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FROM december
The convenience store was in Tennessee, but only just. Customers, pumping gas, often seemed transfixed by the sameness of the clover beneath the WELCOME TO ALABAMA sign. Travelers who paid at the pump and who had no reason to go inside the store never discovered that the store’s metal door scraped hard against its doorframe. But store regulars knew to clench their teeth when pulling open the door, and again when leaving, clutching their paper sacks filled with predictable secrets: a can of Coke, a roll of Life Savers, a pepperoni Hot Pocket, hot from the store’s microwave. Some of the regulars were long-distance truckers traveling the New Orleans/Chicago route. They didn’t know the cashier’s name but they called her Darlin’, or Sugar, or Ma’am.
Lynelle thought her name was the prettiest thing about her and she had once suggested to her boss that he should require her to wear a name tag. But her boss told her that name tags were the kind of foolishness that national chains like Stop n’ Shop or 7-Eleven required of their franchisees.
His own name appeared in large neon letters on a sign by the side of the highway: HENRY’S STATE LINE EXPRESS. In order to claim the attention of drivers, he had lined the store windows with strands of purple Christmas lights that flashed night and day. He had set a timer so that they sometimes blinked in unison, and sometimes raced up and over and down and across, never tiring.
Most of the regulars whom Lynelle saw were locals: plumbers and electricians stopping by the store before their first appointment of the day; landscaping crews who worked for the highway department or for the wealthy family that kept Tennessee Walkers; shift workers on their way to the chicken processing plant up the road. Hispanic, black, white—the narrow aisles of the store made a family of them.
At 7:15 every weekday morning a green station wagon pulled up to the store. And in would come Deshaundra, who had a singing way of speaking, and Tammy, who never spoke and had long, straight hair and the build of a teenage boy. Tammy always had exact change for two packs of Pall Mall Orange. And because Mr. Henry had no rule about smoking, Tammy would light a cigarette and listen while Deshaundra sipped a blue Ice Slurpee and told Lynelle about the places they’d be cleaning that day: that house in New Bethel where the lawyer and his wife had a bay window with glass shelves for all their violets; or the senior center whose activity rooms would have glitter in between the linoleum tiles no matter how often they were mopped. Deshaundra knew Lynelle’s name but she called her Baby because she called everyone Baby. To the electrician who dropped his dollar bill—“Here you go, Baby.” To Lynelle: “Baby, tell that Mr. Henry to get you one of them high-up, swivel stools to sit on. Good-sized woman like you, standin’ all day, you gonna blow out your knees.” And at the mention of them, Lynelle’s knees, as if touched by the bluish lips, briefly ached. More recently Deshaundra had told her, “Baby, don’t you worry ’bout your hair. It’ll even out in a week or two.” Lynelle had smiled, but ahead of her smile, she had lifted her hand to cover her smile. Deshaundra had never said, “Baby, don’t worry ’bout your teeth.” Because no customer, not even regular ones, had ever glimpsed the gaps where the decayed ones had been pulled.
Lynelle’s boyfriend Cory had taken a trucking job four years earlier, when little Brandi was born. By the time Brandi was learning to crawl, his routes no longer included middle Tennessee, but he still sent money orders from time to time. Each morning, in the predawn darkness, Lynelle carried Brandi across the parking lot joining the apartment complex and the convenience store, Brandi’s heavy head riding the rise and fall of her shoulder as she walked.
Every morning, at the squawk of the door to the doorframe, the night cashier would get up to leave. His report, and the words of his report, had become smoothed into oneness: “Same like always.” Then Lynelle would settle Brandi on the fold-out cot behind the counter and let her sleep till Cory’s mother came to bring her to the daycare center she ran. Cory’s mother had several times curdled her lips and complained, “Church says she’s not my real granddaughter.” But she never charged for the daycare.
Over the years Lynelle had gotten to know the preferences of her regulars. The traveling home healthcare aides liked Diet Pepsi and Lorna Doone cookies and pocket-size bottles of Kleen! hand sanitizer. High-schoolers skipping class favored Doritos and Salem menthols. The very thin guy who worked with the landscaping crew stole a Milky Way every time he came by the store. Lynelle had gotten to recognize the flow of his gestures as he slipped the candy into his pocket while dropping a knee to the floor, pretending to tie a shoelace. When he stood up again he would always pick out a few other items to buy. At the cash register Lynelle simply added, without ever mentioning it, the cost of the Milky Way. And he had never pretended shock at the total or asked for a receipt. Lynelle decided he was probably no better at math than she would be if she didn’t have the cash register to calculate change.
