He went inside, blinking in the sudden dark of the shop. The floor of the place still carried a hint of oil-soaked sawdust from its days as a garage. The floorboards were old and grey, and they creaked as he walked down a few narrow aisles. He had a look at the meat counter, it bore a handwritten sign proudly proclaiming \u201cGet your deer butchered here!\u201d Moving toward the register he picked up two small bags of peanuts and a Diet Coke. Apparently diet Dr. Pepper was still a rumor in these parts.<\/p>\n
The lady at the register was chunky and wore a stained butcher\u2019s apron over a voluminous t-shirt and blue slacks. Maybe she did double duty, there didn\u2019t seem to be anyone else in the shop. RJ tried to remember when deer season was and couldn\u2019t quite place it, sometime in the fall or winter he thought. October might be too early. Didn\u2019t really matter, he was as likely to go hunting while he was here as he was to do car repair or coal mining for that matter.<\/p>\n
The lady snapped him out of his reverie with a loud \u201cIs this gonna be cash or charge honey?\u201d RJ noticed he was being closely scrutinized, but wasn\u2019t sure what the lady thought of his rumpled clothes and road weary face.
\n\u201cCharge please, and I topped off my tank out there too.\u201d The lady nodded, \u201cHee! \u201ctopped off\u201d, that little car doesn\u2019t hold much Go juice, does it? I saw ya out there trying to figure out the pump, didn\u2019t know if you were gonna drive off without paying since I didn\u2019t recognize you or the car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grief, thought RJ, this town is so small they know people by their cars. I\u2019m probably the only one here with a Honda Civic and this is probably the only place to get gas without driving back into Huntington. He smiled back without comment as he handed her his credit card. She looked at it \u2013actually looked at it \u2014 front and back, then looked back at RJ, one eye squinting and the other owlishly wide. \u201cJust who\u2019s boy are you?\u201d She asked critically, tilting her head to the side as if that helped her hear his response.<\/p>\n
RJ was taken aback at the unexpected challenge and he blushed before answering. He wanted to say something flip like \u201cI\u2019m nobody\u2019s boy, Lincoln free\u2019d the slaves years ago.\u201d But he wasn\u2019t sure just how that would go over. No need to antagonize random people here, he admonished himself, despite their nosiness.
\n\u201cI\u2019m a Selkirk, I\u2019ve come home for my mother\u2019s funeral.\u201d
\nThe lady leaned across the check out lane and looked closer at RJ\u2019s face. He tried his best to return the gaze. \u201cOne of Gerri\u2019s boys? You\u2019re the one that\u2019s been living in Indiana all this time aren\u2019t you?\u201d
\nAgain it bothered Rj that this lady somehow knew about his family business without his knowledge. He reminded himself that she might have been a close friend of his mother\u2019s and would have heard all about her family. Mom had always been proud of her family, no matter how fragmented it had become. He swallowed his outburst and said \u201cYes. I\u2019m from Indiana now.\u201d
\nThe lady laughed harshly and shook her head \u201cNo you\u2019re not! Once A Local,\u00a0 Always A Local. Can\u2019t run away that easy, especially you Selkirks. You have roots in the earth here, if you know what I mean.\u201d She paused as if waiting on some confirmation that RJ did indeed know what she meant, but he was clueless how to respond. It was if he was being singled out in Sunday School and asked what some parable meant while the whole class watched. He picked up his things and signed \u2014 signed \u2014 the credit slip before heading back out the door. \u201cWell\u2026they don\u2019t know I\u2019m here yet, I better go.\u00a0 Nice to meet you\u2026bye!\u201d<\/p>\n
He stepped back out into the sun, noticing that she watched him from the store doorway as he walked around his car. Another pair of eyes belonging to an equally rotund mechanic sitting back in the shade was following his movements too. The man called out \u201cHow far did you drive from Indiana?\u201d RJ wanted to confront him and ask how he knew he was from Indiana then realized as he walked up to his car that the mechanic could see his Indiana license plate from where he sat.<\/p>\n
\u201c453 miles in 9 hours.\u201d RJ answered, wondering why he bothered be so accurate. Diving back into the car and latching the door, he saw the man stand up and move toward the car. He quickly put his Honda in gear and called out \u201cSay hello to Shorty!\u201d as he drove off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RJ pulled his Honda into the roadside Park and Shop. When he was last here this was just a repair shop and some guy named Shorty did all the car repair, drove the wrecker and sometimes even the school bus. You need similar skills for all three he thought wryly. Getting out of the car, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","missing-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pDxlf-rx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vrharbor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vrharbor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vrharbor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vrharbor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vrharbor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1707"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/vrharbor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1711,"href":"https:\/\/vrharbor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707\/revisions\/1711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vrharbor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vrharbor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vrharbor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}