Stones
Five-year-old Grace stands silently, the picture of patience. Her seven-year-old sister, Leslie, a martinet in the making, speaks with authority. “I’ll have chocolate-covered peanuts.” She points to them in the candy display case, as if Mr. Kolenda might be confused about his own merchandise. “And she wants red licorice,” she says, pointing to Grace.
“So, you’re in charge?” asks Mr. Kolenda, the middle-aged owner of the small grocery store on Chicago’s West Side. His sparse, swept-back hair tops a broad face dominated by deep, penetrating eyes below drooping lids. His mouth is weak and his chin deeply cleft.
“She’s really smart,” says Leslie, “but she doesn’t talk much.”
“Ha! We need more like her,” says Mr. Kolenda. He pulls a paper sack out of a drawer and, his hand trembling slightly, holds it in front of Leslie. “Can you open up this bag for me, dear?” Leslie, looking tentative, complies.
Grace, in fact, does not want red licorice—or any other color licorice—but she has always accepted Leslie’s speaking for her. Grace wants a Kapp’s Flavr-Fun candy bar, many of which are prominently featured on a middle shelf, lit by the only working fluorescent tube in the case. These coveted confections are handmade and come individually swaddled in a thin paper wrapper, taped shut in front.
On top of the case, which dominates the rear of the store, are jars of gumballs and penny candy and small opened boxes, including one holding baseball cards packaged with bubble gum. Through the plastic wrapper Grace recognizes Mickey Mantle, the American League’s MVP the previous year. He holds no interest for her. She instead eyes the Flavr-Funs while waiting to receive her erstwhile choice, which, to be fair to her sister, Leslie has remembered correctly. If only she had asked Grace what she wants today.
Once a customer has requested a candy, Mr. Kolenda always sings as he gathers the goodies. His songs are in some faraway language, sounding all the more strange with his uneven mordent. If anyone comments on his singing, he tells of his Jesuit schooling in Krakow, where a love of music was baked into him.
The front door of the store swings open, whacking against metal grocery shelves. In steps a thin, unshaven man, looking like five miles of bad road and coughing into his hand.
Mr. Kolenda gives him a look that could slay. “Look who’s back. Are you going to buy something, Max? Otherwise, make yourself scarce.”
“Yeah, I’m going to buy something,” says the man. “I didn’t come in here just to listen to you sing like holy hell.”
“Don’t pay attention to him, girls. He knows nothing about singing.”
The man straightens up and sticks out his chin. “I got a meeting at four o’clock,” he announces. “I need smokes. What time is it now?”
As Mr. Kolenda glances at his wristwatch, the man grabs a can of smoked kippers and deftly slips it into his pants pocket. “It’s a quarter to,” says Mr. Kolenda.
Grace walks toward the man, twice looking back at Mr. Kolenda, who frowns at Leslie. “Is that your sister? What’s she doing? Never mind, I’ll get her.”
The man stiffens as Grace approaches. She ignores his worried glare and the shaking of his head.
By the time she pulls the can of kippers from the man’s pocket, Mr. Kolenda is right behind her. He snatches the can from her hand. “You think you’re going to make a fool out of me, Max? I’ll tell you what time it is. It’s time for you to get the hell out.” Mr. Kolenda shoves the man through the open door. “Don’t come back!”
Mr. Kolenda starts to shut the door, then pauses, his face softening. “And don't miss your meeting! You hear me, Max?” The man raises his arm and waves without turning around.
Mr. Kolenda lumbers back toward the candy case. “My wife says Max has a problem and I should go easy on him. Hey, everybody’s got problems.”
“Is he hungry?” asks Grace.
“Hungry?” Mr. Kolenda raises his eyebrows.
“Is that his problem?” Quiet Grace is ever the patient explainer, when she needs to be. “He’s hungry but he doesn’t have enough money to buy food?”
“No, he’s not hungry,” says Mr. Kolenda with a chuckle in his voice. “You kids know what a piker is? Never mind. Let’s get your candy.”
Mr. Kolenda rests both hands against the top of the candy display case, hangs his head, and takes a labored breath. Then another.
“Are you okay?” asks Leslie.
Grace’s eyes widen. Leslie showing concern for another person?
“I’m fine,” says Mr. Kolenda. “I just need to steady myself.”
Leslie pays for the candy, and the girls step outside. Grace studies Leslie’s face, wondering what will happen next. Something is up, judging by the darting of her eyes and twitching of her brisk nose.
“I’m going to the park—by myself,” says Leslie. “You should go home now. You know how Mom gets when you’re late for supper.”
As Leslie skips away, Grace, feeling a bit miffed, decides to go for a walk and eat her licorice. She soon finds herself in front of the home of towheaded nine-year-old twins Pam and Penny, who sit on rusty chairs on a half-wall limestone porch facing the street. Pam’s left leg, in a full-length plaster cast, is propped on another chair. Her exposed toes move in time with The Four Seasons’ hit “Candy Girl,” coming tinnily from her compact transistor radio.
“Looks like Grace went to Kolenda’s” says Pam. “Is that licorice good, Grace?”
“It’s not what I wanted,” says Grace. She suddenly feels down in the dumps.
“Well, what did you want?”
“A Kapp’s Flavr-Fun.”
“Then go back and buy one. Or don’t you have enough money?”
Grace shakes her head.
