Metamorphosis Read Free Page B

It had declined since his father had sold it twenty years back, which Anderson had noticed straight off when he had stepped inside on the day after his father’s funeral, aware that he was looking for his own past, and finding a remnant of it in the familiar sign over the counter and in the smell of old pine boards and racks of model airplanes. “Hey,” he had said out loud, “
I’m
Anderson,” and had smiled and introduced himself to Miles Buxton, who hadn’t shown any enthusiasm that time either, and didn’t apparently see anything remarkable in Anderson’s story of growing up in this shop back in its heyday. Anderson had the sneaking suspicion that the old man had simply thought he was lying.
    “Who’re you calling old?”
he muttered to himself, and he looked over a plywood table loaded up with ancient ham radios and CB setups, wondering what had possessed him to open the door and come in when he knew just what he’d find. The ten-cent table, which had been his favorite when he was a kid, still stood near the counter. He had found jackknives and bottle openers and marbles on it back in the day, although where his father had found the perpetual supply of these things Anderson couldn’t say. Now there wasn’t apparently much on it that was worth having, let alone worth a dime, which was perhaps the consequence of inflation.
    “What’s the good word?” he asked Buxton.
    “Everything half price,” Buxton told him. “Whatever you see, it costs half of what’s on the price tag.”
    “Is that right? Trying to move some stock?” Anderson leaned against the Formica counter, noticing that the years had rubbed the pattern away except along the edges, where you could still make out the blue and pink swirl.
    “I’m moving all of it out, closing up shop. Today’s my last day.”
    Anderson stood listening to the silence, taking this in, looking at the old cash register and at the spindle where his father had skewered carbon copies of handwritten receipts. There were a couple skewered on it now, but only a couple. “Retiring?”
    “Well, that’s the silver lining. Forced out. Maybe it’s time. The school over across the way bought up this end of the block, and they’re tearing the shops down and putting up a theatre or some such thing. Part of the downtown redevelopment. God knows it needs it.”
    “There’s stores up Tenth Street that are empty,” Anderson said. “Why not move a couple of blocks down? Probably cheaper rent than out here on Main.” For a moment he thought of offering to lend a hand. He had a pickup truck, after all. It wouldn’t take much….
    “That’s the problem,” Buxton told him. “Empty stores. People don’t come downtown to shop anymore, and the ones who do don’t speak the language and they don’t buy what I’m selling. I’m done. I’ve got a jobber coming in tomorrow to give me a bid on the whole shebang. Me and the wife have a place up in Big Bear, and once we start up the hill, I don’t mean to look back.”
    “I don’t blame you,” Anderson said.
    He had been living in Fort Lauderdale when he had gotten word about his father’s death, making ends meet with a two-bit job working for the county. The lawyer’s assurance that he had come into an inheritance had left him stunned. He hadn’t spoken to his father since his mother had passed away, which was ten years ago now. In the ten years prior to that he had spoken to him only once or twice, and only early in the day when his father was sober. The inheritance had turned out to be the house and enough money to get by on when you added the interest to Anderson’s small retirement. For that he was grateful, although when he had flown in from Lauderdale carrying his two suitcases, his sense of coming home again had been fleeting.
    He looked over the rack of model airplanes now, picking up a Cessna and putting it back down again. He had built no end of model planes when he was a kid, at first with the help of his