Chapter 6 - Tainted Coin
“I’m sorry, Connor. I know you worked as hard as you could so I wouldn’t have to face this, but there’s just nothing else left for me.”
Rose hesitated before stepping out of her front door. She once again dressed in layers of winter clothing, though the autumn continued to burn so unseasonably warm. What happened to Beckmire? When had all of her fine neighbors vanished? What had happened to the churches and their food pantries? What had happened to Diane’s coffee shop and donut bakery? What had happened to the small office the bank had once operated in the town, or the post office the mail department once kept open for Beckmire’s addresses?
Ollie Turner’s general store was the only place she could go to find anything to put into her cupboards. That shopkeeper’s tainted goods were the only choices offered to anyone in Beckmire.
The idea had come to Rose that morning that she might drive the twenty miles down the county highway to reach the neighboring town, and Rose had gone so far as to lift the garage door open. Her back still throbbed for the effort. She had stared at the small car she had not started for several seasons, and she had tried to engage in all the wishful thinking she needed to have any hope whatsoever that she might change the flat tire, or replace the battery, or even find the keys to the ignition. No matter how she struggled, she couldn’t imagine moving all the tool chests aside to give that small car a path to the street.
Thus Rose again gathered beneath layers of winter clothing and prepared herself for another painful walk to Ollie Turner’s general store. The church had been abandoned for almost seven years, and so the food pantry was no longer offered on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. There was a time when a hungry, old woman might drift to the small elementary school and be gifted a plastic tray of left-overs following the students’ lunches, for those cooks never failed to prepare too many potatoes and carrots, and there were always too many cartons of milk. But the school had been shuttered more than twenty years past, the town no longer possessing the funds nor the students for justify the cost of keeping electricity and heat thrumming through a school building.
What had become of the Forresters who had lived in the split-level across the street? Rose’s appetite fired as she recalled the rhubarb pie Mary used to offer whenever she invited Rose over for an afternoon coffee. Hadn’t Thaddeus’ sons moved him into a retirement home after Mary had passed from too much anesthesia while the doctors operated to repair the hip she shattered upon the ice that hard winter several seasons ago? Had Rose attended her funeral? Had she not even noticed if Thaddeus may have passed? There was a time when Beckmire still possessed a weekly paper, a means for Rose to learn such news. Yet even that was gone. Rose could not walk across the street and ask Mary Forrester if she might have some scones freshly pulled from the oven.
All of Rose’s options vanished. Beckmire had vanished. Rose worried that the wasting of her town had taken decades, and that she had never paid close enough attention to how everything ruined until it was too late, until she woke one morning on a sofa’s cold cushions, surrounded by plastic grocery sacks, with nothing left to do but gaze out of her window at the zombies that shambled down the street.
And each morning, those zombies multiplied in the street.
“The food’s all turned bad, Connor. The bugs have gotten to whatever might not have been spoiled. I’m hungry, and it’s hard to be brave when you’re hungry. I have to go back to that store. I have to see if I can get hold of something else to eat.”
Her joints hurt the moment Rose stepped off of her lawn cluttered with plastic flamingoes and birdbaths onto the street. She felt so hot beneath all her layers of clothing. She would’ve accepted any offer for a ride had a car slowed and approached her, but she failed to see any vehicle at all as she forced herself down the roadway. She carried another coffee canister brimming with coins, and its weight pulled upon her shoulders and made her arms burn. She wrapped blouses and pants around both of her knees, desperate to create some kind of homemade brace to support her muscles and bones. Rose had to often stop to recapture her breath. She fought her desperation as much as she fought her suffering. She deserved to have been treated with compassion. Her husband had believed in work, and she had always supported him. Why did no one come out of their quiet homes to offer her a little help?
Ollie Turner’s general store was sweltering in heat and humidity when Rose pushed her way through the screen door, and she wondered if the shopkeeper had fired up his furnace. Perhaps she was not so proud upon her second visit to Ollie Turner’s store. For Rose unravelled the scarf from around her neck. She took off the heavy coat that filled her armpits with sweat and took a moment to lean against the wall freezer housing cold beers.
“Good day to you, Mrs. Pilger. I hope you’re not feeling ill. It’s a terribly warm day to be wearing so many layers of coats and clothing.”
