started down the hill toward the square.
* * *
The screen door yawned open, brushing against a cowbell suspended overhead.
Violet followed Stanley past bolts of fabric, men’s hats, and a fine china display.
“Be careful!” a woman shouted from somewhere in the store, Mrs. Murray, the owner’s wife, by the sound of it.
“Yes, ma’am,” Stanley returned as he continued toward the back. He paused to admire a bounty of chocolate, while Violet went in search of her favorite treat.
“No fooling around.” Mrs. Murray, a rake of a woman, stepped behind the candy case and grabbed an apron off a nail. She wrapped the strings behind her thin frame and around front again. With fabric still left over, she tied a substantial bow over her hollow stomach. She obviously never sampled her own wares. “What can I get you?”
Stanley piped up first: “Peanut brittle.” He placed the money on the counter.
“And gumdrops,” Violet added. After all, that nickel was just as much hers. “Red ones, please.”
“You’ll take what color I give you,” the woman said as she shoveled a scoop of gumdrops into a paper sack. “No more brittle till tomorrow. Sold the last of it this morning.” She swiped the nickel off the counter, tossed it into the register, and moved toward the front of the store.
Violet handed the bag to Stanley. “You can have the red ones if you like.”
Looking first to see their color, he popped two green candies into his mouth. “What a pickle puss,” he said when Mrs. Murray was out of earshot, and he started toward the door.
Violet spied the widow Lankowski near the entrance. A giant, standing six feet tall, she had at least a head’s advantage over most of her Welsh neighbors. She was also the only Catholic on Spring Street. All Violet had to do was look out her parlor window to see the proof, a foot-tall statue of Mary planted in the woman’s front yard. And if that weren’t enough, she was childless, making her even more suspect in the eyes of the children who seemed to prefer passing on the Morgan side of the street.
Violet grabbed Stanley by the collar and pulled him down behind a cracker barrel to the right of the china. She pointed and mouthed, “The widow.” Without a word between them, they agreed to wait the woman out.
“We Catholics are just as eager to meet Billy Sunday,” the widow Lankowski was explaining to Mrs. Murray. She straightened her fingers as far as her swollen knuckles would allow and raised her right hand. “God as my witness.”
Mrs. Murray nodded while she cut several yards of black muslin from a bolt on the table. “Glad to hear it,” she said, turning to wrap the fabric in a sheet of brown paper.
“We’re all God’s children, are we not?” the widow said.
“Ain’t that the truth.” Mrs. Murray cut a length of string, tied it around the package, and handed it to her customer. “That’ll be one dollar even.”
“And a bottle of Lydia Pinkum’s.”
Mrs. Murray motioned the widow to follow her to the right side of the store. “For what ails you,” she said, pointing to an assortment of bottles stacked on the shelves behind her, all promising to cure any number of female ailments.
“I’m fit as a fiddle,” the widow said. “An ounce of prevention is all.”
Mrs. Murray ran her finger across a ledge in search of the tonic. “There’s more in back. Just be a minute.”
The widow glanced around the store before turning to the counter, where she pulled out a small red book and pencil, and recorded her purchases.
Stanley saw his chance and yanked Violet left around the barrel. “Move,” he whispered, keeping hold of her hand. Both pairs of feet scurried toward the door, but their eyes remained fixed on the widow’s giant frame. As they reached the front of the store, Stanley finally breathed and smiled, “I thought we were in for it.”
The screen door yawned, the cowbell rang, and the children collided with Myrtle Evans just as she crossed the threshold.
“What in the world?” Myrtle placed a hand on the head of each child and pushed them backward into the store. “Mrs. Murray?” she shouted. “Come here this minute.”
“She’s in the storeroom,” the widow Lankowski called out, moving toward the entrance. She eyed the prey trying to wriggle free of Myrtle’s talon grip. “And what do you have to say for yourselves?”
“Probably trying to rob her blind,” Myrtle offered as she dug her nails in a little deeper. “Mrs. Murray?” she called again.
“Where are your manners?” the widow asked, looking at Violet and Stanley. “Apologize to Myrtle Evans.”
Violet willed her lips to move. “Sorry,” she managed a beat before Stanley. Their apologies overlapped like songs sung in rounds.
“Now if you’d waited for me at the counter like I told you, none of this would have happened.”
The children’s eyes sprang up and their mouths popped open as they pivoted toward the widow.
“They’re with you?” Myrtle asked, relaxing but not abandoning her hold.
“I asked the children if they wouldn’t mind helping me this afternoon. Gout’s acting up.”
“That so,” Myrtle said. “For someone who’s afflicted, you move real good.”
The widow allowed her left leg to slacken under her long skirt, as she leaned against a table of bed linens. “I’m embarrassed to say, I didn’t think to ask their folks first. I’d be much obliged if we could keep this matter between us.” When Myrtle didn’t answer, the widow added, “We both know Grace doesn’t need bothering now.” She glanced in Stanley’s direction. “And who knows what his father would do. Beat the daylights out of him, I suppose.”
Stanley reared up, but Violet grabbed his wrist and squeezed.
Myrtle Evans said nothing, her lips pulled tight like a drawstring purse.
“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you if that was your Evan I saw pushing over poor Mr. Bonser’s outhouse on Thursday night. Sure looked like him, but I couldn’t say for certain. Eyes are about as bad as my gout.” She stood up straight and waited.
“Apology accepted.” Myrtle dropped her hands to her sides. “Consider the matter forgotten. You’ll not hear a word about it from me.”
“That’s awfully kind of you, Myrtle. The children and I are sure grateful.”
Mrs. Murray came back out, carrying a bottle of Lydia Pinkum’s. “One dollar and sixty-three cents, all together.”
The widow Lankowski paid Mrs. Murray, entered the price of the tonic in her red book, and handed the bottle to Violet and the muslin to Stanley. She said, “Good day,” as she ushered the two out through the screen door.
Dumbfounded, the