The previous week a group of middle-aged women had come to the store announcing that they would become regulars. They had just discovered how easy it was to drive across the state line and buy a ticket for that month’s lottery. Before the women made their shared purchase, they performed a little ceremony that involved a jump, a clap and a hug and a wish: “The Ritz in Cancun!” Lynelle longed to ask them if Cancun was another kind of saltine, like a Ritz. And why would such a snack mean so much to them. But she just wished the women luck. She had learned not to ask questions. One time Lynelle had phoned Cory’s mother to tell her that Brandi didn’t feel well enough for daycare. “Well, did you give her 7 Up and saltines?” and Lynelle, who knew exactly where in the store to find 7 Up and saltines, asked how those things would help. “Well, you knew enough to get yourself pregnant. What did you do for morning sickness?” And at that remark Lynelle had just stared at the phone in her hand, unable to say anything because she was abruptly back in the tenth grade, gripping the edges of the desktop and not knowing why she was thinking of a ship at sea when she had never been on a ship.
After the lottery women left, a long-haul trucker who’d been helping himself to a bowl of chili from the Crock-Pot shook his head with gentlemanly decorum and said, “I hate to see people throwing away their money like that.” Lynelle asked the trucker what kind of things he was hauling that day. But in order to make sure he wouldn’t mistake her question for flirting, she added, “My husband drives a semi.” She not only made up the part about Cory being her husband, but she also gave him a place to be, somewhere not so very far away—Kansas. And she gave him a bill of lading—logs. The trucker teased her, Well, Sugar, there can’t be too many of those in Kansas. In a smiling instant, the correction came to her. “No. I said, hogs.” Because right there by the Crock-Pot was an advertisement for pork rinds that featured a cheerful little pig wearing an apron and a chef’s hat.
Cory’s most recent money order had been sent from a 7-Eleven in Bend, Oregon. After Lynelle cashed it, she studied the receipt. The amount was for $72.63. She closed her eyes and tried to see Cory. But he’d always been quick in his bashfulness, turning away from a kiss or her whispered words. She wished she could ask the 7-Eleven cashier if he had seemed tired as he was paying for the money order. Or if maybe he had looked proud to have so much cash. Maybe he had been uncharacteristically talkative, saying, “I have a wife and baby in Tennessee.” She studied the receipt another moment longer and then the whole transaction made itself known to her: he had set down four twenty-dollar bills and a five, and he’d bought a pouch of chewing tobacco—Red Man Select—and he had used the balance for the money order. And he had not lingered. And he had not called the cashier Sugar.
Lynelle put the receipt and the cash in her purse and then walked over to the store shelf that was stacked with travel aids. She picked up the spiral-bound State-by-State Atlas. After a lot of looking she found Oregon and then she finger-found the city of Bend. It was next to a big forest named Willamette. Maybe he really was hauling logs. She returned the atlas to the rack. Outside, just beyond the gas pumps, a work crew was positioning a historical marker beside the black walnut tree. She carried out a tray loaded with paper cups filled with chili. She wanted to ask the men why they were putting up the marker. Weren’t all good-sized walnut trees anywhere in the state at least a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old? But she didn’t have to ask the men why this particular tree was being identified as special because the men, thanking her for the chili, joked that the only reason they were there was because Mr. Henry had pestered the Tennessee Historical Society about having a very old tree.
The person who knew well the motion of a ship at sea was named Mvemba. With every ocean swell, the people, bolted to one another below-decks, slid and slammed into the screaming darkness.
The solitary Tennessee farmer who bought Mvemba at auction gave him the name Cicero. The farmer taught him some English words: Walnut tree. Garden. Hogs. In April when everything was in blossom, the farmer joined the militia to bash the Yanks.
At the end of the lane, as he climbed up onto the militia wagon, he had yelled over his shoulder that he’d be back in a month. “See to things, Cicero.”
Lynelle gathered up the pleated, empty paper cups, dumped them in the garbage can, and walked around to the back of the store to clean the bathroom. She held up her can of Lysol as Deshaundra had taught her, as if writing on air. But just as she was about to press the nozzle on the aerosol can, she noticed that someone had scrawled an angry remark on the comment sheet taped to the back of the bathroom door. Filthy. And above it, A stinking disgrace. Lynelle stared in confusion. Was grace really inside that word? Whenever Cory’s mother pronounced it, she said dis-crace. Who would have written such criticism? The women with their lottery ticket? The long-haul trucker? Perhaps it had been some traveler who had paid at the pumps but had not gone into the store to buy anything? Lynelle strode back inside the store, grabbed one of the Sharpie markers from the display rack, went back out to the bathroom, and joined the comments together so their angry meaning drained away to politeness. I seen some places along this hi way that was a stinking disgrace. Thank U that this place is kleen! and not Filthy.
