I’m going to tell you a story.
When my friend and I went to Jonesborough a few weeks ago, we were on our way back to Sevier County but I hadn’t quite satisfied my antique foraging itch. I was keeping my eyes peeled for the places along the road I had noticed on the drive in. I finally spotted the one I wanted–a white, well kept farmhouse. Sometimes with these places you just can’t tell. They look almost abandoned, & like spiders would be crawling just beyond your hand when reaching for something that caught your eye. But not this one. This building set off the divided highway just a bit, just enough to be private, & had a red metal sign –the kind that would creak a bit when there was wind–out by the road proclaiming, simply, “Antiques”.
There was no wind that day, & the sign was silent.
We traveled up the gravel road, split by a strip of cropped green grass, until we stopped at the end near the house. There was a massive, weathered barn to our left, on a little hill. A knoll. Another “Antiques” sign stood near the gray board barn. A small “Antiques” sign, up against the house, next to an obvious addition. A concrete walkway met us in the driveway that led to the shop. We followed it. Around the door, there were several placards. “Please ring bell for entry” “Please allow me time to get to door” “smile! You’re on camera!” Posted among them were hours for the shop.
I rang the bell, thinking this is how it is for little country free-standing businesses, you can’t sit in your shop all day, hoping a stray customer will come through soon. And during the week? Probably not a lot of traffic, not a lot of people with time on their hands to dig through junk, in search of treasure.
In hardly any time at all, much quicker than I had anticipated, here came the proprietor, a rotund dark haired elderly woman. She smiled, unlocked the door, & beckoned us in with a rush of words: how what we were about to see were ALL original, authentic antiques, no reproduction pieces.
We prowled in her shop for some time, while she told us all about her life. How she & her husband had traveled to all fifty states, procuring all the antiques we saw before us, and the many more we couldn’t, housed in the barn. The barn she only opened on Saturdays; she explained it was too hard on her legs after the two or three replacement surgeries she’s had. And she found out real quick people weren’t looking for anything in particular, they just wanted to look. (“Well, yeah,” I thought. “That’s why it’s called shopping.”) She spoke of theft, too, about all the people who come in on weekends & she can’t possibly keep track of them all, & once she got took for several thousand dollars in some kind of glassware.
She followed us around, every step, as we picked up & examined her trinkets & collectables. She gave us anecdotes & stories about how she came by specific pieces.
I came across no mermaids, unfortunately, but did ask to be sure I hadn’t overlooked them. There was so many cabinets & cases–she pointed out the ones her late husband had built– and drawers full of all kinds of beautiful things. It was all precisely arranged & carefully labeled, too. She probably went back over it with a fine toothed comb after we left to make sure nothing was out of place. We heard about how her husband had built the shop where we stood, with a ramp and a bathroom, to her specifications, because she wouldn’t buy in a business where they offered no restroom. She told us about his death, & her daughter’s death, & her surviving grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She mentioned, almost as an afterthought, it seemed to me, her son, who checks on her regularly.
She was pleasant enough, but the longer she talked & the more personal she became, the more nervous I grew. Not for us, but for her. I had told her we ran away from home for the day, a short girls’ trip to see some sights, & shop, & have lunch. We left our husbands working in the hot June sun.
After I paid for my tiny giraffe with the chipped ear that came from a package of Rose Tea, that had a rough base so men could light matches from it, we made for the door, complimenting her on her dustless, organized, lovely, shop.
When we got to Patsy, I exchanged a troubled glance with Jeannie.
“She really shouldn’t tell people she’s there alone. And look, her van, she really needs to put it in a garage, out of sight so people won’t know if she’s home. This is so dangerous!”
“Yeah,” Jeannie agreed. “She’s right here on this main road, you could be on the interstate & gone in no time!”
I put my sunglasses on.
“She didn’t know who we were. We may not be nice girls! We may have been casing the joint for our wicked, felon husbands to come back & rob her blind & slit her throat & leave her lying.”
“That’s true,” she concurred.
It was about that time we noticed a line of traffic parallel to us as we crept back down the crunchy gravel drive. I checked the clock. A few minutes after two. “Must be shift change. See? Who are all these people? She will open her door to anybody…it makes me very nervous for her.”
“Me too. You don’t know people.”
So we came on back home, and that’s where our story ends, but still, this bothers me.
If I were a better storyteller, I would weave you the rest, how she met her fate at dusk one day, two men stealing up the driveway just as she was settling into her velvet Lazyboy to watch Wheel of Fortune while eating a microwave dinner. We just happened to be the last visitors caught on her ancient surveillance camera, & we were brought in for questioning. To make things tidy for local small town police, we were arrested & I was writing from my dank, dingy, darkened cell, waiting on a lawyer to get us out, to prove our innocence for a crime we didn’t commit.
But all I can do is speculate & hope she fared okay through the Fourth of July festivities & all the loud pops were just firecrackers, nothing sinister in the outskirts of Greenville.
I have been reading too much Stephen King.