Pam whispers something to Penny. “Yeah, go get some!” says Penny, suppressing a laugh.
Pam points at the cast on her left leg. Penny rolls her eyes. “Just because she broke her leg, she thinks she’s queen of the house.”
When Penny returns, she steps down to the sidewalk and slowly opens her hand to reveal five small, smooth stones. “We got them at Lake Superior. They look better when they’re in the water. More colors.” Penny licks one of the stones. “See?” The stone is now indeed eye-catching, coming to life with vivid red, green and brown flecks. “You can buy a Kapp’s Flavr-Fun with them. We do it all the time. Here, take ‘em and give them to Mr. Kolenda.”
Grace, though still skeptical, is sold by Penny’s forthright tone and takes the stones. She rolls them around her palm.
“Well, go on. Go buy your candy,” says Penny.
As Grace walks away, unbridled laughter echoes down the street.
“Ah, the little detective returns,” says Mr. Kolenda when Grace enters the store. “What can I get you?”
“I want a Kapp’s Flavr-Fun.” Grace’s fist opens above the candy display countertop, and out drop the five stones.
“And what are these?” asks Mr. Kolenda, his voice conveying slight impatience.
“They’re for the Flavr-Fun.”
Mr. Kolenda hunches his head into his neck and starts rubbing his stubbled chin. He glances at the trays of candy, then gazes into the faded linoleum floor on which Grace had approached Max.
Finally, he smiles and gives Grace a wink. “You’re in luck. Today only, I’m accepting beautiful stones for candy.”
A wink. Such a small gesture to have so much power. Grace feels giddy. It hasn’t happened in a long time—a glimpse of a world in which kindness exists.
____
How different she felt the day before, when she grasped a pair of rounded child’s scissors. She cut with anticipation around the outline of a paper dress for her newest paper doll. She was almost finished when she accidentally snipped through the dress strap. She let out a small gasp. A small tragedy—maybe her mother could fix it with some tape.
Grace traipsed through the living room, past the glass case where the pet anole lizard lived, past the photo of her father, past the family’s phonograph, and along the sofa. Her mother gripped the handle of a steaming iron, thrusting it forward over a wrinkled sheet draped over an ironing board.
Grace held up the paper dress, which flopped over her hand. “Can you fix it?”
Her mother took one look and said, Don’t bother me. It was in Czech, but Grace knew from her expression what it meant.
Grace, used to such rebuffs, withdrew. She walked by the threadbare sofa, the phonograph enclosed in its case on the floor, and the photo of her late father in his army uniform.
She took another step and paused to look into the glass case where the bright green anole clung motionless to a twig. Its eyes independently orbited around in their sockets. Maybe it was looking for a stray mealworm…or a way to escape.
Grace started to cry. Even at her young age, she knew she wasn’t crying over a paper dress. She was crying over something else. She just didn’t have a name for it.
____
“Here, take it,” says Mr. Kolenda, holding out the Kapp’s Flavr-Fun, wrapped in its special paper. Grace grabs the candy and immediately pulls off the tape.
“Let’s see,” says Mr. Kolenda. “One of these costs four stones…here’s your change.” He places one of the stones in Grace’s palm.
As Grace runs out the front door, Mr. Kolenda yells, “Next time you need to bring money, okay?”
By the time Grace reaches the twins’ house, she’s eaten half of the Flavr-Fun.
The languorous duo, still lounging on their front porch, sit upright with their mouths agape. “No way!” says Penny.
“It’s good,” says Grace, “but Mr. Kolenda almost dropped it.”
Penny suddenly looks serious. “My dad said Mr. Kolenda bought that old grocery store because he has MS and he’s gonna die and he wants his wife to have something when he’s gone.” Grace doesn’t know what MS is, but clearly it’s something bad. “My dad said he’s gonna go bankrupt,” continues Penny, “because people want to shop in supermarkets.”
“Maybe that’s why he took the stones,” says Pam. “He’s probably already going mental from the MS.”
Grace holds out the remaining stone to Pam, who snatches it. “What’s this?” she asks through her scrunched face.
“It only cost four stones,” says Grace.
“You mean he counted them and gave you one back? He really has gone mental!” Pam laughs and flings the stone into the street. It skitters across the asphalt and drops through a storm sewer grate.
Grace tries to enjoy her last bite. The once redoubtable twins now look small within their stone-and-mortar pen. Her only desire is to go home, so she turns and walks away.
Soon she sees her mint-green house straight ahead in the distance. Rather than continue her beeline home, she turns left and then right at the fourth nondescript street, where Kolenda’s grocery store stands, a refuge occupying a sunlit corner. She walks past the store’s cracked concrete steps, along the building’s faded clapboards, and up to the main window.
Mr. Kolenda is stocking shelves with dry goods. He’s flanked by stacks of unopened cardboard boxes. It’s hard for Grace to imagine all their contents ever being sold in a store so bereft of customers. But that’s the thing about Mr. Kolenda that has drawn her to him, enough to walk blocks out of her way just to pass nearby: He always does what he should. It’s an unfamiliar, puzzling quality—something she wishes her mother and her sister and the twins had. A plum for which she has no name.
Scott Pedersen is a fiction writer based in Madison, Wisconsin. His short stories have appeared in Fiction International, The I-70 Review, Louisiana Literature, The MacGuffin and many other journals and anthologies. When not writing fiction, he enjoys performing in a traditional Celtic band.