by Mic Roland
“I got a box of…snake bite kits?”
“Mine is some bottles of official FEMA water.”
“I got two food pack things. ‘Meal Ready to Eat’,” the man read. “Ooo. Beef Enchilada! That sounds pretty good.”
“A dozen nylon sandbag bags? We need sandbags?”
“I got a lousy box of radiation detection badges,” said Red Cauloff.
A lady nearby gasped. “There’s a problem at Seabrook? Does this mean there’s a problem at Seabrook?” Her eyes darted from one person to another, looking for a wave of panic she might join.
“Don’t get all spooked, Nancy,” said Landers. “Chief Burgh would have gotten something on his radio if there was a problem at Seabrook. Keep in mind they also gave out snake bite kits, and we don’t have a plague of snakes either.”
“And,” Martin spoke up, “That lineman I spoke to on Friday said that Seabrook was fine, and went into shutdown mode right away.”
“Darn,” said a man near Martin as he peeled back the brown paper. “Two bottles of FEMA water. I’ve got a well.“
“Hey, I got some MREs too,” said a man near the stage. “Veggie burger. Really? Veggie Burger? Anyone want to trade? Veggie burger is more healthy for you than enchiladas. Whaddaya say?”
“No way.”
“Uh oh,” said Hooper with melodrama. “Better cover up them radiation badges, Red. Jeff’s sweater is gonna set off the whole box of ‘em like firecrackers!“ Hooper got into a long chuckle, obviously taken with his own joke. Others laughed lightly too, though more at him than with him.
“Very funny, Hooper.” Landers rolled his eyes as he walked to the center of the room.
“Okay everyone. Everyone? Can I have your attention for a moment?” The din began to fade, except for a little knot of women in intense chat mode. “Ahem. Nancy?” The ladies looked up sheepishly.
“Thank you. Before we resume setting up tables for our first Town Market, this Quinn fellow said that a supply truck will be here on Wednesday at 3:00 and another one Friday. Make sure to tell your neighbors about this, since not everyone is here today. If FEMA is handing out supplies…”
“Like snake bite kits and sandbags?”
“Whatever. We may as well get whatever resources they’re handing out.”
“Besides,” said an older man by the door. “I’ll bet we’ve already bought ‘em, three times over. Might as well get something back for our already-spent-tax-dollars.”
“Yeah.” said another. “What we don’t need, we can trade. If Nutfield gets overrun with snakes and we could trade with them for their MREs or something. Who knows?”
Landers resumed. “Yes, well, remember to tell your neighbors about trucks coming on Wednesday and Friday. Okay, carry on setting up.” The pre-Quinn bustle and chaos resumed. Folding tables blossomed like umbrellas at a sudden shower.
Martin set his box of salsa on one end of a table. Susan hesitated to set her box down beside his.
“She said to do different tables.”
Martin took her box and set it on the end of the table next to his. “There. Separate tables.” He smiled.
“That almost seems like lying.” She furrowed her brow.
“Would you rather go to another table?” he asked.
“Well…no, but…”
“We’ll just be two separate citizens trading different things. No big deal.”
“Hi Simmons,” said Landers. “Great idea to have a swap meet. Really a good turn out too. Oh, is this some of your wife’s jam?” He pulled out a jar and held it up to the light. “We’re friends with Lance and Miriam Walker on your road.” He turned to Susan. “They talk very highly of your jam.”
Susan glanced at Martin with a worried smile. His plan for ‘separate citizens’ did not last thirty seconds.
“I’d better trade for one of these gems or my wife will slug me. What are you looking to trade for Mrs. Sim…”
“Meat!” Susan interrupted. “We’re…I mean…I’m…hoping to trade for some meat. Canned tuna, something like that?” Her nervous smile widened.
“Shoot. I didn’t bring any meat things. What about peaches? My wife has lots of canned peaches.”
Susan shook her head. “No, sorry. Maybe some beans?”
“Hmm,” mused Landers. “I didn’t bring beans either, but I think I saw some at another table. Maybe I can trade some peaches for beans and come back.” Rapid little nods made her curls bounce. Landers waved and melted into the crowd slowly flowing by the tables.
“He thought I was your wife.” There was a trace of shock in her hoarse whisper.
“So?” Martin said. He pulled out a few jars to make a more attractive display. “That happened on the way up here too. Why the freak-out now?”
“That was down there, with people who didn’t know us…I don’t mean us. It’s not like there’s an ‘us’, so much. That sounds…” She blushed. “I mean, it’s different up here where people know you and…her. You were just saying how she was a fireball at that town meeting that got you kicked out of town.”
“We weren’t kicked out of town.”
“Okay. Whatever. My point is, I can’t afford to have her go fireball on me and kick me out. Where would I go?”
“You won’t get kicked out,” Martin reassured with a dismissive wave. He had seen many years of Margaret’s steadfast duty to Christian hospitality. He could not picture her tossing Susan out in the snow. There could be some icy days that were incredibly fine, but no actual eviction.
