Sam's Yarn (Could Be Short Story #1)

The War

Hope was a funny thing; it tended to build. From one person's confidence in him, Sam found the courage to go to his father's mercantile and purchase a box of white chalk before he took over the store from his brother Jephthah. The cluttered place always smelled faintly of dust and flour and sometimes pickles, but today the choke of Mrs. Hasham's perfume had driven out the rest.

But Sam paid her no mind as he fastened on the apron Jep handed to him. "What d'you need white chalk for?" his brother asked, laughing. "Have plans to take to pioneerin' and use father's old slate instead of paper?" Out of all of them, Jep favored father the most, with his square jaw and thick dark hair and eyebrows.

Sam shook his head and looked at the to-do list behind the register. No one else needed to know that he intended to swap out Miss Langley's chalk, but that didn't stop it from being a good kind of secret. He even kept his temper when Mrs. Hasham bustled up to the counter and demanded canary yellow yarn—it must exactly match a sample she had.

Sam took the box of yarn from behind the counter, plopped it down in front of her, and told her to find what suited her.

***

The next morning Sam was downright optimistic after having both a breakfast and a supper under his belt, as well as having slept in his own bed rather than a pile of straw. To top it all off his mother was even bewilderingly affectionate, and it wasn't until Sam was about to slip out the door on his way to school that she announced she was going to go visit Sam's widowed aunt for a week. She'd be catching the afternoon train and would be gone before Sam was out of school.

He shouldn't have been relieved by the news, but he was. Life seemed to run a lot smoother without her looking over his shoulder every minute. And maybe—if it was discovered that Sam was the one who had disposed of Miss Langley's yellow chalk in the creek—she would never hear of it.

So he departed for school with a lighter heart and swapped the chalk before anyone else darkened the schoolhouse doorstep. When Miss Langley and the other children arrived, his teacher seemed vaguely confused by the change but could not find the other box though she looked in the drawers of her desk, under the benches, and in the coat closet. Not even interrogating the class produced results, because Sam fixed a dully innocent look on his face and she passed right over him.

And for the first time since Sam could remember, he could see what was written on the chalkboard. It was amazing how much more sense English made when he could read the parts of speech written out on the board and didn't have to memorize them after hearing them once or fumble through his books until he found something that sounded familiar.

Sam left the schoolhouse feeling less like a dunce than usual, (except that he wondered why he hadn't resorted to subterfuge sooner), and he thanked Doctor Blecham for inspiring the idea as soon as he saw him. Blecham was glad to hear of it, and the two spent an interesting hour poring over the doctor's old medical textbooks. Sam was drawn into the fascinating realm of medicine almost against his will, but he left realizing that maybe the doctor was right after all. Maybe Sam was bound for more than counting change.

When he got to the store, Jephthah greeted him with a raised eyebrow. "Here comes the new doctor's apprentice, or so I'm told," he said. "Funny his family is the last to hear of it."

Sam's ears grew hot. "Who told you that?"

Jep shrugged, leaning against the counter. "Mrs. Hasham, who do you suppose? The woman is the chief gossip in these parts. She said you sold her bad yarn yesterday and wanted to complain about it, but I don't think she got her moan in just right because you weren't here. Anyway, she told me she saw you going to the doctor's two days in a row and wondered if you were dying. I said you weren't as far as I knew, and she decided you must be apprenticed."