The day that a bandaged man with a crutch came stabbing along the road, Mvemba happened to be seated beneath the young tree, smashing open walnuts with a flat rock. When the man called out “Cicero!” Mvemba guided him up the lane, into the farmhouse, and positioned him on a pallet of straw, spooned him some bone broth, and sat with him as he died that evening.
Mvemba dug him a grave against the hogs, then marked the location by placing the smashing rock upright. Then he took up a sharp stone and joined the blotches of walnut stains to secure the image of a hippo:
It had been a hippo at the mouth of the Congo River that had shrieked its outrage that Mvemba was being led in chains up the gangplank. Those wide-hinged jaws, that roaring jury—the last that Mvemba ever saw of home.
Lynelle leaned against the open door. Still undone by the angry comment, she closed her eyes and listened to the fisted shape of traffic on the highway. Then she opened her eyes and considered her familiar surroundings: the steepness of the hills, the dusty weeds along the roadside, the walnut tree. And beyond the tree, at the far end of the parking lot—the row of efficiency apartments—their repeated series of doors and windows looking like one of Brandi’s clapping games.
There was one place within sight that Lynelle tried to avoid looking at. It was the sandy lane leading from the highway, straight up the side of a steep hill. The lane could be mistaken for a driveway leading to a quaint log cabin just out of view. But she knew that the lane had no destination. It led only up—because it was a lane for runaway trucks. Lynelle stood in the cold breeze and dared herself to look directly at the sandy lane, the deceptive quiet of its readiness. Then she imagined that just a few miles to the north, there was a highway trucker in trouble. His brakes had failed and he’d lost control of the rig, which was making spastic jumps. There were sparks. And bucking and thrashing. Now he was no longer a man in a truck on a highway. He was deep inside the tunnel of a different world—a world made only of speed. And at that very moment Lynelle sent her thoughts to him as he was gripping the steering wheel with one hand and yanking the cord of the truck horn with the other. She told him with all the concentration of her mind, Don’t worry. In just a couple of miles, there’s a runaway lane. You know the one. You’ve seen the sign for it. Just before the state line. Right near that convenience store with the purple lights. Then she looked over at the lane and thought of the trucker being able to swerve from the highway and plunge upwards, up its brief distance. She sighed with him and felt the relief at being slowed and then stopped by the deep sand,—of being held,—of being able to look through the windshield into a perfectly ordinary-looking sky,—of knowing that for just that moment he was completely alone in the world, and completely safe.
Lynelle turned away from the view of the lane and thought, almost out loud, “To have a job where you need to know that such a thing exists.”
Mvemba abandoned the drafty quiet of the farmhouse and the shed with its many sand-trays packed with turnips and squash and potatoes. He left behind the winter field. He climbed far up into the hills, into their cave-riddled summits, and partook, for some unknown amount of time, of the freedom of having disappeared, unmissed.
Each year, the dirt in the winter field bulged with a harvest of icy stems and branches.
Until the winter that Mr. Henry, ever certain of his own mind, refused to delay construction of his store until spring—so the concrete slab that was poured did not achieve a perfect float. It tilted slightly at one corner.
Meaning the door and doorframe would always cry out.
Back inside, Lynelle spent a few minutes trying to make some more space on the counter. It was so crowded with displays that she often didn’t notice quickly enough that someone had left an object behind—a pair of sunglasses, a garage door opener, a pink plastic barrette with glued sparkles, a driver’s license. She placed any forgotten item in the shoe box that she kept under the counter. She knew she didn’t save these items because she was Sunday-school honest, but because she was afraid. What if one of the truck drivers who called her Sugar came back looking for the sunglasses and she didn’t have them? People could be unpredictable. The photo of the man on the driver’s license looked far meaner than a simple “no smiling” instruction would have required of him.
