One lone sack of sugar remained on an upper shelf. It was only five pounds, smaller than what Mama had written out, but I grabbed it. I’d ask Joseph to bring another five pounds from the storeroom before we left, and let him know the shelves needed restocking.
Prudence was still fussing through the crate of bobbins, holding the colors to the sunlight with a critical eye. Joseph flipped through the great ledger opened up before him.
“This will do, I suppose,” she finally conceded, and fished out a dime from deep in her apron’s pocket. She slid it across the counter and nodded good day.
“Actually, Mrs. Latheton,” the boy squeaked. “It’s a bit more than that.”
Throughout the store, every woman stopped her browsing and shifted attention toward the counter.
“More?” Prudence questioned, eyebrows arching.
The clerk was visibly uncomfortable. “Well, because of…” He tapped at the ledger, finding the Latheton name.
“I paid in cash just now; you all saw me.”
“But there is debt on the account….I’m afraid that will need to be paid before you can purchase anything else.”
There was a gasp from the far corner of the room, and I turned to see Merry’s friend Jane set down the canister of coffee she’d been intending to buy.
“That’s absurd!” Prudence snapped. “You can’t spring changes on people without giving them ample warning. I don’t carry that sort of money on me. No one does.”
Joseph took the bobbin of thread from her. “I can set this aside for you until you do.”
I think it was kindly meant, but Prudence’s face flared with embarrassment and rage. She opened her mouth to hurl out something undoubtedly pinched and icy, but nothing sputtered from her. After a tense moment, she turned on swift heel and left, letting the swing door slam shut behind her.
The handful of coins Mama had pressed into my palm felt insubstantial as I stepped up to the counter. I sensed the eyes of everyone in the store watching us, waiting to see how this would play out.
“I think you need to restock some of your shelves,” I said, trying to squelch down my nerves. I had no idea what the state of our account might be and didn’t want all of the busybodies behind us judging Mama or Papa. “We’ll need another five pounds of sugar, and my sister is getting tea….” Merry scurried up to the counter and set the metal tin down with a sharp click.
Joseph scanned the ledger for our name. “You’re all paid up.” He jotted down our purchases and tallied the total. “That’ll be two dollars and twelve cents.”
“And the other sack of sugar,” I prompted, my fist still tight around the money.
“There isn’t any.”
“What?” I glanced past his shoulder through the open storeroom door. Boxes and sacks were stacked on large shelves with orderly efficiency. Barrels of gunpowder sat alongside a crate clearly marked sugar. “There must be. There’s a crate right there.”
The clerk leaned over the counter, keeping his voice lowered and his gaze fixed on a whorl in the wood grain. “It’s empty. Nearly all of them are. We were meant to get more in with the supply run, but…”
“Oh.” I looked over the storeroom with fresh eyes. It had seemed stocked to overflowing just moments before. Now it looked sad and abandoned, empty crates waiting for a merchant who would never return.
“Do you still want that sugar?” he prompted.
“Of course,” I said, my fingers digging into the sack’s burlap sides. I counted out Mama’s coins, and Merry and I took up our purchases.
Little whispers filled the store as we left. Despite Joseph’s quiet divulgence, the women of Amity Falls had heard everything.
“What does this mean?” Merry hissed as we hopped down the front steps. “Surely there must be more stock somewhere. The shelves were so empty!”
I spotted our wagon several buildings down. Zenith and Luna were tied to a hitching post, but the cart was empty. I tucked the sack of sugar beneath the buckboard seat but paused before hoisting myself up. “Where do you think Papa and Sam got off to?”
Merry scanned the road, still clinging on to the tea. Before she could guess, a commotion rose from Matthias Dodson’s livery. Horses whinnied and shouts rang out, calling for others to come and see.
“Might as well,” Merry said, shrugging.
A crowd of people gathered in the yard at the blacksmith’s stables. Most of the men were pressed together, circling about something I could not see. There were too many bodies jostling for space. Merry and I edged around the group, nearing Matthias’s forge. There were fewer people to contend with in the scorching heat, and I was able to make out a form lying in the dirt.
I tilted my head, unable to make sense of the snippets I saw.
It’s an elk, I thought. A stag.
The McNally boys had gone on a hunting party this morning. Their sister Florence had mentioned it at the quilting circle.
But it was the wrong size for an elk.
It was the wrong everything.
A fifth leg jutted from the carcass, painfully truncated and twisted. Rather than ending in a cloven hoof, five claws curved from the stump, like a set of talons on a bird of prey.
The hide was too thick, the hair bristly and coarse, the body too small.
And the head…
I gasped as I glimpsed the antlers. They started at the stag’s forehead like clusters of toadstools, likely obscuring his vision as more and more sprouted down his muzzle. It was a wonder the poor creature had ever been able to lift his head under the weight of so many horns. I counted at least five dozen points, tangled round each other like tree limbs starved for sunlight.
“You shot this up on the eastern ridge?” Calvin Buhrman asked, kneeling down to examine the legs. He ran a finger over the hook of one claw, whistling through his teeth.
Orin McNally nodded. “Never seen anything like it.”
“I have,” Martha McCleary said, stepping through the crowd with care. Her twists of hair were snow white, and she leaned heavily on her cane. It was nearly an identical match to the one her husband, Amos, used. “My pa shot something like that back when this town was nothing more than a couple of families living in tents, trying to fight back the wilderness.” Her lips, papery thin and creased with deep lines, pressed together as she dredged the story up through decades of memories. “Pa said there were whole herds of them, dotting the meadow where the Pursimons’ farm now is. All too small. All too strange. Can’t eat the meat, and the hide is too thick to wear. Best to burn it. Burn the body and scatter the bones.”