Writing Exercise #6 - Ryan Henderson

The town’s main street was littered with a ramshackle collection of scattered buildings. The material chosen for the buildings’ construction indicated the ages of the structures. The oldest buildings were made of logs and situated the closest to the stream bordering the west edge of town. The trees for these buildings had been felled by the earliest residents and their crude construction revealed the mean tools available to the builders. Mismatched logs still sheathed in crumbling bark criss-crossed each other at the corners of the building and overhung the building in mismatch ladders rising to the eaves. These buildings tended to be low and the logs often stacked no higher than what could be lifted by a single man. Coarse mud flaked with pebbles and broken shards of limestone cemented the logs into a solid structure and provided the slightest semblance of insulation to the inhabitants. Darker splotches marked where the mud was patched to fill wayward cracks. These squat structures were roofed with uneven shingles, crudely carved from sections of spruce logs and sealed with gobs of pine tar hardened in the sun. These buildings sprung up closest to the stream because it marked the town’s only water source. Muddy tracks led from the buildings down to the stream where inhabitants went to fill their buckets or water their livestock. As more inhabitants moved into the town the muddy tracks expanded outward from the stream. A scattered collection of veins pulsed around the log huts and stretched east to the new buildings taking shape along what was beginning to resemble a main road through the camp. Sections of land were plotted off in rows and the new buildings stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the buildings opposite across a twenty foot wide swath of pale mud. These new buildings were built of roughhewn lumber instead of logs and stood tall and straight in contrast to their log predecessors. These buildings lined the streets in rows and grew progressively younger the farther away they ran from the stream. Framed with square beams, the buildings were covered in wide horizontal planks that overlapped to block the rain as it ran down the side of the building and dripped into the ever present mud. Instead of wood shakes, many of the new buildings were roofed with tin. The metal, which shined and flashed when it was new like the trout pulled from the stream, glistened in the early morning sun, aged quickly under the barrage of wind and rain. It was as if the rain that pelted the town and churned the earth into viscous muck also carried the ability to stain the tin sheets with splotches of rust. The clean metal, dotted with tar to seal where nails held it in place, quickly lost its sheen in the incessant rain and the rust grew like a maroon fungus around the eaves and along the ridgepole. The store was one of the newest buildings and its roof had not yet begun to show the rust of its experience, the pine lumber not yet dulled from bright yellow to light brown to bone grey. No, the store had not yet faded into the surrounding landscape and still glared like a fresh wound in the skin of the town’s only street. The structure was the tallest in town, a full two stories with a facade that only added to its height, and housed both the store and the storeowner who lived in an apartment upstairs overlooking the street. The evenings often found him sitting on the front porch that ran the length of the building and served as an awning over the sidewalk below. A white sign hung evenly to the railing above the door and proclaimed the location as Ward & Sons General Merchandise in gleaming blue lettering. Curls of black and gold edging framed the words and adorned them with an attempted elegance. Seven in the morning always found the front walk of the store decorated with samples of the hardware available inside. Sacks of feed and seed corn provided seats for the idlers who stopped by for some food and a bit of gossip and witnessed arguments of all kinds in addition to providing a place to rest. The hand carved rocking chairs on display were reserved for the community patriarchs who passed their days arguing about the weather and commenting on every person passing down the street. Loops of wire hung from nails that had been hammered into the eaves of the porch, reminding passers of that broken stretch of fence that needed fixing. Barrels made by the blacksmith down the street were filled with farm implements (shovels, rakes and hoes) and stood on either side of the entrance like sentries welcoming customers, calling out to them as they passed, mesmerizing them with promises of the sturdy and fair priced implements waiting inside. And for the most part, the inside lived up to the expectations created by the displays outside. The large and spotless windows provided bright light for the customers to use as they inspected their potential purchases. The women waded through the pools of light flooding from the windows as they ran their fingers along the bolts of bright cloth stacked near a window so they could be pulled out and examined in the light but also stored in such a way as to prevent them from fading in the sun. After lingering near the fabric, a place where many stopped to exchange gossip of the war back east with their neighbors, the women moved on reluctantly to the practical goods that were the real reason for their visit. The shopkeeper’s wife worked behind the counter filling requests for flour, sugar, coffee, lard and even vegetables if the season was right and also gave news and local announcements in addition to her customer’s change. The shopkeeper spent his days on the other side of the store where he had built a long counter lined with barstools where he operated a restaurant of sorts. The lot behind the store was fenced off and was the home to a growing population of pigs that supplemented the shopkeeper’s income with their contributions to the greasy barbeque he served at his lunch counter. Coffee, sandwiches, bacon and eggs, biscuits and gravy, barbequed pork, and pie were all available on a consistent basis and were served on tin plates to those customers who opted to eat at the counter. For the other customers, drawn to the beauty of a sunny day or pushed out by overcrowding in the shop, lunch was served on thick sheets of snowy butcher paper that they carried outside and held in their laps as they sat on the grain sacks stacked along the porch.