Authors: Rob Stennett
Will listened closely, but he couldn’t hear any kissing sounds. He didn’t hear anything until his father finally said, “I
forbid you from taking Will.”
Will was a little startled. He’d never heard his father say something like “forbid.” It seemed like a King Arthur sort of
thing to say.
His mom must have been equally surprised. Because she replied, “You
forbid
me?”
“Yes.”
“Who even says ‘forbid’ anymore?”
“I’m saying ‘forbid’ right now because you are not taking
my
son anywhere.”
“
Your
son? Okay then, I
forbid
you from sleeping in
my
bed with me. I banish you to the hotel. Again. I thought maybe you’d get the message yesterday, Jeff. But now I’m not letting
you in this house anymore until you can act like a caring father and husband.”
“Amy, would you just — ”
“I’m not finished. I also forbid you from forbidding me to do anything ever again!” And then she pushed open the door. Will
jumped back. “Come on. We’re going,” she said.
“Do I have to come?” Emily asked.
“Yes,” Will’s mother snapped. “Go get in the car!”
“I’m coming with you,” his father said as he followed his mom through the door. “You can’t drive on the ice.”
“Fine. You can be our chauffeur. Then back to the hotel,” she said, snatching her purse and keys.
“Great!” Will’s dad shouted back.
Then both parents stared at Will. And he suddenly didn’t want to go to the store with either of them. He was afraid both of
his parents might be crazy.
As the Hendersons drove to the supermarket, Will sat in the back next to Emily and stared out the window. He thought the icy
roads made Goodland feel a little bit like Mars. It seemed uninhabitable, as if it were never intended for human life. It
was just an icy wasteland. Tree branches that normally reached towards the heavens were now frozen and pointing towards the
ground under the weight of the ice. Jagged icicles hung off the roofs of every house. Drainage pipes had large frozen blocks
of ice in front of them. Will wondered how anyone could have ever stayed alive in such a climate before there were things
like central heating and cars and houses.
He tried to imagine what it must have been like for the Native Americans living in teepees or for the cavemen when the weather
got like this. At least the Indians would have giant Buffalo-skin rugs. What would the cavemen do? There weren’t even any
caves in Goodland. That must have been horrible. And at that moment, Will felt very glad he was born when he was. Sure, the
rapture was kind of scary, but he never had to worry about things like surviving. He never had to be a Native American huddled
in a Buffalo-skin rug amongst all of the frozen trees, nor did he have to live as a caveman without a cave.
That was something to be grateful for.
And then, when Jeff pulled into the parking lot of the Super Mart, Will stopped thinking about the Goodland of yesteryear
and started focusing on the Goodland of today.
The first thing he noticed was that the parking lot had
never
looked like this. Will was always a little fascinated that there were always so many extra parking spaces in the lot of the
Super Mart. Sometimes buses and campers and RVs would park there for weeks because the owners must have known that they would
never use all of the parking spaces.
But today every single space was taken.
There were even cars parked in places where there weren’t spaces. There were cars on the side of the road, against the building,
in front of loading docks, and in the crisscross spaces next to where the shopping carts went.
Inside the Super Mart things were much worse.
When the Hendersons originally started to head towards the supermarket, Jeff thought they might also want to stock up on other
non-grocery items: batteries, flashlights, Band-Aids, antifreeze, board games, and so on. Jeff said they’d want to stock up
on things just to be safe in case they got stranded or cut off from the city somehow. “There’s no way any of that is going
to happen,” he said, “but better safe than sorry.” So he suggested they go to Super Mart instead.
It seemed like everyone else had the same idea.
The people of Goodland were vultures, picking every shelf clean, as if this was the last chance they’d ever have to stock
themselves up with Hot Pockets and Children’s Tylenol. It reminded Will of when his mom had brought him to black Friday last
year after Thanksgiving.
