going anywhere if we could help it. We’d fallen in love, and that meant settling in for the long haul.
So instead of packing up in the face of adversity, we dug into our extra energy reserves, prepared to eat air, and with increased free time and desperation, delivered flyers advertising our special events to a widening circle of banks and clinics and hairdressers, chatting to potential customers all the way. Lots of new people did come to see us as a result of our efforts, while a few of our regulars stopped—not very many, just a couple. A friend from my former job had amassed quite a healthy credit in our blue ledger of trade swaps; the afternoon of my firing, she arrived with her adult daughter in tow, wiped out the balance with four armloads of paperbacks, and disappeared. We never saw her or her children again.
That kind of thing let us know how the back-alley gossip hummed; we figured we could beat it over time, but it’s no fun when people are suspicious of you. The “you aren’t from here” snake, which everyone who moves into a small community deals with at some point, became a hydra rearing its ugly “you aren’t one of us, you won’t ever understand us, you’re trying to change us, you’re the outsiders who will never be accepted” heads—and in an extra ironic twist, that suspicion appeared because of losing my job, an act I believed had returned my integrity. Won’t be a snake in the pit? Okay, how about a shut-out failure instead?
Most of us have figured out by now that those aren’t the only two choices life offers. It bothered me that people thought ill of us, but it didn’t define me. Or Jack. Or the bookstore. We were more concerned about the effect it might have on our customer pool, which slumped in the weeks after I got sent home in disgrace.
Soon after I got fired, Garth popped in for coffee and asked how we were doing. I spent the next ten minutes ranting and raving in full-blown Pity Party mode. How we had people we didn’t even know calling us “uppity incomers,” and—even worse—people we barely knew running in to gleefully tell us that we were getting called that. How the other chamber-of-commerce types wouldn’t come near the shop.
When I finally exhausted myself and sat down at my antique kitchen table—sacrificed to hosting the store’s coffee service where we offered free coffee , so why weren’t people taking us up on it?!—my wise friend said, “Honey, this ain’t got as much to do with you gettin’ fired as people wonderin’ if you’re gonna stay. I know you and Jack are good people, but you look like every other City Sophisticate Discovering Rural Paradise. They set up a business, it makes money or doesn’t, they fold up and get a tax write-off, or they take off with the loot back to the city. Ain’t nobody thinks you’re really gonna stay very long. You’ve got no ties to the community, so why should they bother to make friends? It’s like fosterin’ a puppy; sure, it’s sweet, but don’t get attached ’cause you’ll just get your heart broke when it goes.”
“Ties to the community?” I shot back. “You mean like having a real job in town, not just a bookstore we didn’t ask anyone’s permission to start but that just might make it despite the in-club not shopping here, because a bunch of other really nice people are?”
Garth rocked back in his chair and lifted the brim of his cap—and beamed at me. “Well, sweetheart, you do have a bit of spark left in you. Good. I was afraid the last little while mighta burned you out.”
I hate it when men who are neither my husband nor my uncle call me sweetheart, but it also seemed like a good moment to keep my mouth shut and let him talk. Garth returned the chair’s front two legs to the ground with a thud, leaned forward, and crossed his arms on the table, locking eyes with me. “Yeah, honey, that’s what they mean. You got no reason to stay now, have you?”
“I’ve got about 5,200
So instead of packing up in the face of adversity, we dug into our extra energy reserves, prepared to eat air, and with increased free time and desperation, delivered flyers advertising our special events to a widening circle of banks and clinics and hairdressers, chatting to potential customers all the way. Lots of new people did come to see us as a result of our efforts, while a few of our regulars stopped—not very many, just a couple. A friend from my former job had amassed quite a healthy credit in our blue ledger of trade swaps; the afternoon of my firing, she arrived with her adult daughter in tow, wiped out the balance with four armloads of paperbacks, and disappeared. We never saw her or her children again.
That kind of thing let us know how the back-alley gossip hummed; we figured we could beat it over time, but it’s no fun when people are suspicious of you. The “you aren’t from here” snake, which everyone who moves into a small community deals with at some point, became a hydra rearing its ugly “you aren’t one of us, you won’t ever understand us, you’re trying to change us, you’re the outsiders who will never be accepted” heads—and in an extra ironic twist, that suspicion appeared because of losing my job, an act I believed had returned my integrity. Won’t be a snake in the pit? Okay, how about a shut-out failure instead?
Most of us have figured out by now that those aren’t the only two choices life offers. It bothered me that people thought ill of us, but it didn’t define me. Or Jack. Or the bookstore. We were more concerned about the effect it might have on our customer pool, which slumped in the weeks after I got sent home in disgrace.
Soon after I got fired, Garth popped in for coffee and asked how we were doing. I spent the next ten minutes ranting and raving in full-blown Pity Party mode. How we had people we didn’t even know calling us “uppity incomers,” and—even worse—people we barely knew running in to gleefully tell us that we were getting called that. How the other chamber-of-commerce types wouldn’t come near the shop.
When I finally exhausted myself and sat down at my antique kitchen table—sacrificed to hosting the store’s coffee service where we offered free coffee , so why weren’t people taking us up on it?!—my wise friend said, “Honey, this ain’t got as much to do with you gettin’ fired as people wonderin’ if you’re gonna stay. I know you and Jack are good people, but you look like every other City Sophisticate Discovering Rural Paradise. They set up a business, it makes money or doesn’t, they fold up and get a tax write-off, or they take off with the loot back to the city. Ain’t nobody thinks you’re really gonna stay very long. You’ve got no ties to the community, so why should they bother to make friends? It’s like fosterin’ a puppy; sure, it’s sweet, but don’t get attached ’cause you’ll just get your heart broke when it goes.”
“Ties to the community?” I shot back. “You mean like having a real job in town, not just a bookstore we didn’t ask anyone’s permission to start but that just might make it despite the in-club not shopping here, because a bunch of other really nice people are?”
Garth rocked back in his chair and lifted the brim of his cap—and beamed at me. “Well, sweetheart, you do have a bit of spark left in you. Good. I was afraid the last little while mighta burned you out.”
I hate it when men who are neither my husband nor my uncle call me sweetheart, but it also seemed like a good moment to keep my mouth shut and let him talk. Garth returned the chair’s front two legs to the ground with a thud, leaned forward, and crossed his arms on the table, locking eyes with me. “Yeah, honey, that’s what they mean. You got no reason to stay now, have you?”
“I’ve got about 5,200
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