The Dune Country

by Earl H. Reed

The stock of merchandise was varied, but there was very little of any one kind, except plug tobacco. Over a case containing several large boxes of this necessity of life in the back country was a strip of cardboard, on which was inscribed, “Don’t use the nasty stuff.” Under a wall-lamp was another placard, “This flue don’t smoke, neither should you.” Other examples of the proprietor’s wit were scattered along the edges of the shelves, and on the walls, and helped to impart an individual character to the place. Among them were, “Don’t be bashful. You can have anything you can pay for.” “This store is not run by a trust.” “No setting on the counter—this means you!” “Credit given only on Sundies, when the store is closed.” “Don’t talk about the war—it makes me sick.”

A large portion of the stock was in cans. Some of them had evidently been on the shelves for many years. There were cove oysters, sardines, and tinned meats of various kinds, with badly fly-specked labels. The old man remarked that “some o’ them air-tights has bin on hand since the early eighties.”

The humble tin can has been one of the important factors in the progress of the human race. With the theodolite, the sextant, and the rifle, it has been carried to the waste places of the earth, and because of it they have bloomed. Tin cans have lined the trails to unknown lands, and they have been left at both of the poles. The invader has flung them along his remorseless path when he has gone to murder quiet distant peoples whose religion differed from his own, and they have thus been made “instruments of the Lord’s mercy.” They lie on ghastly battlefields, mingled with splintered bones, where a civilization, of which we have boasted, has left them.

They are scattered over the bottom of the sea, float languidly in the currents of uncharted rivers, and rust on the sands of the deserts. They are hiding-places for tropical reptiles in tangled morasses, and prowling beasts sniff at them curiously in deserted camps along the outer rims of the world.

They symbolize the ingenuity of the white man, and in them has reposed the remains of every kind of fish, reptile, bird and beast that he has used for food. The aged bull, the scrawny family cow, the venerable rooster, the faithful superannuated hen, the senile billy goat, and other obsolete domestic animals, have found a temporary tomb within mysterious walls of tin, and have helped to feed others than those who canned them. They enclose fruit and vegetables that could not be sold fresh, and in them they go to the uttermost parts of the earth.

It was indeed strange destiny that took the sardine, flashing his bright sides in the blue Mediterranean, and left him immured on a musty shelf in a store in the back country. If he, with the contents of the cans around him, could return to life, there would be a motley company.

Perhaps, in quiet midnight hours, wraiths come out of the tins and play in the moonbeams that filter through the dusty windows. They may all have been there so long that social caste has been established. The fish, lobsters, cove oysters and clams, being sea people, probably hold aloof. This they may well do, as they are on the upper shelves.

The elderly domestic animals may have a dignified stratum of their own, in which the affairs of the old families can be discussed, while those who were feathered in life possibly form another pale group that devotes itself entirely to questions of personal adornment.

Behind the red labels on the lower shelves are the devilled ham and the pig’s feet. The goblins from these may hold high carnival in the silvery light—the frolics of the indigestibles—and their antics may last until the gray of the morning comes.

Nameless elfs may appear in the little throng. They are from the soups, and have so many component parts that they know not what they are. Naturally they may precede the others, but if they are in the ghostly circle, they are not of it.