The leather folder held seventeen recipes, and after the last one Amos told the whole household to flop the book shut and go eat. But the folder was never the whole of the man, and tucked flat against the back cover, held in by an old boot lace, was a sheaf of loose pages that didn’t hold a single recipe. They’re dated, one line apiece at the top, the way a man writes when he’s too tired for decoration. Diary pages. Amos kept no ledger and owed nobody an account of himself, so these little entries are about as close as he ever came to writing his own history down.
This one is dated Friday, January 15, 1904, and there’s a dark smear at the bottom of the page where a glove with fat on it wiped across the words.
Friday, January 15, 1904
Trappin weather held all week and the creek iced over clean, so I pulled the line this mornin and loaded the wagon with what the winter give me. Eleven coonskins, four possum, two muskrat, and one mink that near bit a hole in my thumb fore I thumped him. A man sets his traps all fall for a day like this, cause cash money dont grow in the yard and Grissom’s store runs on furs the way a mill runs on creek water.
Amos, in the margin, before he left for town: “a fur aint worth nothin till its dried and somebody else wants it worse than you do. and it dont wait on you neither. the creek keeps freezin with or without your traps.”
Grissom spread the whole load across his counter and squinted at it like it’d done him a personal wrong, then commenced to talk down the mink on account of a thin spot and the coons on account of their color. I let him run his mouth, cause talkin down another man’s furs is about the only sport a storekeeper gets in January. When he was done he pushed me three dollars and forty cents and a sack of coffee. I told him the coffee better weigh, cause I know a short scoop when I hear it hit the scale. He laughed and threw in a penny candy for old times, which is Grissom’s way of sayin he’s still makin out fine.
Amos, lower down, after the deal: “you dont never get full price off a man that knows you got to sell. you get enough to come back, and maybe that’s the honestest price there is.”
Bought a new axe handle out of it, cause the old one’s split enough to slap a man’s palm every swing, and the coffee’ll last till the roads dry. Martha asked was there any left after I come home smellin of store, and I told her there’s always just enough and never any more. The mule stepped lively the whole way back, which dont mean nothin good, but the harness held and we made it before the sleet set in. I’ll set the traps again when the thaw comes, and Grissom’ll be there with his scale and his penny candy, and between us the winter’ll get skinned one way or the other.
