About Main Street (From: The Mere Valley)
Post 800:
The Mere Valley: A Novel
Chapter One: Main Street
Tim rubbed a roll of bills together in his sweaty fingers, watching Herm Burns and his teenage son clumsily loading an antique woodworking bench into the back of Herm’s shiny white pickup truck. He winced and rubbed the bills some more, standing there, enduring the process in its entirety while the sun superheated the cracked sidewalk in front of his empty store. He shifted back and forth to give his boot heels a fighting chance. The high altitude added an extra kick to summer. That’s what Herm said pulling up, like he was delivering secondhand news picked clean from a scientific journal.
“Your mother will love this,” Tim heard Herm grunting to his son as they wrestled the unwieldy piece. “She mentioned something about using it for parties.”
“Great,” said the kid, slamming the tailgate closed and spitting like a pretend cowboy through closed teeth onto the curb where it instantly evaporated. “An old table. Exciting.”
Tim almost smiled. The kid’s comment was tone deaf and typically stupid. He might’ve said something as dismissive at that age, but he couldn’t remember back that far, recent events being what they were, clogging up the works.
Herm left his son leaning on the truck to play with his girlish bangs as he walked cautiously over to Tim with an outstretched hand, pink and fat. His smile was bleached and too perfectly white for a man that had seen a long run of years. “I’m sorry about everything,” he said, raising his eyes up to Tim’s face and then to the sign providing them a momentary slice of shade.
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Herm. Like I said. Thank you for responding to the ad. Every bit helps.”
“Did you count that? We just hit the ATM and Linda was on the phone the whole time. I didn’t double check. Make sure. I don’t want to short you.”
Tim held up the roll and slipped it into the front pocket of his old jeans, hoping a forced smile was a clear signal that the matter was closed.
“Okay,” Herm said. “We’ll see you and the Shayna around town. Bennie’s this Friday, maybe. That blues band is playing.”
“We’ll see.” Herm managed to trip another mine, forgetting that Shayna was staying with her part-time tutor sister past the county line. Tim was sure more than one person in town was privy; same as saying everyone in town. Mere Valley was growing but it couldn’t outrun the speed of spreading words. Rumor traveled quick as Mercury.
When they finally pulled away, Tim could see the bench already starting to slide in Herm’s truck bed. In ten minutes it would be brutalized and chipped, but no matter. Herm’s wife would have it stripped of its true purpose to serve champagne or unpronounceable finger foods to people he couldn’t imagine if he tried. He walked back inside, ignoring the store owners standing across the street watching, fingers ready to call the sheriff’s office. Maybe it’d make the big city news, another white guy going crazy, disillusioned by a life sanded down to the nub. Those that looked were people he’d known for decades, but they posed imperiously like ready-made gestapo initiates, arms crossed and faces bunched up.
“How’s everyone,” he called out, summoning a short wave to the audience before turning back inside, doing one last sweep around the store to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He told himself out loud not to think several times as he circled the square footage. Semple’s Hardware was officially no more. The third generation would be the last. His grandfather was gone, along with his woodworking bench and everything else. He sat in the middle of the floor and looked at the counter, using his memory to fill the empty space. He’d learned most things about life from the old timers that used Semple’s as a base of operations, buying a single washer or nut as a pretext to wile away their days telling stories. He found himself pounding the indestructible hardwood next to his legs, whispering a list of things he might’ve done differently without swallowing, until the drool started leaking out from between his lips.
“Hi there. Are you Timothy Semple?”
He rose up like a man with younger legs, embarrassed and without an excuse in the world. He might’ve been able to explain away his behavior to an old friend, but before him was a stranger. “Uh, yes ma’am. We’re not open.”
She nodded back with a little smirk that confirmed the obviousness of his statement then asked if the counter was okay for setting down her box. Before he could unlock his jaw, she said, “I’m Reny Davies. Dru Davies’ niece.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Okay. You’re confused. I’m setting the box down, Tim. It’s heavy.”
“Of course,” he repeated, watching her unburden herself.
“That’s better,” she sighed, wiping her brow and then her hands with a blue bandana pulled from a patched back pocket. “Nice to meet you Tim.”
“Hi,” he said while she looked around him to assess the surroundings. “It’s been kind of,” he continued, “do I know you?”
“Dru Davies bought the space. Today’s the first of the month and I just got to town to start setting up the shop.”
Tim looked at his watch like doing so made for good deflection. “I shouldn’t be here. I was just meeting a guy for one last,” he said, talking as much to himself as her while he started for the door. “It’s not important. I’ll get out of your way, Ms. Davies.”
“It’s totally fine,” she said, “and you don’t have to sprint. You’re officially my first friend in Mere Valley.”
He passed by with a nod, allowing himself a moment to recognize signs of beauty before attempting to dismiss the thought. She was younger than he could put a number to, and therefore too young.
“This has got to be hard, Timothy.” The painfully obvious statement was made by Merritt D. Lennox, Jr. Tim noticed the gang of busybodies across the street growing ever more ready for drama. He could feel the eyes of the cute new tenant on his back. He had to get out of the situation. This was one of those life moments, he told himself. Where a man finds out what he can endure. In seconds he called upon better men’s memories to make the moment small, stories from his father and grandfather about outlasting some god-awful enemy, being near death and riddled with disease as they all slept in a bed of their dead buddy’s guts or some such. “Just really sad to see an institution like Semple’s get swept up. I wish—”
“You wish what, Merritt?” The borrowed memories were gone. The world was only him and his failure, on display for his old friends and the new girl. And Merritt. That the youngest Lennox was a simple-minded guy with a decent enough heart made everything he said worse. “Do me a favor, buddy. Don’t say you wish there was something you could’ve done.”
“Okay,” Merritt said, tipping his cowboy hat to the girl as Tim brushed by in search of his rusty two-tone Ford F-150. “I didn’t mean nothing by it. I just came to pay my respects.”
Tim tightened the keys in his hand until his palm drew blood. The metal sank deeper into his skin as he fought the urge to turn around put Merritt on the ground.
He swallowed. Hurting Lennox would do nothing except get him in trouble with the richest family in town and set fire to whatever future he had left.
“I’ll see you it at the job on Monday,” Merritt said. It was impossible to know what purpose he thought he served by being there. The man was not evil. That descriptor one saved for his father, Merritt, Sr.
Tim reached his truck.
“Lennox Home and Garden is really lucky to have you, buddy.”
Tim bit down on his lip as he tried to jiggle the lock. “You got to be kidding me,” he said.
“What?” Merritt said, though the comment wasn’t necessarily made for his hearing alone.
“You got to be kidding me,” Tim repeated, letting go of his bloody keys and looking for something in the bed of his truck. He found a two-by-four that he’d forgotten about. Mumbling, he grabbed it and started beating the door to the F-150. Merritt called out, asking if everything was okay. Across the street, they were taking pictures. The girl was looking left and right with her mouth cupped, watching as the sad man from the store proceeded to smash the windows of an old pickup in the middle of main street.
