Chapter 8: New Store

1866

The store just off the wide main street of the bustling county seat opened very early on Tuesday, January 2, 1866. It was near the livery stable and the hotels, diagonally across Montgomery Avenue from the courthouse. The dark green sign with gilt lettering that hung above the deep-set door and many-paned window read "Montgomery Farm Supply."

Robert Williams, who had hiked the four frigid miles from his home long before the sun appeared, and Zedediah Snowden, who lived within easy walking distance, were still arranging sacks of feed and hanging harness parts and moldboards to pegs on the wall when the first customer arrived, stepped to the long counter with the brass scale on one end and asked if they had any plug tobacco.

Robert smiled and said he was sorry. The man nodded amiably, looked about and left. Robert wrote 'tobacco' on a slip of paper he put in the back of the cash drawer. By six o'clock that evening, when they banked the fire in their small stove, doused the coal oil lamps and locked the front door, the man seeking chewing tobacco had been their only customer. A few had peered in through the windows. The white-haired Snowden looked at the young man as he pocketed the key. Zed smiled. "It'll git better," he said.

"I surely do hope so," said Robert more-or-less to himself as he walked to the livery stable to hire a riding horse.

Robert's mother warmed him some stew, pulling it toward an open hole in her iron stove when she heard the horse in the barnyard. He ate quietly and thought about the long day, hardly tasting the beef and turnips but enjoying the warn biscuits. Worry gnawed at his insides. At least nobody called me a name, he thought, trying to force himself to find a silver lining.

"One swallow doesn't make a summer," his mother said, patting his shoulder after he shared his concerns.

"I know," he said, "but I warned Mr. French this might happen; that people might stay away."

"Did you tell folks you were going to open?" his mother asked.

"The sign's been up for a week."

"Well, winter might not be the best time to start," she said.

Robert nodded. "Maybe we ought to buy an ad in the Sentinel."

"Wouldn't hurt," said his mother. "Mr. French has run ads for his Georgetown place, hasn't he? Sometimes you have to ignore a person's politics."

Robert undressed and lay on his bed, enjoying the warmth of the quilt and thinking about the store and his future. His feet ached and he flexed his bad thumb as well as his arches. His ribs still hurt when he coughed or laughed. The dentist he had talked to assured him he would not lose another tooth and sold him on having a plate made to replace the missing upper teeth. He touched his sore cheek with his fingertips and closed his eyes, again seeing the girl jumping down the stairs with her wide skirt flying and throwing herself at the men who were kicking him, hearing them curse and feeling their boots thump against his body, smelling the girl's skin and her hair as they huddled together in the carriage.

Seth was right about her; she's brave one. He would have to ask about that incident in '64, not sure what happened back then. Ah well.

He turned over, tried to remember the Preston girl's name, pictured the man who came in for a plug of tobacco, and fell asleep.

By the end of the first week, Montgomery Farm Supply had taken in twelve dollars and fifty cents, nearly all of it in paper money, and Zedediah Snowden had hired a young cousin as a Saturday helper and found an old wagon that could be bought for ten dollars. Robert gave him the money and made an entry in the third column of his ledger. Snowden said he could fashion new sideboards for the wagon, patch the bed and get the whole thing painted by Mr. Bogley, the part-time undertaker and full-time wheelwright.

Late on the store's first Saturday, Mr. French and his daughter appeared at the front counter, unannounced and unexpected. Robert, a bit flustered, showed them around and then gave his employer a short list of items that might be added to their inventory.

"Chewing tobacco?" Richard French laughed.

"If it's what farmers want," Robert said, feeling defensive. "Can't hurt."

"You're right. Order some cheroots and smoking tobacco as well; you can keep them on the shelves behind you. Shovels, mattocks, ten-penny nails?" he said, reading the list. "We'll soon have a hardware store."

"The hardware store sells seed," Robert said with a small smile. "And that Kidwell fellow sells just about everything on earth including fertilizer."

Mr. French nodded. "I ordered some pails, two-gallon buckets, galvanized ones. They ought to be coming out next week. Got a good price."

"We now own a wagon, sir, and I'll get our store's name painted on it pretty soon," Robert said as he watched Caroline roam the store, admiring her lithe grace, the swirl of her hem. "We can hire a horse by the day, at least for a while."

"Maybe you should stock some work gloves," Caroline suggested after fingering the leather goods on the wall.

Robert nodded. "I was thinking about an ad in the paper."

"Good idea," said Mr. French. "I've forgotten his rates. Let's not go overboard. Those Georgetown places buy whole columns."

"I've withdrawn from school," Caroline said quietly as her father walked toward the back room. "He didn't like it," she said, nodding toward her father. The girl stood squarely before him, barely a yard away; she could smell him and see the places his razor had missed below his chin.

