Fiction: A Walking Antique

By Joel Henry Little

In the attic office over Specter Antiques, Jonah counts pennies and thinks of Alaska. He longs for its desolation, the kind he sees on the vintage travel poster by the door. Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight. No people in sight, no people at all. Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one. In his own hometown, it’s gotten so he can’t walk after dark without a pestering from some drunk doctors’ sons out on the prowl. Thirty-two, thirty-three. Rich sons his sister babysat. Rich sons his mother cooked pasta dinners. Thirty-four, thirty-five. Now look at them, how they toss their garbage cans down the steps of the baseball field for fun. Thirty-six, thirty-six. Thirty-seven? Thirty-seven. Surely that’s not the way of things in Alaska. It’s too cold for those games in Alaska. There’s too few people to be rude to in Alaska. Thirty-nine. Just nothing, for miles. Bears and mountains. Lakes and rivers. Trout. Lonely sometimes, sure, but calm. Thirty-nine. Forty. Thirty-nine? Last night he dreamt he was walking through an abandoned industrial park, up and down staircases for what felt like days. All in restless search of something, but what he can’t remember. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. He’d rather dream of Alaska, the trees and snow; to fly among the glaciers, under the aurora borealis. Thirty… forty-three. Forty? He sighs and drops the pennies. He looks up at the hammocks of dust on the beams overhead. There’s no way around it – he’ll have to start again.

His father could take a fistful of coins in his spider-veined palm and tell by their weight alone how many he held. He could even tell how much they were worth, if anybody asked. Then he’d toss them out one by one like a sprinkler just to prove he was right. Sometimes Jonah was sure he must’ve been guessing, like a carny trick no one dares inspect too closely. One day, Jonah thought, he’d count the coins himself in front of the old man and show him the error of his slipshod ways. “Abba,” he’d say, “it’s better to be sure than to be quick.” But whenever he tried on his own, the number came back the same. Jerry Specter never erred.

He’d never let his desk get so cluttered, either. Radiating out from the patch of bare wood before Jonah, there’s pencils, pens, erasers, rulers, tags, tape, hunks of putty, magnifying lenses. There’s porcelain monkeys in need of glue, Diet RC cans half-drunk and novelty Cokes sealed for decades; x-ray goggles, dime novels, unsleeved comic books with their staples degraded. There’s stamps from Canada, pins of failed mayoral campaigns, honk-if-you’re-hungry bumper stickers; a stack of records on the brink of collapse from all the usual suspects: Perry Como, Laurence Welk, Mitch Miller. And there’s pennies — so many little useless pennies. He gathers them up and slides them left to right. It begins with a steel wheatie like the one his father gave him on the morning of his Bar Mitzvah. “Remember, Jonah: older isn’t always wiser.”

The chalky cracks around his knuckles horrify him as they slide across the pine. He sees these hands are a part of him, but he’s sure they can’t belong to him. They’re too old, too much like his father’s on his shoulders, shaking him awake on schooldays. In every other way, he’s remained the perfect copy of his mother. The same eyes, the same nose, the same unconfident stoop — all but those hands. Now, trapped in this drafty office, he feels like the mad scientist in some pulp story, transformed beyond recognition. He thought at least he’d feel old before he began to look it. He thought he’d have someone there to show him the right way when the time came. He thought he’d have more time to see the time coming. He thought he’d have done something worthwhile. He thought he’d have learned something worth learning. He thought so many things. The count escapes him.

He looks straight ahead, back to the poster by the door. Once more his thoughts return to Alaska, where his ancient hands are always gloved. Back to Alaska, where he’ll always be alone.

