Gone South (28 page)

“I want you to be courteous.” He pointed toward the front of the store. “Let’s make sure you remember how to work an antique cash register.”

She followed him behind the counter. Hands clasped behind her back, she studied the ornate gilt surfaces of the machine. “Wow, that’s a fancy one.”

“Of all the registers I’ve restored, this one’s my favorite.” Not for sentimental reasons, though, but for its extravagant style. Every curlicue of the design seemed to celebrate the process of collecting money.

“It’s even older than the one the Howards use at their gift shop,” he added.

She showed no reaction to the name. “Huh. Can’t you afford a newer one?”

Enjoying the irony, he refrained from telling her how valuable an antique NCR could be. “I love the old ones. There’s never a paper jam or a problem with the power supply. But as you know, a 1910 model can’t tell you how much change to give back. You have to use your head.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

“Show me. Pretend you’re ringing up a sale. Let’s say it’s a twenty-dollar item, plus tax.” He handed her the chart for calculating the sales tax.

She flashed him a look of unadulterated irritation but consulted the chart. Twice. Then she rang up the sale, seeming to enjoy the clash and clang of the machine as much as he did.

“There,” she said. “Happy now?”

“Yes ma’am. That’s the sound of commerce, even if it’s only a trial run. Now, here’s an important tip. If somebody gives you, say, a twenty, don’t put it in the drawer right away. Leave it on the ledge above the drawer until the customer takes the change and seems happy with it.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“So somebody can’t give you a ten, wait until you’ve closed the drawer, and then claim they gave you a twenty.”

Comprehension dawned in her eyes. “Oh, wow! Sneaky!”

Hoping he hadn’t given her a brilliant new idea to try sometime, he led her into the back room and introduced her to his vintage Bissell sweeper. Never having seen one, she was intrigued.

“You mean you don’t have to plug it in?”

“No ma’am.”

“Does it run on batteries?”

“No. When you push it back and forth, the little brushes pick up almost everything.”

“Awesome. It’s like those weird lawn mowers that don’t have motors.”

He fought to keep a straight face. “It’s a similar concept. Sweep the floor mat by the front door and the carpet in front of the register, please. When you’ve finished, you can clean fingerprints from the front door and display cases and so on. But never use any of the cleaning supplies on the merchandise without checking with me first. One squirt of Windex can ruin a valuable antique. Got it?”

“Got it.” She hurried away with the Bissell, her ponytail swinging.

George shook his head. If she could learn some new habits, even if it started out as playacting, maybe the habits would do her good. Or maybe she’d only be whitewashing a sepulcher. If she ran into trouble with the law at some point, his new status as her employer put him in danger of being dragged along for the ride. He tried to dismiss the unsettling thought, but it lingered.

It was a quiet day, as Tuesdays often were, but the slow pace was perfect for training her. Early in the afternoon, he decided she’d observed enough transactions. It was time for her to work the register alone.

The customer currently browsing the store was a retired teacher who stopped in perhaps twice a year and never spent more than ten dollars. If Mel somehow offended Miss Meyers and she never came back, it wouldn’t be a great loss.

“Here she comes,” he said softly as the woman approached the counter. “This one is all yours.”

“No,” she whispered, in a panic.

“What’s wrong? You did fine on your practice run.”

“But I know her. She’ll hate me.”

“Get over it, Mel. Do your job.”

It was too late for her to argue. Miss Meyers was nearly upon them, her bad hip making her list to the left like a car with a flat.

Mel looked terrified but attempted a smile. “Hello, Miss Meyers.”

“Hello, dear,” the woman said. “Do I know you?”

“You were my teacher,” Mel said faintly. “Second grade. I’m … I’m Melanie.”

Miss Meyers lowered her glasses and smiled at her. “I’m sorry, dear, but I’ve taught so many children. I can’t possibly remember them all.” The woman placed three doilies on the counter. “These were in the three-for-four-dollars pile.” She reached into a cracked leather handbag and pulled out an equally decrepit change purse.

