Merriton

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be a commercial,” Dora meekly responded to Elvis’ presentation. She had agreed to help him with his PowerPoint slides, but he had basically shown her a commercial for Lancaster Woolen Mills. Vesta looked up from her knitting, frowning, but Elvis responded to her assessment.

“I gotta a truckload of hippies comin’ in from San Francisco. No, they aren’t just hippies. They’re RICH hippies. If I can make just one of ‘em aware that we’re one of the only remaining ORGANIC wool farms and manufacturers in the United States, then I’ve done my work. Those guys are always talkin’ ’bout buying local. Well, Lancaster is a helluva lot closer than Austrailia.”

Dora sighed and cracked her knuckles while looking at the screen of Elvis’ laptop. The few slides he had created were unprofessional and looked no better than what her high school students prepared on a regular basis. She went to the file options and chose, “Save As…” She was going to have to start all over.

“You only have five minutes and and twenty slides. They are going to advance every fifteen seconds, whether you’re done with them or not.” Dora looked at her watch. “What you just showed me was fifteen minutes and you spent two minutes on Teflon alone.

Elvis interrupted her, “I’m not givin’ Dupont any more of my money! Monsanto and Dupont can just kiss my butt!” He stood up and paced around the kitchen. Dora stopped editing his slides. “If you can’t be civil, I’ll leave you to this yourself and you can look like a fool to those rich hippies. Is that what you want?” She used her school teacher voice and to her surprise, he sat back down like a chastised child. Vesta hid a smile behind her yarn.

“So…” Dora tried to start again, “Since you are so angry at Dupont, it’s probably best not to waste two minutes talking about washable wool and how it isn’t as beneficial as natural.” She deleted the Telfon slides. That still left far too many slides. “Your goal is to have these rich hippies buy Lancaster wool for their felting projects, right? Or are you trying to sell them the mill and farm?”

The room was eerily quiet and Dora suddenly felt an uncomfortable awkwardness. It was Vesta who spoke, “He wants to sell the yarn, not the mill.” Elvis’ hands were flat on the table and Dora watched him. He looked at his hands, wrinkled with age and hardened with work. When he finally spoke, Dora was shocked at his words, “You and Roscoe don’t have no kids.”

He paused and waited for her response. All the answers that she usually gave to that question sounded flippant and disrespectful. She quietly gave him her stock answer, “I have 140 kids every school year, and all of them artists.” She looked at Elvis’ slides and marveled at how something as simple as PowerPoint could cause a conversation to turn so personal.

The room was so quiet that the sound of Vesta’s knitting needles filled it with clicking. Dora could swear that she even heard the yarn being pulled from the skein. When Elvis finally spoke, it was a blessing. “Me and Vesta, we had four kids and none of ‘em want the mill or the farm. Maybe I was thinkin’ that they’d wanna buy ‘em.” He sniffed rubbed one of his eyes roughly with the heel of his hand. “Knowin’ me, I’d just drive ‘em crazy tryin’ to run everything. Might as well keep on until I’m dead and let the kids decide how to sell it off when I’m gone.”

Dora had never seen this side of Elvis. It was common knowledge that the Lancaster kids left Merriton the second they could, but the townsfolk never saw this tender side of the old cowboy. She tried to brush it aside lightly. “So, your goal is to sell YARN to the rich hippies. Let’s focus on that.”