 

At the diner, he writes “Usual, Jonah” on a paper napkin and places it on the counter for Ruby to find on the way in from her smoke break. He walks past Darlene and Fred Millson — retirees in matching tan windbreakers. He doesn’t know them well. They always mistrusted Jonah’s mother and her “city ways,” so no one puts much effort into being friendly. After a round of nods and tight-lipped grins, he walks to his regular booth at the far end. He slides to the middle where he can watch the baby birds in their nest outside the window. The grunts of effort embarrass him. Minutes pass as he tries and fails to make straw paper roses like his sister used to. All the while, the old couple drawls on.

“I just don’t see… who else it could’ve been, Fred,” continues Darlene, her words garbled by fritters half-chewed.

“I don’t either. Makes no sense at all. Pass the salt, would you?”

“Just last afternoon, my begonias looked perfect. You saw them… so beautiful, so round… Ideal. With your own eyes you saw them, did you not?” 

A shaker slides across the table.

“I did, I did. That’s the sugar, I need the salt. The salt, Darlene.”

“This morning? Well, you saw.” She takes another bite. “You saw… how trampled they looked. Oh! my poor babies.”

“It’s a shame, a damn shame. The salt, Darlene, please, it’s right by your elbow.”

“What, this?”“That’s the pepper, could y— oh fine, it’s fine. Give it.”

There’s more sliding, then a clatter, then a groan.

“I don’t see who else it could’ve been, Frederick. It’s that deer of yours… The one you left those turkey scraps for last Wednesday. Or was it Tuesday?”

“It was Friday.”

“Friday, fine, make it Friday… Well, it’s too late now anyways. My begonias are dead… and I hope you’re happy.”

“Happy? Why should I be happy? When have you ever known me to be happy?”

Fred sneezes and their conversation peters out, overtaken by tinkling cutlery. Jonah wonders how their arguments always seem to find an end without any resolution. He watches the shadows of branches glide across the windowpane, picturing the day when Darlene decides enough is enough and brings Fred into the shop as a donation. He wouldn’t know where to begin with a human appraisal. How would he keep him, to make sure he feels valued? Where would he go, upstairs or down? Who is he to judge a life?

Ruby steps around the corner into view. Her shoulders sag beneath her gift cardigan, “Grandma Sleepy” stitched above the pocket where she keeps a squat yellow notepad. She hacks up something dire into the bare soil and gropes at the iron railing beside her. With each tennis-shoe stomp, the birds cower and duck their beaks deeper into the nest until all that’s left are five little tufts of sky-gray down. When her eyes meet Jonah from the top of the stairs, she reaches into her apron and pulls out a blue envelope folded lengthwise. She waves it in his direction and mouths the words “wait there.”

The chimes, rubber-banded since the wind’s been up, make a dull thump against the door when she walks in.

“You’re a mail carrier now, too, Ruby?” asks Darlene, gesturing to the envelope.

“What, you need something? Salt?”

Fred sighs at his empty plate. 

The smell of tobacco and pharmacy perfume precedes her. “Card for you. Don’t ask from who, I don’t know nothing.”

She tosses the envelope onto his placemat between ads for psychics and accident lawyers. On the front reads “Jonah Adam Specter” in plain handwriting.

“Oh. Thanks, Ruby.” 

She lingers, whether to take his order or to see what’s inside the envelope, he can’t tell. 

“I left a note at the front,” he says. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be back. The usual is fine.”

“Uh huh. Looks like some sort of card, at least. I saw your name, that’s all I know.” 

Her eyes remain on the envelope a full ten seconds before Fred sneezes loudly enough to make them both look away. 

“Damn pepper, all over my — achOOgebaggehoyaheh —oh boy. No, no, I’m alright.”

“Well anyway.” 

Ruby turns and walks to the kitchen. From inside, she peeks at Jonah through the porthole window, which he pretends not to notice.

