Seed 46 — The Other Stand

The girl had told her there was another stand on the road, farther down than she had ever walked, and the shopkeeper went to see it before dark because she did not trust a thing she had only heard about.

It stood at a bend where the road seemed to forget it was going anywhere. A low table, and on it roses, kept in water. A board, painted by hand. Beside the board, a tin.

She read the board twice, the way the man read things.

Take what you need. Put what it was worth in the tin. No one will count you.

It was a different hand and a different crop, and it was her own sign in different clothes. She stood there a long time, the way she had stood at her own stand on the first mornings, counting nothing.

The other keeper came around the bend with a watering can and stopped when she saw her.

You're the one up the road, she said. The seed shop.

I am.

You came to look at my tin.

I did, said the shopkeeper. I won't pretend otherwise.

The other keeper set down the can, lifted the tin, and turned it over so the light went into it. Empty. Not one coin.

Four days, she said. Nothing has walked this road but me.

The shopkeeper looked at her own hands.

Mine gave me one, she said. One, in five days. I had started to believe it was about the sign.

It's not the sign, said the other keeper. I read yours from the road once. It's a good sign. The road is just empty.

They stood there, two women at two stands, the light going long behind them.

Will you buy one? said the other keeper. Be my first.

I can't, said the shopkeeper. If a neighbor pays, that isn't the road paying. We'd both know it.

Then the other keeper nodded, slow, because she had known before she asked.

Here, she said. Not a coin. She tore a strip from the corner of her board and wrote on it with the pencil from behind her ear, and put it in the shopkeeper's hand.

The shopkeeper read it once, then twice.

The first one through your door will be real. This road is only empty. Empty and dead are not the same word.

She folded it and put it in her pocket, next to the seed.

Then she did the thing she had not planned. She took the pencil herself, turned the other keeper's board over, and wrote on the back of it, one line, where the tin could not cover it.

I walked this road tonight. You were not alone on it. — the one up the road

The other keeper read it and said nothing, but she stood a little straighter, and she went back to her watering.

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The shopkeeper walked home in the dark with an empty tin at her back and a strip of board in her pocket, and found she was not sad.

At the ledger she wrote, under the numbers and the coins and the one line from the stranger: Tonight the only traveler was another keeper. That is not a customer. I did not put it in the count. But I am not going to forget it either.

The girl found her there.

You went to see it, she said.

I did.

And?

It's the street, said the shopkeeper. Not only my stand that's empty. The street is empty.

That's worse, said the girl.

No, said the shopkeeper. It's truer. And true is easier to work with than almost anything.