South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [30]
A thought she’d been having for days came into her mind as she walked: You could sneak back into the hotel. She stomped the thought out, another little grass fire that could be controlled. But the idea was so attractive, before long its spark had flamed Up again and she was talking herself into it. She’d forgotten to give the key back that first day, and Gladys had neglected to ask for it. Madeline found it now in her pocket, and her fingers wrapped around it just for the pleasure of holding it. There was no harm in going in. Gladys wouldn’t mind. Madeline wouldn’t be hurting anything. It would be a very tiny and completely harmless adventure that would take nothing from anyone.
Madeline gave herself twenty minutes in the hotel—up in the attic, staring out at the lake—because anything more than that and Gladys would start to wonder what had become of her. When her time was Up she clattered back down the stairs and out the door, taking care to look relaxed and confident, so that if anyone noticed her they’d assume she’d been there on some errand for Gladys.
7
The fruit man’s stand was just three long tables with a canvas awning pulled over them, behind which sat a battered white delivery van with the doors slid open. The fruit man himself was tall and lanky, brown from standing out in the sun. He looked tired and worn, as if he had worked too many hours for too many years. But he also looked kind.
He handled the produce fast but gently with big hands that never stopped moving, and he chewed on a stub of Unlit cigar as he talked, keeping Up a steady stream of conversation with his customers. As quickly as he could sell cartons of tomatoes and bags of onions and bunches of celery and little crates of plums and apples and apricots, he had his helper bring out more from the back of the truck.
His helper was his opposite—short, bandy-legged like a jockey, with a shock of white hair and rheumy blue eyes. He wore hard-soled brown oxfords with a pattern tooled into the toes, brown polyester pants, a silky blue windbreaker. He grumbled over his chores but he didn’t seem really to mind them. He hurried as best he could on his crooked legs, saying, “Yeah, yeah,” to his boss’s orders in a put-upon way that seemed merely habit, flashing a seedy grin at the ladies.
Madeline waited her turn as half a dozen women ahead of her squeezed tomatoes and thunked melons. They must have all simultaneously been watching the television and had seen that the fruit man’s line was short.
Apparently there was a webcam mounted on one of the buildings nearby that made a sweep of the main street and the water’s edge, panning a nearly changeless landscape day and night. This played nonstop on the local cable channel. Madeline had laughed out loud when she stopped at Mabel Brink’s house one day to return a dish Gladys had borrowed and found her watching the static scene with great absorption. Mabel had said she wanted to see how busy it was at the bank before she bothered to drive downtown, a distance of three blocks. So now Madeline waited her turn, struggling to hide how funny she found this because the ladies mightn’t have been amused.
The produce looked good and the prices seemed fair, and she thought it was no wonder the grocery didn’t want the fruit man coming to town, although she doubted the Bensons would consider him significant competition. Even if he did cut into their business, she didn’t suppose they would do anything to stop him. Wasn’t competition the gospel of the free market, and weren’t they more patriotic than the president himself with their two oversized flags flapping at the front of the store?