Next came a streetscene that might have been the set for a low-budget Hollywood western: crude buildings of weathered wood, spaced haphazardly along the road and connected with wooden sidewalks. Yet, even in this ramshackle environment the hand of an artist was evident in the signs painted on barnwood. The first was a parody of small-town hospitality: WELCOME TO POTATO COVE . . . POPULATION 0. Similar signs nailed to the buildings identified the shops of Otto the Potter, Vance the Village Smith, and specialists in woodcraft, leather goods, hand-dipped candles, baskets, and the like. There was wit in some of the signs. The chair caner called his shop The Bottom Line.
Among the visitors who walked up and down the wooden sidewalks there were townspeople wearing Saturday casuals and doing a little shopping, as well as tourists in shorts and sandals, gawking and snapping pictures. Qwilleran followed a few who were walking briskly toward a shed behind Otto's pottery.
"What's going on?" he asked one of them.
"Kiln opening," was the hurried answer.
In the shed, lighted by sunshine streaming through holes in the rusted metal roof, twenty or more bystanders were watching eagerly as a soft-spoken man in a canvas apron removed pots from a large oven, holding them up one by one. "This is my new decorated platter," he said modestly. "And this is a weed holder with the new glaze I've been working on."
Responses shot out from the onlookers: "I'll take it... Let me see that one up close . . . Do you have three more like that plate? . . . Oh! That's a pretty one! . . . I'll take that, Otto."
The potter continued his commentary in a quiet monotone. "The ones closer to the fire may have some variation m color . . . This bowl's imperfect. It got a little too hot and started bloating. Like we say, the kiln giveth and the kiln taketh away. Here's one of my new pitchers with pine tree decoration."
"I'll take that!" said a man in the back row, and the pitcher was passed over the heads of the others. In a low voice he said to his companion, "I can sell it in my shop for three times the price."
Qwilleran noticed that men in designer shirts and gold jewelry and women in pastel pants suits and expensive cologne were grabbing four-dollar mugs and seven-dollar candleholders, handmade and signed by the potter. He himself found a mug with a handle that accommodated his fingers comfortably, and when he learned it was one-tenth the price of the cats' commode, he bought four. At last the kiln was emptied, and a groan of disappointment went up from the audience.
"Sorry I don't have more," the potter apologized. "I really tried to pack the kiln this time, using miniatures to fill up the corners."
As the purchasers stood in line to pay, voices filled the small shed with social hubbub—exulting over their finds, greeting friends, sharing local gossip. Qwilleran overheard two women saying:
"Did you hear about Tiptop? Some crazy fella with a big moustache and a lot of cats is renting it for $2,000 a week!"
"Is he a Canadian or Japanese or what?"
"Nobody knows. The Lessmores made the deal. He's supposed to be a writer."
"That could be a front for something else."
"Anyway, it doesn't sound good."
Qwilleran hustled away with his mugs wrapped in newspaper and stashed them in the trunk of his car before joining the parade up the wooden sidewalk. He stopped to watch a man making sandals and a woman caning chairseats. Then, hearing the ring of hammer on metal, he followed the sound to the smithy. Within a barn with doors flung wide there was a glowing forge, and red hot metal was being hammered on an anvil by a sinewy young man with full beard and pigtail. He wore a leather apron and a soiled tee with the sleeves cut out.
"Howya," he said when he saw Qwilleran watching intently. Picking up a rod with tongs, he thrust it into the glowing coals, checked it for redness, fired it again, and finally hammered it into shape. When the hot iron was plunged into a tub of water to cool, the sizzle added to the show of sights, sounds, and smells.
Qwilleran examined the hand-wrought objects for sale: hooks, tongs, pokers, spikes, and cowbells, but his eye was taken by an item in a shadowy corner of the barn. It was a wrought-iron candelabrum, seven feet tall and branched to hold eight candles. An iron vine twisted around the main stem and sprouted a few tendrils and leaves. "Is that for sale?" he asked.
The smith looked at it dubiously. "Guess so," he said.
"How much are you asking?"
"Jeez, I dunno. It was just somethin' I hadda prove I could do. Mosta the time I'm a mechanic down in the valley."
"It's a spectacular hunk of iron," Qwilleran said, thinking of it for his apple barn in Pickax. "Set a price and let me buy it."
"Uh . . . two hundred?" the blacksmith suggested hesitantly.
"Sold! If I pull my car up, will you help me load it? How much does it weigh?"
"Plenty, man!"
