Short Stories, James W. Nelson

The Real Meaning of a Quarter (all 1700 words)

            Burke’s expression did not change as the man approached his setup.  The tentative customer, about sixty, well-tanned, stopped at his book display.  Burke shifted his large frame in the deteriorating lawn chair, crossed his right leg over his left knee, folded his arms, subtle movements calculated not to attract attention but to relieve tension, make a deep breath less noticeable.

          And nobody in the weekend flea market crowd did notice.

          The man reached.  From the corner of his eye Burke could not tell for sure, but guessed it was for one of the dime novels from the thirties.  He lifted his stained, gray felt western hat, rubbed a sweaty brow, and turning slightly saw...ah, Poor Richard’s almanac.  Forty titles in that line and he knew them by sight the whole length of his setup, more than twenty feet.

            Raising the cover, the man thumbed the pages, leaned back to see better through bifocals, began reading.  Burke’s insides rippled.  He began to hum, again a ploy to relieve internal tension.

            Almost eleven and no big sale yet.  Normally his small plot was more than paid by noon, but today still short three dollars.  Dozens of other setups filled his view.  Awnings stretched from colorful campers and vans, poles and canopies, some simply in the sun, like Burke’s.  Other dealers wore gaudy hats, bright shirts, suede vests, and had spouses or children helping.  All promoted their wares displayed on card tables, or plywood on folding sawhorses, like Burke’s, each draped with lustrous fabrics and filled with stuffed animals, crafts, paintings, antiques, and just plain junk.

            Mid-July in Minnesota lake country had seen a slowdown in business.  Memorial Day had been very good, then June OK. But July had leveled off, then dropped to slow, very slow, sometimes hardly worth setting up for.

            Twenty years earlier, Burke had piddled with flea marketing, had surmised it a good way to make a living after retirement.  It had not worked that way.  Ten years retired, savings locked in merchandise but not getting rid of it, least not at a speed allowing re-investment power and a comfortable and interesting living.

          The customer finished thumbing Poor Richard, looked the book over once more, then turned toward Burke.  Wind chimes from a nearby setup clinked in a sudden breeze.  Streamers and windsocks fluttered.  Balloons jiggled and danced.

            “How much?” the potential customer asked.

            “One dollar and it’s yours.”

            The man stared at Burke, then again at the book and not through bifocals, thumbed once more, meaninglessly, then dropped the book back into the display and moved on.

            The breeze gusted, raised dust, then fell again to nothing, stifling all around it.

            Burke’s heart sunk, not so much that he did not make the sale as the feeling that Poor Richard’s Almanac was worth that and more.  Ah, the man likely would not have provided a good home anyway.

            The man paid scarce attention to the rest of Burke’s setup, antique harness hames, mirrors, silverware, oodles of other old things, and picked up speed.  In passing he turned slightly and nodded, “Some nice stuff you have here.”

           Burke leaned back, uncrossed his legs, rested his arms on the dilapidated lawn chair’s arms, a movement making the chair creak and grind in the gravel, “Thank you, you bet’cha.”

           Twenty minutes passed.  Several more lookers had come and gone.  One had examined, closely, an old pop bottle capper that would have put Burke way over the cost of his setup.

           Twenty-five past eleven.  A woman in red top and yellow shorts stopped, and began examining his silver table settings, an heirloom from his great-great-grandmother.  Lord, how he would hate to part with it.  Always he had hoped to remove it from his displays, but always earned just enough to get by, so left it.

            Probably didn’t matter anyway for he was the end of a line.  Widower with no children.  No cousins, nieces, nephews who ever contacted him.  And just one sister left who he did not get along with.

            The woman picked up a gleaming knife.  Burke took care of his merchandise, the silver best.  She looked it over from every angle, then laid it down, carefully.  No doubt she recognized its value.  Then she picked up a serving spoon, turned it, gazed at her red-haired reflection in its shimmering surface, and set it back down.  Then she moved to the next table.  The magazines.  More of his treasures.

             Regular merchandise, bottles, vases, figurines, miscellany he could pick up from other dealers, was not bringing enough money, so he had begun   liquidating, but soon found that his own valuables brought no more, sometimes less.  And each time he sold something personal for much less than figured another piece of him would wither.