He flips the envelope over in his hands and finds a small wax seal in the shape of a mushroom. He picks up a knife and slides it under the seal. The envelope pops open to reveal not a card but a letter written on hotel stationery. He lays it out flat on the table and reads:

 

Dear Sir Antique Shop Proprietor,

The hotel from which this letter has been composed is soon to see the end of its long and protracted foreclosure settlement. During the course of a recent inspection of the property, a singular item of conspicuous charm and pedigree was discovered about which all manner of intrigue and rumor has begun to spread in the local press. Naturally, the mystery of the item’s origin must be resolved by a proven authority on such matters (which category, needless to say, includes your distinguished self) so as to assuage public concern before any actions concerning future development may continue as planned. It is imperative that you make your way to the hotel with proper discretion and without rousing further suspicion, preferably at your earliest convenience — say today? Travel arrangements have been provided. Compensation will be generous, with respect to the current state of the antiques market. Take care, and we await your kind assistance most eagerly. Bring a sweater.

Sincerely,

M. Vacher

 

Jonah opens the envelope again to find a one-way train ticket — the 2:38 northbound from the town station, no final stop. The end of the line would take him as far as the Canadian border, but getting there could take days. He checks the back of the letter, inside and under the envelope for a return address of some kind, any more detail whatsoever about this strange request. He looks to the kitchen for answers, but the top of Ruby’s head is gone.

No one’s ever solicited his services before. No one’s even written him a letter before, as far as he can remember. He searches for a word to describe the way he feels. Nothing comes.

It’s 2:25. Sweat pools between his nose and upper lip. The station is a ten minute walk from the diner, seven if he really goes for it. On the one hand he could sit here waiting. When Ruby returns, he’ll have an egg salad sandwich and an unsweetened iced tea, then back to the attic for an evening encore of pennies and Alaska — unremarkable, but safe. Then again, the holidays have passed, taking most of the shop’s traffic along with them. It’s been weeks since he’s had more than a handful of customers in a single day; months since he’s had his parents to worry about; years since he’s spoken to his sister. What’s a few days? Who will notice he’s gone? He wants to go where he’s needed – of that much he’s certain.

Before he can change his mind, he tucks the letter in his pocket and allows his feet to carry him to the front. At the counter, he takes out his wallet and weighs down a twenty dollar bill with an empty ketchup bottle. Below his earlier message, he writes “Never mind, Jonah (again).” He takes a last look at the Millsons, too absorbed in an argument about another, separate deer-and-garden incident to notice him leaving. With his back straight and his eyes forward, he walks out the door. Outside, the baby birds have flown from their nest. He says goodbye to no one, hoping they’ll hear, wherever they’ve gone.

 

The train car is empty, apart from a few suitcases in nets along the aisle. The conductor didn’t respond when Jonah asked about Vacher and the hotel. He’s decided to go as far as the train will take him and figure out the rest from there. For all he knows, this was the agenda Vacher had in mind. He chooses to believe that maybe everything is exactly how it’s supposed to be, though he doesn’t quite know how or why.

Outside the window, the storm blinkers his view to the telephone wires and cornfields just beyond the tracks. Dark clouds blanket the drowsy day. Small flocks of geese swoop down and back up like dozens of needles hemming vast bolts of gray felt. He rests his head on the cool glass. The rumbling against his ear soothes him. Above, sheets of rain cascade from the roof and splatter into drops on the window which fall haltingly to meet his forehead. He remembers how his sister and he would watch them this way on long car rides, announcing the drops’ trajectories in their best ringside voices: “Here comes a big one! Let’s see if it can go the distance, folks.” Then when their father told them he couldn’t hear the radio over their noise, they’d start a silent game of tic-tac-toe in the condensation. He lifts his head from the window and makes a circle of fog with his breath. There, he writes his mother’s secret Hebrew name, the one which only they could say.

Soon the clouds part. Hours slip by in a violet gloaming. The pine trees multiply and gather closer to the tracks. He looks for nests among the branches but all he can make out in the hazy wash of green is the odd pinecone or squirrel. After a while, the uniformity of the trees and the thumping of wheels lull him enough to where he can close his eyes and rest his head on the seat in peace. Sleep draws near.

