Since I’d clearly spent enough time that day making tourists uncomfortable, I opened the store’s front door. Once inside, I stopped and did what I always did when walking into Benton’s: just stood there and breathed deep with my eyes closed.
Instantly I was transported back in time, back to the days of stores with wood floors and tin ceilings, when penny candy was sold from glass jars and herbs could be purchased in bunches that hung from a rack.
I opened my eyes and there it all was, from tin ceiling to wood floor, to candy in a jar and hanging herbs. The penny candy cost more than a penny and the herbs were for decoration only, but still.
A few customers milled about in the housewares section, exclaiming over the glass butter dishes and wire fly swatters, just like grandma’s. A young man about twenty years old was standing behind the wooden counter, bagging up a small collection of toys and candy for a girl half his age. “There you go, miss,” he said, pushing the paper bag toward her outstretched hands. “Would you like help carrying that to your car?”
She giggled. “No, thank you. Bye, Brian. See you next week!” She ran past me, flew out the door, tossed her purchases into the front basket of her bicycle, and was pedaling off in seconds.
“Next week?” I asked, coming up to the counter. “She’s a regular?”
“She’s in here once a week through mid-August,” he said, nodding. “Her family spends the summer up here, and this is allowance day.”
“Which is now all gone?”
He glanced at the cash register. “She has thirty-two cents left.”
“Maybe Cookie Tom will give her a cookie for that much,” I suggested.
“When I did the same thing when I was her age, he’d give me two.” We laughed, and he asked, “What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for Rianne Howe. Does she have a minute?” I gave him my name.
“Hang on.” He picked up the phone, asked my name, and punched a few sleek buttons. The anachronism of a twenty-first-century telephone in a late-1800s general store bothered me a little, so I averted my eyes and studied the massive brass cash register instead.
“She said come on back.” Brian clunked down the phone and nodded to the rear of the store. “See that curtain? Through there. There’s a door on the right—that’s her office.”
I thanked him and made my way past the shelves of office supplies, then past the T-shirts, work boots, and overalls. I glanced at the far side of the store toward the colorful selection of fabric and kitchen supplies and strong-mindedly marched past the books. I pushed my way through the navy blue burlap curtain panels Brian had indicated and knocked on Rianne’s office door.
“Come on in,” she called.
“Hi,” I said, and stopped short. I’d assumed her office to be one of two things: full of the castoffs from a store that had been in existence for more than a hundred years, or city sleek and modernistic. “Wow. This is . . .”
Rianne grinned. She was probably in her early forties, and her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes attractively. “What do you think?” she asked, pushing her reddish brown hair back behind her ears. “I love hearing people’s first impressions.”
“It’s amazing,” I said, soaking it all in. “And I mean that in the best possible way.”
There were wide windows and wood-paneled walls and a high ceiling made of wood. There were built-in cabinets that looked like they’d been designed by a master, and brass light fixtures that harked back to the days of kerosene lamps. There was a wood floor and scattered area rugs and framed diagrams of Janay Lake and Lake Michigan.
But, above all, there was a massive wood ship’s wheel attached to the front of Rianne’s desk. My hands itched to take hold of one of the spoke handles and give it a spin, but since I was working on being a fully functioning adult, I kept my hands at my sides.
“Did you do this?” I asked.
She shook her head. “The only addition of mine is a dent in the desk when I was five, from riding my tricycle too fast. It was the last Benton to own the store, my great-grandfather, who did all this.”
“By himself?”
“Pretty much, or so the family story goes. He’d wanted to go to sea, but as the only male Benton, he was obligated to take over the store. Back then they ran tabs for people and would sometimes trade. One of their customers paid for a full year of groceries with maple planks cut from trees he’d felled on his land. Great-grandpa sold some, but used the bulk of it for this.” She smiled. “Or so the story goes.”
“You don’t believe the story?”
“In my family, the stories get better with every generation, so it’s hard to know the truth.” She tapped the desk. “Take this, for instance. I grew up hearing it had been given to Great-grandpa by President Roosevelt for saving his life during some hunt.”
“Not true?” I asked.
“When I took over the store, I crawled underneath the desk during a cleaning frenzy and found the manufacturer’s label. Made in 1923.”
“Didn’t Roosevelt die just after World War I?”
“In 1919.”
“Hmm.” I studied the desk. “Who made it? Maybe there was some association with the name.”
“The desk?” She looked at it, too. “Something to do with kitchens. Something Furniture. Pot, pan . . .” She snapped her fingers. “Kettle. Kettle Furniture.”
A report I’d written in sixth grade bounced out of my brain. “Kettle Hill,” I said. “The Spanish-American War. Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill were where the big battles took place.”
She considered the possibility for half a second, then shook her head. “Don’t see it. Thanks for trying, though. By the way, I’m Rianne Howe,” she said, standing up and holding out her hand. “You’re Minnie Hamilton, and I’m not sure why we haven’t met before today.” After we shook, she waved me to a chair. “I love libraries, and I think your bookmobile is the best thing that has happened to this town since Cookie Tom opened up.”
I beamed. “We welcome volunteers on the bookmobile. Julia and Eddie and I love to have new folks along.”
“Sounds like adding one more might make it a little crowded.”
“Well, one of us is a cat. He doesn’t take up too much room.” I thought about what I’d said, then added, “Most of the time, anyway.”
Rianne laughed. “So, what can I do for you? I’d love to make a donation to the library, but I’m still trying to figure out how to make sure this store actually turns a profit.”
“You haven’t been running the store very long?” I asked.
“Technically I took over when Grandpa Cal retired six years ago. I was downstate then, managing some big-box retail stores. No one else wanted to run this place, and I couldn’t stand to see it go out of the family, so I said I’d do it.” She looked around the office, smiling. “But we wanted our youngest to graduate from high school first, so I hired a manager. Then when Brian graduated last June, we started making plans to move up. My husband’s an RN. He got a job with Lake View Medical Care Facility, and here we are.”
It wasn’t an unusual story, but there was one part of it I was curious about. “It seems odd that with seven children and who knows how many grandchildren, you were the only DeKeyser who wanted the store.”
“That’s because you don’t know how much work it is. My grandparents were wonderful people, but one of their strongest beliefs was that a strong work ethic made for strong character.”
“Sounds like my mother,” I murmured.
“Each and every DeKeyser relative,” Rianne said, “worked in this store when they were kids. After school, on weekends, through the summer. Probably half the kids in town worked here, too, but it was the DeKeyser kids who had to work harder and better.” She gave a wry smile. “No nepotism in my family. Raises? Not a chance. Holidays off? Not for a DeKeyser. It was our store, and we have to live up to its reputation.”