The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (9 page)

A little bell jingled when she opened the door and the man behind the till looked up. She hesitated for a moment in the doorway – as though she was waiting for some sign from Amy, a vision of some kind that would show her what to say or do. Then she nodded nervously at him and entered the shop.

The place was nice, in its own way. Aside from various tools, nails, screws and old fishing rods, there were refrigerators stocked with dairy products and a bit of meat, a few shelves of bread and cakes, a shelf of canned goods and a sparse selection of ice cream and candy. She walked slowly around, taking the things she needed from the shelves: more bread, some mincemeat, a can of chopped tomatoes and a few eggs being sold individually from a box at the front.

At the counter, she paused again while she looked at the man sitting there. Since she hadn't taken one of the rickety baskets at the entrance, she was forced to stand perfectly still to avoid dropping any of the things she was clutching. He had to be Amy's John.

He had grey hair and a hint of a beard peppered with grey, but perhaps it was sorrow which made the rest of him seem to blend into the dusty items behind him. He was wearing a thick wool suit and his body was lost in its big, padded shoulders.

When she eventually started handing over her shopping, he put her items through the register without saying a word.

His movements were completely automatic, something she recognised from her own time behind a till. It reminded her of the Christmas rush, when you were so exhausted that the only thing saving you was the fact you had done it all so many times before.
Is there anything else? Would you like it wrapped? Do you need a bag? Thanks very much.
When the Christmas rush was at its worst, she could go to a cafe to buy a cup of coffee and find herself saying ‘Thanks, was there anything else, would you like a bag?' to whoever was serving her.

John had that same empty, slightly desperate look. She hesitated but eventually held out her hand to him.

‘Sara,' she said.

‘Amy's guest.' His voice sounded like he was clearing his throat. He didn't bother taking her hand. She lowered it again.

‘You must be John,' she said.

‘Yes.'

‘Amy often wrote about you.' It was a silly thing to say, but it was the only thing she could come up with.

She wondered whether he had even heard her. It was only when she held out the same crumpled dollar bills she had been trying to pay with all week that his gaze changed and he actually focused on her.

‘No, no,' he said. ‘This one's on me.'

‘You can't give someone their shopping for free,' she protested. A cup of coffee was one thing. Beer at a pinch. But chopped tomatoes? No, if she was going to be staying in town for a while, then they were going to have to let her pay.

But John waved her money away again. ‘Your letters made Amy really happy,' he said. ‘They meant a lot to her. Especially towards the end.'

In between the hardware store and Grace's was an abandoned shop. While Sara waited for George to finish his coffee, she stood outside it, clutching her thoroughly authentic American brown grocery bag.

Something about it had caught her attention but she couldn't work out what. It was far from being the only empty shop on the street; over half of them were standing vacant. That was one of the reasons Broken Wheel felt so abandoned – the town had so clearly been built for
more
. The roads had been laid for more cars, the houses built for more children, Main Street for more shops, and the shops – those which were left – for more customers.

Maybe it was just because its windowpanes were still intact or because it didn't seem to have been treated quite as badly as the others. It was dirty, but only with two, maybe three years' worth of dust.

‘When did this shop close?' she asked George as soon as he came out.

She leaned in towards the window and rubbed a circle to look through. There was a counter in the middle of the space, and a couple of shelves against the walls. Two chairs had been left behind, and both seemed to be in one piece. The lighting consisted of a lone naked bulb, and though the sun was managing to make it through the dirt on the windows, it was hard to tell what colour the walls and few furnishings were.

‘Amy's?' he asked.

‘This is Amy's shop?' Was, she thought, but he didn't seem to notice that she'd used the wrong tense.

‘Yeah,' he said as he fiddled with his car keys. He looked around as though he was worried someone might hear them. ‘Her husband bought it. It was never much of a success while he was alive, but I guess it kept him away from her for a couple of hours a day at least.' The expression on his face was uncharacteristically grim. ‘She closed it as soon as he died. Not a day too soon.'

It wasn't clear whether he meant the shop closing or Amy's husband dying.

‘When was that?'

‘Almost fifteen years ago, but she kept on cleaning it. I don't really know why, I don't think she thought she'd be renting it out. She stopped, of course, when … when she got worse.'

Sara could just picture Amy cleaning her dead husband's shop year after year. Neat and tidy.

‘What kind of shop was it, when it was open?'

George looked even more disapproving. ‘A hardware store.' Then he said nothing more about it. He drove her home in silence.

That evening, Sara sat in the kitchen enjoying the first warm meal she had made for herself since arriving. She had one of Amy's books wedged beneath the edge of her plate so that she could eat and read at the same time.

The warm food gave Sara renewed courage. She didn't even bother to go round and switch on all the lights before it got dark. The light in the kitchen was the only one she needed. She was starting to feel like she might manage, like she might get her reading holiday, her stories and her adventure, after all.

She had told people at home she was going to Broken Wheel to get away for a while, to have a real holiday, to read and to meet Amy, but that hadn't been the whole truth. She had wanted to experience something … big. To be able to say to people, though she didn't quite know who, that she had once spent two whole months in a small town in America.

‘Amy,' she said, ‘did you know that over 300,000 new books are published in the US every year? And now here I am.'

Regardless of how it all turned out, she would have
done
something for once.

Two hours later, she had spread Amy's books out on every available surface and was sitting contentedly in one of the rocking chairs on the porch, a forgotten cup of tea by her side.

She had three books on her lap but wasn't reading any of them. She was listening to the sounds of the evening breeze playing in the old house. Somehow, her discovery of Amy's books had changed the atmosphere of the place. It was as though it had become Amy's once again, and Sara her guest. The constant noises had made her nervous those first few days, but now they were a comforting addition to her evening. The branches rapping at the window upstairs made her feel less alone, like the tree and the window were keeping her company. The rattling pipes, the constantly creaking wood; it was as though something was still present in the house, as though it would never be completely empty, even once she had gone back home.