Mel tucked the doilies into a bag. Then she ran her forefinger down the sales-tax chart. “That’ll be, um … um … four twenty-four, please.”

From the tiny coin purse, Miss Meyers extracted a ten-dollar bill, folded in fourths. Mel unfolded it and placed it on the ledge above the drawer.

She hesitated, moving her lips, apparently going over the process in her mind. Then she pulled out four ones, two dimes, and four pennies, and placed them in the woman’s hand. “That’s four twenty-four,” she said breathlessly.

Too stunned to speak, George raised his eyes to Miss Meyers’ face. She appeared to be oblivious to this highly irregular method of making change.

Mel reached into the cash drawer and pulled out a penny and three quarters. “Four twenty-four,” she repeated under her breath. “Twenty-five,” she said, her voice gaining strength as she dropped a penny into the woman’s outstretched palm. “Fifty, seventy-five, five,” she chanted, counting out the quarters. Then she placed a five-dollar bill on the woman’s palm. “And five makes ten.”

“Thank you, dear.” Miss Meyers stuffed the money into her coin purse.

“Thank you.” Mel beamed and handed her the bag. “Have a wonderful day.”

“You too.” Miss Meyers beamed back and leaned closer to George. “Keep a sweet girl like her at the register and you’ll do twice as much business.”

“Er, yes,” he said. “Thank you, ma’am. Come see us again sometime.”

Miss Meyers hobbled away, humming.

“Cool,” Mel whispered. “She doesn’t remember me.”

Glowing with pride, she watched her former teacher walk out with the three doilies and not a penny less than she’d arrived with.

George massaged his scalp, hard, with both hands. The good news was that Mel might not have stolen from her previous employers. Not intentionally, anyway.

The bad news? He needed to confront her immediately. If she overreacted and stormed off, then he didn’t want her working there anyway.

He cleared his throat. “Mel, we need to have another little talk.”

Upstairs at her desk, Tish checked the time. Past five. Mel wasn’t back, so George hadn’t found cause to fire her yet.

He was a good man. A kind man. Tish had already admitted to herself that she liked him, so she didn’t understand why he sometimes spooked her so. When he spoke to her so gently … or teasingly … she froze inside. The night before, on her porch steps, she’d half expected him to lean in for a kiss, but then she’d panicked. He would want to know why, and she wouldn’t know what to tell him.

Part of it was that he’d apologized for the “little nuisance,” quoting the first words she’d said to the dog at her door. Knowing he’d heard the whole thing, she felt as if she’d opened a window to her heart just when he happened to be passing by.

She didn’t want to think about it anymore. She’d had enough of the online job hunt too, so she decided to take another look at the McComb letters. If nothing else, they would remind her to be grateful. Compared to Letitia, she lived a cream-puff life. Being unemployed for a while was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Tish zoomed in on one of the most poignant letters.

I’ll be home soon, dearest Mother. I have lost everything but Nathaniel, who was once the delight of his father and his sister who now repose in the vile earth of Alabama …

When Tish had visited Noble with her dad, he’d driven to the town’s oldest cemetery, thinking Nathan might have been buried there. She’d stayed in the car, trying not to cry. She hadn’t been ready to visit a cemetery—any cemetery—but she hadn’t wanted her dad to know how hard it was. He hadn’t found Nathan’s grave, but when he’d climbed into the car again, he’d been more angry than disappointed. Pressed for an explanation, he’d said he’d found a separate area where slaves were buried, but their graves weren’t marked.

“As if they weren’t God’s children too,” he’d said. “It’s evil.”

She’d agreed with him, but she’d been more focused on her private grief. Even now, she couldn’t comprehend the wickedness of slavery or the way it had bled into succeeding generations, long after the Civil War.

She lifted her gaze from the letter, recognizing that the “darkies” mentioned in that old book were former slaves, as were the people Nathan and Letitia must have hired as household help—for a pittance, probably. Carpetbaggers hadn’t been known for their generosity.

