll help me clarify my proposal. If what I’m thinking works out, Charlie, it could do both of us a world of good. A sensible solution is always the best way forward, I think, one with mutual benefits.”
    Suddenly the store’s entrance door swung open and Harriet Bowersock stepped out onto the porch carrying her empty cargo box. “You boys still blabberin’ out here?” she said. “Must be sumthin mighty real to keep both yuns from your work so long. Bet you ain’t set ‘long ‘side that pretty wife of yorn this much time for years, Jim Russell,” she added as she walked around the truck’s tailgate to the driver’s side. “Probably not since you courted her. Shame on you! And yet here you are yappin’ with ole’ Charlie. Nothin’ pretty about him, I can tell you that. Don’t know what a good woman like Lorna even sees in him!” After stowing her cargo box and climbing into the truck, she leaned out the window to grin at them, content with her chidings, then waved goodbye, and they to her, as she drove away.

6. Consolation of Community

    “So you’re giving up at last, is that it?” Gracie Evans asked Charlie with her characteristic diplomacy. She slid back the door to the dairy cooler and plucked out a carton of brown eggs as she talked, not even looking at Charlie, then placed the eggs gingerly on the counter in front of him before looking up. Her friend, Irma Lambert, another of the Keepers, already stood at the sales counter with her own dozen of Bowersock brown eggs.
    “Where’d you hear that, Gracie?” Charlie asked while ringing up their purchases. Even as he asked, he was enumerating to himself the possible sources.
    “Well, Irma here’s the one told me,” Gracie replied, relieved to have her friend nearby as a ready excuse.
    But quick to defend herself, Irma explained, “And I overheard it at church Wednesday night, Charlie. Several people saying it. From what I could make out, they were tellin’ it’s caused by that new place—that convenience store on that corner lot Sandie and Freddy Cunningham sold off. The one right along Shawnee Highway. A choice location, for sure.”
    “And by now,” Gracie added before Charlie could reply, “the phone lines from here plum out to Zion Ridge are burning up with the news. So, Charlie Crandall, I sure hope you weren’t expecting to keep this store’s demise a secret for long.”
    “Yes, our problem is the new store,” Charlie confessed, “and no, I didn’t expect it to stay a secret for long but didn’t expect it to become headline news, either.” He laughed a bit, then said rather sadly, “Besides, nothing’s decided yet. You need to keep that in mind, ladies.” He lowered his voice still more as he saw Lorna approaching from the storeroom. Leaning toward them he added in a hush, “The new store’s a challenge for us, no doubt about it. Just don’t talk about it when Lorna’s around. Bothers her some.”
    Gracie and Irma looked at each other and then caught Charlie’s drift.
    “Okay, we understand,” Irma said quietly.
    Still, Gracie felt compelled to add, “But like I said, the phone lines out this way are burning up with the news. No one wants to see it happen, Charlie. Rest assured of that. None of us do.”
    “Thought you of all people, Gracie, wanted to see another store open up out here. Isn’t that what you’ve always said?”
    “Yes, see one open but not see this one close,” she replied in a whisper. “There’s a big difference, you know. Cause if it did happen, where would we go to buy Harriet’s eggs or Lorna’s bonbons or all the fresh produce you sell here in the summer and fall? The convenience store won’t serve for any of that, you can bet your life on it. It wouldn’t be the same around here without this general store, and losing it certainly would not be in the spirit of all we Keepers have pledged to one another to preserve Locust Hill. So we can’t have it close, Charlie Crandall, and that’s that.”
    “Well, I’m glad to hear you finally admit it, Gracie. But your concern . . . ,” and now Charlie bent forward and whispered to them again, after a glance in Lorna’s direction, “it might come a just bit too late unless we can figure out some way quick to save it. Others, as you may know, are not as anxious to preserve the past as we are.”
    “You wouldn’t mean Lord Lowery across the way there, now would you?” Gracie gave an elegant wave of her right hand toward the Lowery home while clutching her carton of eggs in the other. “He wouldn’t be like that if he was a Methodist.”
    “No, Gracie, not just him. Travis wants to see the community grow and prosper and seems to think that can happen without harm to anyone, if you know what I mean.”
    “But most of all he wants to make money from all the growin’ and prosperin’, if you know what I mean, Charlie. And wants it no matter what the changes are or who gets hurt by them. I’d say he’s quite willing to ignore any harm that comes from change even when he knows about it.”
    “But maybe he’s right about change, Gracie. Just look what’s happened in Parkeston. They knocked down their City Building a year or two ago as though it meant nothing. Now if a magnificent landmark like that can’t be saved, what chance has our little general store way out here got?”
    “Not sure I know, but I guess you’ll figure it out,” Gracie said. “I do see your point, but at least now you know how we feel about it.”
    “I do,” Charlie said, nodding his head, “and thanks for that.”
    “Well, Gracie,” Irma piped up, “I need to get home with these eggs ‘fore they commence to hatchin’! You comin’ along or stayin’ here to agitate Charlie some more?”

