Madison Short

The Object

“Do you know what that’s called?”

The woman behind the counter looks up at the wall to her right following the line of the customer’s vision.  He’s pointing to a rather large hammer-like object suspended from the ceiling by a rope.  It’s one of many old farm implements adorning the walls of the coffee shop Ling owns with her husband.  The shop is a vintage turn of the century (20th) building that has housed a pharmacy, general store and, briefly, a hotel in its many incarnations.

He’s large, quite large in fact, but not in a threatening way.  He walked into the shop with a woman, this somehow made a difference.  That he’d overlooked the scythes, hoes and shovels was understandable.  Those being more likely items one may have seen before.  But the one he pointed to was shaped almost like a croquet mallet but with an elongated barrel.

His girlfriend/wife sat with her back to the conversation.  Why did she assign this role to the woman?  After years of running a coffee shop she found that she did this naturally, even when out with friends.  Trying to figure out people’s connections to each other.  Maybe it helped to pass the time.

The woman wore a green bandana pulled down low over her forehead.  The shop was empty otherwise, not unusual for the time of day just after lunch but well before suppertime when people stopped by for a cup of coffee or a chat on their way home.  Only the portraits on the wall of the owner’s deceased beagle and black lab looking over the proceedings.

Ling, sharing the same innate ability as her husband, was able to expound in the minutest details about the instrument on the wall.  It was called a dibber, used for making holes in the ground so that seeds, seedlings and bulbs could be planted.  “Most of them aren’t this big.  This particular one came from Canby, only about 30 miles down the road..  Don’t know what they were making holes for with this.  It would have taken two hands to use it.”  He looks at it more intently.  About three and a half feet long, much thicker than a baseball bat at the handle and tapering to a blunt point that must have been sharper when still in use. 

He keeps the conversation going. Asking about the type of wood, etc.  “It looks like hand-made.  I mean, no one was manufacturing these back then.  The size of the barrel, I mean, it’s not even the same from end to end.  Is that on purpose?”

“I don’t know.  I never used one but you could be right.  We’re not sure what year it was made but the person we got it from said it had been in his family for as long as he could remember, hanging up in their barn since before he was born.”

Another customer comes into the shop then.  She recognizes him and goes right over to make his usual order, a double vanilla latte, 2%.  John is his name and while he waits at the counter the other man sits down.  John and Ling talk about the Spanish bike rider just stripped of his Tour de France crown for doping. 

The other man snorts derisively and turns to his partner and maybe says something about Spanish or ‘the Spanish’ or maybe even something else entirely.  John’s latte is soon ready and he gets the cup and heads out the door.

The man is up at the counter again.  His eyes still fixated on the object, talking about the handle and the grip.  Inquiring about its weight.  It’s hung pretty high, the ceiling is 12 feet, but not so high he couldn’t reach up and touch it if he wanted to.  If she’d let him.

He leaned on the counter, over it really, but maybe that’s the way he always did.  A large man compensating for his frame by balancing his torso, taking some of the weight off his feet.  It wasn’t like he was towering over her but she took a step back from the counter anyway.

He said something about the Chinese when she did this, or maybe he didn’t, her long hair braided in one ponytail down the small of her back.  Just then the door opened and Sally walked in.  Ling glanced at the clock, noticed it was about two, and found herself relieved at the thought that Sally nearly always came in at this time, ordered a cappuccino and stayed for an hour or so, sitting on the couch nearest the window reading a book, most often something off the latest best seller list.

But as she started to pour it into a mug Sally said, oh no, she did not have time to stay.  The gentleman had continued to stand at the counter this time and Sally, whether she had to or not, turned slightly to her left in order to pay.

Ling tried to read something into Sally’s gesture, even made a remark about her leaving which Sally explained without hesitation, saying she needed to go check on a friend.

After Sally left Ling made a pretense of cleaning the ‘espresso machine’ on the back counter, the one she had not used.  There mainly as a backup in case the first one breaks.  The customer noticed this, made a joke of it and they both laughed.  Hers was forced. 

He moved away from the counter and began to talk to his girlfriend again. Ling felt relieved and used the occasion to go in the back room to get more half and half from the fridge.  She saw a hammer on the floor just outside the back door and made a mental note of it.  Her husband would be back before three but until then there could be two customers or twenty.

The couple were no longer talking, or she couldn’t hear them, feeling like she had been gone long enough she came back into the main room.  He was no longer standing at the counter.  Her eyes quickly darted around the shop, maybe too quickly.  The woman was still sitting and she followed the woman’s gaze over to the wall.  The man was standing right underneath the dibber, but not touching it.

“Hey!’  Why did she say that?  And in that tone of voice?  For the first time she really noticed the wife/girlfriend.  Her response had surely been too shrill, decided that's what the look she was being given meant. 

‘I’m not gonna touch it.  But I sure would like to know what it feels like.’

‘My husband’s going to be back any minute. Maybe when he gets here.  I can’t reach it.’

‘I can, but I see.  I can wait,’ he replies, friendly enough, and he goes over to sit back down.  Ling hears the girlfriend say something she can’t quite catch.  The couple laughs in a way that confirms what she thought she heard.  She looks at the clock.  Seven after two.  The sun is out after days of rain meaning there might not be any customers for awhile.  At least no one who will stay.  It’s warm for the first time in weeks, too, so most people won’t want to be inside.  Gordon, her husband, really isn’t going to get back before four.

The girlfriend gets up and puts her coffee cup in the bin.  Ling feels stupid for being relieved, but she does.  The man is up now, too, cup in hand moving towards the bin, but the woman heads over to the bathroom and the man reverses, comes towards the counter and orders a latte.  He had been drinking straight black coffee since he came in.

‘3 o’clock, hunh?  I really don’t want to have to wait but I will.’

She hadn’t mentioned a time.

‘I grew up out in the country, always admiring the old tools.  My grandpa would let me ride around on his Fleetline Model 66 tractor. Drive it even, from the age of seven.’

His tone matter of fact, friendly even.  So why did he move back over to it, standing directly below it?  He was not so short that he couldn’t reach it.  The mallet could be handled quite easily without him even having to get on his toes.  His hand wouldn’t have trouble gripping the barrel.  It wouldn’t prove too much trouble, even, to pull it out of the ceiling suspended as it was by a thin piece of rope on a hook.

With one hand touching the barrel, not even both, it would most likely come right out of the ceiling.

It did.

END

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Madison Short is a writer and schoolteacher currently living in the Pacific NW. His work has appeared in several small literary magazines including Whiskey Island Magazine, the Pacific Review and Sulphur River Literary Review among others.