Authors: Geoff North
“The special effects are lousy. Is that
supposed to be a robot? It looks like an old washing machine with flashing
lights on top.” Colton returned to his handheld. Sci-fi sixties camp didn’t
appeal to him.
They watched the re-run and poked fun at
the old characters, reminiscing more of their own younger days until Cathy
announced she was taking Hugh’s mom home. Colton gave her a hug and thanked his
aunt for supper. He wandered back across the yard to his own home, video game
playing all the way.
Hugh and Heather sat out on the small deck
facing west and enjoyed an evening coffee. They waved to Cathy as she pulled
back in from her run into town, and watched the sun set.
“It’s good having you home,” he said
between sips. “Braedon’s a nice place to raise a kid.”
“It’s been wonderful…I just wish we didn’t
have to live off you and Cathy.”
“We don’t see it that way. There aren’t any
good jobs in town, and we don’t want to see you waitressing again.”
“But I’ve wasted my life, Hugh. I should’ve
gone to university, I should’ve done more.”
“Don’t look at it that way. You’re a great
mom and our kids love you. We never want to see you leave. It’s not what you do
with life, it’s all about--”
She laughed. “Please don’t give me any
sappy speeches. Save it for your next story.”
“Good point.” He set his empty cup down. “Speaking
of stories… I promised my agent the next manuscript before the weekend. Better
call it a night.”
Hugh slid the patio door open and reached
for his coat from a hook inside. An envelope fell to the floor. “Shit, I almost
forgot.”
“What’s this?” She asked as he presented it
to her.
“Happy birthday.”
“My birthday was last month. You guys got
me the china set, remember?”
“We forgot the card.” She started to open
it but he stopped her. The wind was picking up. “Not here, do it inside. And
don’t lose the fucking thing.” He gave her a kiss and went home.
Hugh grabbed the bottle of champagne and a
single wine glass from the kitchen and headed into the study. The computer was
still on; a screensaver collage of family vacation pictures was fading in and
out. Cathy and Hugh in Punta Cana, Julie and Dana posing in front of a Scottish
castle, Colton giving a double thumbs-up in front of the Great Pyramid.
He wiggled the mouse and the screen snapped
to its Google News home page. Of all the twenty-first century innovations he’d
left behind, the internet had been the most sorely missed. He scrolled down his
favorites list and clicked on the lottery website he’d bookmarked in the
morning. The winning numbers had already been posted.
8, 12, 20, 23, 34, 36
One winner.
Hugh popped the cork off the bottle and
champagne bubbled over onto the desk. He poured until his glass was full and
took a good long taste.
Not worth thirty-eight bucks.
He’d have to get Heather to buy him a
better one. He touched the keyboard where the champagne had splashed. She could
replace that too.
This was the day.
The day Hugh’s hours had been cut in half.
The day
Hugh
had been cut in half.
“Pick up some more garbage bags, were
almost out.” Cathy called from the kitchen.
He looked out the living room window and
saw his car waiting in the driveway, a smoky grey Audi, very expensive and very
new. He couldn’t even remember the model of the old clunker he’d driven into
the fuel truck thirty-seven years ago. It was blue. And rusty.
“Did you say something, honey?”
She came up behind him. “Garbage bags and
this.” She placed the grocery list in his hand. “I still can’t believe you’re
going to the grocery store. How long has it been?”
Never.
“Too long I guess.”
“Well say hi to Billy.” She patted his
bottom and pushed him through the front door. “See if he would like to have
Caroline over this weekend. We haven’t gotten together with them in a while.”
“This weekend?”
It seemed strange to imagine a future so
close now that he had no knowledge of. What would happen tomorrow? He had no
idea. The feeling frightened him, like losing a familiar old sense.
“Yes, this weekend. Colton’s going to a
friend’s on Friday night and the girls are hanging out over at your sister’s.
See if they can make it over then.”
“What…what will we do?”
“Play some cards? Rent a movie? How should
I know? Just get going, will you? It’s already after five and the store will be
closed soon.” She left him standing outside with a perplexed look on his face.
Clouds were building in the west; it looked
like it might snow.
It will snow.
Hugh sat in the Audi and started its engine.
As it warmed up, he thought back on the last three and a half decades.
Round
Two
he sometimes liked to call it. Had it been worth it? Sure, he’d gotten
back what he’d missed the most, but a lot of other people had suffered dearly.
He clicked on the stereo for company and started down the twisting lane. He
glanced to the left without slowing and rolled onto the gravel road without
slowing.
He’d forgotten to say goodbye to the kids.