“Think of all the money we’ll save. We can get twice the Christmas gifts for half the cost,” she had said. They got to the
Best Buy an hour before it opened and there was already a line wrapped around the building. And as the doors opened, people
flooded in, flanking every aisle, scratching and clawing for DVDs and TVs, and begging to be the chosen ones who were given
one of the ten free printers. It was one of the most uncomfortable scenes Will had ever witnessed. He saw his friend’s moms
(the same kind ladies who had given him rides to soccer practice, the same ladies who insured that every boy on the team was
given a Capri Sun and Fruit Roll Up after a game) turn into soulless creatures as they yelled at each other and cussed and
snarled “mine” over all of the wonderful deals on electronic merchandise. Will had never seen people act that way, and he
learned on that day that every adult was one step away from anarchy.
It was even worse on the day of the ice storm. It seemed that anarchy had arrived. Checkout lines were stretching down every
aisle. The shelves were barren. Even clearance items — trinkety things that hadn’t been touched in years like Chia Pets and
The Clapper — were being snatched up because people didn’t want to leave the store empty-handed. And there was no kindness
or decency in sight anywhere in the store. Just people, young and old, big and little, doing whatever it took to get what
they wanted.
The Hendersons stood frozen amidst all the chaos in the Super Mart. The scene was all too overwhelming. They didn’t really
know what to do or how to act. Finally, Emily said, “All right, if we’re going to shop, we’re going to need a cart.” She then
grabbed a shopping cart, but some short man with a goatee and wire-framed glasses ran up to her and said, “Hey man, what do
you think you’re doing!”
“Getting a shopping cart,” Emily said. Will thought Emily always had this sassy, teenage-girl, know-it-all quality to her.
But she seemed taken back by the man who’d run up to her.
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” the man with the glasses snorted. “I, like, see this cart across the store, run to it, and you think
you’re going to grab it from me?”
“She wasn’t trying to take it from you,” Jeff said.
“Nobody’s talking to you, square,” the man said. “And besides, it doesn’t, like, matter what she was
trying
to do, because what she
did
was steal my cart.”
“Oh, okay,” Emily said, letting go of the cart.
That was the only invitation the goateed man needed; he snatched the cart and ran into the chaos of the Super Mart.
Will thought the goateed man must have awakened his dad because he cleared his throat and said, “All right, here’s what we’ll
do. We need to stick together and get the essentials first. Bottled water, batteries, flashlights, stuff like that,” Jeff
said.
What about food, Will thought. Isn’t food an essential? He thought about being trapped in the corn maze with his insides eating
themselves out because he was so hungry, and he imagined himself like that for days, waiting for the trumpet to sound and
Jesus to come. He couldn’t bear the thought. They needed food, Will realized. He was starting to feel that he was the only
clear-thinking person in his family. Maybe he would need to start taking more action, maybe he needed to grow up a little
to help his family survive this crisis.
Jeff went on, “If you see a cart, grab one. Until then, we load up our arms. Now let’s go.”
“Maybe we should split up,” Will said.
“We’re not splitting up. It’s too dangerous in here,” Jeff answered.
“It’s just a grocery store.”
“Son, have you ever seen a grocery store like this?” Will didn’t answer. His dad kind of had a point. “Now come on,” Jeff
said as he started leading them
away
from the food toward the flashlights. What were they supposed to do, turn the lights on and watch themselves starve to death?
This plan was getting worse and worse by the second.
When they got to the flashlight aisle there were only two left and Jeff lunged at one of the last ones. He seemed to have
grabbed it at the same time as some lady in a wool coat.
“Excuse me, sir, I had this first,” she said.
“No way,” Jeff shouted. “I just gave some guy my shopping cart.”
“Not my problem. Let go.”
“No, it’s mine,” Jeff said.
Will never found out who won the argument because that was about the time he snuck away from his family and towards the grocery
side of the Super Mart. There was no time to argue. His dad would be mad at first, but he’d be happy when Will came back with
a cart full of food.
