Night Chills Read Free Page B

be said of many places in a man’s life.
    “There’s Edison’s store! There’s Edison’s!” Mark Annendale leaned over from the back seat, pointing through the windshield.
    Smiling, Paul said, “Thank you, Coonskin Pete, scout of the north.”
    Rya was as excited as her brother, for Sam Edison was like a grandfather to them. But she was more dignified than Mark. At eleven she yearned for the womanhood that was still years ahead of her. She sat up straight in her safety harness beside Paul on the front seat. She said, “Mark, sometimes I think you’re five years old instead of nine.”
    “Oh, yeah? Well, sometimes I think you’re sixty instead of eleven!”
    “Touché,” Paul said.
    Mark grinned. Usually, he was no match for his sister. This sort of quick response was not his style.
    Paul glanced sideways at Rya and saw that she was blushing. He winked to let her know that he wasn’t laughing at her.
    Smiling, sure of herself again, she settled back in her seat. She could have topped Mark’s line with a better one and left him mumbling. But she was capable of generosity, not a particularly common quality in children her age.
    The instant the station wagon stopped at the curb, Mark was out on the pavement. He bounded up the three concrete steps, raced across the wide roofed veranda, and disappeared into the store. The screen door slammed shut behind him just as Paul switched off the engine.
    Rya was determined not to make a spectacle of herself, as Mark had done. She took her time getting out of the car, stretched and yawned, smoothed the knees of her jeans, straightened the collar of her dark blue blouse, patted her long brown hair, closed the car door, and went up the steps. By the time she reached the porch, however, she too had begun to run.
     
    Edison’s General Store was an entire shopping center in three thousand square feet. There was one room, a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, with an ancient pegged pine floor. The east end of the store was a grocery. The west end held dry goods and sundries as well as a gleaming, modern drug counter.
    As his father had been before him, Sam Edison was the town’s only licensed pharmacist.
    In the center of the room, three tables and twelve oak chairs were grouped in front of a wood-burning country stove. Ordinarily, you could find elderly men playing cards at one of those tables, but at the moment the chairs were empty. Edison’s store was not just a grocery and pharmacy; it was also Black River’s community center.
    Paul opened the heavy lid on the soda cooler and plucked a bottle of Pepsi from the icy water. He sat down at one of the tables.
    Rya and Mark were standing at an old-fashioned glass-fronted candy counter, giggling at one of Sam’s jokes. He gave them sweets and sent them to the paperback and comic book racks to choose presents for themselves; then he came over and sat with his back to the cold stove.
    They shook hands across the table.
    At a glance, Paul thought, Sam looked hard and mean. He was very solidly built, five eight, one hundred sixty pounds, broad in the chest and shoulders. His short-sleeved shirt revealed powerful forearms and biceps. His face was tanned and creased, and his eyes were like chips of gray slate. Even with his thick white hair and beard, he looked more dangerous than grandfatherly, and he could have passed as a decade younger than his fifty-five years.
    But that forbidding exterior was misleading. He was a warm and gentle man, a push-over for children. Most likely, he gave away more candy than he sold. Paul had never seen him angry, had never heard him raise his voice.
    “When did you get in town?”
    “This is our first stop.”
    “You didn’t say in your letter how long you’d be staying this year. Four weeks?”
    “Six, I think.”
    “Wonderful!” His gray eyes glittered merrily; but in that very craggy face, the expression might have appeared to be malice to anyone who didn’t know him well. “You’re