The girls were helping mom with supper, and Colton was locked away in his
bedroom playing his Xbox. Should he go back? No, it wouldn’t make a difference.
The stop sign was less than a mile ahead, a little pink smudge on a grey
horizon.
Hugh accelerated. The sun was blocked in
the overcast sky but he knew it was getting low. He had to get to town and
finish this off.
The tires slowed on cold gravel and the
Audi came to a complete stop. He checked both ways, crossed the highway, and
went into Braedon. He slowed down by the elementary school out of habit, even
though its playground was empty this late in the afternoon. A glance to the
left revealed the empty lot where his first son had died almost twenty years
before. Mounds of uneven, brown grass grew over the spot where the
McFarlane-Nance house once stood.
Where to first, he wondered? He only had
two stops to make. The grocery store came into view on the right hand side of
Main Street, making the decision for him. He pulled into the almost empty lot
and put the car into park.
He looked out his windshield toward the
front entrance of Little City Food Store and after a moment’s consideration,
turned off the engine. He got out and pulled the collar of his coat up around
his neck. The wind was cold, the clouds low and fast moving.
The double doors slid open and he stopped
in his tracks three feet short of entering the store. It looked just the same
as it had thirty-seven years ago. The two check-out counters straight ahead,
four rows of shopping carts to the right, the magazine rack beyond.
The young cashier at the closest counter
looked up at him as she ran goods past the scanner. Her look said ‘the door won’t
close until you step through, and it’s cold outside, dimwit’.
Hugh smiled apologetically and entered. It
smelled of produce and baked bread. He’d missed that smell. Should he grab a
cart? The grocery list had been forgotten on the front seat of his car. Should
he go back for it? No…he never planned on picking anything up.
Sorry Cathy, but I hate grocery
shopping.
He wandered down the first aisle. It
consisted of cookies, snack crackers, microwave popcorn, potato chips and
bottled peanuts. All the bad shit. The second aisle wasn’t much different, just
more sugar content. Hugh looked at the description label beneath each item. He
couldn’t recall somebody’s name he’d met on the street last week, but he
remembered the price of everything here. He knew pack sizes, he recognized
family groupings; he even remembered individual UPC codes, those ten digit
numbers below the funny series of black bars. The human brain was a funny
thing, he thought. If you pound enough boring data into it every day for eight
hours straight, for five days a week, and for over twenty years, there’s no way
you’re ever going to forget.
Some things never changed.
But there was something fundamentally
different. What was it? He nodded to another customer and made room for her to
push her groceries by. A snotty-nosed little kid stared at him from his
strapped in position on the cart. Hugh didn’t recognize either one of them. There
was a girl in the pet food aisle facing cans to the front as he rounded the
next corner. He didn’t know her either.
That was it! A few customers he did know,
but none of the workers seemed familiar. The pretty, sullen-faced cashier never
worked here when he was an employee, nor was the pet food facer. The girl
removing over-ripe bananas from a produce stand in the distance definitely
never worked here before, Hugh would’ve remembered tits that big.
He wandered down another aisle and finally
saw two male employees working the dairy cooler. One was young, on his knees
scrubbing out the crud that had built up during the week. The older one, whom
he recognized instantly, stood above and pointed out spots the kid had missed.
“How does Caroline feel about the number of
young females employed here?”
Billy Parton looked up and his jaw dropped.
His eyes almost popped out of his head. “Hugh Nance? In my store? Is the place
burning down?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He clapped Hugh’s shoulder and grinned
widely. “My wife trusts me completely! She insisted I hire all girls just to
prove it to me.”
“I bet.”
“Mikey here is a guy,” he indicated the
teen with a tilt of his head. “He’s one of Calvin Wilkinson’s boys.”
Hugh nodded politely. “Hi Mike, how’s your
mom doing?” The boy grunted something in return, hard to tell what it was since
he wouldn’t lift his head from his work to look Hugh in the eye.
“So what
is
the special occasion,
buddy? Why pop in here out of the blue for the first time in what, ten, twenty
years?”
It was a simple question, so simple in fact
that he didn’t have an immediate answer.
What am I doing here? Saying hello?
Saying goodbye?
“I’ve never been in here…why don’t you show
me the offices in the back? I’d like to see where all the big decisions are
made.”
“Yeah, that’s a happening place alright. Lots
of food gets ordered there--huge business moves--should we order a fifteenth
type of shredded cheese? Is there going to be another recall on Romaine
lettuce? Sure you can handle it?”
“Just show me the back, smartass.”
