Boomtown by Nowen N. Particular Read Free Book Online Page A

none,” the mailman grinned. “He’s been cuttin’ my hair for years. I still got both my ears and my nose. You just got to keep your mouth shut while you’re in the chair.”
    Ed continued. “As I was saying, Walt was a whiz when it came to cutting down trees. You see other men wrestling with one of them two-handed saws, but not old Walt. He’d pick up an ax about as big as your head and chop down a tree with a single swipe! I seen him do it! Trees falling one after another like dominoes. I seen him clear an entire hillside in a single afternoon.
    â€œBut then we started running out of trees on account of the fact that he’d already cut most of them down. That’s when Walt got himself a job working at the mill. He’d strip the bark off the logs with his bare teeth, then wrap his big old arms around the logs and put them into the saw all by himself. After the wood was cut, he’d stack up the boards and haul them out to the yard for sorting, ’bout forty boards at a time. Didn’t even break a sweat.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œSure thing. But when the logs started to run out, the mill shut down and Walt was out of a job. That’s when he decided to open up the butcher shop.”
    The other fellow piped in. “You forgot about the bear.”
    â€œI didn’t forget about the bear. I was about to say some-thing about the bear until you stuck your big fat nose in.
    Who’s telling this story, anyway?”
    â€œYou are. Just not very well.”
    The mailman shook his head and continued. “After he lost his job, Walt went way up into the hills to try and figure out what to do next, when all of a sudden a bear as big as a house fell down out of a tree right in front of him. Walt looked at the bear. The bear looked at Walt. They were the same size and had almost the same amount of hair. They circled each other—round and round—until all of a sudden the bear charged old Walt, and they got each other in a bear hug! Can you imagine?”
    â€œWhat happened?” Jonny asked, perched on the edge of his seat.
    â€œIt was pretty much an even match, that bear and Walt being similar in size and strength and generally of the same peevish disposition. They wrestled day and night until finally that old bear up and died from sheer disappointment. Soon as it was dead, Walt took his hunting knife and had the bear-skin off in five minutes flat! Chopped him up and had enough bear steaks to feed half of Boomtown. He figured it was a sign from heaven, so the next day he opened up a butcher shop right here in this very spot.”
    The mailman leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, proud of the effect his story was having on Jonny.
    Jonny’s brow furrowed with a next question. “So when the trees started running out, Walt worked in the mill. And when the logs ran out, he opened the butcher shop. I get all of that. But where did the barbershop come from?”
    Ed smiled. “You are quite the clever boy—you noticed, huh? Let me tell you what happened next. After Walt had his butcher shop for a while, a new supermarket opened over in Stickville. Up until then we got all our groceries here in town, including our meat from Walt’s Butcher Shop. But when they put up the supermarket only ten miles away, some of the folks here in Boomtown started shopping over there. It wasn’t a problem at first, but after a while, enough folks stopped coming into Walt’s. That didn’t make him a bit happy, no sir.
    â€œAfter losing two careers already, Walt was madder’n that old bear. He ran the whole ten miles over to Stickville and busted into the supermarket. He was still wearing his red-stained apron and he had two butcher knives—one in each hand. He charged up and down the aisles until he found the owner of the store and cornered him back by the milk and eggs. By the time Walt got done yellin’, all the hair on