Issue Three

I pull into the Easy Stop on my way to work. It’s not unusual for me to do so. I stop the lulling voice of NPR’s morning edition by pulling my key from the ignition. Inside the store most of the shelves are empty, as though the owners are in the process of moving. I wait in line behind a disgruntled customer and am paying for a pack of donuts when the gunman comes in and stands behind me. He’s carrying his gun the way I carry my briefcase. It looks burdensome. As I take change from the clerk, the gunman walks to an empty rack and shoves it over. I drop my change into my pocket and step aside. The gunman takes my place in front of the register and raises his gun. The clerk pulls the money out and hands it to him. Nothing is said. The transaction is routine, almost cordial and I understand why. I express my understanding to the gunman by giving a little nod of my head and a smile. He shoots me. Which makes perfect sense. I understand. Who hasn’t been desperate. He pockets the register money and shoots the clerk. The gunman moves slowly, levels the gun and fires. The clerk crumples to the floor. I appreciate his style, slow and deliberate, as he levels the gun at me. He shoots me as I explain that he doesn’t really need to shoot me anymore.

 We’re not all that different,” I tell him, “not when you think about it. Our stories I mean.” And I’m making my point fairly well, I think, when I say to him,“We couldn’t be so different.” He shoots me on his way out. I understand that he has to go.

It’s like any other morning on my way to work, 5 a.m., driving along Cleveland Avenue, from one streetlamp’s circle of light to the next. Dark–light–dark... The gray sky is just above the street, holding the city light. My old car floats–bobs along the road, a boat in a wake. The dewy air is full of honeysuckle and exhaust. Classical flute plays on the radio, but there is static, like a concert and a bonfire together. I pull into the Easy Stop and kill the engine.

Light pours through the bars on the window and it is hard to look inside, but I grab my briefcase and go in. The place is nearly empty. Shelves everywhere, but next to nothing on them. I walk toward the back of the store passing scattered boxes of aluminum foil, baking soda, some loose bubble gum. I’ve come in for breakfast. A danish, maybe, but I don’t see any. All I see is a pack of donuts. At the front of the store I see the head and shoulders of the clerk above the counter. He is tiny. I take the donut mini-gems from the shelf. A little package of six, chocolate flavored. They are old and waxy. Stale. I take another look toward the front and there is a man there, pointing at the cigarette rack that hangs above the register. His movements are quick and irritated. The clerk is atop a stool now on his knees, reaching above to take down a pack of cigarettes that he replaces to grab a different pack. I take my donuts to the front and get in line behind the cigarette man, who mumbles and walks away empty handed. I put my donuts on the counter as the gunman walks in and takes his place in line behind me. I turn to look at him briefly. He wears a black ski-mask and his posture is poor like mine. His arm is limp and his gun hangs heavy at his side. I direct my eyes to his dirty black sneakers and then to my old, but well shined oxfords. I pay the clerk and start to leave, but decide to turn around and watch instead. The gunman levels his gun at the clerk. The clerk pulls the cash from the drawer, hands over the dollar I’ve just given for the donuts, and the gunman shoots him. The gunman scratches his face.

“That mask has to be an itchy mask,” I say, “It’s really still too warm for a ski-mask.”

The gunman levels his pistol at me and fires.

“Entirely unnecessary,” I say, catching the bullet in the chest.

“I know where you’re coming from. These are difficult times. Money’s hard to come by,” I say, and I mean it. I do understand. He levels the gun again and fires, knocking me back a little. “Do you have to do that?” I ask. He fires again.

I am in the store and the lights aren’t too bright, but the linoleum floors are shiny and smell of pine-sol. I get my donuts from the shelves and head to the counter. The cigarette man has already grumbled and left. I am running a little bit late. The gunman waits alongside the register. I pay for the donuts, the gunman levels his pistol, the clerk hands over the dollar and is shot. I tell the gunman that my patience is wearing thin. It occurs to me that it is the gutsiest thing I’ve ever said. He levels his gun.

Gathering

It was warm, walking together in our neighborhood with its old clapboard houses, restored. All of the lawns were filled with pecans from the trees overhead.

You were so quiet, never talking the way I did. Did you ever speak just to hear a voice? We watched the road. All those little nuts, you had to watch or you’d slip. I heard one fall and looked into the trees above us, into the highest and thinnest of the branches arching across the street. I loved to walk along the veins of the shadow limbs, crossing in and out of one another. I kicked pecans as far as I could along the dusk pink street.

I jumped from one to the next too, crushing them, mashing the meat into the pavement. You stepped around them and kept watching the road. The trees formed the leaky roof of a Cathedral above us.

“Are you walking in a processional?” I asked. For a moment, you raised your face from its ground gazing. My leg flew higher kick after kick. I must have looked like a chorus girl. No, a punter.

  It was the couple that stopped my fooling around just then. I saw the Mexican woman first, on her knees in the yard. She was crawling from one good pecan to the next, gathering, filling a grocery bag. Then there was the man two houses up the street on the other side. He was bent at the waist, filling a bag. I had no question about whether they were together. I could feel it. The woman slowed her efforts as we passed her, she seemed wary of us, but wouldn’t look our way. The man watched us from the corner of his eye, but never stopped his work. I felt as though I’d mistakenly walked through their home. I was glad to get down the road, past them.

I almost remember jumping on the pecan that rolled. I remember being flat on my back anyway, staring up. Those tree limbs mingling over the street. I knew I’d fallen, but it was hard to account for your silhouette beside me, crushing a shell on the asphalt beside my ear. You were right, the little things weren’t funny all the time.

Your hand was full of purpose, pulling me up. I put a lot of weight on it just to feel you pulling. I kicked a pecan back at the house after you’d gone inside. It hit the neighbor’s hubcap, and made a hollow tinny sound that resonates.