ONE TURN AWAY, PART 1 George Maric had never found Walmart as tedious a place to visit as most people do. The lights there are bright yet never glaring. They throw everything into a colorful array somewhat like a daycare center might, but in a way smooth and sterile and professional-looking. If only hospitals looked this nonthreatening, he’d think. Everywhere you go all that you need is right within your grasp, and soothing Muzak floats through the air. George had always felt as though surely he was the only person in the world who ever understood the appeal but all the same he’d never brought up the subject. No, he didn’t have any problem at all dawdling in a megamarket like this; all he needed today, however, was a single piece of thatch screening for his garden. As he located the necessary row of boxes in the pleasantly dimly lit Home & Garden section (which had always looked to him like a half-finished garage) and started rummaging inattentively through the various choices of brands and types he wondered for the first time why he hadn’t taken up a more useful hobby than gardening. He thought, Maybe I could have tried something like painting or drawing. Make something lasting. But hey, why complain? At least this way I’m creating life. Technically. But what kind of life *do* plants have? I mean, they can’t even go anywhere. It’s the ultimate ‘bred in captivity’ situation. They’re born stuck in place, paralyzed, they live their whole lives that way, and that’s how they die. How do we really know they don’t mind? It gives me the willies. Suddenly eager at this point to mosey on out of there and get his mind on something else George grabbed a box of screening at random and began to make for the end of the aisle. He then found himself facing two old women, one of whom was the other’s elder by some ten or fifteen years although this still placed her at around sixty-seven at the very youngest and possibly more than seventy-five. Both of these people gave the distinct impression that they were swaddled in old-fashioned dowdy Southern clothing at the very moment they came out of their mothers’ wombs (and were probably then given these very same gaudy, mink brown purses, for that matter). This, however, was not the dominant thought in George’s mind. The only thing he cared about was that the women were blocking the aisle with a diagonally slanted shopping cart. That and the fact that the older lady had a voice which George described, every time he told anyone of the incident afterwards, as “the sort of thing I’m convinced got complaints from next-door neighbors every single morning, and I’m talking about people who live next to *each other*—in Pakistan.” “REALLY EXTREME WEATHER WE’VE BEEN HAVING, ISN’T IT?” this older woman said in a very conversational tone but at roughly the same number of decibels as your average movie theater speaker. “Oh yes,” her friend replied nonchalantly as though she were talking to a normal human being. Probably she’d known this woman for years and no longer noticed anything out of the ordinary. “Didn’t you hear? Odessa’s been terribly sick lately. Out with the flu or something. It’s gotten really bad. Her symptoms started off normal but then her eyes got all bloodshot and I heard down at the beauty parlor that the nurse saw her foot and mouth both swell up like a balloon in reaction to some pill she gave her! *Everybody’s* under the weather these days. Probably because no one gets enough exercise anymore.” “THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE THE FLU,” the older woman said. “THAT SOUNDS MORE LIKE A VIRUS. I HEAR THAT SALMONELLA THING’S REALLY GOING AROUND NOWADAYS. PERSONALLY I NEVER COULD TOLERATE PILLS THOUGH. THEY GIVE ME GAS.” George remained silent, hoping to catch the women’s eyes with his own. He was trying his best to be polite but there was a burning sensation welling up within him. Acid reflux was nothing compared to it. “SO WHAT DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD GET HERE?” Finally. “Well, let’s see,” the younger woman replied as she carefully scrutinized many bags of powder marked “Flea & Tick Killer”. After spending nearly two minutes poring over the different brands (which as far as George could tell were no different from each other) she selected one using no discernible standard and put it in the cart. “IS IT BIOLOGICAL??” the older woman said. For the first time George was almost as confused as he was bored and frustrated. It was too much. He was ready to speak up. “Excuse me, ladies,” he said gently. They didn’t seem to hear him. “I don’t know what you mean by that, Frederica,” the younger woman said without looking in George’s direction for even a split second. “It’s just like the others.” “ALL THE BEST AUTHORITIES SAY IT’S ALL GOT TO BE ONE HUNDRED PERCENT NATURAL, EDNA,” Frederica said. “EVERYTHING I USE IS ALWAYS HOME GROWN. I FIGURE I’D WANT NO LESS FOR ANY OTHER ANIMAL.” “For heaven’ sake, Frederica, we’re talking about killin’ ants here, not setting free the whales,” Edna said. “If my shoe can be synthetic then I see no reason why this other stuff can’t be too.” Although George had finally gained a smidgeon of respect for this “Edna” person the fact remained that he could bear to continue standing here no longer. Why it hadn’t occurred to him before to simply turn around and leave the aisle he didn’t know—but then again how often in life does the obvious solution occur to us puzzlingly, embarrassingly late? As it so happens it didn’t matter in the slightest anyhow. The way out was blocked on one side by a busy employee standing on a ladder next to a tall, wide cart of some kind, and on the opposite side by another employee slowly filling up a shelf with a humungous pile of charcoal sacks. George was stranded. Only a well-trained Olympic athlete could have cleared either cart or sacks. Of course the old ladies’ shopping cart was much easier to deal with but surely it wouldn’t come to that—would it? George returned to where he had been. They were still there. But he already knew that. He probably could have heard Frederica’s voice from at least a third of the way across the store. “WHAT’S THAT?” she said, pointing to a bottle of liquid up on the shelf. George couldn’t clearly read the label from where he stood. “Oh that’s just some chemical they sell here, dear,” Edna said. “We don’t need any of that.” “PROBABLY NOT,” Frederica said. “MY FIRST HUSBAND WORKED WITH CHEMICALS, YOU KNOW. IN A SCIENCE LAB. SEEMED LIKE THEY WOULD BURN HIM EVERY OTHER WEEK. HE WOULD COME IN AND LEAN OVER TO KISS ME AND THERE WOULD BE THIS NASTY, GRODY BURN ALL OVER HIS NECK AND I’D SAY, ‘LEONARD, WHO’S TRYING TO KISS ME, YOU OR THAT THING ON YOUR NECK?” As the two women laughed like ninnies George closed his eyes and tried his best to remember the positive thinking exercises some disaster management expert had taught him one week in The National Guard. “Let’s just find that good seed,” Edna said after the laughter finally ceased. “You know, like they used to have. I’ve got a real good plot of dirt sitting in my backyard that’s just achin’ for it.” “I DON’T THINK THEY PROBABLY SELL IT ANYMORE,” Frederica said. “IT’S NOT LIKE IT USED TO BE. FLOWERS GREW SO MUCH BETTER IN THE OLD DAYS. SEEMED AS THOUGH YOU WOULD JUST PLANT THE SEED AND WAKE UP THE NEXT MORNING TO FIND THEM SHOOTING RIGHT UP OUT OF THE GROUND.” Edna made a little clicking “pssh” noise with her mouth. “Wasn’t like back where *I* come from then,” she said. “*We* didn’t need much more than dung. In fact I’ll wager you four for a halfpenny nothin’ anyone’s been buying these days has ever enriched their soil like the cow pies did back home.” Suddenly George had a disturbingly vivid, gleeful fantasy of running up to one of these women, snatching something out of their purses and holding it hostage until they let him go. *That* ought to get their attention, eh? There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned Mexican standoff! “Ha ha!” he’d tell them. “I have your precious bingo card! Now let me through because I’ve got a winning ticket! I’ll slash your little darling all the way from ear to ear, O-one to B-five! MOVE IT, SUGAR! Or I start with the free space!”
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:29:41 +0000
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