He thinks of Alaska and the pennies left uncounted; of the letter in his left sweater pocket from who-knows-where. He thinks of fritters and egg salad; of pie on a windowsill; of deer and moose, begonias and geraniums, robins and sparrows, thrushes and whip-poor-wills. He thinks of black bears playing a friendly game of baseball with the trash they’ve found; of the highest mountain he’s ever seen and the farthest horizon. He thinks of the first time he saw the ocean, how he clawed at the beach while the wake dragged him in, how he cried for his father to carry him back to dry land, how they all laughed at his foolishness. Now he’s swaddled in the milky waves, eyes aglow with the light of the stars, sinking down and down and down through inchoate tunnels only the whales know, down to the barren womb of time where history is forgotten, buried in the sand, down where nothing is old and everything is new, down where he’s free from the judgments of the dead. 

 

A plaintive whistle rouses him. He checks his watch but the car is too dark to see its face. Outside, the trees have stopped moving. The chirping of crickets fills his ears.

“Sir, it’s time to go,” says a low voice from above. 

“I’m sorry? Is this Canada?”

“Herr Kuhn is waiting for you in the house at the end of that path.” The conductor points to a gap in the pines through the window. “His instructions specified you may feel the need to hurry. That is all.”

“Herr Kuhn? No, there must be a mistake. I was sent by Vacher. V-A-C-H-E-R. And his letter came from a hotel, not a house. Here I’ll show you…” He fumbles around on the seat for his sweater. “It’s in the pocket of… I’m sorry, is there any way you could turn the light back on in here? It’s too dark. I need my—”

“Herr Kuhn awaits. Hurry if you please. That is all.”

His silhouette drifts through the train without a sound. Jonah stares into the darkness. He wonders why the conductor made no mention of this stop when he boarded. Could this Kuhn be the same man as his Vacher? A cover? He mentioned a need for discreteness in the letter. But then who’s ever heard of a hotel out in the middle of the woods? And would it be safe, walking out there all alone at night?

The decision to be made sits in his throat like a sack of wet towels. The train sighs knowingly. He’s sure another chance like this will never come again, but the lack of clarity frightens him. The floor begins to rumble. He wants to feel needed, to be the kind of person people depend on. The whistle blares three times. He wants to feel what his father must have felt when the shop was his. Everything seems to lock into place, ready to roll into action. There’s only one way to go, he tells himself.

Like a cat with a stepped-on tail, he’s out of his seat and tearing down the aisle. He turns the corner and hops down the three metal steps to the ground, then lopes away from the tracks and gravel to the edge of the trees.

He stands at the foot of the path as the train passes behind, gasping. When it’s gone, all goes black but for a faint glimmer at the end of the long corridor of pine, at least half a mile away. He sets off in its direction, slowly at first, then more quickly when he remembers the conductor’s advice. His shoes squelch like toads in the fresh mud.

Five minutes in, the wind picks up. A burning stench wafts forward in bursts. The cold which nipped at his cheeks and fingers starts to bite. He hopes his new employer won’t mind his arriving so late. Then again, it wasn’t Jonah who bought the ticket, and he wouldn’t know where to wait around for business hours to commence anyway, whatever they might be. He warms his hands with his breath and notices the glimmer ahead has grown nearly to the size of his palms. He jogs unsteadily, anxious to get in from the cold.

As he gets closer, the house’s structure reveals itself around the light from the open front door. He’s struck by the size of the chimney, immense beyond proportion, like a grain silo glued to the top. It coughs out globes of black smoke which sink and float forebodingly around the highest of the three stories. There’s a narrow attic squeezed into the tip of its roof, pitched high like a child’s backyard tent. There’s a wrap-around porch with no railing, and in front, a well with no bucket and a driveway which runs in a perfect circle, connected to nothing but itself. 

He comes to a stop at the end of the path. A blurry figure on the edge of the porch waves to him with both arms.

