The Last Year of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative

The supply and marketing cooperative is closing.

Zhou Sufen started working there at nineteen and stayed for twenty-seven years. People said the shop should have closed ages ago. Who could even remember all the unpaid tabs? She said nothing, only turning through the ledger page by page and returning the money to each household listed.

Some refused to take it. Some were moved to tears. Some knocked on her door in the middle of the night just to repay a ten-cent debt from thirty years ago.

The old folks in town said she wasn't just keeping the shop open. She was holding on to the whole town's debt of gratitude to her, and to the lifetime she owed the town.

Years later, the boy who used to take the long way around every day to buy candy returned to town. The supply and marketing cooperative had been torn down, leaving only an empty lot. He crouched where the counter used to be and set down a piece of candy. Only then did he finally understand:

Why that woman had kept a pane of glass so polished.