Drew grabbed a market basket. “Do you have any fresh meat or produce?”
“Hamburgers and hotdogs in the cooler. Couple of pork chops, maybe. And we got coleslaw.”
Well, he supposed that was produce of a sort. “What about chicken?”
“Nope. Got eggs, though. Might be able to raise a chicken or two from those, would you keep em in a warm place.” She laughed at this sally, exposing brown teeth. Not gum after all. Chaw.
Drew ended up filling two baskets. There was no NyQuil, but there was something called Dr. King’s Cough & Cold Remedy, also Anacin and Goody’s Headache Powder. He topped off his shopping spree with a few cans of chicken noodle soup (Jewish penicillin, his nana had called it), a tub of Shedd’s Spread margarine, and two loaves of bread. It was the spongy white stuff, pretty industrial, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He saw soup and a toasted cheese sandwich in his not-too-distant future. Good grub for a man with a sore throat.
The counter woman rang him up, chewing away as she did it. Drew was fascinated by the rise and fall of the stud in her lip. How old would Mommy’s l’il monster be before she had one just like it? Fifteen? Eleven, maybe? He told himself again that he was being an elitist, an elitist asshole, in fact, but his overstimulated mind kept running along a trail of associations just the same. Welcome Walmart shoppers. Pampers, inspired by babies. I love a man with a Skoal ring. Each day is a page in your fashion diary. Lock her up send her b—
“Hundred and eight-seventy,” she said, snapping the flow of his thoughts.
“Holy crow, really?”
She smiled, revealing teeth he could have done without seeing again. “You want to shop out here in the willies, Mr.… Larson, is it?”
“Yes. Drew Larson.”
“You want to shop out here in the willies, Mr. Larson, you gotta be prepared to pay the price.”
“Where’s Roy today?”
She rolled her eyes. “Dad’s in the hospital, over St. Christopher. Got the flu, wouldn’t go see the doctor, had to be a man about it, and it went pneumonia. My sister’s sittin my kids so I can mind his business and lemme tell you, she ain’t happy about it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” In truth, he didn’t care much one way or the other about Roy DeWitt. What he cared about, what he was thinking about, was DeWitt’s snot-clotted bandanna. And how he, Drew, had shaken the hand that had been using it.
“Not as sorry as I am. We’ll be busy tomorrow with that storm comin in over the weekend.” She pointed two spread fingers at his baskets. “I hope you c’n pay cash for that, the credit machine’s busted and Dad keeps forgettin to get it fixed.”
“I can do that. What storm?”
“A norther, that’s what they’re sayin on the Rivière-du-Loup. Quebec radio station, you know.” She pronounced it Kwa-beck. “Lots of wind and rain. Comin in day after tomorrow. You’re out there on the Shithouse, ain’tcha?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you don’t want to be out there for the next month or so, you might want to pack up your groceries and your luggage and head back down south.”
Drew was familiar with this attitude. Up here on the TR, it didn’t matter if you were a Maine native; if you didn’t come from Aroostook County, you were considered a namby-pamby flatlander who couldn’t tell a spruce from a pine. And if you lived south of Augusta, you might as well be just another Masshole, by gorry.
“I think I’ll be okay,” he said, taking out his wallet. “I live on the coast. We’ve seen our share of nor’easters.”
She looked at him with what might have been pity. “Not talking about a nor’easter, Mr. Larson. Talking about a norther, comin straight across O Canador from the Arctic Circle. Temperature’s gonna fall off the table, they say. Goodbye sixty-five, hello thirty-eight. Could go lower. Then you got your sleet flyin horizontal at thirty miles per. You get stuck out there on Shithouse Road, you stuck.”
“I’ll be okay,” Drew said. “It’ll be—” He stopped. He had been about to say It’ll be like taking dictation.
“What?”
“Fine. It’ll be fine.”
“You better hope so.”
15
On his way back to the cabin—the sun flaring in his eyes and kicking off a headache to go with his other symptoms—Drew brooded on that snotty bandanna. Also on how Roy DeWitt had tried to man through it and wound up in the hospital.
He glanced into the rearview mirror and briefly regarded