            But, eleven-thirty.  He stared at the wrist watch with a broken band he carried in his left front pocket.  His setup had to be paid by noon.  He had never missed noon, and then in the afternoon he had always managed to at least pay the rest of the day’s expenses.  Gas.  Food.  Sometimes lodging, shower.  Usually he left his bulky articles outside under plastic, then wriggled his six feet into the back of his rusted ‘75 Ford station wagon.  But a real bed and shower at least every three days was almost a necessity.

            The woman picked up a magazine, a big, thick copy of the early Post, leafed through for perhaps thirty seconds, then moved to his book table, picked up...Shakespeare.  He recognized it immediately and began to hum again.  He didn’t know the name of the song but had heard it on the radio just before arriving from his trailer home in northern Iowa.

            The book was more than three dollars.  He would earn his setup.  That woman was going to make a purchase.  He just knew it.  She had to.

            She laid down Shakespeare, picked up another—too quickly for him to recognize it—and walked to him, book under her arm, opening her purse, “Two dollars and seventy-five cents for this, I believe.”  She set her purse down and held the cover open.

            He could not believe it.  Two-seventy-five.  Still short a quarter.  “Sure is, ma’am.  Thank you, you bet’cha.”

           Then the woman was gone and Burke did not even know which of his books had sold.  He stood, hauled up sagging gray trousers, stuffed a faded blue shirt into them, flinched slightly as an arthritic knee straightened, then walked to the front of his book display, determined the one missing, then returned to his chair, which groaned horribly as he sat.  He entered the sale in his ledger, and knew soon he would have to invest in a new chair, but all on his mind right then was earning his setup.

            Ten to noon.  He looked both ways.  The crowds had thinned.  It was like that.  One minute people everywhere, the next, nobody.  Course, it was lunchtime.  People would be hungry.  Most of the other dealers were already eating.  He was hungry too, and glanced at the dusty cooler holding milk and sandwiches in the shade beside his car.  But he couldn’t eat right then, could not give up earning his setup before noon.  It had never absolutely happened.

            Five minutes passed.

           Burke’s stomach felt tight.  His stomach hadn't been so tight in years.  In fact he couldn't remember being so tight, if ever.  He closed his eyes, clenched them, gotta make it...don’t know what I’d do...

            A sound.  Someone sifting through the items on his miscellaneous table.  Holding his breath he opened his eyes. Peripheral vision showed a woman, older, about seventy, but younger than Burke.  She wore a dark blue coat that must have been hot, a matching old-fashioned hat.  She stirred again, scraping, making noise, the sound of an interested customer.

             He let out a breath with the noise, but would not move, would not look at her or speak.  Too often just a ‘Hello,’ would make them leave.  He wished he knew the time, but didn’t dare reach for his watch, did not dare move for fear of frightening his potential customer.

            The woman picked up a used hand mixer, a fifty-cent item.  Joy, he would make it, and more.  He began to hum, an out-of-tune musical sound nobody but him had ever heard of.  The woman turned the handle.  The mixer whirred.

            “Take a quarter for this, young man?”

            He turned to the woman and smiled, “Yes, ma’am.  Today I’ll take a quarter for that.”

            The woman approached, not fast.  Burke stood up, towered over her, quickly pulled up his trousers, tucked in the shirt.  The woman set her purse on the table with Burke’s change box and ledger, set the mixer beside her purse, a huge one, then began rummaging, searching in one small pocketbook after another.

            Burke hummed louder, loud enough for the woman to hear.  How he wanted to feel that quarter in his hand.  How he wanted to look at his watch.

            She stopped rummaging.  He saw the slim knuckles on her hand had turned white.  He looked at her face.  Bright eyes. Wrinkles, yes, but, pretty—no, charming.  Her face was charming.  He felt a bond with her.  She was giving up a quarter.  He was getting one.

            She smiled, then pulled her hand from the purse, in it a shiny quarter, “Here you are, young man.”  She held it out.

           Burke’s hum had intensified until it hurt his ears, then stopped completely when the coin touched his palm.

            “Thank you, young man.”  The woman closed her purse with a snap and walked away.

            Burke gripped the quarter in his right hand, shoved his left into his pocket, jerked out the watch and held it close.

           The sun sweltered down.  The temperature seemed to rise by ten degrees.  He blinked, several times, and just as his eyes focused, the sweep second hand joined the other two hands all pointing at twelve.  He had made it.

            The breeze returned, not gusting and raising dust but cooling, suggesting new hope and life.  He squeezed the coin, felt its metal digging into his palm, and felt the hardness of it, the quality, and knew the real meaning of a quarter.

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