Our penultimate offering marks Gary Braunbeck’s third appearance in this series, and this time he gives us something atypical of his work. Instead of his trademark examinations of the human heart in his longer fiction, he reveals a rarely seen caustic and satiric side to his writing.
At the New and Shiny Big-Box Store there’s an old fellow who greets you when you come through the doors. His uniform is blue and well pressed, his shoes shiny, his white hair glowing under the overhead lights, his voice tattered at the edges (he is, after all, an old fellow, and perhaps he drank or smoked too much in his younger days), and he smiles at you as if someone has just stuck a gun in his back and told him to act naturally.
“Welcome,” he says. “Thank you for shopping with us. If you need any help, please don’t be afraid to ask.” It doesn’t matter a damn that you have just entered the store and have yet to buy anything; this is the way he greets everyone, with those memorized words and his gun-in-the-back smile. Were you to stop long enough and look in his eyes, you might see behind them something that is nailed down and in torment, even fear and horror, like a drowning victim too far from the shore who can do nothing more than wave their arms and cry out in futile hope that someone will hear them and they will be rescued.
“Don’t forget to grab one of our flyers and check out today’s sales,” he says, his voice an offshore echo as the customers walk away.
At the New and Shiny Big-Box Store there is always a sale going on, always a blue/green/orange special in one aisle or another. Perhaps it’s one of these brightly lit sales that the woman is hurrying to, carrying her toddler. She barely glances at the greeter as she makes her way to the shopping-cart rack and, after a brief struggle, frees one from the corral. Her toddler—and a cute little one he is, perhaps eleven months at most—giggles and grabs at her with his tiny arms as she places him in the upper seat, as if it’s some kind of game they’ve played a thousand times but to him never gets old.
After that, it’s on to the back of the store, near the Hardware and Home Repair area where no customers are elbowing their way past others to get to a sales item. The woman parks the cart next to the Motor Oil section, glancing around to make certain no one can see her. After a few moments she opens her purse and pulls out a small but well-used stuffed toy, an elephant missing one of its tusks, and gives it to the toddler, who excitedly snatches it from her hand and hugs it to his chest, squeezing it within an inch of its life. The mother leans down and gives her son a kiss on his forehead, brushes a hand through his hair so less of it is hanging in his eyes. Without a word or another glance, she turns around and walks away.
The toddler covers his eyes as if counting to ten while playing hide-and-seek. When he pulls his hands away, his mother does not reappear. For a moment he is frightened, but then squeezes his toy elephant once more as if to say, It’s all right, Mommy will be back in a second. And there in the cart he waits.
At the New and Shiny Big-Box Store it’s not unusual to see an employee or department manager peeking out from behind the windows of swinging metal doors that lead back into the storage area, and today is no exception: a middle-aged gentleman watches from behind the swinging doors as the mother kisses the toddler on the forehead and turns and walks away. The manager waits a few moments to make certain no one is around, and then exits the storage area and approaches the cart. The toddler looks up at him and smiles. The manager smiles back, and then slowly pushes the cart down a few aisles, to the back of the Home Lighting Department.
The manager grabs a lamp from one of the displays, removes the shade, and places it to the side of the cart. He then reaches into the pocket of his manager’s smock and removes a toy doll’s head, which he jams into place atop the frame that protects the bulb. Without looking at the toddler—who seems somehow larger than before—he walks over to a wall phone, lifts the receiver, presses a button, and says for the entire store to hear, “Shoppers, we’ve got a special over in our Toy Department. All the latest Star Wars toys are thirty percent off for the next fifteen minutes. A Toy Department employee will be happy to put one of our green-light stickers on the item of your choice.” He hangs up and walks away. By now the little boy in the cart is crying—not a lot, not enough to draw the attention of any shopper who’s all but running to the Toy Department, but enough that even a hug from the elephant can’t stop the quiet tears.
At the New and Shiny Big-Box Store, you can always find a child who is crying.
At the New and Shiny Big-Box Store a line is forming at the Customer Service desk, and the woman who abandoned her toddler in the Hardware and Home Repair aisle is right at the front. She removes an envelope from her purse and hands it to the young man working the desk. He opens it, reads what is written on the piece of paper inside, nods to himself, and then begins pulling several thick books of coupons from a shelf below. He continues to stack the coupon books until there are twenty-five of them. The woman pulls a plastic bag from her purse, seeps the coupons into it until the bag threatens to burst, smiles at the young man, and then leaves the store, still smiling.
At the New and Shiny Big-Box Store many people leave smiling.
At the New and Shiny Big-Box Store the little boy in the cart is trying to wiggle his way out of the cart but his legs have gotten a bit too long and a bit too chubby. By now he’s all cried out and has nothing to hug because he’s dropped his elephant. He’s been moved several times, and each time someone jams a doll’s head onto a lamp and places it near the cart. The boy watches as customers whiz by, on their way to a special sale that seems to be in a department on the opposite end of the store. And so the little boy waits, but he doesn’t have to wait long.
At the New and Shiny Big-Box Store no one ever has to wait very long.
Soon the little boy becomes a larger boy who has split through most of his toddler clothing; soon the young boy is nearly naked, his privates covered only by the remnants of the clothes he was wearing when his mother brought him here; soon the young boy is a grown man whose weight the cart can no longer hold upright. The cart flips forward, knocking over many of the impaled dolls’ heads that scatter like marbles. The force of the falling cart is enough to free the young man’s legs—a light shade of purple they seem to have become—and then the cart falls over him as if it were a cage being lowered from above.
The young man huddles beneath the cart, still crying, and tries to reach for his elephant, but it’s on the other side of the cart. The young man tries to reach it but cannot get the cart to budge. Eventually he gives up, huddles in a fetal position, and wishes that someone walking toward the next sale would notice him. But no one does, even when he calls out to them in a voice that sounds frayed around the edges.
He stays like that until he can no longer call out or even muster the tears to cry. He stays like that until his skin begins to wrinkle and his hair turns grey. He stays like that until the first manager to move the toddler’s cart emerges from the storage area and lifts the cart off the old man. The manager helps the old man to his feet and begins to dress him in the perfect, new, bright, shiny, perfectly pressed uniform of a store employee.
“Keeping this clean is your responsibility,” says the manager. “It has to be dry-cleaned, not washed.”
Helping the old man to put on his New and Shiny shoes, the manager walks the old man to the front of the store, explaining more of the store’s employee policies.
“The most important thing,” says the manager as he positions the old man by the entryway, “is to smile when you greet the customers. Remember that.”
He walks away, leaving the old man standing there, alone and confused. But then the old man sees a young woman come into the store holding a toddler, and a cute little thing he is. “Welcome,” he says. “Thank you for shopping with us. If you need any help, please don’t be afraid to ask.” He watches as the mother puts her little stinker in a cart, hands him a small stuffed elephant missing a tusk, and makes her way back toward Hardware and Home Repair. “Thank you,” the old man whispers, but it sounds more like a question.
At the New and Shiny Big-Box Store there’s an old fellow who greets you when you come through the doors . . .