“Mr. Vacher?” he calls out, panting. “Hi, I’m Jonah… Specter. From antiques.” 

The figure doesn’t respond.

“You know, the letter?” 

No response. 

“Or Mr. Kuhn? I’m sorry, there’s been some confusion. Is it Vacher or Kuhn? … I don’t have the letter on me, but I have… uh… my non-driver ID. Or a business card. It has my father’s name on it… but everything else is accurate. Whatever works for you, you know?”

No response.

“Well I don’t have a sweater either. That’s where the, uh… the letter. The lights on the train, I… Well, you understand. This is all very unfamiliar to me, this whole situation.”

No response.

“Here, why don’t I come to you… sir. You’ll hear me better from inside, I think.” 

Jonah steps towards the house. The figure’s waving ceases. Its shadowy eyes stare straight through him.

“Mr. Vacher?” 

The figure runs inside the house, down a long hall and through a door on the right. Numb from the cold and unsure how to proceed, Jonah follows him up the porch and inside. He pulls his shirt over his mouth and nose to keep out the smoke. The interior quakes, ready to collapse. The linoleum floor crackles with every step, oozing with something brown and viscous. From the ceiling, a chintzy chandelier dangles on a loose wire shooting sparks in all directions.

At the end of the hall and to the right, he finds a burnished mahogany door around which lie dozens of marble statuettes of cows and mushrooms in tiny individual niches. At the door’s center, a bronze knocker hangs from the nose of a bull, its bushy brows deeply furrowed. He taps it lightly against the door. When he hears nothing from the other side, he pushes his way in. He stumbles over the high threshold and shuts the door behind him, letting his shirt fall from his face.

Inside, the air is musty in a pleasant way, like his mother’s old basement study. The room’s walls are covered in shelves – thousands of books he can’t recognize climbing up from the ornately carpeted floor to the high mosaic tile ceiling. 

Beside a brass spiral staircase, two hairless old men in matching harlequin sweaters and pince-nez glasses sit at a trestle table, midway through what appears at first glance like a game of chess played with cigarette butts. With his back to the door, Jonah watches the rounds pass, waiting for the right moment to ask about Vacher or whoever it might’ve been he’d seen running into the room. After ten minutes with no opportune breaks in which to respectfully intrude, it becomes clear that the game is in fact not chess, but rather something very different and entirely inscrutable to him: a ceaseless motion of butts with no beginning or end, perhaps even no victory or loss. It occurs to him, now, that maybe the game has nothing to do with the old men. Maybe, he supposes, the real game is in his own mind, and that if he can only discern the pattern behind the seeming chaos of their play, it’ll be over. But the longer he watches, the more impossible this kind of sense-making becomes, until at last he gives it up and loses himself in mindless admiration of the way the butts arrange themselves on the board like shifting constellations: here Taurus, there Orion.

“What’s he gawking at?”

Jonah turns to find that a group of five men in seersucker suits and straw boaters have gathered in the room, each with a leather notebook in hand and the end of a fountain pen between their teeth. They stand around the open fireplace, watching him amusedly, caught like a rat in a maze with no center.

“Lost in the memory of an old flame? A pet rooster once made, so tragically, to slaughter out behind the barn — that awful shade of red he’ll never forget?”

“You’re too sentimental, that’s why you never write anything good.”

“Up yours, prick. I’m baring my heart here.”

“Up mine? You call yourself a poet and you say to me up mine? ‘Up yours’… ha.”

“Say he’s an alcoholic on detox, fighting the shakes with every labored breath. Trying to find his way to one last fix, the one last glass of that demon hooch before he goes straight — but what does he find at the bottom? Well… maybe uh… Sorry, I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

“Typical cart before the horse, that is your problem, Edward.”

“Enough, enough. Simmer down, gents.” This man walks over to Jonah with one hand raised authoritatively, his teeth clean as whitewash on a picket fence and his hair flat as a new-mown lawn. “What’s your name?”

