In the heat of long summer days we wandered into the darkness of Labatt’s. The store wasn’t air-conditioned, but something about its small windows and dark pine flooring made it feel cooler, as if we’d dropped into a cave. There was still a hitching post out front, an iron ring in stone, and once a man left his horse tied up.
“Can we watch your horse for you?”
The man smiled and gave us a dollar, although we’d have stayed by that horse’s side for nothing, stroking his chestnut neck that rippled under our touch, pulling the tallest, greenest grass from the yard and offering it on our flat palms. We didn’t say no to the dollar. A dollar could buy a lot in Labatt’s.
They had spinning racks of comic books, marked-down lawn furniture, a key machine that smelled like burning pennies, keychains for every zodiac sign. Best of all, they had penny candy: whistle pops, multi-colored dots on strips of white paper like cash register receipts, wax bottles filled with syrupy drinks. Were you supposed to eat the bottles too? Sometimes we were bored enough to try before we spit out the sticky mess. They had SweetTarts, Bazooka Joe, Pixy Stix in paper straws, Zotz that fizzed your mouth with foam: “GRAAAHHH! I’m Old Yeller!” None of the candies were actually a penny. Most were two for five cents, and we’d ask Mr. Labatt how much for just one and he’d shake his head and put another in our hand—so he didn’t have to do math, we guessed.
On our way out we’d scrape our sneakers on the old iron boot-scraper by the door. We’d take the long way home, trading candies, peeking into comics. Time held its breath, waiting for us.
Kathryn Kulpa is a writer and editor with stories in Centaur, Fictive Dream, Flash Frontier, Ghost Parachute, and Milk Candy Review. Her work has been chosen for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and the Wigleaf longlist, and her chapbook A Map of Lost Places is forthcoming from Gold Line Press.
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