Chapter Twenty

Sophie walked the canned goods aisle, sucking on a piece of peppermint candy the store manager, Ms. Watson, had given her. The woman had asked to be called Mama Norma, but Sophie wasn't sure yet how she felt about such familiarity.

She wasn't sure about grocery shopping, either. It wasn’t something her family had done much of at Northwind, since the farm provided meals to any worker who wanted one, and the nearest store was half a day’s ride away. She examined the paper labels on the cans. Black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, green beans…so many varieties! And that was just the beginning. There were soups and stewed tomatoes, peaches and pears, and something called pineapple that Sophie wasn’t at all sure about, but looked juicy and yellow in the picture on the label. What would a pine apple taste like? She frowned.

“There you are,” her father said as he came around the corner. “Checking our inventory?”

Sophie didn’t know what he meant by inventory. “There’s so many things. What do people do with it all?”

“They eat it.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Robert put a hand on her shoulder. “How about you pick out a few things for dinner? I have the keys to the lodge, and Norma assures me that everything is clean, the stove has a fresh tank of propane, and we can move right in. We’ll eat, get a little sleep, and in the morning we’ll start fresh.”

“But how can I pick out dinner when I don’t even know what some of these things are?”

“That’s okay. There’s nothing here that’s going to kill us, at least not on this aisle. And who knows, you might find a new favorite.”

He left her staring again at the cans as he went to the aisle marked “Household Goods.” Sophie sighed. Her father’s words had been jaunty, but in that forced way he had taken to lately, which she suspected was a cover for a consternation almost as great as her own. He was overwhelmed too, and it was her job to put on a brave face and not add to his worries. She grabbed a can of black beans and a can of the mysterious pineapple. Then she went to the “Grains and Pasta” aisle and selected a bag of rice.

At the counter, broad-faced Mama Norma smiled and put the items in a cloth bag. “How about some chicken to go with this?” she asked. “We have some chicken quarters delivered fresh this morning from Nance’s.”

Sophie didn’t know who or what Nance’s was, but she nodded and watched the woman place a paper-wrapped bundle in the bag.

“And to drink? We have Coca-Cola, imported all the way from Atlanta, Georgia.”

Coke had been a luxury at Northwind, suitable only for special occasions. Sophie sucked in her breath in happy anticipation and turned to see if her father was nearby so she could ask permission.

Guessing at her thoughts, Norma chuckled. “Nothing’s too good for your first dinner in your true hometown. And besides, your father pays wholesale.”

Sophie had no idea what wholesale was, but was pleased to see Mama Norma add a bottle of Coke to the bag.

“We checked the well at the lodge when we knew you were on your way,” Mama Norma went on, “but sometimes one well doesn’t agree with someone like another does, so I recommend you get some bottled water, just in case. It’s on the “Beverages” aisle at the end over there, see?”

“Okay.” Sophie went to the aisle she had pointed to and took a bottle of Ojo Santo water off the shelf. When she got back to the counter, she found Mama Norma slipping a bottle of beer into the bag. “Dad likes wine better than beer,” she said without thinking.

Norma paused. “Oh. Yes, I guess he would.”

Sophie thought she detected a hint of disapproval in her voice, but said nothing as the woman put the beer away and selected a small bottle of red wine instead. By now Robert had returned, his arms full of towels, brushes and bottles of cleaning supplies, which he dumped on the counter.

“I know you said it’s clean, but there’s bound to be some dusting and scrubbing to do, regardless,” he said, again with that cheerfulness that Sophie recognized to be false.

Norma put the cleaning items into a separate bag and started to hand them both across the counter, when Robert stopped her with a forced smile.

“Please write those up for me while I’m here,” he said. “Sophie and I are both so tired we’re likely to go home, eat, fall asleep, and forget all about it.”

Sophie thought she saw a flash of confusion on Mama Norma’s face, quickly replaced by a smile. “Of course. You only just got here. What am I thinking, that you’d want to start doing the accounting right away?” She dug a pad and pen out of a drawer and started writing down all the items in their bags.

After they had wished Norma a good evening, they went to their horses. They were half a mile down the road toward the lodge before Robert muttered, “If that’s how my brother taught her to keep up with the inventory, it’s no wonder the store never turns a profit.”

“What do you mean?” Sophie glanced up at her father.

Robert hesitated as he considered how best to explain. “The town needs money to maintain the roads, light the streetlamps, provide security, and things like that, right? Well, they get that money by charging a tax on the things people buy. As the store owner, it’s my job to collect the tax and then give it to the town government. If I give something away, I’m not collecting a tax, so it’s very important that I write down everything I give away so I can show that no tax was collected.”

“But how do they know what you have in the store in the first place?”

“All sale goods that come in have to pass through a checkpoint, like the one we passed. They make a list of everything brought in and where it’s going. So if ten cans of green beans are going to my store and I sell them for fifty-cents apiece, they expect to get two cents in tax for each can.”

“Twenty cents,” Sophie said.

“Yes. I’m glad you paid attention in math class. If I give away one of those cans, but I don’t write down that I gave it away, the government thinks I sold it and they want the two cents tax, even though I didn’t collect it.”

“So everything we give away or take for ourselves, we have to write it down or else take the tax out of our profits.”

Robert smiled, the first genuine smile Sophie had seen all day. “Exactly. You’re going to be a big help to me, you know that?”

Sophie had no desire to get involved with managing the store, but the idea that she could be a real help to her father made her sit up tall in the saddle. The move to Castaño wasn’t what either one of them had really wanted, but they were partners now.