The front door slammed. “Tish! Tish! Are you up there?”

“I’m up here, Mel,” she hollered back. “I’ll be right d—”

Mel’s feet pounded up the stairs. “I gotta tell you,” she yelled, halfway there already.

Tish shook her head. There went her plan to keep the second floor as her private sanctuary.

Mel burst into the room, her socks sliding on the smooth wooden floor. “George cleared my name! I mean, he practically called me stupid, but I already know I’m stupid. It was, like, really embarrassing, but he taught me the right way to make change. Sheesh, I’m an adult, I’m nearly twenty-one, and I can’t do something that simple?”

“What are you talking about?”

“He watched me counting change for a customer, and I did it all wrong. See? It proves I didn’t steal from anybody’s cash drawer. It was all an accident. A dumb mistake—every time!”

Tish’s natural skepticism kicked in, but she decided to ignore it. If George believed this new theory, she would too. “That’s great, Mel.”

“Isn’t it?” Smiling, she looked around the room. Her eyes lingered on the sewing table in the corner. “This reminds me of my mom’s sewing room. You really like to sew? That’s weird.”

“What’s weird about it?”

“It’s kind of a mom thing to do. Or a grandma thing. Anyway, my mom’s sewing room is half filled up with Scarlett O’Hara stuff. She spends a ton of money at George’s shop ’cause she’s a Windy.”

“A what?”

“A Windy. That’s what we call people who collect
Gone with the Wind
junk. Except we don’t call it junk. We call it memorabilia. Collectibles.”

Tish smiled at Mel’s wholehearted adoption of George’s terminology. “I see. Well, do you think you’re a good fit for the job?”

“Yeah. It’s fun except for the chores. I get to wait on customers and everything, but he’ll only need me part time so it won’t be much money.”

“Maybe you can find another part-time job too.”

“Maybe. Hey, I’m starving.” Mel headed toward the doorway. “I’m gonna grab something to eat. You want anything?”

“No, thanks. Save some room for supper. I’m making stir-fry.”

“Okay.”

Mel was back in two minutes with a yogurt and a spoon in one hand and an apple in the other. She set the apple on the sewing table and started the yogurt. Leaning in, she studied the computer screen. “What’s that?”

“A letter that the original Letitia McComb wrote to her mother after her husband died.”

“The mother’s husband?”

“No. Letitia’s husband. She lost her daughter too.”

“That’s sad.”

“Yeah. Maybe the whole town had good reason to hate them, but I feel sorry for them anyway. According to Letitia’s letters home, they went through some real tragedies.”

“What happened?” Mel pulled the chair away from the sewing table and straddled it while she ate.

“From clues in the letters, I think Letitia couldn’t get pregnant for a long time, and then one baby was stillborn and another one died when he was only six months old.”

“That’s sad,” Mel said again, scooping a spoonful of yogurt from its container.

“She finally had two healthy children, a boy and a girl, when she was in her early forties.”

“Huh. My mom was almost that old when she had me.”

“And Nathan was a lot older than his wife, so he was probably in his mid-seventies when the two children were teenagers.”

Mel laughed. “Geez, and I thought my dad was old.”

“Nathan made a bundle of money when he and Letitia first came to town, but apparently he lost most of it in the last few years of his life. He died when their son was sixteen.”

“What did Nathan die of? Old age?”

“The letters don’t say, but a few weeks after he died, their daughter died of malaria. She was only fifteen.”

Mel stopped with a spoonful of yogurt halfway to her mouth. “That’s awful. That’s like … tenth grade. Before she’d had a chance to go to prom or anything.”

“Yes, and Letitia was afraid she’d lose her son too. She wanted to move home to Ohio, but she hadn’t been aware of Nathan’s money problems. He was so far in debt that she wasn’t even sure she could afford to leave town.”

“What did she do?”

“From what I’ve read, my best guess is that someone pressured her to sell this house, dirt cheap. Then she and her son headed for Ohio with almost nothing.”