A trucker in a flannel shirt and baseball cap interrupted her organizing efforts. He asked for a pack of Marlboros and then said, “What the hell” and pointed to the “instant winner” scratch-off cards beside the cigarettes. She handed him one and he leaned forward and said, “Warm it up for me, Darlin’.” So she held it in a pretend kind of prayer. Then the man scraped away the metallic surface and discovered he hadn’t won. So she apologized to him as he was leaving, telling him, “I guess I’m just not lucky.”
But she knew well that she was lucky. She had Brandi. And free daycare. And Cory hadn’t forgotten her. She wished someone would walk into the store and say, “Hey there, Ma’am, I was wondering what you would do if you won the jackpot?” Because she knew exactly what she’d do. First, I’d get my brother a better lawyer. And next, I’d go by Buell’s “Buy and Sell” lot and I’d get a car. And before anyone could say, “Do you even have a license?” she’d say, And I’d pay somebody cash money for a booster seat that their kid doesn’t need anymore. She knew she’d have to begin talking more quickly because the customer would be losing interest. Then when I let Mr. Henry know I’m quitting, I’d tell him to just give me that State-by-State Atlas over there ’cause nobody needs maps anymore, not with all their fancy phones telling them what they need to know. Then I’d tell my boyfriend’s mother that her days of puke and pee at the daycare are done. Then my little girl and me and Cory’s mom, we’d set off across the country and whenever we got tired we’d stop at any motel that suited us and when we got hungry we’d stop at any store that advertised good coffee and snacks and then we’d catch up with Cory and I’d tell him he doesn’t have to send money orders no more. Then we’d buy a cabin way up in the mountains where it’s too snowy to ever have to work or go to school. And the cabin would have a master bedroom and a bedroom for Grannie and one that’s just for Brandi. And in the front room there’d be a couch that nobody has to sleep on, except if they wanted a nap.
At the sound of the metallic yelp, Lynelle looked up to see a lady who looked like she might actually have won a jackpot. Her sparkling dress was tight and black, cinched with a wide, red belt. She had red high heels. As she tilted her head in the direction of the door, her pearl drop earrings twirled about. “That scraping sound must make your teeth hurt.” Lynelle covered her mouth and said, “I hardly notice it anymore.” The lady picked out a celebrity magazine, two diet sodas, a bottle of cold water, and a package of peanut butter crackers. She asked for a pack of Newport regulars.
The lady indicated Lynelle’s hair by tugging at her own. “Let me guess. One of those damned awful home perms. I tried one of them kits a while back. My hair fell out in handfuls. Don’t worry, honey. It grows back.”
Lynelle said, “I got distracted and left the chemicals in too long.” She rang up the items and handed the full bag to the lady, who cradled it in her arm.
“That’ll be $25.72, please, Ma’am.” A damp spot was already forming on the paper sack from the cold of the sodas and Lynelle was about to offer a plastic bag. The lady gave her a hundred-dollar bill, then turned, calling over her shoulder, “Anyway, a pixie cut is in right now.”
“Wait. You forgot your—” Lynelle called out.
The lady shoved open the door while saying, “If I bring him back change, he thinks I’m telling him he’s cheap.”
In the sudden quiet of the store, Lynelle looked down at her already moving hands. They were thick and slow, like a menacing of bees, and they knew what they were doing. She watched herself reaching for her purse. She was taking out some of the money that Cory had just sent her. She was putting a twenty-dollar bill and a five-dollar bill in the cash register. She was making plans for the future. I’m gonna get a ride to the Dollar Store and I’ll get Brandi a bath towel with the Little Mermaid on it, and some bubble bath, and No Tears shampoo. She was placing the $100 bill inside the zippered dark of a purse pocket. But her thoughts would not stay put. Maybe instead of the towel, she would buy that big Children’s Encyclopedia that Brandi loved to hold whenever they went to Walmart. It was a book that seemed to be a block of gold but when the book was opened, the gold-trimmed pages showed everything there was to know—the parts of a ship, the names of trees, a list of countries, pictures of animals from jungles and deserts. I’m gonna buy her that book and not even wait for Christmas.
She began to have second thoughts about the beautiful gold book. It would be more sensible to buy Brandi a raincoat and rubber boots. Something practical. That’s what Cory’s mom would do. She didn’t have to decide right away. Her hands nestled the purse back in its place between the plastic milk crate and the folded cot. What she knew for sure was that she was not going to do what Mr. Henry told her she had to do if a customer overpaid: put the money in the cash register to help cover the cost of the next drive-off out at the pumps.