Rose limped her way down the aisles filled with cheese nips and summer sausages to arrive at Ollie Turner’s register counter. “My joints can no longer handle any of the cold. All these clothes help me fight through my arthritis as I’m forced to limp all the way down the street to reach your counter.”
Ollie Turner nodded. “It’s good then that my air-conditioning remains broken. Seems my vents are blasting warm air now instead of cold. Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“There is something, Mr. Turner.”
“Just name it.”
“I need a refund.”
Ollie Turner’s filmy eyes narrowed. That maniacal smile creaked into a frown. “I don’t understand.”
“You sold me tainted food.”
“That’s not possible,” Ollie Turner quipped. “If I remember correctly, you filled your basket with non perishable food. You filled your basket with sealed boxes and jars. If the food was tainted, then you should seek reimbursement from the manufacturer instead of from my store. There is no way any taint could have marred those goods while they sat upon my shelves.”
“There were bugs in my food.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bugs, Mr. Turner. Bugs like none I’ve ever seen. Some kind of cross between a cockroach and a centipede. Something that reminds you of a silverfish and a spider all at the same time.”
Ollie Turner rested his hands onto his register counter, and Rose swallowed at the sight of the knots that made the shopkeeper’s knuckles so bulbous. Moles and warts grew everywhere on that man’s skin.
“Mrs. Pilger, believe me when I tell you that I can certainly empathize with your painful joints. I understand how difficult it is to live alone in one’s later years.” Ollie Turner gathered a breath, as if he was quelling a temper, before he continued. “But I don’t appreciate, nor do I deserve, accusations that I don’t run a clean store. Don’t assume that I live in filth and squalor just because I had the misfortune to be born with such a face. For generations, my family has faced such discrimination because of the deformities our blood has suffered through our ancestry. I had hoped that you, of all people in this town, would not hold that ugliness against me, knowing how you and your husband always appreciated those who strove to make an honest living.
“I challenge you to find one bug in this store. I dare you to find any trace of a pest. You will not find a single crumb on the floor beneath the counter where I sell my muffins. You will not find a single, half-open packet of sugar resting on the coffee island. I take extreme care to insure that my store is clean, Mrs. Pilger, and I promise you, any bugs that you might find in your home certainly didn’t originate in my store.”
Rose’s stomach flipped. She was so hungry. Her Conner would not have been proud to see her so casually toss accusations at an entrepreneur such as Mr. Turner. “I’m sorry, Mr. Turner. Perhaps I’m not thinking clearly. I was so disappointed to lose that food. I’ve come with another coffee canister of coins.”
“You didn’t have the time to exchange your coins for some cash following your last visit?”
“I did not, Mr. Turner.”
Ollie Turner sighed. “I will of course accept your coins. It all spends the same. If I sounded upset, please understand that it’s not easy to operate a general store in a town as sleepy as Beckmire. It’s very hard to sell anything to people who have so little. Just dump your coins across my counter again, and we’ll see what you bring.”
Rose grunted and lifted the coins above the counter and felt the pressure build within her wrists as her hands turned over the canister. Coins jangled and jingled. A handful fell to the floor, and handful of others twirled and danced. But Rose gasped, and her eyes darted into Ollie Turner’s face, where she recognized in his eyes that the store proprietor also saw them, dozens of small bugs, the very bugs that tormented Rose in her home, scampering across the counter amid all those coins.
Ollie Turner’s hand flashed in a blur. His palm thundered upon his counter. Rose’s stomach turned to see the ooze of a crushed bug slime out from beneath the shopkeeper’s hand.
Ollie Turner whispered to keep his calm. “Perhaps, Mrs. Pilger, you should inspect your own home before you come into my store to accuse me as the source of the infestation responsible for ruining your food.”
Rose’s spirit crumbled. It took what courage remained within her to remain standing. “I’m so sorry. I’ll clean up after them. I’ll track each one down.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Ollie Turner shook his head. “Your money is no good to me now. Your money is tainted.”
“Tainted?”
“Is there another word for it? I certainly can’t risk accepting whatever other coins you might carry to this store. I don’t want you monsters crawling over my pizza slices.”
