The Ladder in the Window

Kestrel and Sons Hardware stood on Bell Street for thirty-one years, and for thirty-one years there was a wooden ladder in the window. Seven rungs, pale with age, leaning against nothing in particular. A small handwritten card at its foot said NOT FOR SALE. The card yellowed and was replaced four times. The ladder was never replaced at all.

The street built its directions around it. Go past the ladder and turn left. Taxi drivers knew the ladder before they knew the shop. Parents told children to wait by the ladder, and children did, because it was the only thing on Bell Street that had never once moved. One couple insisted on being photographed in front of it on their wedding day, in the rain, which the photographer later described as a firm request.

When the shop finally closed, the owner turning seventy-four and deciding that was enough, the neighbourhood asked more questions about the ladder than about the shop. Somebody asked him, at last, why it was there. He said he had honestly never decided. He had carried it in one morning in 1994 to fix a shelf, propped it in the window, and then a customer had asked to buy it, and he had said no, and after that it seemed rude to move it.

The bookshop that took the unit left the window empty for a week. Then it filled it: same ladder, same seven rungs, a new card in new handwriting saying the same three words. Directions on Bell Street did not have to change.