Chapter 4: Cash on the Counter

On Saturday morning I walked into Brannigan Hardware with four hundred dollars in an envelope and the intention of being paid off.

The store smelled like cedar and rubber. Half a dozen people were in line.

A woman with gray curls and reading glasses on a beaded chain stood at the register, and she looked up and screamed.

"Hattie!" She came around the counter and hugged me so hard my feet left the floor. "Gus said you didn't know anybody. Do you know me?"

"I'm sorry," I said into her vest.

"I'm Dot. I'm his mother. You call me Dot, and you've told me to mind my business forty times a year."

"That sounds like me."

"It does!" She wiped her eyes. "Whatever you want. It's all yours. Take the stapler."

I did not take the stapler.

Gus was at the paint counter, mixing a can for a man in a John Deere cap. He saw me and set down the stir stick.

I walked up to the register, put the envelope on the counter and pushed it toward him.

"Four hundred dollars. That's this month's."

The line went quiet.

"Hatt, we're not doing this here."

"We're doing it right here. You can count it."

"I don't need to count it."

"Then I'll count it," I said, and I did, twice, out loud.

Dot slid it back across the counter with one finger.

"Gus won't take it," she said. "Honey, he never does."

"Then he's an idiot or a crook."

"Why not both?" said a man holding a hose clamp.

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