“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, turning to help him carry his new lock sets to the front counter. Walt was nowhere to be found, so I rang up the new purchases and bagged everything before carrying them out to the Suburban. “That gonna do for you today, Mr. Purcell?”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “Sure is. Can’t wait to look up the video when I get home. I’ll give you a call if I have any trouble.”
I nodded and stepped back after closing the hatch again. As soon as he’d pulled out of the drive, a bright yellow VW Beetle pulled in and out popped Beverly Abbott. “Just the man I wanted to see,” she said with a bright smile. “I came across your video about building a raised vegetable bed and wanted to pick up some supplies. Can you help?”
“’Course,” I murmured, holding the front door for her. I noticed Walt watering the hanging baskets several yards down the storefront. He’d obviously overheard Bev because he beamed at me. Ever since I’d started doing the videos to help out our customers, he’d heaped praise on me for the accompanying boost in business.
I didn’t pay much attention to the increase in sales since it didn’t particularly benefit me other than providing basic job security, but I had to admit I enjoyed helping people. And of course I was happy for Walt’s increase in business because he was a hard worker and he ran a good shop. I’d been doing the DIY videos for about a year now, and they’d been very popular. There were even people all over the world who’d stumbled across them and found them useful, to the point I’d gotten requests to translate measurements into meters and help people find alternatives for products that weren’t available in other countries.
It was a nice peek outside of the small town of Wheatland, Wyoming, for someone who’d never even been across state lines. The process of learning how to take and edit video had become more fun than I’d expected, even though my sister Delia made fun of me for thinking that.
“You’ve always liked figuring out how things work,” she’d said over family dinner one night. “Tech equipment is no different than complex power tools.”
My dad and brothers had hooted about that, but she was right. It was fun figuring out how to optimize a project with the tools you had at your disposal. Of course, it always made you want better tools, but that was the same case with anything. My dad had been half in love with a brand-new automated combine for the farm for years even though his income couldn’t justify the expense.
I helped Beverly find everything she needed and got it loaded up in her little car before saying my goodbyes to Walt for the day and whistling for Nacho. Walt knew Thursday nights were family dinner night at the Winshed Farm, and my parents didn’t take very many excuses to miss it.
When I loaded us both up in the truck, I checked my phone to see if any of the messages were my mom needing something from the store. I was surprised to see one of the missed calls had come from an unknown number. The voicemail said it was a man named Clay with Stallion Tools.
I glanced up at all of the brand-name signs in the windows of Walt’s hardware store. The Stallion Tools logo was the biggest one with its orange script and stylized outline of a horse. My very first power tool had been a little battery-operated Stallion electric screwdriver that Santa had brought me straight from my wish list when I was seven years old.
How had Stallion gotten my personal cell phone number instead of calling Walt at the number for the store? I clicked the button to listen to the voicemail.
“Hi, Nine, we’re big fans of your YouTube channel here at Stallion, and we’d like to pick your brain regarding a new sponsorship opportunity. Please give us a call back at your earliest convenience to discuss or have your agent reach out to us.”
I let out a soft snort. Agent. Ha. My DIY and nature videos were hardly the stuff of internet fame. Granted, they’d picked up crazy-big subscription numbers, but I tried not to notice. If I did, it made me clam up the next time I tried shooting a new video.
So, for now, I simply focused on genuine interactions with curious viewers who asked interesting questions and had great suggestions and requests for future content. My YouTube videos gave me an excuse to get outside and away from the obligations of work and family, and you really couldn’t put a price on that anyway.
I didn’t want to think about having to say no to some exciting offer just because I was legit terrified of talking to new people. The idea of working with the marketing department of some big corporation made me want to hide behind the mountains of chicken feed that had just come in. There was a reason I’d never gone to college like most of my siblings had. I wasn’t really a people person, and I didn’t have grand expectations of a big life.