Ennis Greenlea and the Things Folks Forgot
By the time Ennis Greenlea reached the edge of Butterfield, he had three things in his wagon that nobody had paid him to haul.
A wool shawl.
An empty pie plate.
And a small boy’s left boot.
The boot concerned him somewhat.
He could account for the other two.
Ennis earned his living hauling goods around Honey Hill Country with his wagon and two mules, Buck and Jenny. Feed sacks, flour barrels, fence wire, somebody’s new stove — whatever needed taking somewhere generally stood a fair chance of getting there with Ennis.
Along the way, other things accumulated.
“People leave things,” he had explained another time.
Buck had offered no opinion.
Jenny had reached for a low branch.
Neither mule appeared troubled by the additional responsibilities.
The shawl belonged to Ellen Wickheiser, who had accepted a ride into Butterfield that morning.
She had climbed down beside the shops, thanked Ennis, and gone about her errands. The shawl remained folded on the seat. A hand-knitted wool shawl in the colors of an Autumn hillside.
It had been a warm afternoon but would be a different proposition by sundown, and Ennis figured
Ennis tucked it beneath the seat where it would stay clean.
The pie plate belonged to Myra Cookson of Myra’s Pie Pantry & Goodies Shoppe.
Someone had handed it to him outside the store.
“If you happen to be going by Myra’s.”
Ennis had been going in the opposite direction.
He had taken it anyway.
The boot was another matter.
He discovered it behind a sack of feed while checking his load.
Small. Brown. Considerably acquainted with mud.
He held it up.
“Well,” he said.
Buck stood patiently.
Jenny flicked an ear.
“Somebody’s going to notice this.”
Autumn had been making deliveries of its own.
Leaves collected along the road edges. A patch of sumac had turned red beyond a fence, and pumpkins occupied porch steps where flowerpots had stood a few weeks earlier.
Ennis liked this time of year.
A man could travel the same road twice and find that a tree had changed its mind between trips.
He took the shawl home first.
Its owner opened her door, saw what he held, and put a hand to her shoulder.
“Thought you might want this before evening, Ellen,” Ennis announced.
“I wondered where I had left that,” she said, relieved, as she reached up to take it back from Ennis.
She drew the familiar brown wool around her shoulders, its bands of burnt orange, moss green, and deep gold softened by years of wear.
“Made this myself,” she said, smoothing an edge. “You would think I could remember to bring it home, wouldn’t you?”
“Reckon you remembered the knitting. That was the harder part,” Ennis reassured. “Kept your place on the seat awhile.”
“I suppose you came all this way just for me.”
“Buck wanted to see the neighborhood,” he responded. “Just happened to be passing by.”
She laughed and invited him in for a cup of tea.
“Best keep moving. Got a boot to account for,” he concluded.
“A what?”
“Left one. Small. Brown.”
I think I have an idea who is missing it,” he added.
She considered this.
“Then I expect you had better be going then,” she accepted. “A bare foot can catch cold on these chillier nights now. Thanks again, Ennis!”
At Myra’s, the pie plate received a warmer welcome than Ennis thought an empty dish ordinarily warranted.
“There it is,” Myra said. “I’ve been wondering where that pie plate went off to,” as she cam out from behind the counter.
“Been traveling,” Ennis responded.
“Did Mrs. Bell send it?”
“Came by way of a fellow outside the store.”
Myra nodded as though this clarified everything.
In Honey Hill Country, a pie plate sometimes required several people to get home.
“Was there a message?” she asked.
Ennis thought back for a moment.
There had been flour to unload, a wagon to move, and somebody asking whether he could carry two chairs on Friday.
Then he remembered.
“He said the crust was the best part.”
Myra’s face brightened.
“Well, now,” she said, a little pink rising in her cheeks. She smoothed her apron. “That was my mother’s crust.”
She turned toward back towards the counter.
Ennis waited.
A moment later, she handed him a small paper parcel.
“For your trouble,” she said gratefully.
Outside, he opened it when far enough away to investigate.
Two cookies.
He looked at the mules.
“Pie plate business is improving,” he observed.
Buck turned his head and regarded the parcel with interest.
Ennis folded the paper back over the cookies.
“No, sir, Buck. These are mine today. You get paid in oats.”