A customer walked in. She knew him, though not by name. He worked at the feed store and he liked salt-and-vinegar potato chips. She smiled at him as he approached the cash register, but the fact of the $100 bill in her purse made her so giddy she hardly remembered how to ring up a sale. What a strange thing it was—she had to grip the narrow counter, thinking of it—to be a store cashier. To see people day after day and hand them pennies and paper sacks across such a brief distance and yet not know them. The man from the feed store held up his bag of potato chips and handed her a dollar bill. As she handed him the change she watched the soft thorns of water traveling the locks of his hair. It was raining outside and she hadn’t even known.
Anyways, she told herself, as the feed store employee left with his snack, Mr. Henry had no right to the $100. With the installation of the credit card machines, it wasn’t possible to pump gas without paying beforehand. And, not counting the Milky Ways (because the landscaping guy was paying for them without knowing that he was), the only real stealing occurred when teens dashed outside, laughing, clutching some ice cream sandwiches and a few bags of chips, and then speeding from the parking lot. On those occasions she’d tell Mr. Henry about the cash register being short by $6 or $7 and then he’d fume and say, Why didn’t you get a license plate? She never explained to him that a few weeks later, when the kids would finally dare come back to the store, she would call out, I’ve missed you! And contrition would make their faces shine. She never explained to Mr. Henry that calling the police and filing charges would change those kids from being foolish teens into being angry teens. And angry teens ended up in jail. So Lynelle explained to Mr. Henry that the kids had simply run out to the car to show their friends everything they could choose from, and then they’d gotten distracted and climbed into the car, forgetting to come back in to pay.
If an actual robber ever burst in, shouting above the scraping sound, Hands up! and demanding all the cash, she would give over all the stacked bills in the register drawer, and if he had forgotten to bring a bag to hold all the money, she would empty the shoe box of its lost items and give it to him, and then she would turn away so she would be sure not to see the moment when he was briefly aligned with the yardstick glued to the doorframe. She didn’t want to be able to make any kind of report. Because everyone was 5’7“ or 6’1” and everyone had a flannel shirt or a heavy metal band T-shirt, or a denim jacket, and everyone was thin or heavy-set and dark or pale or telling jokes in Spanish.
Beyond the glass door, the rain clouds had cleared. She could see the first pinks of sunset. Soon she would be unbuckling Brandi’s seat belt and marveling at the gold sticker on her worksheet. Soon she would be getting Brandi inside the store and helping her to step up onto the milk crate so she could show customers her coloring. Then the night shift cashier would arrive and she would be able to leave the store and have Brandi all to herself. They’d make their macaroni and they’d play a guessing game and then they would curl up together to get some sleep because 4 a.m. would be coming soon enough.
He drove northward through the darkness of very early morning, well ahead of schedule yet unable to keep from speeding. He knew from other, day-lit trips, that he was entering a region of hills. The black air around him was probably already crowded with their hunched forms.
Silently, but somewhat formally, he addressed himself: You need to stop and get some fresh air. He slowed as he crossed the state line and he drove up to a particular gas station that he had noticed on previous trips. The one with the purple, pulsing lights. He got out, stretched, and very consciously inhaled the cool of the night air. He took his time topping off the fuel tank, grateful for a task that could be conducted outside and that did not require him to speak to anyone. To guard the calm of the moment, he looked away from the race of the purple lights. And as he did so, he detected, just within the palest reach of the floodlights, a moving shape that became a woman holding a long-limbed, sleeping child. He dashed from the side of the car and opened the store’s door for her, startled by the quick metallic scrape. He went back to his car, replaced the fuel cap, and then, to his own annoyance, he reached into the car to get his wallet so he could go inside. You don’t have the energy to talk to anybody. The last thing you need is more coffee. As he walked inside he held the door for an old man leaving.
Again the scrape. He told the cashier, “You could probably get that fixed. All you’d have to do is get someone to shave down the side of the door.” The cashier looked up and smiled but didn’t answer. His mind raced through the procedure by which the repair could be accomplished. He would need a circular saw, a metal file, a magic marker, and also a ruler to note the exact width to be removed. Take off too much and there would be a constant draft. His frustration with himself—for coming inside, for speaking, for wasting time thinking up solutions to problems that had nothing to do with him—joined the shrill complaint of the electric can opener she was using to open cans of beans for the Crock-Pot.
He walked over to the coffee maker. Watched his hands trembling as he worked to hold the too-hot paper cup and to press the lid in place. Then he had to pry off the lid again to add a packet of milk powder. He looked around at the overcrowded shelves. The too bright and the too much of it. He thought he might be about to run back outside and he reminded himself that if he did flee, he’d have to be sure to set down the coffee first so she would know he wasn’t stealing.
