Country Store
by Sara McAulay
Port Republic. Maryland, ca. 1950
I always greet the chickens first, thank them for their eggs (I don’t say meat), then pet the horse’s nose. My brother gathers bread and milk, a dozen of those just-laid eggs. Out by the car, our father smokes a Lucky Strike, winks, and blows a smoke ring when he sees me frown (don’t tell your mom!). Mrs. Jones, who owns the store, sits with our mother on warped unpainted steps. They sip cold soda, bemoan the speed with which their children grow: just yesterday so tiny…
This is how we always start our summer on the Bay. Ned sets the sweating milk jug on the counter, runs a thoughtful finger up the bulging belly of the Peppermint Pillow jar and grins, as if his choice of treat will come as a surprise. It never has. We love the Pillows—a single one fills our mouths with last-forever promise, crumbling to syrup on our tongues. A waste, Ned always says. I always nod. We both know we’re both lying—our stop here scripted and unchanging every summer of my life.
This time his smile feels different. I see him see himself compared to me—so tall, so almost-grown, newly crewcut hair—so almost not a high-school boy. This fall he’ll be a college man. He’ll have a job next summer. But meanwhile at the single pump our father fuels the old Ford as he always has, his yellow shirt a candle flickering, sun splintering through kudzu and pine branches. He isn’t thin. No sign yet of white blood cells run wild. The cracked dial of the gas pump gauge ticks cents to dollars, cents to dollars, cents into dollars again,
and the Bay’s salt presence floats toward me on the late-June wind, incoming waves too far away to hear. I don’t need to hear them to know their voice is there. It always is, like my own heartbeat, like the quick whisk-whisk as Ned unscrews the lid of the seductress Pillow jar and scoops two fat fragrant candies, chalky red and white, hands one to me and does not need to say: This time next year you’ll have to choose your own.
Sara McAulay is a California based writer who spends as much time as she can hiking in the coast range with her dog. In her long life she has been a horse trainer, a riding instructor, a university professor and an editor. She is the author of three novels and received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for fiction. Recently she has turned to poetry and flash, with work appearing in The Atlanta Review, Hole in the Head Review, The MacGuffin, quartet, Sky Island Journal, Synkroniciti and elsewhere, and nominated for Best of the Net. A chapbook, Ask River, was published by Finishing Line Press in April, 2026. She is online at @swmcaulay and www.saramcaulaywriter.com.