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

soul.
    Barbara, a book enthusiast who already made a hobby of trading and selling on the Net, brought her stash of mostly Christian fiction, and we hit instant rapport. She offered to take a list of titles and genres we wanted and scour yard sales on our behalf, a task I was only too grateful to hand over to her. Glenn, the happy-go-lucky white-haired actor in local stage productions, appeared with true crime, seeking classics. Mr. Pettry, who was to become one of our regulars, hauled in about two hundred hardback thrillers, all in excellent condition, and proffered a list of others his wife Sylvia wanted.
    Garth, town council member, donated how-to tomes on electricity, deck-building, and other manly pursuits. Like the pastor, he had an alternate agenda: “to see the floor of my garage again, just once, before I die.” In fact, most people bringing books were donors rather than swappers; they were cleaning house, or just chuffed that a bookstore had come to town and wanted to help it along. Few of that initial ragtag bag team took swap credit.
    At the same time, Jack and I got one of our first lessons in how quickly a used book store can become a junk shop. We didn’t want to say no to any of these nice people, but what could be done with a six-year collection of National Geographic magazines, a selection of 1970s economic textbooks, and yet more Reader’s Digest Condensed Books? We stuck them on the shelves and smiled, perhaps suspecting even then what the future held: furtive midnight runs to Dumpsters about town, tossing in stacks of magazines and old textbooks, and scouring the Internet for patterns to make handbags, birdhouses, planters, and shelf brackets from old books. (Although I no longer had a yarn budget, I would have plenty of other crafts to mess about with.)
    Actually, that’s hindsight talking; at the time we were so relieved that people brought us stuff, refusing anything never really entered our minds. We put every title on the shelf, no matter how old or uninviting. Everybody loved books! Everybody loved all books, all the time! National Geographic magazines were beautiful!
    We didn’t have a clue.
    People also came with useful genres, including the science fiction and Westerns we lacked. They got generous swap deals written into the big blue ledger, and left happy—to tell others about us. Word of mouth began to circulate, the best advertising one could ask for.
    Many “rural suburbanites” are tucked into the snug hills and hollers that cradle Appalachia’s Coalfields; often growing tobacco on their family farm for extra cash, at least one adult commutes to a job in town. Since they didn’t live nearby as Dave and company did, this group took a little longer to find us, but as word rippled outward, they also brought in books.
    Jack met Larry and Larry’s wife, Teddy—he a gentleman farmer, she retired from an illustrious career in Washington, D.C.—when they drove in from their farm one day “to see what all the fuss is about.” Jack and Larry struck up an instant and comfortable friendship, and it was Larry who gave us an early understanding of how Big Stone might be different from other small towns in which we’d lived.
    While the Gap held the usual collection of doctors, lawyers, and educators, high-powered professionals wielded less real power locally than Old Families. As Larry explained it, “It’s not unlike medieval history; sure, it’s great to be king, but the Old Families put you on the throne, and they can take you off again. So don’t get uppity, because you never know who’s friends with an Old Family.”
    Uppity, we didn’t plan on; busy would be enough, if our idea—okay, my sister’s idea—worked. And it did. Soon enough, our shop held bags, boxes, milk cartons, and plastic tubs full of stock, glorious stock. With each ragged, tatty plastic sack piled into a corner for sorting, Jack stood straighter. I leaned over boxes and sniffed that heady smell of books: