Two
Langdon Hardware was on the east side of the bank and the pharmacy and right beside the feedmill with its antique elevator that served the poorer mixed farming country that stretched at elevation beyond the height of land to the south. It faced the sun on Main like all businesses in Langdon did. Antique homes with unfenced yards backing on the groundswell faced north. The store was a low rectangular building with a full overhung porch in the centre of the single block that all original Langdon storefronts were limited to, save the Avondale where a boy took a girl to the soda-counter if he was lucky.
A gangling young man with a big nose drove a black-and-yellow 1975 Camaro into town. The car only generated 155 horsepower via its 350 cubic inch small-block V-8 engine versus the previous year’s model with the exact same engine that generated 245 horsepower and this was on account of the catalytic converter, new in ‘75. The first thing he had done when he got the car was to remove the converter at the high school autoshop, something no mechanic would do over the illegality of the operation. He drove the car every day for a week in this lawless condition, breaking into a sweat passing every cop and once that week when Gunderson was driving behind him in his squadcar he pulled over ready to confess but the cop - chief or sheriff or whatever he was - drove by, waving to him. At the end of the week he went back to the shop and reinstalled the converter.
He had to suspend animation on the main avenue waiting to turn into Langdon Hardware - his family’s store - because a procession of eighteen or twenty black men enjoying their once weekly contracted break from the fields were strolling west. A third of them or so wore their thick toques in the heat with the result that some of their headgear seemed a foot high with their piled dreadlocks in there. They didn’t look at him. Didn’t look at the car, didn’t seem to notice any of it. Some of them without toques had boxes of groceries atop their heads and he’d seen how they could walk for miles in the sultry heaviness without lifting a hand to assist. They seemed very languid in their movements yet they were making deceptively good progress, perhaps on account of their long legs or perhaps their movements were not languid at all but rather just fluid, like water over shieldrock. The young man drummed his fingers on the steeringwheel. As soon as they were past and almost before, he wheeled in front of the store. He grabbed a sheaf of papers from the passenger seat before exiting the car.
He came up the few wooden stairs picking his nose and crossed the low porch in two strides, entering the building. The polished plank floor of the interior creaked under the tread of his large flat feet in their large flat Keds sneakers. There was a faint garage-like mustiness that was not unpleasant and sheets of light fell in canted panes on long rows of miscellaneous wares laid out flea market style on broad flat tables or benches as you entered. Glinting porcelain figurines of birds and horses and mugs and clocks and delicate glass menageries that caught the sun and offered it back spectral through dustmote murmurations, all his mother Anthea’s doing. A case of Timex watches and beyond this shelves of paints. More beyond that than anyone could know, including themselves.
Both of the young man’s parents were behind the counter. Scranton, a squat, once powerful man with a balding pate thinly foliated with tendrils of greasy ash that undulated gently like eelgrass with the slightest movement of anything was hunched over ledgers flicking his warty tongue whilst Anthea, a tall, gaunt woman with a façade of serenity, unfocused eyes and the large nose he had inherited was doing a crossword puzzle and stroking her sparse goatee with a free hand.
-Hi Richard, she said without looking up.
-These Creoles act like they got nowhere to be, he said, motioning back towards the street.
-It’s not like they want to be here, Anthea noted.
-If they don’t wanna be here, why’re they so abundant?
-They only seem abundant, Scranton said. Richard stared at him blankly. Their movements are visible, see. Longitudinal. He stood up from his ledger and looked over his glasses at his son. They walk places where we drive everywhere, darting in and out like astronauts. Movements short and lateral, see, like being in the atmosphere is gonna kill us. If you follow me. He hunched back over the books. We only seem outnumbered, son.
-They hold up the town.
-They hold it up alright. It’s an agrarian county. You can’t expect the landowners to do the work, now can you?
-Markovics do fine without ‘em. McLeods too, he said.
-McLeods bin here since they were givin’ land away. Everything’s paid-for and then some. And there’s a whole clan of ‘em. Markovic, it’s just him and his wife and that youngest girl now. He’s got a head full of peasant ideals from a peasant country and a mortgage still, likely. Working himself to death. Heart-attack, looming bankruptcy, Scranton said, pencil scanning the rows and columns. If you call that doing fine. Anyways, he had them fellas on his place too, back aways.
-I did not know that.
-Lots of things you don’t know what goes on around here. Enjoy your ignorance while it lasts. There’ll soon be no place in the world for peasant farms and peasant farmers.
-Or peasant hardware stores.
-Now Richard, Anthea said. She was polishing a porcelain grosbeak now from a box she had opened. Kissing it, polishing the spot, kissing it again.
-Apples and oranges, Scranton said.
-A person might say you two work yourselves to death.
-A person might say anything, and will, Scranton noted, tongue flicking.
-We don’t work so hard, Anthea said flatly, not looking up from her task. Steady is how we work.
-Steady as in always, Richard said.
-We’ll outlive Milo Markovic, Anthea said.
-Used to be the community pitched-in, Scranton said, looking up. All the kids worked on the farms from senior public-school and on. Some earlier. It was the order of things. Not anymore.
-What do they do anymore, Anthea said shaking her head, putting down the grosbeak and producing a warbler.
-Lachlan Creel works the farms still, Richard pointed out. He’s taken the year off after highschool and that’s all he’s doing.
-Lachlan Creel’s de-facto McLeod, Scranton said. Special case.
-Special enough for Lili Markovic, Richard griped.
-It wasn’t a compliment.
-At any rate, don’t fret, son, Anthea said. You just have to be patient. She began singing an old folktune under her breath. Quiet soprano. Listen to the mockingbird. Listen to the mockingbird. The mockingbird still singing o’er her grave… Still singing where the weeping willows wave.
-And persistent, Scranton added, holding up an index finger for emphasis, glancing at his wife.
-I brought the patent papers, Richard said.
-Things are linin’ up, Scranton said, flipping another page of the big book.
-I mean, would you mind having a look at them?
Scranton looked at his watch, slapped his hands down on the ledger.
-Let’s do it. Afore my meeting with The Mayor.
They repaired to the father’s small cluttered office in the building’s viscera with its fake wood paneling darkened by the smoke from the tens of thousands of the cigarettes he had quit four years ago. Tall dusty filing cabinets, wall calendar depicting old woodworking tools, worn oak desk mostly buried under papers and heavy Edwardian chairs in which father and son seated themselves across from one another. The son handed him the papers and the father studied them through his bifocals. His tongue began to flick around. Would he flick the tongue if the wart were not there? Maybe the tongue worked in service to the wart. Maybe he needed the wart to start the brain, the wart being a sort of solenoid…
-Son… Son?!
-Present!
-What is it?
-Nothing.
-Looks good, Scranton said.
-Looks good?
-You got that girl on your mind, doncha? Good as in profits look like they will more’n cover the costs of the patent.
-Oh, yeah. I’ll mail it out on Monday then.
-Do that. And don’t blow the rest of the dough. The car’s fine and dandy for now.
-Money’s meant to be enjoyed, didn’t you say so once?
-Not yet it ain’t, Scranton said. Richard got up from his chair. They outnumber us two to one, by the way, Scranton added. So mind yer manners come summertime.
-Come summertime?
-Most of ‘em fly south, if you haven’t noticed by now.
-Maybe we should fly south, Richard said, turning to leave.
-We’re not going anywhere, son, Scranton said, still seated. We committed to this place. Better or worse.
-It’s just a store, at the end of the day, Richard replied, stopping a moment, turning partially. Didn’t you say that once too?
-It’s just a store. Yes it is. I’m not talking about the store.