He decided that his best bet would be frozen foods. They would keep for a long time and they would have full hearty meals
like Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and apple cobbler. He knew that the freezer aisle was aisle 11
and on his way there he tried not to look at everything else that was going on in the Super Mart. He tried to tell himself
what to do: Just keep walking. Do not stop and don’t be a sissy. All you have to do is get some food for your family. And
if you don’t want to starve, you better get some before it’s gone.
Despite the pep talk he gave himself, he couldn’t make it past the produce aisle without stopping. He watched as women with
shopping carts grabbed the last of the apples and pears and bananas and put them into their carts. They were all complaining,
saying things like, “This fruit is way too bruised to buy. I can’t even believe they stock fruit like this. Honestly, if they
expect us to pay for this, at
most
these apples/pears/bananas should only be half price.” Of course it wasn’t really their conversation that shocked Will.
It was the empty produce stands.
There were neon letters on poster boards that said Bananas for 69 cents or Apples $2/lb. But underneath those signs were only
empty brown shelves. Will had never seen shelves in a grocery store completely barren. He never even knew that was an option.
He never thought about the process of stock boys coming in late at night to restock all the fruits and vegetables so his mom
could buy more — because he never had to. It just happened. And the fact that things were not happening normally was starting
to unsettle him. The system was breaking down.
What are you doing? Keep walking. You are at aisle one — ten more to go, buddy.
Will locked his eyes and walked straight ahead. He didn’t focus on all the grabbing and tussling over cereal and oatmeal in
aisle four, or the shouting match that was happening between two large men in aisle nine. It wasn’t his problem. All he had
to do was make it to the freezer aisle.
Unfortunately the freezer aisle was the most crowded in the Super Mart. Every freezer door was open with two or three people
at once trying to grab whatever was inside. Will stood at the end of the aisle and watched as all of the frost-coated doors
had hands and faces and legs mashed against them. It reminded Will of when his dad would let him watch detective shows after
he was already supposed to be in bed. In those shows they had shelves that slid into freezers where they would put all of
the dead bodies. In aisle 11 it looked like all of the shelves had been stood up and now all of the dead bodies were trying
to claw their way out.
How am I supposed to get in that aisle? There’s no way, Will thought. It’s weird and there’s too many people and I’m too small.
Are you serious? Is that what you’re going to tell your dad when he asks why you snuck away? Are you actually going to tell
him, “Sorry Dad, I was going to get food but I’m too small”? Are you really going to let your family starve because the grocery
aisle is too crowded?
Of course he couldn’t let his family go hungry. It would be fine, no one was going to hurt him, he just had to get in there.
He had to be brave. So he marched down the aisle past the worthless things like frozen vegetables and stopped in front of
the sign that said “TV dinners.” There would be turkey à la king with mashed potatoes and spaghetti dinners with breadsticks.
But the frozen TV dinners seemed to be quite the commodity. Everyone was reaching and clawing towards the back to get the
last of Super Mart’s frozen meals. Will tried to reach in with everyone else, but with little luck. He was too short and just
couldn’t wedge his way in there. He’d have to let people know he needed in there too.
“Pardon me,” he said a little timidly. No one noticed. “Please, I need to get in. I have to get some turkey à la king for
my family.” A few people looked back but did not give him room. He would have to shout. Everyone here was acting so primal
and he would just have to get in and act primal with them. That was the only language they would listen to now. So he shouted,
“I have to get food for my family! PLEASE let me in! What kind of people are you? You didn’t listen when I warned about the
school being destroyed, and now you’re acting like this?”
Will realized he probably shouldn’t have said that last part. Because at that moment every soul in the aisle stopped the pushing,
shoving, and clawing and stared at the little boy. People got out from deep inside the freezers. The frosted doors clicked
shut. And then there was only silence as people stood watching Will. The only sound came from a big-boned woman who dropped
an entire armful of ice cream. Will didn’t know what these people were about to do to him.
Then one man said, “That’s him. That’s the little boy who predicted the tornado.”
“That’s not the Henderson boy,” another man argued.