Moses Pennyweighter

Moses Pennyweighter was evil. No better word could be used to describe him, not at Christmas and not by those truly knowing the shriveled little man.

Most though who lived in Millageville, working themselves ragged in his factory to buy another month's stay in his houses, groceries at his supermarket, and everything else in their lives from his department store, did not know him, did not know him at all.

"Good Mr. Pennyweighter," the people of Millageville would say at the very mention of the sweet old man's name. And there would be a warming of hearts as every child in town dreamed of the toys at his department store and of how next Christmas their fathers might be able to put together enough money to buy a toy for them.

"Mark everything up fifty-one percent," Mr. Pennyweighter ordered when the first leaves of autumn began gathering on the ground each year, and Clarence Turnberry did just that. He ran the department store.

By the first day of October, the pale, sun dried tags dangling from handlebars of bicycles and baby dolls' hands were gone. Slick and shiny white ornamental labels and tags replaced them. Tags with Santa Claus or Christmas trees adorned everything. On these Clarence would write the newly calculated prices extra-large so they could not be mistaken by anyone. Then, when Halloween arrived, Clarence Turnberry would take out his markers again. Items selling well were marked up another fifty percent. Clarence always changed prices with down turned eyes avoiding the sad faces of customers as the things they so wanted became even further beyond their reach. Without a choice and having a large family, Clarence did his job.

"That'll give them something to be thankful for," Mr. Pennyweighter growled every year, cigar clenched in his teeth, looking over the store's ledgers and financial statements. This was always from behind the closed doors before Clarence Turnberry turned the giant brass key in the lock which kept everyone outside looking in. Eyes were always peering through the store's glass display window.

Pennyweighter's, the town's only department store, opened early for business and every day except Sunday. This made it possible for third shift workers to spend their wages on their way home after escaping from a night of work in the sweltering noise of the factory. Pennyweighter's Supermarket next door opened at seven o'clock sharp too and for the same reason.

"So nice to see you Mrs. Smith or Mr. Brown," Mr. Pennyweighter would say greeting Mrs. Smith or Mr. Brown or whomever happened first into the shadowy light of the old building. This daily ritual always took place before the old man left the department store each morning. Making his daily rounds first to the supermarket, then to the factory, by noon he would finally make it back to the department store. There he would eat a lunch of smoked herring, port wine cheese, and soda crackers. He kept boxes of soda crackers in his desk drawer.

"Good morning Mr. Pennyweighter," Mrs. Smith or Mr. Brown or whomever first happened into the store would reply shy and humble, even when the old man got their names confused, which he did quite often. In their second rate shoes shuffling across the floor and smelling of work, they never seemed bothered by being called whatever name came to the mind of good Mr. Pennyweighter.

Busy as he was, the addled old merchant always found time to pause for those patrons carrying little ones. Childless himself, he appeared to love little children.

"Our future customers, Turnberry," he would hiss a whisper into the outstretched ears of the man who listened in fear at the sinister glee Mr. Pennyweighter's voice carried.

Slaves are more to the tune of it, Clarence thought, but not too loudly.

Not long after he began working for the old man, Clarence asked Dolly, his wife, not to bring their children to the department store. Visits to the store only made his little ones want for things, things that he, like most who browsed its shelves, could never afford.

"He's such a nice old man," Dolly, eyes confused, said at his request. Clarence kept quiet seeing no need to tell his wife any different. Nor did he tell her how he dreaded the dawning of each day and the long walk to work before sunup and the long walk home after sunset. With a house full of hungry children to feed, like fledglings with upturned mouths waiting in their nest for his return, the mild mannered man kept all this to himself. His bottom lip rolled in, he said a prayer of thanks for his job, though the hours were long and his salary meager. Passing the factory each day he said a prayer of thanks too. It was a prayer of thanks for having escaped that dreadful place. His mother and father, like their parents before them, worked their lives away inside of the looming monster. It was a monster which belched smoke, filled with acrid smells, into the air every morning at exactly seven o'clock, even when running on short time, which it always did around the holiday season.

"If we cut their hours and make them hungry they won't be expecting a Christmas bonus," Mr. Pennyweighter explained to Elias Stonethrower, the factory's overseer. "Tell them things are slow and we don't have the orders and send them home early."

The old miser wanted only his workers hungry, not starving. So every October when the autumn skies grayed, filling themselves with the hint of winter, rumors of short time became a reality. Faces of those who toiled inside its giant shadow grew as long as the nights.

"It's a good thing Mr. Pennyweighter is so generous and lets us buy on credit," customers would say. Mr. Pennyweighter's goodwill helped many through the lean months of winter and made it possible for the tables of those who lived in Millageville to be set with a Cornish hen and some cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. In this, the families of the little town took as much delight as possible, only ever having enough holiday food to arouse festive appetites and never enough to lay them to rest.

Pennyweighter's Supermarket, famous for its Cornish hens, didn't stock turkeys and hadn't in years. It had been so long in fact a good many people of Millageville, especially those coming up, had begun calling the little hens, turkeys.

The hens purchased on discount made them easy for the old skinflint to sell on credit and still pocket a tidy profit. Pennyweighter, figuring all this out early on, turned the scrawny little birds into a tradition in Millageville.

Then there was the cranberry sauce. Cans and cans of it always overtook several narrow shelves of the drafty old supermarket by late October. Like everything else, Pennyweighter got it cheap too. And it never failed to be the only item selling quickly enough to not grow a coating of dust like everything else in the supermarket.

As the inventory grew older, it lost price stickers. For some reason, labels had a way of falling off things and onto the floor. Once on the floor, the dried bits of paper waited to be swept away by the young boy who pushed the broom up and down and between the long shadowy aisles.

Ernest Lieflinger, the grocer, promised someday to put all new price labels on every dusty can of this or sun faded box of that. He even told Mr. Pennyweighter this more than once. But he never got around to putting new price labels on anything. And no one minded, particularly not the sharp eyed old man who hurried by on his way to the factory each...