Free Counterfeit Cowgirl (Love and Laughter) by Lois Greiman

turned too quickly and ran smack into the wall behind him. Rubber belts of various sizes showered down like acid rain.
    After that, things went more smoothly, but then came the grocery store.
    Hannah swallowed. Regardless of her words to Tyrant Fox, she didn’t know the first thing about shopping for groceries.She could shop for dresses. She was good with shoes. And she was hell on wheels when looking for hats. But groceries… That was Maria’s department. Or maybe it was Natalie’s.
    Glancing at the list, Hannah began wandering down a narrow aisle. It wasn’t a big store, and yet…
    Where did one find peaches? Peaches. She scowled, pattered around and eventually came to a sign extolling the virtues of fresh produce. She regarded the refrigerated shelves. Produce, possibly, she thought. But fresh? Highly unlikely. Picking up one of the smattering of strawberries, she scowled at its faded, wrinkled face before dropping it back down. There was not a peach to be seen. And right now she’d just about die for a papaya. But she supposed she’d have to fly to Hawaii for that. And until she won this current bet, her flying days were through.
    “They call these fresh?” said a gravelly voice beside her.
    Hannah looked down on a bent head. The woman beside her barely topped four feet tall. Dressed in immaculate white pants and a down coat big enough to protect a Clydesdale from the bitter elements, she raised her face to glare myopically at an orange.
    “He calls this a citrus!” complained the tiny woman. “I could grow better oranges on my Christmas cactus.” She had a face like a dehydrated apricot.
    Hannah didn’t even attempt a smile. “Might you know where I could find peaches?” she asked.
    “Peaches!” The woman reared back as if zapped by a cattle prod. “Here?” She snorted. “You won’t find no peaches here.”
    Hannah scowled at her list. “I was told to buy peaches.”
    The old woman scowled. Her features turned from wizened to frightening. “Who told ya?”
    Hannah considered that an instant. “A barbarian.”
    The woman’s laugh sounded like a road grader on a bad day, the effects of a cigarette habit cured too late. “A cowboy, huh?”
    Now Hannah did smile. The real thing. Straight from the heart. Here was a kindred spirit. “Yes. You might call him that.”
    “He didn’t mean for you to get no fresh peaches. He meant canned.”
    “They can them?” She shivered. “How awful. Where might I find them?”
    The old woman chuckled again. “You’re not from around here, huh?”
    “No.”
    Silence as the woman stared up past her bifocals.
    “I’m, um…” A lie didn’t seem smart, or even safe with a woman like this. “I’m from a lot of places,” Hannah said.
    “Ahh. What’s your name?”
    “Hannah.” There comes a time when only a lie will do. “Hannah Nelson.” She extended her hand, gloved as it was in lambskin cuffed with silver fox. “And you?”
    “Mrs. Puttipiece,” said the tiny person, reaching out a leathery hand. “Widow Puttipiece. Pansy’s my Christian name.”
    Pansy Puttipiece. She must have really loved her husband to marry into that name. And she’d thought. “Hannah Nelson” was bad.
    They shook hands. Pansy’s grip was as delicate as a road mender’s.
    “Come on,” she said, still carrying the slandered orange.
    Hannah followed her slightly bent figure along the dairy section before turning right.
    “Here’s the canned department.”
    Hannah gazed in flummoxed wonder. “They have an entire department devoted to abused fruit?”
    Pansy chuckled. “You got your Libby’s, your Del Monte, your Dole.”
    “Which is best?”
    A shrug. “Canned fruit’s all right for Jell-Os and the like. Makes pretty fair muffins. And cowboys can manage to eat’em straight outta the can. But when I make my tarts and such, I gotta have fresh.”
    “You bake fresh tarts?” She was beginning to salivate like Pavlov’s dog. “By yourself?”
    “My