Eden Hill Read Online Free PDF

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    “What . . . what is it?”
    “Somebody bought the lot across the street to put in a new service station!” He took off his khaki cap and slapped it on the table. “Welby says it’s nothing to worry about, but how can another service station be anything but bad for Osgood’s?”
    This caught her completely by surprise. She couldn’t recall any articles in Pageant or Photoplay about business competition, and had no idea how to respond to her husband, who was clearly concerned. “So, what will you do?”
    “Don’t know. I suppose we should clean the place up a bit.”
    “Maybe a new sign with your name on it would help.” She sighed and snatched up the cap, hanging it on the hook next to his jacket.
    “I don’t think so. People know who we are and where to find us. Besides, a sign caused all this trouble to begin with.”
    “Well, let’s not worry about it at lunch.” Mavine lifted the smoking patty from the pan and placed it on a bun with onions and pickles. “Meals ought to be calm and peaceful.”
    “I’ll try.” Virgil leaned over his plate and took a bite. He stopped chewing. “What,” he asked, “is in this hamburger?”
    “Oatmeal!” She brightened. “I found the recipe on the back of a cereal box.”
    Virgil lifted the top of the bun and stared at her creation. Without a word, he retrieved the mayonnaise jar from the refrigerator and slathered most of its contents onto his sandwich.

V IRGIL WANDERED down the hill after dinner, carefully picking his way along in the diminishing light. Not to work; this was a social visit   —and a haircut. Opening the door, he could hear laughter and conversation from inside.
    “A little longer on the top, Welby.” Grover Stacy laughed at his own joke, his balding pate sparkling under the flickering and dusty fluorescent bulbs.
    “I’ll try.” Welby chuckled through the whir of his clippers. “But I’ll have to take it from the bottom.”
    Virgil smiled, in spite of himself. He and the others in the makeshift barbershop had heard this conversation again and again. Every time the local grocer climbed into Welby’s chair, in fact. This was familiar and well-traveled ground.
    Only two vehicles in the gravel lot: Arlie’s truck and the telltale ancient red Farmall tractor that meant it was Sam Wright’s week for a trim. The retired crop duster and local eccentric had been stripped of his driver’s license a couple of years before, after driving his Oldsmobile into the front of Stacy’s Grocery. He failed the ordered vision test, as expected, and his driving privileges were revoked. Somewhere, though, Sam learned that a license was not required for agricultural vehicles, so he bought the used Farmall from Arlie.
    Virgil let his mechanic set up a barber chair in the storage room of his service station, since the men and boys of Eden Hill needed maintenance just as their cars and trucks did. Welby would trade his rumpled coveralls for a starched white coat, and exchange his box wrenches for electric clippers. He might cut hair the same way he cut engine gaskets, but the vehicles he repaired ran very well, and the menfolk of Eden Hill usually looked quite presentable. The little shop helped Welby with extra income and provided a place for the men to talk about the women, who would all get together at Gladys’s on Fridays and talk about the men.
    Virgil owed Welby this much and more. When his father, H. C. Osgood, had needed an assistant for his little machine shop, twenty-year-old Welby had joined the operation. When H. C. had spent eighteen months in the sanatorium with tuberculosis, Welby ran the business and made sure that the Osgood family had food on the table, even working part-time as a night watchman at a bank in Quincy. H. C. never forgot his kindness. Virgil hadn’t either.
    Welby and his wife, Alma, enjoyed being “uncle” and “aunt”to Vee. They had no children, nor any nearby nieces or nephews. Besides, they had all been