The Country Store...Barbara's "place" prompt

They loved the little store at the crossroads in the country. When they bought the store 20 years ago, they were younger. Their move from a city to the country on the other side of their state was a dream come true. They had dreamed of a bucolic life of friendly neighbors helping each other build a barn and children playing in the hay loft. Checkered curtains had been hung at the windows and candy sat on the counter waiting for children with straw in their hair. Let the dreams begin.

The sun had come up hot that first day at the store. She listened to the local radio where the usual boredom of country living was broadcast live. Grave plots were sold on the "Buy it Here" show and announcements of the local pinochle club winners topped the news. This morning, though, someone had stolen a new car from the front of the Kaufman house. The announcer was been shocked. The beautiful green and black car had been purchased in the next big town and was the first one like it in the county. It was then she picked up the phone and made a quick call.

Inventory had been completed, the windows washed and a hot pot of coffee sat next to the bench near the stove. The numbers scribbled on the wall above the pay phone were left untouched. But every other surface has been scrubbed to a neat gray shine. At nine o'clock the she glanced out the window at the round thermometer than hung next to the Coke sign on the garage wall. 90 degrees already. They had been open since 7 a.m. that morning and a hand full of pickup trucks had stopped in the middle of the road as their grimy drivers ran to the pop machine filled with ice. They deposited their coins, jerked the bottle out with a clank. Each bottle was opened by a true bottle opening expert and cold coke was guzzled as they jumped back into their trucks. Tires ground on the road and a small cloud of dust followed.

The dirt road in the front of the little store had been paved at one time but when the county decided to put in a new rural opera house for famous people to perform in, the road money had simply vanished. The opera house stood unused. No famous people had come. And the road remained dusty in the summer. She wondered if it would be a slick clay mire in the winter.

She had glanced up from her cup of coffee as a cloud of dust began to move closer. People moved slower here she had found but once in a while a fast car whizzed up the road. She recognized the car at once. The locked brakes and the skidding car had her full attention. It had stopped. Leather and boots emerged from the sparkling car. The man, a very large man, emerged from the driver's side.

She was new to the country. She didn't know about nitrates in the water or when to plants potatoes or how to keep bugs out of the harvest. But she knew about this. She knew the aura, the look in the eyes, the sagging pants and the bandana tied over the graying hair. He looked stupid...it was a look that took her back to the corner store in the city. He came inside and began rummaging in the penny candy bin. He was pretending to be busy as he glanced around the store. She began to laugh. The keystone cops quality of the whole moment was more than she could stand. She could see the headlines in the local paper. Thief Forgets Sunglasses it would read.

The dust that followed the next car up the road didn't surprise her. She knew there would be a sheriff's car and handcuffs. A car thief that stopped to use the phone to call his girl friend, left his sunglasses behind and came back to get them was more than she could understand. It was not new to her though.

Hadn't they just moved to a corner on a country road? A sigh passed her lips. She realized that they would never go far enough or fast enough escape them. It was then she felt at home. She hadn't seen a barn raising or children with straw in their hair but she had seen that humans are humans. You might as well laugh and enjoy the moment. Yes, she thought then, this is probably going to be fun!

Twenty years later she still felt a twinge of excitement as the dust rose from the road in front. Friends had become real and laughter still escaped her lips every day. She was very glad they had made that change years ago. Looking beyond the horizon in hopes of finding a better life had been a good idea all be it not as much of a change as she had thought it would be.