Girl Out Back Read Free

indicated an aluminum frame chair in the front of the showroom near the showcases. “Sit down. I’ll get the motors.”
    It was dim inside the shop. I clicked on a switch and a bank of fluorescent tubes over the lone work-bench came on and an electric fan began whirring. There were a half-dozen dismantled motors scattered around on the bench in various stages of repair, but I walked on over to the end of the room where the completed jobs were clamped to individual dollies. They were both there, 3-h.p. motors with tags that read “Nunn” on one side and “Tested OK” on the other.
    George Nunn ran a fishing camp on Javier Lake, about thirty miles away in another county. It was an enormous, marshy body of water in a wild area, accessible by road most of the year only at his place on the lower end. I’d been over there a few times duck hunting, but it was before he’d taken over the camp. He’d been in the store two or three times, and still owed me around fifty dollars on a motor he’d bought from me. I lifted the repaired ones on to the bench and started wiping them down with a piece of waste. In a moment I heard a clicking of high heels on the concrete floor of the showroom. She came in and stood watching me after an indifferent glance around at the bench and the shelves of tools and spare parts.
    “How’s the fishing on Javier?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “All right, I suppose.”
    She set her purse on the bench and took out a cigarette and a folder of matches. The breeze from the oscillating fan riffled the mane of tawny hair and blew out the match before she could get the cigarette going. She threw it on the floor, in spite of the fact there was an ash-tray right in front of her. She struck another that went out. It went to the floor also. I held a lighter for her.
    “Have you got a telephone out there?” I asked.
    She blew out smoke and looked up at me with eyes as expressionless as nailheads. “Why?”
    Business,” I said. “Advertising. If your husband will call me when he has some good catches over there I may be able to get them in the Sanport papers. You know, the outdoors columns in the Call and the Herald . Blake and Carstairs both check here twice a week by long distance.”
    “We’ve got a phone,” she said. “Party line. Sometimes it even works.”
    “You’d be surprised how good it is for business,” I went on, “to get the name of your place in those columns now and then. I pick up a lot of free advertising that way.”
    “That s nice,” she said.
    I started to give her a wheeze about how to phone in the information, to be sure to get the fishermen’s names right, and the type of gear used, and so on, but when I glanced around I saw she wasn’t even plugged in. She was still watching me, but she hadn’t heard anything I said. I finished wiping down the motors, nodded for her to precede me, and carried them out front.
    “How much?” she asked.
    ”Just a minute,” I said. I went into the office and lifted Otis’s work order off the spike, added up the labor and material charges, and then found the amount of the old balance.
    “Seventy-four thirty-five,” I said when I came back. “That includes the old balance of forty-eight dollars, plus twenty-six thirty-five for repairs.”
    She came around opposite the cash register and put down her purse. Taking out a billfold, she counted out three twenties, a ten, and a five. I was inwardly congratulating myself on getting the whole amount, and it was only half-consciously I noticed two of the twenties were crisp, brand-new ones. I counted out her change, put the bills into their respective compartments in the register drawer, and closed it. I tossed a “Thank you” into the bottomless void of her disinterest, and carried the motors out to the station wagon. She got in, and I closed the door for her. It struck me then, for the first time, that it was odd she was here so early. It was a long drive, part of it over back-country