Six Mile Store, the engaging debut crime novella by AM Belsey, is narrated mostly by a young woman in her early 20s named Honey. The story at first appears to be almost a picaresque, as she colourfully describes her encounters with the customers of the rural Arkansas convenience store cum gas station where she works weekends. Judging by a map, the precise location is not too many miles north of the state capital, Little Rock.
This would be a dispiriting job, but it’s just for the summer – a place-holder for her – and her boredom is relieved by this succession of quirky customers. Small-town life is notorious for there being much going on beneath the surface and behind what people who all know each other choose to talk about. By sticking to surface impressions, Honey can sail through her days at the Six Mile with a serene heart. The store itself, with its stale coffee, profusion of unhealthy, plastic-wrapped snacks, healthy trade in cigarettes, and imbalance between southern summer heat and vigorous air-conditioning, is perfectly evoked. I could smell it.
There’s always the possibility of crime, as some of the customers are at the far end of the weirdness scale – will one of them show up with a gun a some point? One family living off the grid appears every few months with their many children to stock up on gasoline and food, then returns to the mountains to make meth. Then there’s the handsome but too-friendly Cop, as she calls him, whose frequent visits to the Six Mile Store suggest a desire beyond that of buying a refreshing cold drink.
More ominous, Honey’s Turkish boyfriend Karim hangs out in town with a bunch of pot-smokers, and the Cop would undoubtedly bust him if he could. Karim plans to return to Turkey in September when his project in the US is scheduled to end, and she’s fighting – not very successfully – not to become too attached.
A lot could be said about the narrator’s voice here. Honey is interesting, funny and someone you can enjoy spending time with. When the narration shifts near the end to another store employee, an older woman named Lisa, you realise how sympathetic Honey was. Lisa is judgmental and difficult, which comes through loud and clear. But Lisa is a dark horse.
It seems a step in the right direction, which could make better use of her gifts, when Honey takes up graduate studies at a nearby Bible college. Tuition and room-and-board will be free to her if she teaches a few classes. It’s easy to imagine that Honey’s freewheeling lifestyle and the Bible-centric teaching she’s expected to do will not be a good fit. Still, it’s a question which of them – Honey or the slimy college administrator, Vowan – will give up on the other first. Either way, her stint at the Bible college may be a flimsy ticket out of her current life. As the narrator says near the end “the store will always be there.”
Honey’s observations are amusing, though what you mostly learn about the other characters is their quirks. You may come to perceive them as separate marbles rolling around in a drawer, but eventually, you realise they’re beads and, in fact, Belsey has strung together an actual necklace for you. The characters fit together, their inexplicable behaviour is explained, and their motives become clear.
Six Mile Store is a quick and interesting read – both witty in the characterisations and clever in the plot, but with a more serious undercurrent. Being smart and witty may not be enough to get Honey out of a milieu more defined by its limits than its possibilities.
Read more about AM Belsey and her inspirations here.
Deixis Press
Print
£7.99
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
