For a time she was able to divide the project into specific segments. Settle on a new name. (The Mountain Shop.) Collect and destroy the shabby old roadside signs. Design and have made and select locations for new signs. Alter the roadside appearance of the place from that look of dusty, withered defeat to a look of green and shade, of coolness and invitation. Extend that same face-lifting treatment to the rental units. Repaint, refurnish — and do it all as cheaply and tastefully as possible. Clear out all the tawdry, vulgar junk in stock and find good sources for smart and beautiful things, and arrange attractive display areas for them. Learn how to buy and how to price and how to sell, and how much inventory to maintain. And, on top of all this there was the unavoidable business of living, of clothes, cleaning, food, meals, children.
But the neat division of projects soon merged, and there was a blur of lists and things unfinished, and not enough hours in any day or any week.
In all this gray time of effort, the memorable moments — good and bad — stood out with a strange clarity.
There was the evening when she broke down the barrier between herself and the Gutierrez family, Joe, his plump wife Ampara, and their eighteen-year-old daughter, the dark, lovely Maria. From the beginning she had paid them more than the Persons had paid them, and had put Maria on the payroll too to help out in the shop. But the new total was still embarrassingly meager. Yet they seemed very wary of her. Joe and Ampara particularly, worked slowly, never looked directly at her, and often did assigned tasks carelessly.
One evening after the children were asleep, Maria was in the shop with her, helping her unpack a shipment of pottery which had arrived that day. They were both tired. A heavy pot slipped out of Maria’s hand and shattered on the glass top of a new display case, cracking the glass. Maria gave a wild cry of despair and fled into the night.
Laura put a sweater on and took her flashlight and walked back through her property to the Gutierrez shack on the other side of her back line. The lamplight inside shone through cracks in the outside walls. She heard a loud argument inside, conducted in Spanish. It stopped abruptly when she knocked on the plank door. Ampara let her in, and backed humbly away from her, nodding, smiling nervously, saying, “Bad girl. Clumsy girl.”
Maria sat up abruptly on a narrow cot, her, face marked with tears.
“Didn’ mean nothing bad,” Joe said, staring at the floor.
She realized they were terrified. It was the first time she had been inside the shack. She had not realized how tiny it was. A small charcoal fire glowed on an improvised structure of cinderblocks and sheet metal.
She smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way and said, “I just came to tell Maria she didn’t have to run away. I know it was an accident. And it was my fault. I knew she was tired. We were both tired. I should have stopped working...”
Suddenly she felt an unreasonable anger, directed at the smallness of the shack, the outside plumbing, the lack of electricity. She stamped her foot and said, “I won’t have you living like this! It’s not right! It’s not fair! We’ll have to get this place fixed up.”
They were all staring at her, their eyes wide and startled.
“But... I don’t know when we could start... you could move down to one of the cottages... until... until...” And suddenly there seemed to be too much to do, and it would never be done. The tears began to run down her face and she turned blindly toward the door. But Ampara caught her there and put her arms around her. Laura began to sob, and was furious at herself because she could not stop. Ampara took her over to the couch. Joe bustled about and gave her a cup a third full of fiery colorless tequila. They patted her and beamed at her and soothed her. By the time she had herself under control, they were friends. They talked a long time. Joe Gutierrez summed it all up when he looked sternly at her, thumped himself on the chest and said, “Now you got wan beeg family here, Señora, all work like mad.”
And they did, with skills and energies she had not known they possessed. And perhaps they spelled the difference between survival and failure.
Another vivid, and less pleasant memory, was the morning when the salesman of leather goods came back in answer to her complaint about what had been shipped her. He was husky, with a narrow face, a lantern jaw, and a soft coaxing voice.
“I ordered about half that stuff,” she said, “and the rest of it is junk I don’t want around. Nasty little stuffed alligators. Phony beadwork.”
“Why all the heat, sweetie? It’s a new line for you, and a consignment deal to try it out, so what’s it costing you?”
“I don’t want junk I didn’t order. Why was it sent?”
“I stuck it onto the order, sweetie. As a favor. I hate to see you go wrong, starting out like this. What you don’t know, the public loves junk. You put it out, it sells. Dirty postcards, carved coconuts, peekaboo key chains, they sell and they pay the rent.”
“Not here, friend.”
“Your big trouble, sweetie, you think you got Saks Fifth Avenue here maybe, way in the boondocks. It doesn’t work that way. You got to be realistic. You just can’t build a class trade.”
“I don’t want any other kind.”
“You’ll fall on your face. Give it a chance.”
“No thanks. Let’s go get that horrid junk out of the storeroom and you can check it off the packing list. The stuff I wanted is all right. I’ll keep that and see if I can move it.”
She led the way back into the main house toward the room she had converted into a storeroom. As they crossed the living room he touched her on the shoulder. “I got one more idea, sweetie.”
“Like what?”
“I want it to work out for you, so what I can do, I can check off that stuff so a bill will never come due, and leave it anyway, like a gift.”
“How can you do that?”
“It’s a little bit a loose inventory operation. So it would be like a present. Whatever you get is net.”
“Why would you do that?”
He smiled in a sly way. “I want this should get to be one of my favorite stops, sweetie.” He pounced at her, grabbed her, swung her around against the nearby wall and began bruising her mouth. For a few seconds she was stunned with surprise, and then she began to struggle. He was a powerful man. She yelled several times, but it seemed to amuse him more than alarm him. He was wrestling her toward the couch when Joe Gutierrez came in, catfooted, pruning shears in his hand. He came up behind the salesman and laid the cool steel of the blade against the side of the man’s throat. The salesman turned ashen. He stood rigid, his mouth making small fish-motions.
Laura backed away from him and said, “Thank you, Joe. Now you can help this man load all his merchandise back into his car.”
“It was just a little joke, Mrs. Barnes,” the salesman said weakly.
“I’ll laugh later. Get the merchandise.”
As they were getting ready to carry the merchandise out to the car, Laura suddenly realized she was making an un-businesslike decision. The things she had ordered were handsome. “On second thought, just take the junk. Leave the rest. But bill it to me at the cash discount rate instead of the consignment rate.”
He looked at her nervously. “You want to pay?”
“Oh, no! I just don’t want to take the trouble to discuss the whole thing with your sales manager.”
“I... I guess I can work that out. Sure, Mrs. Barnes.”
After he left, her knees felt weak and her hands trembled. An hour later she sold one of the handbags he would have taken away. She sold it to a honeymoon couple. It was a handsome saddle-leather bag, hand-stitched, priced at $32.50. It was as much satisfaction as when she gambled on the line of handmade jewelry from Santa Fe and, after it was in stock for a week, sold two amethyst and silver bracelets the same day, one for three hundred dollars, and one for a hundred and seventy-five. And a week after that she came close to tears when a fifty-dollar necklace from the same line was filched from a counter top when both she and Maria had their backs turned, busy with other customers.