7. Consolation of Perspective

    In the late afternoon Lorna was taking her turn at the cash register when the Windsor family stopped by the store. Artie Windsor, a retired merchant marine, had sailed the world over for twenty years after leaving Locust Hill as a teenager. Now he’d returned with his young wife, Miku Hirata Windsor, having charmed her away from her native Osaka to a farm in Locust Hill. And now they had a three year old daughter, Hana, their “Flower,” and soon would have another child. They also had an orchard full of cherry trees. Done with the sea, Artie had bought land on Zion Ridge and become an orchardist, specializing in Montmorency cherries, all for Miku, who couldn’t bear the thought of spring without cherry blossoms. Now she had her very own cherry trees, and they were beginning to bear fruit.
    And Miku’s daughter—today Hana wore a sunflower dress with bold yellow and orange blossoms surrounding dark brown centers. Already she displayed her mother’s beauty—the daintiness of her face with such small and perfectly shaped lips and nose. And with such dark almond-shaped eyes, eyes that never merely glanced at the world but always peered out below her black bangs as though to see right through to the heart of things. Her father must have given her just the breath of life, for all else that moved and mattered about her was her mother’s. Only Hana’s skin was perhaps a half-shade lighter than her mother’s bronze tone, maybe not even that.
    As the Windsors stood before Lorna, the parents with their tiny daughter and even before Artie could lift the child up to the penny candy jar, someone touched Lorna’s shoulders from behind, the same way Charlie would do each morning to take her jacket or coat or sweater. But this was not Charlie. He was in the back of the store, showing work pants and carpenter’s aprons to Harmon Cleary, the local handyman. The hands touching her shoulders were warm and the voice at her ear just as warm, whispering to her, “Momma, watch what happens here and never be afraid again. Nothing is lost to change, not even me. Don’t fear for me. Don’t fear for the store or for Dad or for Locust Hill. Just watch.”
    Then, suspended from her father’s hands, Hana reached into the candy jar and grasped a chocolate mint wrapped in silver foil with her tiny brown hand. Then dropped it. As Lorna watched Hana, she thought, No hand like hers has ever reached into this jar. No, not in all these years, not until Hana came along, and I never realized it until now. No hand so brown, so different. A hand from another world, yet born right here.
    “Uh-oh! No, not that one, Papa,” Hana squealed with laughter, then grasped instead a roll of Necco wafers. “This one!” she proclaimed, lifting the roll up to her nose and then to her father’s nose. “Smell, Papa!”
    Artie gave the candy a perfunctory sniff and said to Lorna, “She loves the purple licorice wafers in these rolls while her mother only eats confections made from seaweed. Two strange girls I’ve got!” Artie laughed as he lowered Hana back down to the wooden floor. “Now, Hana, you must pay Mrs. Crandall.”
    Lorna walked to the opening at the front end of the candy counter and stooped down to receive Hana’s pennies. And Hana counted them, counted them out loud—slowly, deliberately, and accurately—dropping them one at a time into Lorna’s hand.
    “There, Lorna-san, my five pennies,” Hana announced and made a little bow.
    “Why, thank you, Hana. My, you count so very well. Who taught you?”
    Hana grasped her father’s pantleg as if to say, “This one!” but in fact said nothing. Hana’s mother, who had watched the purchase in silence, took two steps back from the counter and bowed as well, at least the best she could with her swollen abdomen. The little family then departed with Artie bidding Lorna to “say hello to Charlie for us. Say we’re sorry we missed talking with him.”
    Lorna waved to the Windsors, then crossed her forearms and placed her hands on her own shoulders as a shivering person might do. The other hands were gone now and so was the voice, but the comfort of both remained. This time Lorna felt no pain or panic, trusting now that the apparition would come again whenever needed to console her and remind her that change was not to be feared or fought or allowed to conquer her with despair.

