The Store

by Bentley Little

  Skipping his usual preliminary warm-up, he hurried down the drive to the road and started jogging.

  Juniper seemed even more deserted than usual, and for once he found the lack of people oppressive rather than refreshing. He'd expected to see more lights in the houses, to see more people in the streets -- hadn't anyone else heard the explosions? -- but the town remained dark, dark and quiet, and he almost breathed a sigh of relief as he passed by the last of the downtown buildings and headed toward the highway.

  Although the sun had not yet risen, there was a lightening of the sky behind the mountains as he approached his favorite stretch of highway. The forest was dark, the close-set trees still clinging to the blackness of night, but the open area ahead was clearly visible and bathed in a fading blue. He slowed down, not to savor the moment this time, but to see what was going on.

  He stopped directly in front of the sign.

  In the twenty-four hours since he'd last passed this spot, it had changed completely. The sign was still in place, but gone were the saplings and small bushes that had dotted the meadow. Gone was the meadow itself. The tall grass had been plowed under. Bare earth and surveyors' sticks marked the boundaries of the construction site. A portion of the hill had been blasted away, fallen timber and chunks of boulder fanning out onto the flat section of ground away from the remaining slope.

  He stared at the scene, shocked. He'd seen pictures of rain forest destruction, the aftereffects of wanton slash-and-burn policies in underdeveloped countries, but even in his most pessimistic projections he had not expected to see anything like that here. Yet that was exactly what it looked like. The carefully planned and orderly executed clearing of the land that he would have thought a major chain like The Store would insist upon was nowhere in evidence. No trees had been saved, no effort had been made to preserve or protect the character of the area. The trees had been simply cut, the land gouged, the hillside blasted.

  And they'd done it all in a day.

  There was no sign of the workers, only the equipment -- bulldozers, Caterpillars, shovels, cranes -- parked side by side in the southeast corner of the site and set off by a chain-link fence. It had been only a half hour, maybe less, since he'd been awakened by the explosions, but the men who'd set off the blasts were nowhere to be seen. He looked carefully around, trying to spot someone, anyone, moving amidst the equipment. Nothing.

  He frowned. Even if work was only performed at night, there was no way that there wouldn't be at least a few men still about -- unless they'd detonated the explosives and then immediately vacated the site.

  But he'd seen no cars on the highway, had met no vehicles on the road.

  He jumped the small ditch adjoining the highway and walked past the sign onto the property, his jogging shoes sinking into the newly turned dirt. As he walked over rocks and ruts, around branches and boulders, his puzzlement over the workers reverted back to anger over the destruction of the meadow. How had this been allowed to happen? Where were the building inspectors? The code enforcement people? Juniper's zoning laws didn't allow builders to just decimate the landscape. The town's master plan specifically required all new businesses to "conform to the spirit and style of the existing community and its buildings, and to make a concerted effort to retain all geologic formations and as much natural vegetation as is feasible." The plan had been drafted in the early 1980s by the then-town council in an attempt to preserve the unique character of Juniper and its environs, and every council since had reinforced the town's commitment to controlled growth, making sure the builder of an apartment house incorporated an existing stand of ponderosas in his landscaping plans, withholding approval for a gas station until the company agreed to shift its building fifteen feet to the north in order to accommodate a huge house-sized boulder that had become a local landmark in the years it had sat on the undeveloped land.

  Now, in one day, The Store had managed to circumvent that entire process and single-handedly destroy the most beautiful stretch of road within the town limits.

  Well, that wouldn't last. As soon as it opened, he'd go directly to town hall and He stopped walking, his stomach sinking.

  The perimeter of the site was littered with the carcasses of dead animals.

  He took a deep breath as he stared at the scene before him. A wall of debris from the cleared meadow had been pushed back by bulldozers to the rear of the property and formed a semicircular barrier to the land beyond. He had seen only trees and bushes at first, logs and branches, but this close he could see that there were animal parts mixed in with the rest of the cleared brush, bodies lying on the ground in front of the debris. As his gaze moved slowly from left to right, he counted four deer, three wolves, six javelina, and over a dozen raccoons, squirrels, and chipmunks.

  How had this many animals been killed?

  And why?

  _The deer_.

  The deer had been an omen, a taste of things to come. He had thought it odd at the time, eerie even, but now the animal's death seemed downright malevolent. It was as if the deer had died as a result of the erected sign. And now these other animals had died because the land had been cleared.

  Their deaths seemed to be the price of construction.

  It was a trade.

