The Shopkeeper

I always looked in the window, but to really appreciate his enterprise you had to push the tinkling door and enter the dark forest. Exactly what he specialised in was never obvious. Packed shelves whispered beneath their creaking branches. General goods, repairs, card tricks—I witnessed them all. If you brought in a key, he would find a lock to fit it. One wet day, he trued my umbrella. I once saw him cutting a boy’s hair. The mother was applying lipstick in a cracked mirror off to one side and, when the boy stood up, she took the seat herself. Sometimes he gave free sweets, but mostly you deposited your coins on the counter for careful inspection. Beyond a rack of discarded photographs (50 cents each), was a doorway with a curtain, through which a workshop and some sort of bicycle-piano contraption could sometimes be seen. Kids spoke of a cellar, skeletons, ingots, access through the sewers. But I only believed in the mysteries I could see, like the fact of the attic—in which, it was clear to me, he was building an airship capable of lifting the entire shop, or perhaps that was a rocket I could see nosing from the chimney as I made my way quietly out of town, never to return, my shadow strong in the timely moonlight.