8. Resolution

    Friday finally came and Jim Russell telephoned the store, called in the late afternoon. Lorna answered. Could he come by their house this evening? Had important information for them. In fact, proposals for them to consider. His voice seemed bright with optimism. “Why yes,” she said, “Of course, you can, Jim. This evening will be fine.”
    As Charlie and Lorna walked home through the village that evening, the cats raced ahead of them, stopping now and again to look back, waiting for a moment for their patrons to catch up, then racing off again, anxious now for dinner. Lorna watched them until Charlie asked her, “Is that all he said, Lorna? Some proposals? Nothing specific?”
    “That was all, Charlie. But don’t worry. Jim’ll come and explain himself. I’m not worrying about it anymore. You yourself said not to. Pastor Beattie said not to. And . . . and now, well, I’m not going to.”
    “I’m glad to hear that, but I sure am anxious to know what proposals Jim’s got for us.”

* * *

    Jim came promptly at seven, just as he’d told Lorna he would. They sat at the kitchen table, which Lorna had been especially quick to clear that evening.
    “So what is it, Jim?” Charlie asked right away. “I’m on pins and needles to know! What have you got?”
    “Quite a bit for the two of you to consider, Charlie. The Co-op Board put a lot of thought and work into the proposals I’m going to show you. Spent much of the week on them, in fact.” As he spoke Jim fished three sheets of paper from a manila folder he’d brought with him. “Here they are,” he said, offering one sheet for Charlie, one for Lorna, and keeping one for himself. On the papers was a typed list of items, which he then proceeded to read:
    “1) The Locust Hill Farmers’ Cooperative wishes to lease the Crandall’s General Store in order to sell small item hardware—such as hand tools, screws, bolts, washers, and nuts—along with work clothing, footwear, and related accessories—such as handkerchiefs, bandanas, belts, and sunglasses. This is not an all-inclusive list but is meant to illustrate the types of items intended in this agreement.
    “2) The Cooperative also wishes to employ Charles and Lorna Crandall as managers of the store with salaries and benefits comparable to the Cooperative’s other employees
    “3) The Cooperative will purchase the existing stock of hardware and clothing items now owned by the Crandall’s and on sale in the store; the purchase will be made at the current fair market wholesale value after a joint inventory.
    “4) The Crandalls will still be responsible for the insurance, property taxes, utilities, and maintenance of the store and grounds during the lease period.
    “5) If in the future the Crandalls should wish to sell the store and property to the Cooperative, and the Cooperative should wish to purchase the same from them, the amount paid in lease payments up to the date of sale will be applied to the purchase price.
    “6) During the duration of the lease, the Crandalls may still sell such other items as both parties deem appropriate—that is, items such as confections, baked goods, and other food products from local producers and sold in the store on consignment, as in the past.
    “7) The store will also continue to host each growing season the sale of local produce and may charge producers a reasonable fee for doing so.
    “8) The Cooperative will construct at its own expense a driveway linking the two properties for the convenience of their mutual customers.
    “9) The store must display at all times signage provided by the Cooperative designating the store as an affiliate of the Locust Hill Farmers’ Cooperative.
    “10) The Crandalls will be responsible for maintaining the financial records of Cooperative sales and expenses separate from their own sales and expenses.”