“Me? I’m Jonah.” 

Jonah offers his hand but it’s left unshaken. The man’s height intimidates him.

“What brings you here — how do you say it? — Troma?”

“Jonah. I was invited by Mister Vacher. Something about a hotel, I don’t have the letter on me. Do you know him?”

The men by the fireplace laugh at the question. The old men at the table shush them.

“Ah, Jonah Jonah Jonah. Jonah and the whale, eh? No, I’m afraid I don't know any Vacher.”

“Would you know a Kuhn, maybe? Whatever his name is, I think he ran in here a few minutes ago. I followed him from outside. You might’ve seen him pass through.”

“Did you see anyone, Edward?”

“Not a soul, William. Not a soul.”

“Richard? Anything?”

“Not me, William. George?”

The one who must be George looks at the fire, saying, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“He’s in one of his moods again. George, you’re always doing this. It doesn’t suit you — honestly, it comes off a touch affected.”

“Leave him alone, Richard, please. Not in front of… I lost it again… No, don’t tell me — I want to say Drano?”

“Jonah. I’m sorry, I must be in the wrong place. The conductor’s instructions were… unclear. I can find my way from here, though, thank you. Thank you all.”

William takes a step closer. “No, don’t go! You mustn’t leave, please. Forgive my colleagues, they forget how to act in the company of strangers. They lead such solitary lives, you see?”

“The life of the mind!”

“Oh shut up, Edward.”

“Enough, you two. Jonah. Jonah of Arc-ah. Good name. A very good name. Ancient.”

“A proud name,” adds Richard.

“Thank you, really, but I think I have to go now. Mister Vacher must be getting worried.”

“You’re the only one who seems worried to me, my dear Jonah. Come come, let’s be friends, yes? My God, those arms — take a look at these arms, Edward. Simply strapping. Such a healthy young man. You must work so hard. But listen, Jonah, listen… between you and me, we represent similar interests, myself and your Vacher. We all do.”

“So you know him?”

“Well, not exactly. Can anyone really know a man like Vacher, boys?”

The other four laugh louder than before.

“Jonah, you see, when we’re not wearing our writers’ hats (so to speak, ha) my associates here and I, well — let’s just say we work in the service of the Shane-Wayne Corporation. Your man Vacher, he does the same… in his way.”

“That’s perfect! Do you think maybe you could help me then? The letter said something about an item. ‘Conspicuous charm and pedigree,’ it said. Is it near here?”

“That has George written all over it,” says Edward. “Was that one of yours George?”

“We all agreed we wouldn’t say. We all agreed, right William?”

“Again, excuse them,” says William. “They’re like children. I suppose that’s what makes them good writers but not so good in polite society, eh?”

“Speak for yourself, man.”

“I own it. I relish it. I nurture it. You, Edward? You fight your inner child like a damn toreador. That’s your problem.”

“Easy metaphor. Cliche, like your haircut.”

“Please, I don’t understand,” says Jonah. “So the letter was from… who?”

“Try not to fret over authorship. That way lies madness,” says the one who hasn’t spoken yet. “Trust me.”

“The point, Jonah,” says William, “is we’re all friends here. Isn’t that right, Edward? Friends of Shane-Wayne, friends of you, friends of me. Let yourself be taken care of. Can you do that?”

“So the item, the appraisal?”

“Thataway.” 

They all point to a gap in the bookshelves to Jonah’s left, dark and damp as the belly of a whale.

“Take care, Jonah. Remember to write!”

At once, his ears begin to ring and his knees buckle under him. Something unseen hits the back of his head and he crumples to the floor. Just before the lights go out, the two old men look away from their game into Jonah’s tear-filled eyes, toothless smiles stamped across their weathered faces. 

“Who won?”