To steady himself he grabbed hold of the shelf below the coffee maker. He studied the little numbers ascending on the carafe. He refused to cry. And if someone—this cashier for instance—were to come up to him and say, “Hey there, Sir, do you happen to have a little daughter about the same age as mine? How is she?” he would say, She’s doing much better. The Vanderbilt leukemia folks told me to be there at 7 a.m. to see some very promising lab results. And if this cashier were suddenly to look sad at the mention of leukemia and perhaps touch his arm out of concern for him, he would speak reassuringly. No, no, it’s all good. The doctors are very upbeat.
His daughter really was looking better. She was still bald, still thin. But the bruises, formed from no injury, were disappearing.
He listened as the cashier tapped the spoon against the side of the Crock-Pot and set the glass lid in place. He stared down at the dirty linoleum tiles. They were somehow so inviting. He longed to drop to the floor, to stretch out along its length. To weep and never have to cease weeping. What a relief that would be—to fall to his knees and be a penitent, a supplicant, an accuser—to crawl across the floor, a dumb beast, silently screaming at a God he didn’t believe in, and very much did—who had reduced him to begging, and then who had answered those prayers, singling him out among all those other parents sitting in that large waiting room, giving him good news that could be withdrawn at any moment during all of his daughter’s growing-up years, or during her adult years, or during her old age when he was no longer alive to help her.
He sipped the dreadful coffee. He reached into his pocket for his phone and checked for messages, knowing there wouldn’t be any. The Oncology Offices wouldn’t be open for another two and a half hours, and he’d be there by then, learning, in person, the good news.
The cashier came up beside him and said, “Let me make you a fresh pot.” He cupped his hand to his mouth but failed to stop a sobbing cry. He coughed to disguise the sound. But there were tears making a swimming confusion of the whole store. In his embarrassment and panic he held out the phone still in his hand and blurted out a news item he had learned the day before. “Do you know that children in West Africa—I’m talking kids just seven and eight years olds—they spend their days digging for the cobalt that goes into our cell phones. Can you imagine? Children digging children-sized tunnels. With their bare hands. Gathering the ore in a bag. It’s too sad.”
Her quick blinks, her tears, they surprised him. She mumbled, “I had no idea. Those poor, poor babies. I didn’t know.”
“But as you see,” he said, shrugging, “I own a phone. I have to have it. Still . . . little children. Scraping for metal . . .”
He saw her glance quickly over at the door. Maybe she was desperately hoping for another customer to walk in. He was probably making her uncomfortable, talking about horrors on the other side of the world.
But no, she was smiling and reassuring him. Her fingers were pressed to her lips, as if she were telling him a secret: “But don’t you just know those kids, smart as they are, they gonna grow up and figure out a better way to do everything and teach us all.”
He nodded and managed a real smile. He told her that he didn’t need fresh coffee. He followed her over to the counter and opened his wallet.
She said, “That’ll be $1.53.”
He pointed at the cot behind her and asked her if that was her little girl, sleeping. The cashier smiled again behind her fingers, and added—“Yes, indeedee. And she’s super smart. She can tell you all kinds of things. The capital of Tennessee, the names of some oceans. She can count all the way up to a hundred.”
“Well,” he said, feeling himself beaming as he talked to her, “if she can get to a hundred, there’s really no reason not to just keep going. Hundred and one, a hundred and two . . .”
She was saying something cheerful in reply. He looked down again at the grimy floor. In the smudges he could make out stains shaped like kneecaps and the toe-tips of shoes, the heels of hands. Had he actually dropped to the floor? Had he already gotten up?
He looked again at the cashier. The word beautiful had nowhere in particular to land on her—but she was beautiful. Her hair was oddly short, but not chemotherapy short. Perhaps it was a style. He picked up the coffee and before he turned to go he saw into a possible future and without hesitating, he chose that future for his daughter: This lady at the cash register is my little girl, years from now. She is happy and plump. She is a mother. She understands the world. She always knows just what to say.
The cashier was still telling him about things her daughter knew.
“And see this, here.” The woman was pointing at the side of the cash register. It was engraved with the words Atlas Machines. And it had an insignia—a figure of Atlas holding up the world.
“She even knows the name of this giant. And she knows he ain’t real. But, see right here, my little girl scratched a line underneath him so he wasn’t kneeling on nothing.”