Bite Your Tongue

Jesse

I was expecting Dan to show up on Saturday morning, which was part of why I hadn’t wanted to draw things out with Joe the night before. Dan owned a restoration company in town, and he always came to me for lumber, tools, and other odds and ends for his crew. He was a big money-maker for the store, one of our best companies. I didn’t trust anyone else to handle business with him.

That was partly because Dan was one of the most demanding customers that we had as well. I watched him run his hand down a piece of lumber. He looked up at me with knitted eyebrows. “This the best oak that you’ve got?” he asked. “We’re refinishing countertops and trim in some of those old cabins out by the lake, and the woman who has us doing it wants everything to last into the next century, not just the next decade. Look at all the knots in this piece!”

I peered at the sample and then the piece of paper attached to the pile. Then, I nodded, jabbing my finger at it. “Yep, this is the stuff for the trim. Figured you could cut it down this way,” I showed him with my hands, “and avoid all the knots. Should be good wood otherwise. And then these are the pieces for your countertops.” I showed him another pile, and he looked appreciatively over the wood.

“Of course, we wouldn’t be paying the same price per cord for that trim wood as for this,” he said.

“Of course not,” I said, refusing to be ticked off at the way that he said it. Dan had been coming to get supplies and lumber here for years now, and he knew I always priced things fairly. Hell, the guy had known me since I was a kid. I wouldn’t dare try to overcharge him for anything, even if I didn’t respect him as a businessman. And even if I didn’t need him to keep bringing his business back to me again and again.

Not that the store was struggling, per se, but Miller Hardware needed every bit of business it could get. This was a small town, and the last thing I needed was for people to put me out of business in favor of the bigger corporations. So far, we still had plenty of mom and pop shops around town. But even in a small town like Aberdeen, we were starting to feel the modern world encroaching on us.

“All right,” Dan said, nodding as he appraised the rest of the pile. “Well, it looks like you’ve got everything that I ordered. Let’s ring it up, and I’ll have my guys come through this afternoon to get it loaded on the truck.”

“Sounds great,” I said, moving to the register. I nudged Chance out of the way and rang up the customer, ignoring Joe’s muffled snickers as I did so. I was serious when I meant that I didn’t trust anybody else with Dan’s business. He wasn’t the kind of guy that you pissed off. He was a businessman, and his time was money.

Dan scrawled a healthy tip onto the bottom of his bill. “Thanks as always,” he said.

“You as well,” I said, nodding at him. “Hope the project goes well and come back any time.”

Dan nodded and walked out. Joe was next to me a moment later. “Jesus, why do you let him treat you like that?” he asked, shaking his head.

I shrugged. “He treats everyone like that,” I reminded him. “He just wants the job done right. I respect that in a man.”

“He squeezes your balls so tight, it’s a wonder you’re still man enough to respect a man,” Joe joked.

I rolled my eyes and didn’t comment on that. “What are you doing out here anyway, Joe?” I asked him. “Weren’t you supposed to be doing inventory all morning?”

“It’s more fun out here,” he said, winking at me. When I gave him a look, he rolled his eyes. “Come on, boss, you know I always get the work done on time.”

I gave Chance a pointed look. The last thing I needed was for him to start slacking off, but he would start to do so if his superiors didn’t set a better example for him. Of course, Joe always managed to scrape things together in the end. He’d been doing that ever since we were kids and all up through school. Somehow, he’d managed to graduate like that.

But Chance wasn’t quite as bright or as adept at pulling things together. I needed the kid to focus, and Joe wasn’t making that easy for him.

“Well, if you’re not going to do any inventorying right now, how about you help me move around some paint cans?” I suggested. That would at least leave Chance alone at the register, and even though I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to do that, I definitely didn’t want to leave Chance alone with Joe and the register while I shifted those cans around. And I could use a little help with the paint anyway. That shit was heavy, and the less I had to move, the better.