The Gravesavers by Sheree Fitch Page B

bones and rushed past the truck. I flew through the door, ringing the little bells overhead loud as church bells on a Sunday morning.

— THE CLOUDS AGAIN —
    Harv’s store is a cross between an old-time general store, a hardware store and a convenience store. He sells fishing tackle, hunting gear, gardening equipment and cooking supplies. Pots and pans hang from the ceiling, and Mason jars for pickles and jams are stacked willy-nilly in the corner. Miniature plastic lighthouses, lobster salt and pepper shakers,
Bluenose
key chains and other Nova Scotia souvenirs are displayed next to a counter where he sells fresh fish. A few years back Harv put in new stand-up freezers and now there is all sorts of frozen stuff too, like Sara Lee cakes and TV dinners and even packaged fish and chips.
    “For crying out loud, frozen fish in a fishing village, Harv, who’s ever going to buy that?” my grandmother asked him at the time.
    “Fishermen,” Harv replied. “You’d be surprised, Ida, what a treat it can be.”
    He also rents videos and video games. Thenthere’s the books! His is the only bookstore in the county. He has everything from the latest potboilers to the classics and Oprah’s book club picks.
    “Well, whoever heard of this—a fish store and bookstore all in one?” I heard a tourist say last year. “Just wait till I write home about this.”
    “La-di-da!” snapped my grandmother, loud enough for them to hear. “Uppity CFA’s. Nothing better to amuse themselves with than going on about how quaint we all are.”
    CFA’s stands for Come From Aways. Nana has no time for them. A friendly woman once told her how hospitable everyone was in Boulder Basin. My grandmother smiled and said, “Well that’s because we know you’re not staying.” I’ve heard my mother tell that story many times. If Nana thought for a minute anyone was poking fun at the ways of Boulder Basin folks, she’d go on a rant about “those foolish tourists who pay an arm and a leg for stinky lobster traps and strap ’em to the roof of their cars and take them home for coffee tables and planters. Now that’s what I call quaint, eh?”
    Once she wagged her finger at my nose and said, “Hope you never forget where you come from and go getting too big for your bootstraps, Minn. Just because you live in the city doesn’t make you any better than the rest of us.”
    There she was, one more time, accusing me of something and I’d never even said a word.
    As usual, Marie was doing cash. There was no sign of Harv, so I poked around in the book section. He has used books, too. My favourites. Sometimes when I opened one, the pages were so brittle, I was afraid they would crack. They were a tea-stained colour and smelled like attics and rain. Old books have such a mystery about them. I always wondered who belonged to them once. Like who turned the pages before me, drinking in all the words I was reading? I loved to read the notes people sometimes scribbled in the margins.
    A blue book on the bottom shelf caught my eye:
The Collected Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
I reached for it as someone else did. I jumped. Not before I’d snatched the book myself.
    “You like poetry?” His voice was hoarse. I turned and looked into his eyes. Those eyes.
    I ignored him. I might have said, I don’t! I like, um … mystery and adventure. Novels. With endings. Poetry? It sort of leaves you hanging like you’re on the edge of a cliff or something and I don’t always get it. But I couldn’t speak.
    “You following me or something?” he said.
    I rolled my eyes and looked down at the book, turned pages like a speed reader.
    “Stop! Here’s my favourite,” he said. He leaned over me. He smelled like fresh salt air. He pointed to the title.
    “‘The Cloud,’” I read. Shivers up and down my neck!
    His hand brushed mine. I darn near fainted.
    “Min
-u-et?”
    He was way more handsome than Gavin.
    “Nuh-uh,” I squeaked.
    At the till, Marie was