Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(89)

“Adrienne? Babe? Did I f*ck it up?” He put his hand around her left arm and squeezed lightly.

The concern in his voice broke her trance, and she looked up. “I love you.”

His brow smoothed out, and he grinned again. “I love you, too. I did okay?”

“Better than okay. Perfect.” She stepped into his embrace, clutching her new camera between them.



oOo



Leaving Hector at Show and Shannon’s to play with his brother, Max, Badger took Adrienne and her new camera for a ride. He took them far out, riding over an hour, before she tugged on the front of his kutte to get his attention. He leaned his head back a little so she could tell him she had to pee. He nodded and made the next turn. About ten minutes later, he pulled up at a little market that seemed to be entirely isolated from any other human life.

The building could have come off the lot at a movie studio, straight out of a John Wayne movie or something. Bare wood boards, aligned vertically, weathered to grey. A covered porch, low to the ground, with split logs for a railing. Hanging from the porch eaves, swinging gently in the light fall breeze, was a simply-lettered sign in black and white that read Malone’s Market.

There was an actual horse actually tied to the porch by the reins of her bridle.

A weathered picnic table sat out front, near a huge old elm with a tire swing hanging from a thick branch.

“What is this place?” She took her helmet off and handed it to him.

“Malone’s. It’s cool, you’ll see.”

“How did you even know it was here?”

“I ride a lot, babe. Riding helps me think things out. I probably know every road and building for more than fifty miles around home.” He held his hand out to her. “Bring your camera in. I don’t think Buck’ll mind if you want to take pictures.”

She got her knew camera out of his saddlebag and let him lead her into the market. As they stepped onto the porch—three old rocking chairs on one side, a rough-hewn table and two chairs on the other— their feet made the distinctive clop of walking over old boards. A sound common to every western she’d ever seen. And she’d thought Signal Bend had been caught in a time warp. Adrienne felt like they’d lost almost two hundred years when Badger had pulled onto the skimpy gravel of the Malone’s lot.

The wooden screen door squealed when Badger pulled it open. With a hand on the small of her back, he led her into the store.

“Oh. My. God.” On instinct, she lifted her camera.

“Hey, Buck. How’s it goin’?”

A tall, deeply wrinkled old man with darkly ruddy skin and a short shock of snow-white hair looked up from behind the counter, where he was pulling something from the case. “Badger. Good to see you. It’s goin’ like it always goes.”

“You mind if my lady takes some pictures of the store?”

“Reckon that’s okay. Not sellin’ ‘em or nothin’, though, yeah?”

Badger looked at Adrienne. She shook her head. She had no one to sell them to. She just wanted to remember what she was seeing.

“No sir. She just likes the place. This is Adrienne, by the way. Adrienne Renard, Buck Malone.”

“Hi, Buck.”

Buck dropped his head in a courtly nod. “Young lady. Let me know if you need somethin’.”

“I will, thanks.”

The first thing that greeted them was an ancient soda cooler—a big, red chest with the Coca-Cola label emblazoned across the front and a bottle opener built into the side. She lifted the lid—it was operating, and cold steam wafted into the air. “There are actual bottles of soda in here!”

Badger laughed. “Yeah. It’s a soda chest.”

“I didn’t even know you could still get bottles like this!”

Adrienne closed the lid and looked around. The store was dimly lit, a few bare bulbs in the ceiling augmenting the natural light from the windows across the front and along one side. The floors and walls were the same rough-hewn wood of the exterior. The other side wall was shelving from floor to ceiling, and the center of the space was taken up by rows of tables with shelving built on top. And barrels. There were barrels clustered in one front corner. Full of…nails? Wow.

The shelves along the wall and in the center were stacked with jeans, plaid and chambray shirts, bandanas, and other kinds of fabric goods, and then canned goods and boxed foods. There were shelves of identical work boots. A topper in the center was stacked with cowboy hats and trucker caps. Another was paper—stationery, envelopes, old-fashioned ledger books, greeting cards and postcards.

The sales counter was a long, framed-glass case, filled with brightly colored candies and cheap plastic toys—and an array of tobacco products. A man in a brown twill shirt and faded jeans, sagging in the butt, wearing a dirty and misshapen straw cowboy hat, was paying for a new bag of chewing tobacco. He handed his money to Buck, who rang the sale into an ornately cast brass cash register.

Seriously. This place could not possibly exist in the twenty-first century. They had to have crossed through some kind of portal.

She pulled on Badger’s arm. “How does this place stay in business?”

Badger laughed. “Low overhead, I guess. And a lot of the stock’s been here for a while. Everybody around knows about Malone’s, though, so he does okay. I’ve never been in here when there wasn’t somebody else here, too. Look down to the back of the store.”