Rose’s lip quivered. “But where else am I to go? I need something to eat.”
“Your hunger is not my concern,” Ollie Turner snarled. “I must work to find my own means. It’s not my responsibility to look after your stomach. It’s not my fault that you haven’t earned the means to avoid your predicament.”
Rose stepped back from the register. The old anger fired in her heart. She was going through a rough time, a difficult patch. She wouldn’t deny that her recent fortune had turned sour, but Ollie Turner had no right to imply she had not worked, that she could ever be counted amid the idle and the lazy. Rose’s blood burned. Who did he think she was? Did he not know how she had always supported her husband as he had toiled to earn a living? She was not a charity case.
“I’m not a begger, Mr. Turner.”
Ollie Turner laughed. “What else would you call it?”
“I worked to earn my place in this community.”
Ollie Turner rolled his eyes. “What did you do exactly? Where, precisely, did you work?”
“Well, no place in particular if you really need to know,” Rose scoffed, “but I supported my husband in all of his enterprises.”
“So you stayed at home. You stayed shuttered inside of your door,” Ollie Turner’s eyebrow arched in disdain. “You didn’t have to answer to any kind of a boss. You didn’t earn a paycheck. You didn’t provide any kind of service to a customer or a client.”
“If you’re suggesting I was a mere housewife, I promise you that I was much more than that.”
“Of course you were,” Ollie Turner shrugged. “No matter what your were, Mrs. Pilger, you’re money is no good to me.”
“But I have to eat.”
“Again, Mrs. Pilger, not my responsibility. Not my fault you didn’t plan sufficiently for your appetites. Not my fault that coffee canisters hold your savings.”
“But there has to be something,” Rose started to panic. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t allow her frustration to any further jeopardize any hope she still held to acquire a meal. “There has to be something that I can do. Perhaps there is something I can put up for collateral. Perhaps there is something I might be able to trade for a loaf of bread.”
“There might be something,” Ollie Turner’s eyes flared with a filmy light that made Rose shiver. “I’m a man who invests in many projects. Perhaps, I might help to find the labor that is required to repair the covered bridge outside of town, or the workforce needed to sickle the weeds alongside the highway, or the backs needed to dig the foundation my home extension requires. Perhaps, Mrs. Pilger, you could gather with the others in front of my general store just before sunrise. Perhaps you could carry a rake or a shovel from your garage, some kind of tool to help us in our purpose.”
Rose reeled. Fear chased clarity from her thoughts. She shivered, regardless of the layers of winter clothing she wore on that warm, autumn day in Ollie Turner’s hot and humid general store. Ollie Turner’s face didn’t move as Rose stared into the man’s filmy eyes. The skin of his chins did not shake. His eyebrows did not arch. His lips did not twist into that maniacal smile. Ollie Turner’s face only passively waited, but Rose saw the laughter ripple beneath the shopkeeper’s flesh, saw the mirth wiggle across the underlying skull.
“More simply put, Mrs. Pilger, I can offer you the opportunity to earn your right to hunger.”
In her haste to retreat from that register, Rose turned too quickly and tripped onto the tiled floor. Ollie Turner did not move out from behind his counter to offer Rose a helping hand. Rose’s fear summoned her adrenaline, and, somehow, she found the power to lift herself back upon her knees, toppling a pyramid of crackers and cheese spreads before stumbling once more out of the store’s screen door.
Yet when she had fallen, she had not remained upon the floor like some pile of old, broken bones. She had not placed herself before the mercy of a man as vile and cruel as Ollie Turner. She thought Connor would’ve been proud of her for that. Rose thought her husband’s ghost would’ve been proud of how she limped down that long street back to her home, no matter how she may have sobbed and whimpered for the pain that locked her knees.
She cried once she was back within the parlor. She would not peek out of the curtain to see whomever, or whatever, might have followed her. She crawled onto her sofa, her stomach still hungry, and she covered herself with newspapers and magazines to find all the warmth she could to help sooth her bones.
And she felt something tickle across her shin, felt something squirming against her skin that was far below those layers of winter clothing. A second later, another one of the strange bugs crawled out from her sock before leaping onto the littered floor to find a new, dark corner in which to hide.
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