Chapter 222: Bear With Her, He Was Showing Off

DOVE’S POV

Dove leaned toward the radio as if moving her ear closer could make the man at the pump depot finish his sentence.

Edrik kept one hand on the casing. The voice held for another moment, then dissolved into a hiss.

"Again," she said.

"You have excellent manners when you want something."

"Please do the useful thing with your very talented hand."

His smile made her regret the wording immediately. Thorne laughed beside her, and she pointed at both men before either could speak.

"Not a word. There are other people in this truck."

Edrik adjusted the dial, checked the battery connection, and tried the exercise again. The reception improved briefly. He let go when his expression tightened, and the static thickened at once.

"It takes more than the little volume change did," he said. "I can’t hold it just because you ask nicely."

"That’s fine. I didn’t buy a husband with a radio attached."

"Good. I would be expensive."

She rested her hand over his free one and looked toward the front of the truck. Cal had heard enough to stop at the next staffed road shelter and ask directly. A delivery driver there confirmed a damaged pump, delayed loads, and no reliable repair time. It was one depot, not every source of water disappearing at once.

Dove felt better for knowing the difference. She still checked their drinking bottles before they left.

The next stop stood at the edge of a small town: a hardware store with a diner attached, rooms above it, and a gravel lot behind a chain-link fence. The front doors opened onto the road. A passage beside the diner led to the back stairs and parking lot, so they could move between their room and Cal’s truck without walking around the block.

Dove asked about that before carrying anything upstairs. She was tired of arriving somewhere and learning the useful door was behind three strangers and a pile of junk.

The owner let her set up beside the hardware entrance, beneath an existing shade cover. The concrete still held the day’s heat through her shoes. She shifted the counter far enough back that waiting customers could stand out of the sun.

"Equipment," she told Sprout. "Useful equipment. People have started treating batteries like jewelry."

The cabinet filled with eight four-packs of AA batteries in blue sleeves, four hand-crank radios with folding handles, and four pairs of heavy work gloves. The batteries occupied the upper shelf; radios stood upright in the middle, with their labels facing out. Gloves lay in paired packets below.

Dove checked one radio sample, returned it intact, and read the label twice.

"Does this need a signal that actually exists?"

"Yes. It receives ordinary broadcasts."

"And if there aren’t any?"

"You will have a radio and no broadcast."

"Sprout, your ability to disappoint me in complete sentences is unmatched."

Still, the hand crank meant people did not have to find fresh batteries just to check for news. That mattered enough to sell it honestly. She approved ordinary barter terms, put the sample where she could demonstrate it, and let the cabinet handle the straightforward trades.

A mechanic bought gloves after comparing the size to his hands. He was deaf and pointed to the size label, then his palms; Dove turned the packet so he could read it easily. He wrote THANK YOU on the corner of a receipt and grinned at her. Two drivers wanted radios. One demanded to test every switch before trading. The other offered a sealed bag of coffee and asked whether she needed a third husband.

"Not one who’ll trade himself for a radio," Edrik told him. "Raise your standards. She has." Dove showed them the crank, made them test the reception, and refused to promise that every distant base would suddenly become chatty.

Then a man stopped in front of her and stared down her shirt.

She waited a moment. His eyes did not improve their behavior.

"The prices are on the cabinet," she said. "My chest isn’t selling anything."

He laughed as if she had invited him to share the joke. Edrik went very still beside the doorway.

Dove turned to the next customer, who actually wanted batteries. She liked being attractive. She did not like having to drag someone’s attention up to her face with both hands.

"Are the gloves waterproof?" the customer asked.

"No. They’re for protecting your hands while you work. The label is honest, which is more than I can say for half the people on this road."

Thorne coughed into his fist. She looked at him, and he did not pretend he had swallowed wrong.

The sales mission offered seventy-two normal coins for six completed trades. The glove sale, four battery packs, and two radios carried her past it before the hottest part of the afternoon ended. Dove chose to close rather than stand sweating for the remaining stock. She returned the demonstration radio intact, paid the nine-normal return charge for the nine unsold units, then packed the cleared storefront.

The day still left her ahead, with ordinary barter goods she could use and a husband carrying lunch upstairs. That counted as a good decision, even if Sprout offered to show her the customers she might have missed.

"I also missed heatstroke," she told it. "Let’s celebrate that."

She ate a chicken sandwich with sliced tomatoes in the upstairs room while Thorne opened the window onto the shaded back lot. Edrik said he would collect the drink she had asked the diner to set aside. He left by the front stairs.

Dove watched him go, then noticed Thorne looking toward the passage below.

"What?"

"Nothing you need to get up for."

She narrowed her eyes. "That was suspiciously specific."

He kissed the top of her head instead of offering another answer. She let it go for the moment because the sandwich was good and her feet finally felt cool.

She moved their warm drinking bottles away from the window before going downstairs.

Later, downstairs, she found a visiting trader stacking sealed water packs beside the hardware counter. She checked the caps and labels without touching the goods.

"Looking for a better price?" he asked.

"Always."

He smiled and pointed toward a small office behind the register. "We could discuss that privately. Leave the big fellows out here."

Dove looked at the open office, the narrow doorway, and the hand he had placed on its frame.

She read the price on his water, then spotted the same blue labels behind the clerk at half that price.

"Why are your bottles twice the price of those?" she asked, loud enough for the clerk to hear.

The trader’s smile disappeared. "Those might already be spoken for."

The clerk paused with his hand on the register. "I need to check with the owner. Come back when we open."

Dove pointed to the blue labels. "Please leave that price where I can see it."

The trader moved into her view of the cheaper stack. She looked around him, making no effort to hide it. Tomorrow she intended to buy her water from the man who had just spoiled his evening.