    When he finished reading the last proposal, Jim leaned back in his chair and said, “Now we drew up all this language yesterday without the help of a lawyer, so this is not our formal proposal yet, but it truly is what we’re thinking and have agreed to on our side. The document is specific enough for all of us to talk about, at least.”
    “What would the lease rate be, Jim?” Charlie asked. “Nothing here about that.”
    “True enough, we didn’t have enough time to get to that point, but we’re consulting right now with some realtors we know to determine the lease rates in the county on comparable properties. You might want to do the same so that we can reach an agreement faster.”
    “Okay, I can see that,” Charlie responded.
    “On the Co-op’s side,” Jim continued, “what we’re trying to do is avoid having to pay for an expansion of our existing store, which would shrink our parking area and require a large outlay of cash, something we’d rather not do right now. We could take out a loan, of course, but with this agreement, we wouldn’t have to make a downpayment to a lender and could pay you a monthly lease fee instead of interest going to some bank in town. You make money; we save money and time. Then, later on, when you two are ready to retire, we would make a final payment to you to purchase the property, if necessary. Helps both of us that way and gives you a reliable source of income now that could bridge you to retirement later on. And it keeps the store open and active, which we believe the entire community wants to see. Plus, you both would have salaries paid to you for managing the store and keeping its books. Not a lot of money to be sure, but the salaries would also come with medical benefits and life insurance if you want it. . . . Well, what do you think?”
    Charlie stared at the paper he held, hitched up his glasses to be certain he was seeing it right, but Lorna’s heart already raced ahead. For her, the words on the paper had become visions, even as she stared at them, visions of their old age together, Charlie’s and hers, gathered here as pictures might be in a photo album, like the one she kept of the coffee table in the parlor. She placed her forefinger on the words “the Crandalls” and felt a mellowness transfer from them, rising up her finger like warm water through a straw, racing on to find her heart. And when it did, she spoke. “The Co-op Board really agreed to all this, Jim? They would really do all this for us?”
    “Yes,” Jim replied. “Yes, they sure would. And agreed to it all unanimously, I might add. So you know what that means.”
    Charlie quickly responded, “It means that even Travis Lowery voted for this?”
    “As a Board member myself, I should never say how any individual Board member voted, so let me just repeat—the vote was unanimous.”
    Charlie smiled, feeling his shoulders lighten and his own heart fill. “This is very generous, Jim, very generous, indeed.” Then he looked at Lorna. She was smiling, too, more than he’d seen her do since Tuesday when he first broached with her the threat to the store. In fact, her face now seemed perfectly tranquil, even angelic. Then, looking back at Jim, Charlie echoed Lorna’s words, “You would really do all this for us? You and the Co-op, I mean?”
    “We would, and do it happily. Of course, your agreement to these proposals would mean that the store wouldn’t be completely yours any longer and most likely would eventually belong to the Cooperative.”
    “But it would still exist, wouldn’t it, Jim?” Lorna hastened to ask the question she knew was still on Charlie’s mind.
    “Yes, it sure would,” Jim replied. “We certainly wouldn’t be buying it to tear it down. We couldn’t claim to be Keepers of the Village if we did that.”
    As Charlie and Jim rose to shake hands, Lorna felt other hands touching her shoulders again, and their warmth flowed throughout her body once again. And the voice spoke again, “See, Momma, nothing to fear. You don’t have to worry anymore, not even when change comes.”

 

See the January, February, and March 2023 issues of cc&d for the full story...

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