Then it’s eternal night: a thousand supernovae bloom across the northern sky and the sound of thunder stomping hither and thither like a mad band of elephants repeating repeating accelerando fortississimo and lightning strikes the heavens and bedecked in glass feathers he soars forever through the donut hole moon and he’s never gone so high before and he’ll never come back down again no never never never…

 

When Jonah awakes, he’s standing upright in a small stone chapel. A streak of dusty green light falls over his eyes from the stained glass window above. A massive cowbell hangs over the pulpit. There’s a quiet beyond silence here, as if no soul has stirred since the morning of creation.

He yawns and looks around, confused but no longer quite so afraid. In the pew behind him, a cow sits wearing a threadbare wimple, crochet hooks in her two front hooves. She looks at him with kind concern.

“Hello! Please, sit, sit, sit. Here with me, yes,” she says, moving aside her jumbled skein of yarn. “You must be exhausted, this I was just thinking to myself. I was wanting you to sleep, so peaceful.”

He blushes, unsure of what to say. Nothing sounds right in his head, so he sits beside her with his hands in his lap for a while, waiting for his stomach to settle.

“I wouldn’t have slept here if I knew this was… I mean, I didn’t know this place was in use. It just sort of happened, I guess. One minute I was talking to these writers, and then… I don’t know.” He holds his breath for a moment. “I’m sorry, I haven’t been myself lately.”

“Please, it is nothing. I am liking to have the company when I crochet. This, I am liking. No apologies  — none.”

He watches her hooves wind the yarn around and around, like a dozen little games of cat’s cradle played all at once. His mother showed him how to do it once when he was young, but he’s forgotten. He always pulled too hard or shook too much, unlike his sister.

“Who is the you when you are yourself?”

“I’m Jonah. I run an antique shop. It was my dad’s, before… Um, I run it now. Well not right now. But recently.”

“Do forgive me please, could you tell me what this word is meaning, this, em… ‘aunt eek?’ A cow in my years and still with so much to learn, I know!”

“That’s okay. An antique.” He pauses. “Well, it’s an old thing. Like an old object. Something you keep in a family, maybe. Something you pass down from person to person. Like junk but worth something, my mom said.”

“And people are buying this junk, these old things?”

“It sounds funny, but yeah, I guess so. People like to buy those things, things which look nice around the house, things which remind them of another time.”

“And this shop, it is your antique?”

“Well no, it’s a business. I don’t think a business can be an antique. How do you mean?”

“Is the business of the father, no? Something keeping in the family?”

“Well yes, but… an antique is like a dead thing. It just sits there gathering dust. The shop, I don’t know. It’s different somehow.”

“Maybe I am antique too, yes? I am old, sitting here with the crochet; I remind my people of another time. But I like it. I like antique. Is not so bad, this antique life, I think!”

They both laugh.

“Maybe not,” he says.

“But tell me, Jonah, where this shop is?”

“Alaska.” He stops himself. “No, that doesn’t sound right. Somewhere cold I think. Maybe it is Alaska? No… I’m sorry, it’s just that so much has happened since… the letter and… and the train, too… and so much walking… I just can’t remember.”

His stomach rumbles. 

“And I’m hungry! I haven’t eaten in… well I don’t even know how long anymore. A while. Do you know somewhere I could —”

“Of course, of course. There is vittles and stuffs in the vestry. I will take you there, yes? Not much in the way of gourmet, but food is food, yes?”

“Sure, thank you. That’s very kind.” 

He rises from the pew but she remains still, watching him blankly. He stretches his legs to make it seem as if he hadn’t been so eager to leave.

“Please forgive me. There is one thing more I am having to ask before we leave the —” followed by a deep, warm loam which Jonah understands to be her name for the chapel.

He nods and sits back down.

“Do you know the tale of the Cow Gardener and the Mushroom King?”