The boot found its owner near a gate farther along the road.
Or, more accurately, its owner’s mother found the boot.
Clara Sutton came to the gate, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Ennis Greenlea! Where did you get that?”
“Found it in the wagon.”
“So that is where it finally ended up!” Clara exclaimed.
Her young son, Ben, appeared behind her.
He wore one boot. The other foot was in a stocking.
Ennis regarded him thoughtfully.
“Been somewhere, Ben?”
The boy nodded.
“Come back with everything?” Ennis inquired.
The boy looked at the boot and then his socking foot.
“Mostly,” he admitted sheepishly.
His mother closed her eyes briefly, shaking her head.
“This boy,” she muttered under her breath. And paused.
“This boy,” she began again. “He said that he was showing his cousin how he could stand on one foot in your wagon while you were unloading.”
“That explains part of it,” Ennis said.
“I took it off so I could wiggle my toes,” little Ben explained. “But then forgot where I had left it.”
“That explains the rest,” Ennis concluded.
Ennis handed the shoe down to Ben.
The boy accepted it with both hands.
“Thank you,” he offered.
“Put it somewhere you’ll remember this time,” Ennis offered.
His mother pointed toward the dirty stocking foot.
“I have a suggestion,” she directed.
By late afternoon, the wagon was lighter.
Ennis had finished his paid deliveries, returned two belongings, and helped reunite a boy with the remainder of his footwear.
He still had Myra’s cookies tucked beside him on the seat. He had been saving them for when he could sit awhile.
At a familiar turning, he gathered the reins.
Then he paused.
Walter Pritchard, an older fellow farther down the other road, had asked him several days before whether he might stop by sometime.
Nothing needed hauling. Nothing needed fixing, so far as Ennis knew.
“Just stop by when you get a chance,” Walter had extended.
Ennis had said he would. He had meant it, too.
But there had been another load, another errand, and a day when rain threatened before he got the flour delivered.
He looked down the road. Smoke rose from the fellow’s chimney.
Ennis turned the wagon.
The man came onto his porch as the wheels slowed.
“Got a delivery?” Walter inquired.
“No,” Ennis said. “Remembered you asked me to stop.”
Walter Pritchard stood a little straighter.
“Well, come on up on the porch,” he invited.
There were two chairs on the porch.
Ennis took the empty one.
Ennis unfolded the little paper parcel from Myra Cookson and held it toward Walter.
“Myra Cookson sent these along with me. Help yourself. ”
Walter took a cookie.
“What is the occasion?” he asked.
“Returned a pie plate,” Ennis replied.
Walter examined the cookie.
“Might have to look around for lost pie plate myself,” he replied with a smile.
For a while, they discussed the weather, the road, and a fence that had been leaning for so long it was beginning to seem meant to stay that way.
Then Walter told him something Ennis had never heard before.
It took some telling. Quite a while. And Ennis let it.
Buck and Jenny waited patiently beneath a tree. They had waited through considerably less useful conversations, they thought.
Ennis reached home later than he had intended.
That happened now and then. There were things a man could write down before leaving in the morning, and things he discovered only by going thru the day.
A shawl on a wagon seat.
A message that pleased a baker.
A boy who had come home a little short of fully dressed.
An invitation he was glad he had remembered.
He unhitched Buck and Jenny, removed their harnesses, and brushed away the day’s dust, taking his time around the places where the collars rested. Then he checked their hooves and saw to their water and supper.
“Fair day’s work,” he told them.
Jenny lowered her head to eat. Buck did the same.
Ennis understood.
Some appointments should be kept promptly.
Especially supper.
And he left to tend to his own.
A little more Honey Hill Country is coming this Saturday.
Our October issue of Hearth & Holler — A Monthly Visit to Honey Hill Country will be waiting, with Autumn doings, familiar neighbors, a Halloween tale or two of sorts, and a few more folks worth stopping to visit. We hope you will pull up a chair and join us.
Till next time then —
Jim (and Red!)
A Little Red Bear P.S.
Ennis once brought back a shovel I had left leaning against somebody’s fence.
I was pleased to see it.
Then I remembered what I had been planning to do with it.
— Red 🐾
Images have been created for this piece with the assistance of AI . . . lovingly prepared and styled for Honey Hill Country and the world of Little Red Bear.
