Category: Fiction

The Widow Who Tried to Sell Her Eggs

The young widow Nelson planned her trip to the General Store carefully. She decided on Monday afternoon, because it afforded the best chance to be the sole customer. She chose to wear the blue calico that she generally reserved for church, since it suited her complexion, and was snug against her bosom, never mind that it was modestly buttoned up the length of her chin. He never went to church, the man she most recently targeted as a prospective father for her young two sons, so had never seen her to proper advantage. She plucked a few curls out of the confines of her bonnet, and set off to town in her buggy.

If she was a bit surprised to find him cleaning his gun on the store counter when she entered, she was careful not to show it.

“I brought some eggs to sell.” She smiled and batted her eyes at the top of his head.

“Did you now?” The shopkeeper continued his task. “Hens must be laying uncommonly well to have extras, what between feeding the hired hand and those boys of yours.”

“Indeed they are.” She placed the basket of eggs beside his newly cleaned and assembled gun.

“Honestly I’d rather you sell me what you’ve been giving to the hired hand all those lonely nights on the ranch.”

She meant to pick up the basket and leave, she told herself later. She picked up the gun by accident. “Let me help you with that, ma’am”, said the sheriff, when he saw her struggling to put the body in the buggy.

She’d bury the storekeeper beside the hired hand after the boys were in bed. At least the roses would bloom well next summer.

The Girl Who Was Sent on an Errand

Ma was making her apple pies and I suppose we were underfoot because she took an exasperated swing at us with her rolling pin and sent us scurrying outside. There were seven of us at that time, and I was the second oldest, seeing as the fever hadn’t take Sarah yet. “Ruth”, she called, before I was out the kitchen door. “Run to the general store and fetch me some more flour.”

“Can I take Zeke along with me?”

“No, you cannot.”

Ma wasn’t real attached to any of us, but at least she wasn’t risking two of us at once, which I admire, seeing as I’d have sent us all and been done with it, had I been in her place. So off I went with only my dolly for a companion, down the wood plank walkway that stretched from my house to the General Store and beyond.

“There’s a stranger talking to the sheriff over by the saloon,” I offered in the way of gossip to the shopkeeper when I arrived. He glanced out the window, nodded, and gave me my choice of penny candy as he filled Ma’s order. My eyes lit on the round ones between the licorice whips and taffy.

“How do they make those look so much like eyeballs?” I asked.

“One question per customer.” The shopkeeper wore that stern expression that Pa had when you’d left the barn door open at night.

“Right or left?”

He sighed. “Just zigzag.” In spite of everyone suspecting where the source of the eyeballs was, the shopkeeper was a kind man.

“Licorice please”.

And I clutched my dolly and Ma’s supplies close to me as I ran towards home, zigzagging the dusty street to avoid the not so sudden gunfire.

The Stranger

When she rode into town and tied her horse to the post just outside the saloon, she wasn’t at all worried about anyone’s opinion as to whether or not respectable women should enter such establishments. But the gargoyle did give her pause. It perched from one of the “0’s” on the sign, stone ugly, a bobcat-like creature with wings, a slack-jawed grimace and eyes that followed your every move. She’d seen one of the fool things in St. Louis when she was a girl, on a great stone mansion, but what was one doing here, among a handful of ramshackle buildings? A tumbleweed rolled by as if to make her point.

“Can I help you, miss?” From star on his shirt she assumed he was the sheriff, and from the bruises on his face and the sling on his arm, an uncommonly busy one for a town of this size.

She gestured toward the gargoyle. “My Daddy told me these stone creatures were meant to protect the inhabitants of a building. But in the case of rowdy drunks, don’t guns suffice?” The sheriff’s only response was to walk past her and toward the saloon. He faded before he reached the swinging doors. But not before she saw the hole the size of a cannonball on his back.

She could feel the gargoyle’s eyes on her as she rode back out of town. She wasn’t that thirsty, after all.
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Ghost Town

When she rode into town and tied her horse to the post just outside the saloon, she wasn’t at all worried about anyone’s opinion as to whether or not respectable women should enter such establishments. But the gargoyle did give her pause. It perched from one of the “0’s” on the sign, stone ugly, a bobcat-like creature with wings, a slack-jawed grimace and eyes that followed your every move. She’d seen one of the fool things in St. Louis when she was a girl, on a great stone mansion, but what was one doing here, among a handful of ramshackle buildings? A tumbleweed rolled by as if to make her point.

“Can I help you, miss?” From star on his shirt she assumed he was the sheriff, and from the bruises on his face and the sling on his arm, an uncommonly busy one for a town of this size.

She gestured toward the gargoyle. “My Daddy told me these stone creatures were meant to protect the inhabitants of a building. But in the case of rowdy drunks, don’t guns suffice?” The sheriff’s only response was to walk past her and toward the saloon. He faded before he reached the swinging doors. But not before she saw the hole the size of a cannonball on his back.

She could feel the gargoyle’s eyes on her as she rode back out of town. She wasn’t that thirsty, after all.