By nine o'clock, it had grown cool outside, but not so cold that a blanket and one of the work jackets she'd found in a wardrobe wouldn't keep her warm.

She saw the headlights first. They swept like searchlights over the overgrown garden before swinging up onto her and eventually going out completely. Only then did she realise it was Tom's car.

He got out of the car but didn't come over to her. He leaned against the driver's door instead, and crossed his arms.

‘I just thought I'd check you were OK,' he said.

‘I didn't drink
that
much,' she said. She hadn't been that drunk, had she? Or did he think she was part of Jen's crazy plan, and want to make sure she knew he wasn't interested? She was just about to reassure him that she would never have chosen to be paired up with him when he continued.

‘With Amy and everything. Staying here by yourself. It must have been a bit of a shock for you when you arrived.'

She waved the book self-consciously. ‘I found Amy's book stash,' she said. ‘And met John.' Those two things seemed to go together somehow. He nodded but didn't say anything. Still, he didn't seem to be in a hurry to leave. She pulled the blanket and the jacket tightly around herself.

It still wasn't comfortable, the silence. He was standing there, right in front of her, only faintly illuminated by the light from the kitchen window, not exactly looking relaxed. But despite that, Sara thought that there was a kind of calm between them which hadn't been there the night before. Maybe it was being at the house, maybe he had simply accepted that she was staying there. Maybe, but Sara herself was convinced it had something to do with Amy's spirit. It could be felt more strongly in the house now.

‘Tom,' she said, ‘George told me about the empty shop next to the hardware store. Amy's.'

He nodded.

‘He said it had been her husband's?' Tom still said nothing, so she continued. ‘George said it had been a hardware store?'

‘George seems to have said a whole lot.'

‘But, Tom,
John
has a hardware store.'

‘Yeah.'

‘So they were … competitors?'

‘Amy's husband –' Tom broke off as though he was thinking. He shifted position. His eyes were fixed on the patch of gravel in front of the car. ‘Amy's husband wasn't a happy man. He was confused. And angry. He had problems with a lot of things, but especially with John, because he was black and because he was … accepted.'

It sounded as though he was thinking about saying something else, but she didn't dare ask what, for fear that he would lose his thread.

He moved his hand absent-mindedly over the car. ‘Amy's husband thought he could drive him out of business. Which was crazy, because people here liked John and weren't especially keen on Amy's husband. When he bought the shop, everyone had already been shopping at John's for years. It was the shop you went to, simple as that. In the end, it was just another of her husband's bad business ideas. He kept trying for a while but then he gave up.'

Sara willed him to go on.

‘He wasn't a popular person. Amy was much better off without him. I don't think many people grieved for him when he died. Maybe not even Amy, and she was a really kind person.'

He smiled briefly. So briefly that she wasn't quite sure she had seen it. ‘I definitely didn't,' he said. It was clear from his tone that he didn't want to say anything more on the matter.

So she changed tack. ‘How do the shops around here break even?'

‘Most of them don't.'

‘But they're still open?'

‘Some of them.'

‘Not Molly's Corner though,' said Sara, wondering whether it was stupid to bring it up. She still hadn't worked out how open she should be about the fact she knew so much about the town from Amy's letters.

But Tom simply laughed. ‘How the hell do you know about Molly's?' As luck would have it, he didn't wait for her to answer. ‘It must be twenty years since it closed. I was just a kid when she was selling her porcelain chickens and whatever else. Boys weren't allowed through the door. Not that we wanted to go in anyway.'

He shook his head as if to get rid of the memory. When he straightened up and took a half-step forward, she didn't know whether it was because he had managed to escape the feeling or because he had given up trying. He came slowly towards the porch and sat down beside her. She shifted in her chair so that she could look at him, but he kept staring straight ahead.

‘Do you know when I realised that everything was changing?'

He didn't have to add that the changes weren't for the better. Sara had already worked out that they never were around here.

‘It was when my old school closed. When I was a kid, that school was more certain and more unavoidable than death. It had tormented my dad before me, it would do the same to me for eternity.'

‘Why did it close?'

‘There just weren't enough kids. When the family farms disappeared, most people moved to bigger towns. Broken Wheel used to be surrounded by smaller towns, and they sent their kids here. Nowadays, our kids get sent to Hope. There aren't enough farmers here for there to be a school. Next time you go into town, just look at the cornfields and count how many farms you see. When Molly's closed, it didn't bother me at all,' he continued. ‘There was a shop selling fridges and freezers too, but it closed after Wal-Mart opened on the other side of Hope, and most people were already used to shopping in the bigger chain stores. But the school was different. I was still young enough to be surprised that things which had been there in my childhood wouldn't be there forever. It's funny, really. Dad was dead by that point. I should've already learned that lesson.'

He smiled at her, but it wasn't a happy kind of smile.

‘Welcome to Broken Wheel,' he said. ‘There's nothing left to see.'

‘John's still here,' she said. ‘And Grace. Andy and Carl.'

He shrugged.

‘Not Amy,' she admitted quietly.

‘No,' he said, ‘not Amy.'

And with that, he stood up, nodded to her and went back to the car. One hand on the door handle, he said: ‘I haven't been back to the school in over ten years. Of course,' he added, a hint of a smile in his voice, ‘that probably has something to do with the meth lab they started up there.'

She had no idea whether he was joking or not.

‘I just don't want you to have any illusions about this place. You can't say I didn't warn you.'

She still didn't know whether or not he was joking.