“Just be careful,” he said. “Know what I mean?”
Susan looked him in the eye for a long moment — longer than he felt comfortable with. A small, wry smile erased her worried look. “Yeah. I think I know what you mean.”
Her smile derailed his train of thought. Now Martin was not quite sure he knew what he meant, but at least she was smiling again. That seemed like progress in a vague way. He also felt that he needed to not see her eyes for awhile. They were trouble. “How about I walk around and see what else is here? You stay here and trade.”
The long tables held a wide assortment of food items, though few of them enticing. Some old canned goods had clearly been forgotten in the back of a pantry for many years. One man had frozen venison in a cooler. He wanted twenty dollars for a small steak. Martin declined with a shrug. Some folks from Carrolton Orchards had bags of apples. A lady with ‘Spring Pond Farm’ on her ball cap was offering pumpkins, some quite large.
A man in dirty Carhartt coveralls had an armload of firewood on his table. That was his marketing sampler. He was negotiating with a pair of men over the delivery of a cord or two. Mr. Carhartt was accepting cash only. From the head shaking and arm flailing, Martin guessed the men did not have several hundred dollars in cash. Bartering for large value items was a challenge.
In the back corner of the room sat a woman with an array of metal nick-knacks on her little card table. No one was showing any interest in her craft items. She looked both hopeful and worried.
Some people were striking bargains. They walked up and down the rows of tables with a mix of goods in their arms. Martin returned to his boxes, thinking he should carry around a couple jars of salsa for quick bargaining.
“Lookit!” Susan beamed. “I traded two jars of jam for this one can of kidney beans. That’s a good bargain, right? Isn’t it?”
“I guess so. I’m going to take a couple jars of salsa and walk the floor. You stay here and keep up the bargaining.” She nodded enthusiastically.
Martin ran into Landers in the middle of a long row. “Simmons! Got any of your wife’s jam left?” Martin nodded. “Good, good. You know, Lance told me awhile back that you had a very pretty wife. He sure was right.”
Martin could feel his face getting hot. Margaret would not be amused at the mistaken identities. “Actually, she’s not my…”
“Oh wait!” Landers blurted out. “That woman just set out cans of beans! Hot dog! That woman don’t know it yet, but she needs some
peaches. Hope to be talking to you and the missus really soon. See ya later.” Landers wove his way through the slow lines of traders in the aisle.
Martin sighed. Holes get dug incredibly fast. He vowed to correct the misunderstanding when Landers came to trade for the jam. He continued walking the aisles. At a table near the stairs for the stage, a man with a straggly beard had tub of ice water on his table. In the tub were jugs of milk. Beside the tub was a little pyramid of wax-paper-wrapped squares. It was the first non-bean protein he had seen, aside from the gold-plated venison.
Index cards propped against the tub and pyramid had ‘$20’ scrawled on them. Gold-plated milk too? Since the banks and ATMs were closed indefinitely, Martin was inclined to carefully marshal whatever cash they had. Who knew what they might need to buy later? Medicines? Ammo? Over-priced foods would use up that limited resource quickly. Still, Martin reasoned, perhaps there were haggling opportunities.
“What do you have here?” Martin asked.
“Goat’s milk,” said the bearded man. The man seemed delighted that someone was asking. “And some goat cheese. Interested? It tastes pretty much like cow’s milk but it’s much more healthy for you and a great source of protein, vitamins and pro-biotics.”
The bearded man’s pitch sounded like salesman code for ‘this is technically food, but it tastes bad’. He held an imploring smile, with drooping eyebrows that seemed to say ‘please don’t run away.’
“Been having trouble selling them?” Martin asked. He noted that the tub was still full of milk jugs and the pyramid complete. The man looked like he needed cheered up. A little conversation would not cost anything.
“You have no idea. I thought people would be hungry, or at least less fussy. The older folks don’t seem all that hungry and the younger ones, well, as soon as I say its goats milk, I can see their noses wrinkle. The stuff tastes fine! They have no idea. I mean, what do they think it tastes like? Licking a buck? Cumon!” The man was clearly exasperated. “No point in my setting out my goat salami if people can’t even handle the idea of the milk.”
“Salami?”
‘Yeah.” The man scooted a cardboard box out from under this table with his foot. It contained a half dozen loops of dark sausage. He kicked the box back under the table. “My ice is pretty much melted. I might as well start packing up.”
“Hold on,” Martin said. “Maybe you just need an ice-breaker.” He was intrigued by the goat salami idea. He recalled how no one at Market Basket was taking the Vienna sausages until he started taking some. Someone just has to go first. That might work again. It was time to strike a bargain.
“What do you mean, ice-breaker?”
“Well, I don’t have twenty bucks,” Martin said, which was a lie. He had forty, but skirted the edges of lying by mentally finishing his sentence with …that I would spend on goat’s milk. “But I do have these two jars of salsa my wife made. What if I trade you these two jars for one of the salami loops and one block of cheese?”
