Conditional Reality

Beltbuckle Listprice grew the best tomatoes in the county. When they reached their peak of ripeness, she took her tomatoes fifty miles away, across two county lines, to a farmer’s market in a strange town where she traded them for jewelry, which she displayed in a glass case back home. Visitors to Beltbuckle’s house sometimes asked her why she went to all that trouble when there was a perfectly good jewelry store not three blocks from Beltbuckle’s front door. It’s about recognition, said Beltbuckle. No one gets noticed by their own tribe. That’s why many of us need to roam.