 

There was once a cow-gardener on a lonely isle in the middle of the sea. He had neither family nor friends, but only his plants to keep him company in the darkness of night and in the brightness of day. It was on one most ordinary day when the cow-gardener, knees swaddled in the thick brush of weeds which plagued the southernmost bed of his garden that time of year, found himself a mushroom king.

He’d never seen one of its like before. He sniffed all around and blinked once, twice, and three times again to be sure his senses had not deceived him. But no amount of sniffing and blinking could alter what the cow-gardener knew to be true: there between the two claws of his common cloven hoof sat a true king among mushrooms, dressed in the finest of regalia. He held him to his ear, that he might wait upon his royal decree.

“Don’t eat me!” cried the mushroom king.

“Pardon me, sir? I’m afraid your voice is too high for these old ears of mine, worn dull over so many years of toil.”

“Don’t eat me! Please, I beg of you, do not eat me!”

The cow was perplexed. What was a king like that doing on an island like this, asking favors of a lowly gardener like him?

“You must be mistaken, sir. I’m only doing the weeds, you see. Believe you me, I was of no mind to take you from your castle. And I certainly have no designs on eating you, oh no sir your highness.”

“Had I only listened to Master Bello and his interminable language lessons, I might make sense of these gruff snorts and unrefined gabbles! Dear cow, do take pity on me, I never asked to be so excitable and unstudious in my youth. I was a sensitive soul in a hostile world of miscreants and knaves. I had to lash out just to be seen. No one knew the meaning of compassionate learning then, and now look at the spot I’m in! Oh to be young again. Things would be different this time around, I tell you.”

“But I mean you no harm, my liege! Can’t you see by my simple hat and my simple tools? Why, I’m a simple cow!”

No matter how the cow-gardener softened his voice to make himself understood, and no matter how thoroughly he assured the king he would never feel the least bit inclined to eat him, no words seemed able to puncture his veil of fear. As our poor gardener soon came to realize, the only language this mushroom king would prove receptive to was that of the threat and the bargain — perhaps a consequence of his evidently most troubled youth. So it was that the cow-gardener reluctantly came to act the part of the no-good devil-cow for the king’s own benefit.

In the most baleful voice he could muster, the cow-gardener did say, “Give me some terms I can accept and I’ll yield… weakling.” A tremble of shame accompanied his every word, though he comforted himself in the knowledge that the king would soon be safe and the garden would then be his to tend in solitary peace once more.

“My kingdom is yours, dear cow, you have only to release me from your fearsome, slobbering… er… distinguished grip! All I ask in return is that you and your kind release — and, I repeat, do not eat — those of my kind, gathered each year by multiples of the holy number granted to us by the One Who Counts. Then and only then will you and all who follow in your way be free to roam in the Kingdom for eternity. Do we have a deal?”

The cow-gardener agreed to the king’s terms, relieved beyond expression. And so he walked him over to the tallest oak tree and set him down gently upon the lowest leaf. Thus he populated the tree with all the king’s subjects to the end of his days, whereupon he was released from his lonely isle to the Pasture of Ages, master of all cowkind.

 

In the attic office over Specter Antiques, the morning sun shines down on the faces of pennies left scattered across the desk. The ceiling droops to meet the hundred little beams of copper light. A rocking chair creaks in the stiff wind through the floorboards. Off in the corner, a ceramic bull gazes on in perfect placidity. He knows nothing. He fears nothing. He can’t hear the knocking at the door. He has no ears.

“Jonah? Hello? What’s going on in there, Jonah? Is everything okay?”

She goes unanswered. She flies home to Alaska. She tries to forget why she came. She doesn’t return. She reads the note she couldn’t leave behind — two words she’ll never repeat. She rips it in three and tosses it in with the dying embers. She goes to sleep and dreams another dream she won’t remember. Something about cows. Something about mushrooms. It lingers. It’s fading. It’s gone.

Joel Henry Little is a bookseller and writer/musician from New York City. He received a B.A. in English from Hunter College, where his work appeared in the school's Olivetree Review.