Algoma by Dani Couture Read Free Book Online Page B

trove of assorted accessories. A long, braided, gold metallic belt with an oversized black patent leather buckle, a silver cross pendant with a large rhinestone in the middle of it, a neon blue umbrella with bright yellow plastic handle in the shape of a duck’s head, and a white balaclava with a small cigarette burn below the left eye. A crisp black hole with a dirty yellow halo.
    The balaclava was the kind the snowmobile drivers around Le Pin used to wear as soon as there was enough snow to ride; however, since most drivers had switched to Neoprene masks, The Shop’s collection of acrylic balaclavas grew unchecked like mice. The store’s owner, Josie, was sure this was going to be a banner year for snow and The Shop would “clean up” in the balaclava department. “Everyone needs a spare. Neoprene rips.”
    “Hoarder,” Algoma said.
    “Hoarder who owns the store you work for,” Josie replied.
    Algoma had worked at The Shop, a second-hand store in the middle of town, for almost a decade. It was time enough to see some of the same items make second and third rounds on the floor. She sorted the incoming clothes during the week and sometimes tended the till on weekends when Josie took some needed time off. The pay was modest, but it was enough to furnish Algoma’s refrigerator with food and her family with clothes.
    While The Shop was the most popular of all the second-hand stores in town, there were a dozen others like it. Each store owner was a curator, how they saw the town and the people in it evident in what they offered for sale and for how much. The store was a time capsule that was opened every time someone walked through the front door, nothing stayed buried for long. Looking for what treasures countless others had missed, shoppers rooted elbow-deep through the sale racks and bins. An Italian silk scarf in a sea of rayon eels.
    New clothing and furniture could be had at the town’s only mall—a one-level affair with bad lighting and even worse food. However, while the second-hand stores thrived, the shops in the mall opened and closed in the same season. If someone really needed something that wasn’t available in town—the latest video game or a new wedding dress—she could take a trip south to Quebec City or Montreal. Each city was roughly a three-hour drive away in good weather, four or five when the weather turned bad. For the most part, the town was a closed community, a throwback with its customs and rituals clearly defined. Few people left, and even fewer moved in.
    While Le Pin was not a rich town, the people were proud. Each lawn was perfectly manicured, every sagging porch coated in fresh paint, and most people were content to live out their lives dressed in someone else’s clothes—as long as those clothes were clean, pressed, and sold for a good price. Even Josie, a Manitoba transplant, had adopted the local custom and dressed in clothes she took from work. When she was done with a particular item, it went back into The Shop’s rotation.
    Josie lived by barter. She traded in the things people left at the curb in the morning for whatever she needed to flesh out her own comforts.
    “Just doing my part,” she told people.
    A tall, sinewy woman in her late thirties with cropped brown hair and regrettable blue butterfly tattoos on each of her toned calves, Josie was perfectly built to harvest the outdated tables and bags of clothing others pitched. She also had the gift of being able to sweet talk people into giving her what she needed without making it seem like she was asking for anything at all. On a good day, her truck bed looked like a fully furnished living room.
    Josie knew the intimate needs of everyone within her complex barter network: the butcher who always needed baby furniture for his constantly procreating daughters, the hairdresser who adored anything amber or suede, the unmarried plumber who collected end tables the way most people collected knick-knacks or spoons. Even her