The man started to shake his head. “Sorry. I need to get…”
“Hold on. I’m not done. I’m thinking that what you might need is someone to go first. What I’ll do is walk around the aisles, holding them up so people can see them. Maybe sniffing them and going ‘ahhh’ and stuff like that. Okay, no. That’s too corny. But, I’d bet that if people see that someone else bought them, they wouldn’t be as spooked.”
Martin could see the wheels turning, but no light bulb was coming on.
“Now, I can agree that a couple jars of salsa aren’t really an even trade for a salami. They’re a lot of work. This would be for the marketing labor too. Tell you what. If, after I’ve gone around admiring the salami, you haven’t sold anything, the deal’s off and you’re not out anything. I take my salsa back and we go our separate ways.”
The man stroked his scraggly chin. “Hmm. Nothin’ to lose. Okay. Go for it.” They shook hands.
Martin meandered up and down the aisles, looking at people’s goods, but making sure he carried the loop of salami prominently, like a new fiancée wears her ring. People did notice.
“Where did you get that?” Susan asked.
“I got this really nice salami over there.” Martin said. “The bearded man by the stage has these, some cheese and milk too!
“Why are you talking so loud?”
“Long story. This isn’t actually mine yet, though. Kind of a loaner.”
“A loaner sausage? Whatever.” Susan shook off his obtuseness. “Never mind that. I traded for another can of beans: baked beans this time. Pretty cool, huh? I’ve only got two jars left. It was that Mr. Landers. He came back.”
“Oh. Did you…say anything about…”
“No.” She frowned. “He called me Mrs. Simmons again and I was about to correct him, but he just kept talking and then someone else came up and he went off with them, still talking.”
“I see. Well, maybe it won’t matter. I have to go see if this salami is mine or not. Be back in a minute.” Martin ambled over toward the stage.
The bearded man was busy talking to an older woman in a long gray coat and a young man in a down jacket. The young man handed over some money and walked away with a square of cheese. The woman haggled over how many jars of green beans were equal to a half gallon of goat’s milk. The exchange rate settled on four.
“Things are looking up?” Martin asked.
“Oh yeah. Hey thanks a ton for helping. Jerry’s the name, by the way.”
“Martin.”
“I’m new in Cheshire, but been doing goats for years. Moved in this past spring. Most of my produce goes to suppliers. Never really tried local retail. Today, I figured local retail was a total fail. Now? Maybe not. I sold or traded all my other salamis. Half my cheese is gone too. Looks like a deal’s a deal. Enjoy your salami! Maybe see you next week.”
Martin and Susan boxed their un-traded jars and their new treasures. During the walk home, Susan mused aloud about how cumbersome a process the trade and bartering were. People had too limited of supplies for trading and too narrow of needs: a poor combination for fluid commerce. Many tried to use cash, but there seemed to be a shortage of paper money to use for exchange. She wondered what would happen in later swap meets when people had traded away their excess. Cheshire had, essentially, a fixed money supply to work with, and a small one at that.
—
“How did it go?” Margaret asked. “Did the separate tables work out well?”
Martin could feel Susan glance at him, but he kept his eyes on Margaret’s eyes. “Actually, I was walking the aisles, so I wasn’t really at a table.”
Margaret smiled a bit at this news. “Let’s see what you got,” she said. “What’s this? A sausage?”
“A salami, technically, but yeah. There was a guy there who has a goat farm.”
“Goat?” Susan said with a worried look. “You didn’t say it was goat sausage?”
“Oh, you won’t be able to tell,” Martin said. “It’s all spiced up, smoked and dried.”
“Sure! This will make us quite a few nice meals. It’ll go well with your sauerkraut,” Margaret said with a smile.
She turned to Susan with a flat expression. “And what did you get?” she asked in that tone schoolteachers use to ask for late homework.
“Um. Two cans of beans?” After the warm reception the salami got, two cans of beans seemed a feeble prize.
Margaret hefted them in her hands a few times. They were the larger sized cans. “Well, these are nice. There’s a couple of good meals here as well. Looks like you did pretty good too.”
The corners of Susan’s mouth twitched up into a hint of a smile. She might have taken one step back from the precipice of being thrown out in the snow. But, would it be enough if the mistaken identity got back to Margaret?
Chapter 6: Temper
“No ice on their water bucket this morning,” Martin said. “Got an early egg too.” He set the egg beside yesterday’s two eggs on the counter. “T
hey’ve really slowed down with the shorter days and all.”
Susan and Margaret were sitting at the dining room table with a pile of dry bean pods heaped between them. They seemed to have been in the middle of a conversation, which Martin interrupted. While they sat at opposite ends of the table, their faces betrayed no tensions. If anything, Margaret looked disinterested. Susan looked focused on her bean pods.
Margaret was shelling the beans with her usual alacrity. With a paring knife in one hand and the pod in the other, she would cut a slit near the stem end of the pod, pinch the stem between thumb and knife, and pull. The pod would unzip with a long fiber. With her other thumbnail, she would scoop out the dry beans in one smooth motion.