The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch Read Free Book Online

that excited about having to move boxes of books we weren’t going to read again, but I talked him into it. Is that what you were calling about? Mom told you we did that?”
    Ah, family. You can count on them, no matter what.
    “That is so cool! Thanks, and tell Dennis thanks! But actually, do you remember all those schlocky—I mean, that science fiction and fantasy you used to read, the Star Trek novels and whatnot? Are they in the boxes?”
    “Those weren’t mine. I gave them back to the friend I borrowed them from, years ago. Why are you interested in—now what was it you used to call them, let me think—‘those schlocky near-porn not-worth-starting-fires-with wastes of paper and ink’?”
    “Okay, okay. I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things since then! We haven’t got much science fiction in our inventory, and there are two colleges near our store. You just know a bunch of students are gonna be sci-fi and fantasy readers.”
    “Try eBay.”
    “We did. They’re expensive there. It turns out that people don’t sell them at yard sales because they can get more on eBay. So I was hoping you had some, but thanks for the other books.”
    “If fantasy and science fiction are that popular, there must be tons of it around. Offer a better deal than eBay, and people will bring them to you instead.”
    I sighed. “It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing. We need them before we open, but we can’t get the swaps going until we actually have the store running.”
    “Why not? Ask people to bring their books now and give them credit against when you’re officially in business. Issue credit slips. It’ll reduce your cash later, but get you books now. And it sounds like you haven’t got any money to buy books now.”
    My sister has always had a way of cutting to the chase.
    “Good idea,” I said.
    “I know. See you at Thanksgiving. By the way, you might want to put this number in your address book.” She hung up.
    We quickly appropriated Tracy’s idea as our own (thanks, Big Sis!), but advertising a prestore swap program still took money. Or ingenuity, and we were short on both at this point. Enter Teri, town chiropractor and another friend from church. Hearing of our plan, she offered unlimited access to her office’s photocopier in exchange for book credit once we opened. If it hadn’t been for Teri, I really don’t know how we would have managed advertising at all.
    I designed a flyer with the oh-so-original header “Calling all bibliophiles: great swap deals!” and traipsed around the nearby towns, hunting down bulletin boards at the Laundromats, drugstores, clinics, and so on. I chatted up bank clerks and dropped in on hairdressers, armed with pushpins, tape, and a smile. By the end of the day, I knew some very important things: the bloke who used to run one of the county’s Laundromats got fed up and moved to Kentucky to become a starving artist; the new grandchild of the receptionist at a nearby ear, nose, and throat clinic didn’t look anything like his daddy; and the annual Christmas parade was a cliquey stitch-up you could get into only if you knew the right people. In a small town, talking for fun hasn’t yet gone out of style.
    Then we sat back and waited. Tracy had been right. About a dozen people showed up with stuff; what they pulled from the bowels of their (fortuitously dry) basements proved astonishing. Jack started a ledger recording each person’s precredit against opening day, and we spent evenings—lots and lots of evenings—shelving the loot.
    A clergyman turned in a puberty-length collection of bikini-clad outer space bimbo paperbacks. He didn’t want trade credit. “Just get rid of these painful reminders of high school for me,” he said. They sold for an astronomical amount within a month of our opening. I called him back, but he reiterated they were a gift to get us started, so long as his name never got linked to them. He’s dead now, God rest his adolescent