Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,5

loaded Smith & Wesson revolver on the shelf below the register. The copper bell above the sill tinkled.

The woman waited in the doorway, a wooden butter churn and dasher clutched in her arms. Parson had to hand it to them, they were getting more imaginative. Last week the electric sign and false teeth, the week before that four bicycle tires and a chiropractic table. Parson nodded for the woman to come on in. She set the churn and dasher on the table.

“It’s a antique,” the woman said. “I seen one like it on TV and the fellow said it was worth a hundred dollars.”

When the woman spoke Parson glimpsed the stubbed brown ruin inside her mouth. He could see her face clearly now, sunken cheeks and eyes, skin pale and furrowed. He saw where the bones, impatient, poked at her cheeks and chin. The eyes glossy but alive, restless and needful.

“You better find that fellow then,” Parson said. “A fool like that don’t come around often.”

“It was my great-grandma’s,” the woman said, nodding at the churn, “so it’s near seventy-five years old.” She paused. “I guess I could take fifty for it.”

Parson looked the churn over, lifted the dasher and inspected it as well. An antiques dealer in Asheville might give him a hundred.

“Twenty dollars,” Parson said.

“That man on TV said…”

“You told me,” Parson interrupted. “Twenty dollars is what I’ll pay.”

The woman looked at the churn a few moments, then back at Parson.

“Okay,” she said.

She took the cash and stuffed the bills in her jeans. She did not leave.

“What?” Parson asked.

The woman hesitated, then raised her hands and took off her high school ring. She handed it to him, and Parson inspected it. “Class of 2000,” the ring said.

“Ten,” he said, laying the ring on her side of the glass counter.

She didn’t try to barter this time but instead slid the ring across the glass as if it were a piece in a board game. She held her fingers on the metal a few moments before letting go and holding out her palm.

By noon he’d had twenty customers and almost all were meth addicts. Parson didn’t need to look at them to know. The odor of it came in the door with them, in their hair, their clothes, a sour ammonia smell like cat piss. Snow fell steady now and his business began slacking off, even the manic needs of the addicted deferring to the weather. Parson was finishing his lunch in the back room when the bell sounded again. He came out and found Sheriff Hawkins waiting at the counter.

“So what they stole now, Doug?” Parson asked.

“Couldn’t it be I just come by to see my old high school buddy?”

Parson placed his hands on the counter.

“It could be, but I got the feeling it isn’t.”

“No,” Hawkins said, smiling wryly. “In these troubled times there’s not much chance to visit with friends and kin.”

“Troubled times,” Parson said. “But good for business, not just my business but yours.”

“I guess that’s a way of looking at it, though for me it’s been too good of late.”

Hawkins took a quick inventory of the bicycles and lawn mowers and chain saws filling the room’s corners. Then he looked the room over again, more purposeful this time, checking behind the counter as well. The sheriff’s brown eyes settled on the floor, where a shotgun lay amid other items yet to be tagged.

“That .410 may be what I’m looking for,” the sheriff said. “Who brought it in?”

“Danny.”

Parson handed the gun to the lawman without saying anything else.

Hawkins held the shotgun and studied the stock a moment.

“My eyes ain’t what they used to be, Parson, but I’d say them initials carved in it are SJ, not DP.”

“That gun Steve Jackson’s?”

“Yes, sir,” the sheriff replied, laying the shotgun on the counter. “Danny took it out of Steve’s truck yesterday. At least that’s what Steve believed.”

“I didn’t notice the initials,” Parson said. “I figured it came off the farm.”

Hawkins picked the shotgun off the counter and held it in one hand, studying it critically. He shifted it slightly, let his thumb rub the stock’s varnished wood.

“I think I can talk Steve out of pressing charges.”

“Don’t do that as a favor to me,” Parson said. “If his own daddy don’t give a damn he’s a thief, why should I?”

“How come you to think Ray doesn’t care?” Hawkins asked.

“Because Danny’s been bringing things to me from the farm for months. Ray knows where they’re going. I called him three months ago