to his house with a few of the other boys lucky enough to be included in George’s circle. Artie carried his Winchester. Mostly they were after squirrel, although once they took an eight-point out of season; it was George’s shot that had brought the deer down. This was back when the Baxters cast a longer shadow over the county—when there was talk of Sal running for governor. Back then, Artie ate at their table, teased George’s sister, chopped wood for Sal, and nursed a desperate crush on George’s mom, who was the local standard of beauty for years.
Then George had gone off to college.
Artie had carried on with George’s sister for a while, yet that ended before George came home for Christmas break, a different person than the one who’d left. After that, the only times the two talked were those few occasions when George needed something from Artie’s father’s store—the store that now belonged to the son. George still came in now and then, to buy the odd tool or coil wire, and they would chat for a few minutes—always cordially, never too familiar. But not once had Artie been tempted to change his daily routine to join the men who gathered in front of Maggie’s every morning, even when George was among them.
Artie almost felt bad about his involvement in the pool, although it didn’t stop him from wishing that the elder statesman of the Baxter clan would hold on just one more day. Artie stood to win a cool thousand dollars if George’s dad passed into the great beyond tomorrow. On the heels of this last thought he reached his destination and started sorting through the mess of keys on the ring.
Kaddy’s Hardware—the name coming from Artie’s grandfather’s belief that people might be reluctant to enter an establishment whose name they couldn’t pronounce—occupied the corner of Fifth and Main. It was the perfect location, with ample parking in the side lot, and Ronny’s Bar & Grill next door. From eleven to five, a steady stream of customers came through—mostly for small-ticket items, but those added up. Artie made a good living on duct tape and caulk, and aerator rentals.
As the keys clinked against each other, a city services truck rolled around Sycamore and up Fifth, Gabe at the wheel. Artie waved as it passed by, turned and headed up Main toward the town center. In the back, a sign for the Adelia Fall Festival swayed dangerously, and Artie watched until the truck straightened, expecting the heavy wooden placard to topple to the pavement, but it remained in the bed and the pickup continued on. By midmorning several of the signs—some of them the original ones hand- painted by the founders of the Fall Festival back in 1931—would line the streets surrounding town hall, and in the weeks leading up to the event, seasonal decorations would pop up and then the big banner would be strung across Main. The Festival, whose seasonal synchronicity placed at the height of football season, was the most anticipated event in Adelia, punctuated by the arts and craft fair along Main, the town dance, a parade, a lawn fete at St. Anthony’s, and officially culminating in the Adelia High home game against rival Smithson Academy, of neighboring Batesville. The two teams, historically evenly matched, had come near to splitting forty years’ worth of games, although Adelia had won the last three. But Smithson was strong this year, projected to go to the state championship.
Unofficially, the Fall Festival found its end much later in the evening, when students from both schools met at the town line to pummel each other with tomatoes under the amused eyes of the adults. This tradition was like most modern incarnations of long-lived events, a neutered version of the original occasion, when men from Batesville had shown up at the first Fall Festival to throw rocks at the Adelia revelers, who responded in kind. In the seventy-eight years that followed, the only time period during which some form of the confrontation did not happen was between 1937-1942 when Batesville, with its overwhelmingly German citizenry, suspected an escalation to more deadly projectiles should they make their customary appearance.
His key found the lock and he gave it a turn, wincing against the pain that shot up the back of his hand to the wrist. He released the key still in the lock and opened and closed the hand. Then, with a shake of his head, he pushed open the door. He