“Hmm, I wonder why he did that.” Mom reached into her change purse. “I’ll give ya some extra so you can getcha some chocolate bars.”
“C’mon.” I grabbed Sal’s arm once I had the money. “Maybe Mr. Elohim didn’t burn all of it. Maybe they had some hidden in a back freezer.”
When we came upon the Delmar house, Sal stopped and stared at Dresden, who was once again standing against the oak in her yard, this time with To Kill a Mockingbird. Sal waved and softly called her name. She held the pen in her hand tighter and the book higher, though her freckled forehead and her light eyes peered above the page at him.
“Tell me something about her, Fielding.”
“Her dad split a few years back, so it’s just her and her mom, Alvernine. Alvernine’s one of them fancy-pancy ladies and sexy as hell. She’s consumed by bein’ Miss Perfection. She wouldn’t like you.” I smacked a sweat bee away. “Though, maybe if ya gave her a rose. She started a club on ’em.”
“Is Dresden in the club?”
“Naw. It’s just society ladies, like Alvernine. Why you care so much about this girl anyways?”
“Even a devil’s heart isn’t just for beating.” He gave Dresden one last wave. In response, she hid her face completely behind the book, her frizzy hair sticking out around the cover like red static.
Sal glanced back at her before we left, but his attention was soon placed on the birds flying above.
Papa Juniper’s was on Main Lane, which was a long lane of stores serving as the main route of business in Breathed. Storefronts of wide windows, brick fa?ades, and that summer, flowers and plants wilting in the heat. The soaring elms lining the lane shaped a canopy not unlike a vaulted ceiling, giving rise to the lane’s nickname, the Cathedral. A nickname not just for the ceiling the trees gave the lane but also because the trees were said to be blessed on account of their escape from the Dutch fungus that had obliterated most of the nation’s elms.
In 1984, there were no big-box stores or outside commercial influence. The businesses were Breathed born and bred. Main Lane was a place you could buy books, furniture, music, condoms, a brand-new refrigerator, and finish it all off with a haircut at Chairfool’s barbershop or a meal at Dandelion Dimes, named so by the founder who, in the late 1800s, would accept a yellow dandelion head as payment equivalent to a dime.
Juniper’s, with its whitewashed brick and little blue juniper berries painted on every one, was the only grocery store. Down from it was the butcher’s, and down from there a bakery called Mamaw’s Flour, which every Fourth of July would bake the largest blueberry pie. It sure looked nice, but wasn’t much for taste.
If you needed dressing, there was Fancy’s Dress Shop for the ladies. Contrary to their name, they did sell pants, though they never brought them to the house when Mom called up and said she’d like to go shopping. They would come with their hangers and garment bags, laying the dresses out, knowing just the kind she liked. She’d go over them, point to this one and that one, eventually buying them all, I think because she felt they went to an awful lot of trouble, bringing the store to her.
Across the lane from Fancy’s was the Burgundy Toad, which is where Dad bought his suits and ties, among other menswear, with little burgundy toads embroidered in the labels. While Fancy’s and Toad’s catered to the older shopper, the young ones could find the latest fashion at Saint Sammy’s. Though the sign out front had last had a face-lift in 1954, you could find the latest acid-washed jeans there.
Sal glanced at the mannequin in the window with her purple bikini printed with little neon hearts as me and him passed Saint’s on the way to Juniper’s. Once inside the market, we found all the ice cream had indeed been melted. In the aisle where Elohim had torched it, the concrete floor was left cracked by the heat.
What I knew of Elohim’s punishment for the act of vandalism was that he was to pay for the ice cream, the cleanup, as well as patch the cracks in the concrete.
Because the exhaust fan in the ceiling above had carried out a good deal of the smoke, very little residue remained on the food around. Being as it was burned in the canned food aisle, the cans merely had to be wiped.
When we saw one of the workers passing through with a mop in his hand, we asked him if he was sure there wasn’t any ice cream left undiscovered in the back.
“It all burned. We expect a shipment by the end of next week. You can check back then.” He perched his pimpled chin up on the mop handle while he stared at Sal.
“Well, where’s the chocolate bars and candy?” I looked at the shelves, which were covered in thick brown smears.