"I'm sorry," Robert said turning his face aside because he felt the girl staring at his still-blackened eye, now an evil purplish-green.

"They wouldn't even talk to me," she said to his back as her father returned. "I was so mad." Caroline clenched her fists and nearly stamped her foot. She took a deep breath and smiled.

"Caroline wants to go to one of the art schools, perhaps up in Philadelphia or New York. I suggested the Stanmore School in Sandy Spring." Mr. French did not look very happy about the idea. "Your storeroom is certainly neat."

"Thank you," said Robert. "That's Zed's doing. Art is it, Miss French?" he asked Caroline.

"I think so," she said, wondering what color she could call his eyes, hazel she supposed. "Some people seem to think I draw well. I enjoy it."

"Would you like to come to dinner Sunday?" asked Mr. French. "We could talk a bit of business."

"Oh Daddy," Caroline cried in mock seriousness. "On Sunday. Tsk, tsk." She wagged her gloved finger at him, grinning.

"Well," Robert began, wondering if he should dine with his mother for the first time in a week.

"Please come," Caroline said. "We promise, no fried chicken."

"I'd be most happy," said Robert, feeling he owed the girl at least that much. "Thank you, both of you."

"Around two," Mr. French said, leading his daughter toward the door. "You're off to a good start, my boy. I only took in five dollars my first week in Georgetown, and one of them was counterfeit." Caroline wiggled her fingers in a funny wave without turning to look at the young man, able to picture him well enough to draw him.

After a fine dinner at the French's mahogany table, with both Irish potatoes and yams, Caroline showed Robert some of her sketches and two small, dry-point water colors she had done. The series of sketches she had made of his face she kept under a book in her room.

"I like this one of the old barn," he said, sitting beside her on the sofa, their knees touching, his only slightly higher than hers.

"I worked and worked to get the shade right," the girl said. "That's about the tenth version."

"But this cow," said Robert, making a wry face and trying to sound serious, "I don't know about her."

"It's a horse," Caroline cried with a laugh, snatching the page from his fingers. "I'd like to see you do any better."

"Not me," Robert said. "I can't even draw a decent map."

"I've been thinking about the store and your advertisement," said Caroline, ready to spring her carefully prepared surprise. "Look at this."

"It's very nice, well done," Robert said holding out the inked image of a farmer plowing a hillside below the boldly-lettered store name and the legend 'Dealers in Prime Goods.' "But I think one column is all we can afford, perhaps four inches." He smiled at her and handed back the sheet of heavy paper.

"That's so skinny," she said, disappointed her efforts did not earn more praise and acceptance. "I was looking at some of the Washington papers and at Harper's. I don't know how they do those drawings; I mean print them."

"Wood blocks, I believe," Robert said. "But I think we ought to stick to just type right now. Anything else costs more money."

Caroline stuck out her lower lip, looking disappointed.

"But you had a good idea," he said. "Maybe you could do a bigger one in ink for the window. It's a good picture, the furrows and all."

"Yes," she said, brightening, "I can do that, perhaps on four sheets you can glue together."

"Make the words extra big," he said, leaning his shoulder against hers.

Caroline turned toward him and their noses nearly touched. "About your beard," she said, mischief in her eyes. What a flirt I am; I'm terrible, she thought, but he has such kind eyes, even if one is still bloodshot.

Robert leaned back and crossed his arms although he had enjoyed her warm nearness, her clean smell, and obvious enthusiasm. "What about it?"

"I think you should trim it down or shave it off."

"Do you?" he said, arching an eyebrow at her and stroking at his chin with the back of his fingers. "And why do you think that, my girl?"

"Well, no offense now, but it's kind of, well, splotchy and uneven."

"My beard is not splotchy," Robert said, stroking it. "How about if I did a Vandyke, just chin whiskers, and perhaps a neat mustache or Burnsides?"

"That might be better," Caroline said, wiggling away a bit and cocking her head to the side, putting a finger to her cheek. "But clean shaven is my advice."

"Your father has a beard."

"His isn't splotchy," Caroline said with a laugh as she stood. "Oh, go on, do what you like. I don't know why I said that."

When the drayman appeared on Monday with his bill of lading, he looked puzzled. "Don' know why you'd need so many pails," he said.

Robert looked at the flimsy yellow paper. "A hundred," he nearly yelled. "It can't be a hundred."

"Sure is," the man said, holding open the front door. "Jimmy," he yelled. "This is the place."

Soon ten stacks of ten buckets each stood on the floor, gleaming in their newly galvanized splendor and filling a corner.

"Lord have mercy," said Zedediah Snowden, scratching his head. "That's surely a sight a'buckets."