Billy led him past the fresh meats counter
and down a narrow hallway into the warehouse. A couple of kids, one a boy, the
other a girl, were checking through stock on a pallet of boxes over eight feet
high. They were talking and giggling while they worked and didn’t seem bothered
by their boss’s presence. His old friend must have been good to work for.
Another girl, a very stout girl, was sweeping the cement floor beneath them
with a monstrous push broom.
“That’s Scott and Sally Harder’s daughter,”
Billy pointed out. Hugh could see the resemblance. “And this here is my office.”
The door was open. The desk was littered with invoices and time schedules. A
security monitor in the corner showed a split screen with half a dozen
different store locations constantly being recorded in black and white.
Bob never took security that seriously.
“You have a lot trouble with shoplifting?”
“Shrinkage hasn’t been much of a problem
since the cameras were installed a couple of years ago.”
Shrinkage.
A
dumb retail word Hugh never cared for.
He looked back at the desk and saw the time
bouncing around on Billy’s computer monitor. It was 5:29. Time was running out.
“Do you have a file maintenance office?”
“Well sure,” Billy looked a little puzzled.
“All the pricing, all the sales are set through there. Is this one of your book
ideas?”
“Can I see it?”
Billy scratched his head, now downright
perplexed. “I guess so, its back through there.” They left his office and went
to the far end of the warehouse. Hugh could’ve found it himself, blindfolded.
It was next to the compressor room, hot in the winter, hotter in the summer,
and louder than hell all of the time.
A female voice sounded over the intercom
system, Billy was paged to the front of the store. He swung the file
maintenance door open. “Probably some old lady thinking she was overcharged on
prunes and denture cream. I better go check it out. Poke around all you want,
just don’t touch the computer.”
Hugh waited until his friend was out of
sight and then stepped into darkness. He reached for the light switch to the
left without having to look. The pale fluorescents flickered on and Hugh’s
breath caught. It was the same tiny room with the same windowless pale green
walls. That’s where the similarity ended. The desk was up against the north
wall, not the south. It wasn’t even the same desk. His had been small with
barely enough room to space to accommodate a fifteen inch monitor and keyboard.
Hugh sank into the comfortable office chair and swiveled around.
Jesus Christ, it’s as nice as the one in
my study.
There were family pictures on the wall
amongst the certificates and work calendars, a pretty woman in one, a guy
smiling with two kids in another. The one boy looked hauntingly familiar.
Handsome little guy.
“No one was overcharged, but it was an old
lady. Said her cereal cream was sour.”
Hugh spun around. “Who works in here?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Why should I?
“You really don’t get out much, do you?”
“
Who
, Billy.”
“Glen Richards.”
“Bob’s older brother?”
“The one and only. He’s been here for
almost twenty years.”
The same kid that bust out the stain
glass window in the McFarlane house in my first life.
“These are his kids?”
“Can’t you tell?” Billy’s voice softened. “Little
Eric there looks just like his uncle… Do you ever think about that day at the
bridge?”
Hugh stood up and looked away from the
pictures. “I try not to. Some things you can’t change so it’s best not to dwell
on it.” He ran his fingers along the top of Glen Richard’s computer monitor. “Nineteen
inch?”
“Twenty-one. Only the best for my guys and
gals.”
“You’re a good boss, Billy, and an even
better friend.”
He stepped back and grinned. “You don’t
want a fucking hug, do you?”
They went back through the store and
stepped outside into the windy evening. Wet snowflakes had just started to
dampen the asphalt parking lot. “Don’t be a stranger, come on back soon, and
next time buy something!”
Hugh was halfway back to his car when he
remembered Cathy had wanted him to invite them over for Friday night. He turned
back but Billy was already gone. It didn’t matter.
He got in the Audi and started it up,
turning the heater to maximum and setting the fans to defrost. There was no
buildup of ice and snow on the windshield, and he would make sure the field of
vision remained clear. He wanted a good view of what was to happen next.
He drove a little too quickly for Reynolds
Liquor Mart, but he had to hurry, it was almost completely dark out. He ran to
the door and got clocked on the forehead as it swung out.
“Oh, Hugh, I’m so sorry!”
“Not your fault, Suzey. I should’ve seen
that coming.”
The pretty woman reached out to see if he
was okay and he opened the door all the way to let her through. “I-I read your
last book…actually I’ve read them all. You have such a wonderful style.”
Hugh didn’t rub his sore head. He didn’t
want to make her feel any worse.
Damn, she’s pretty.
“Well thank you, that’s very nice of you to
say.”
“I’m not just saying it, I
mean
it.”
“Take care, Suzey.” He watched for a few
seconds as she hurried to her car.