morning cup of coffee was an exchange. In return for allowing Café Drummond to extend its small patio (used for exactly three months every year) in front of her storefront window, she received bottomless cups of strong black coffee.
Josie kept a neatly printed list of everyone’s needs tucked into her black leather wallet, which she kept in the back pocket of her jeans. She consulted it every time she ran into a potential barterer and updated it regularly with new items and information. The pen that sat behind her ear had replaced the cigarette that used to sit there. She’d traded one habit for another.
“Did Anna have her baby yet?” Josie had asked, the last time she was at the butcher’s.
Theo nodded. “Another boy! And this one named after me.” He thumped his wheelbarrow chest with his fist. “But now Susan is pregnant again.” He sighed the heavy sigh of a man who was proud of his family, but also a man who wasn’t looking forward to being a babysitter into his sixties. He shook his head and turned to finish butchering the meat he’d been working on. Josie tried to offer her congratulations over the sound of saw on bone. She underlined her previous entry for Theo: Crib.
Even Josie’s rusty pickup truck had been a barter. One summer, she worked for a friend who owned several blueberry fields. She’d risen at 4:30 every morning to pick blueberries in the semi-dark before she had to work at The Shop. At the end of the season, her fingers were stained a deep blue, and she’d been given the keys to the truck.
In an attempt to avoid the insomnia that had plagued her from her teens, Josie spent most nights driving around town and the outlying regions in search of leftovers. She knew the secret dump sites on the outskirts of town and the streets where the credit cards had higher limits and the houses were more prone to renovation and discard. Homeowners would haul their furniture out to the curb, knowing that it would be gone by morning. They did not have to pay to have it removed or haul it to the dump themselves. Josie needed them and they needed her. Her heart was a twenty-five-cent cracked knick-knack salvaged from an estate sale.
At the end of her shift, Algoma picked up a pencil from beside the register and wrote on the debit board. Each week, Josie checked the debit board for staff purchases, clothing and other items taken in lieu of pay, which was also the main reason the best offerings never made it to the sales floor. With a couple of quick strokes, Algoma marked down twenty dollars worth of purchases for two full-length fur coats. Two furs. Women’s. Damaged. $10 each. AB.
Outside, she retrieved four bungee cords from the trunk of her car and lashed the two coats—fur facing out—to the front seats. Muskrat for the driver, fox for the passenger.
Comfortably seated on a soft bed of muskrat fur, Algoma drove home and felt warm for the first time in months. The fur cushioned her aching back from the jarring potholes that pocked the weather-ravaged streets. She drove fast and loose, one hand flat on the wheel, and the other fingering the wrist-worn hem of the coat sleeve like an amulet, like luck, like a lottery ticket before the numbers are called.
The youngest of seven children, Algoma had never worn a piece of new clothing in her life. It was a fact she was proud of. Even as a teenager, she had “shopped” for clothes in her friend’s overstuffed closets. They had readily given her the things they’d confessed to no longer liking or wanting. An excuse to buy more.
Well into adulthood, she continued to accept the castoffs of her friends and siblings, however outdated and misshapen the pieces were. She could not bear the stiff seams of a new shirt, or the extra button sewed to the bottom hem that seemed to portend disaster. She preferred clothing that had already been vouched for, shoes that already knew the way home, a dress already comfortably stretched over the hips. Unconcerned with
Josie kept a neatly printed list of everyone’s needs tucked into her black leather wallet, which she kept in the back pocket of her jeans. She consulted it every time she ran into a potential barterer and updated it regularly with new items and information. The pen that sat behind her ear had replaced the cigarette that used to sit there. She’d traded one habit for another.
“Did Anna have her baby yet?” Josie had asked, the last time she was at the butcher’s.
Theo nodded. “Another boy! And this one named after me.” He thumped his wheelbarrow chest with his fist. “But now Susan is pregnant again.” He sighed the heavy sigh of a man who was proud of his family, but also a man who wasn’t looking forward to being a babysitter into his sixties. He shook his head and turned to finish butchering the meat he’d been working on. Josie tried to offer her congratulations over the sound of saw on bone. She underlined her previous entry for Theo: Crib.
Even Josie’s rusty pickup truck had been a barter. One summer, she worked for a friend who owned several blueberry fields. She’d risen at 4:30 every morning to pick blueberries in the semi-dark before she had to work at The Shop. At the end of the season, her fingers were stained a deep blue, and she’d been given the keys to the truck.
In an attempt to avoid the insomnia that had plagued her from her teens, Josie spent most nights driving around town and the outlying regions in search of leftovers. She knew the secret dump sites on the outskirts of town and the streets where the credit cards had higher limits and the houses were more prone to renovation and discard. Homeowners would haul their furniture out to the curb, knowing that it would be gone by morning. They did not have to pay to have it removed or haul it to the dump themselves. Josie needed them and they needed her. Her heart was a twenty-five-cent cracked knick-knack salvaged from an estate sale.
At the end of her shift, Algoma picked up a pencil from beside the register and wrote on the debit board. Each week, Josie checked the debit board for staff purchases, clothing and other items taken in lieu of pay, which was also the main reason the best offerings never made it to the sales floor. With a couple of quick strokes, Algoma marked down twenty dollars worth of purchases for two full-length fur coats. Two furs. Women’s. Damaged. $10 each. AB.
Outside, she retrieved four bungee cords from the trunk of her car and lashed the two coats—fur facing out—to the front seats. Muskrat for the driver, fox for the passenger.
Comfortably seated on a soft bed of muskrat fur, Algoma drove home and felt warm for the first time in months. The fur cushioned her aching back from the jarring potholes that pocked the weather-ravaged streets. She drove fast and loose, one hand flat on the wheel, and the other fingering the wrist-worn hem of the coat sleeve like an amulet, like luck, like a lottery ticket before the numbers are called.
The youngest of seven children, Algoma had never worn a piece of new clothing in her life. It was a fact she was proud of. Even as a teenager, she had “shopped” for clothes in her friend’s overstuffed closets. They had readily given her the things they’d confessed to no longer liking or wanting. An excuse to buy more.
Well into adulthood, she continued to accept the castoffs of her friends and siblings, however outdated and misshapen the pieces were. She could not bear the stiff seams of a new shirt, or the extra button sewed to the bottom hem that seemed to portend disaster. She preferred clothing that had already been vouched for, shoes that already knew the way home, a dress already comfortably stretched over the hips. Unconcerned with
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