  That was stupid, he knew, but logical or not, something about the idea felt right to him, and goose bumps arose beneath the cooling sweat on his arms as he stared at the curved line of bodies.

  He began walking forward. The first deer had not been shot or injured. Had these other animals died naturally?

  He strode quickly across the unevenly graded ground. Two days ago, he would have laughed had anybody suggested anything as ludicrous as what he was thinking. This was a construction site. Local workers, people he probably knew, had been hired to clear a piece of land and build a building. There was nothing strange or unnatural about that.

  Only there was. He didn't know how, didn't know why, but somehow within the last twenty-four hours everything had changed. The entire world seemed different. His unshakable faith in the rational and the material had been shaken, and while he wasn't ready to believe in ghosts and goblins and little green men, he wasn't quite the skeptic he had been. It was an unnerving feeling, and it didn't sit well with him, and once again he found himself wondering if it wasn't his personal connection with this area that was coloring his viewpoint.

  _Third Store Massacre in a Month_.

  Then again, maybe it wasn't.

  He reached the first animal, a wolf. Like the deer, its stomach was distended. Also like the deer, there was no physical sign of violence. The wolf did not even appear to have been pushed here by a bulldozer. There wasn't a mark on it. It was as if it had walked or crawled to this spot of its own free will and died.

  He looked past the dead animal to the wall of cleared debris immediately beyond.

  And saw an arm protruding from the tangle of rocks and brush.

  Bill's heart leaped in his chest. He took a hesitant step forward to verify that what he thought he was seeing was what he really _was_ seeing.

  Sticking out between the bare branches of a dead manzanita bush was a white hand and forearm, smeared with mud and blood.

  He backed up, stumbled across the rutted remains of the meadow, and, as the sun rose over the mountains, ran down the highway as fast as he could toward the police station in town.

  He returned with the police to the scene, answering questions and watching as they pulled the corpse out from the rubble. After the body had been loaded into an ambulance and taken away, he rode back to the station with Forest Everson. The detective took down an official statement, which Bill read and signed.

  It was after ten when he was finally through with all of the forms and questions and reports. In the furor over finding the body, The Store's destruction of the meadow and its wanton disregard for local zoning ordinances had been pushed to the side, but though Bill was still disturbed by what he'd found, he had not been distracted from his original purpose, and he walk
ed next door, to the town hall, and explained to the young acne-scarred clerk behind the counter that he wanted to talk to one of the building or code enforcement inspectors.

  "Mr. Gilman's out for the week," the clerk said.

  "And who is Mr. Gilman?"

  "He's the code enforcement officer."

  "Isn't there anyone else I could talk to?" Bill asked.

  "Well, what exactly is the problem?"

  "The problem is that whoever's in charge of clearing the land for The Store has totally ignored Juniper's zoning regulations. They cut down every tree on that property, they blasted a section of hillside --"

  "You want to talk to Mr. Curtis. He's the Planning Director."

  "Fine," Bill said. "Let me talk to him."

  "Actually, he's not here right now. He's attending a seminar in Scottsdale. If you want, I can have him call you when he gets back. It's just a one-day thing. He should be in tomorrow."

  "Look, all I want to do is let someone know what's happening so inspectors can be sent out there before any more damage is done."

  The young man looked uneasy. "I, uh, think everything's been approved."

  Bill stared at him. "What?"

  "I think that was all okayed." He looked around the office, as though searching for someone higher up to help him out, but there was only a secretary seated at a desk against the far wall, typing on a computer and pointedly ignoring the exchange. "You'd have to talk to Mr. Curtis, but I think the Planning Commission gave The Store a waiver."

  Bill was stunned. "How's that possible? I didn't hear anything about it."

  The young man shifted his feet uncomfortably. "You'd have to talk to Mr.

  Curtis."

  "Mr. Curtis? I want to talk to the mayor!"

  "He's not in his office, but I could leave a message to have him call you." "Is _anybody_ in their office right now?"

  "There's a town council meeting tonight. Six o'clock. You might bring it up in open discussion."

  Yes, Bill thought. Open discussion. A public forum. That was exactly where this needed to be brought up. There was something fishy going on here. Decisions affecting the entire town had apparently been made by the Planning Commission in closed sessions, without any input from members of the public. He didn't know whether or not there had been any bribes involved, any promises made in exchange for cash or stock options or whatever, but something wasn't right, and it needed to be brought to the attention of the public.

  He'd call Ben, make sure the editor put it in the paper.

  "Thank you," Bill told the clerk. "I think I will bring it up in front of the council. What time does the meeting start?"

  "Six o'clock. In the council chambers next door."

  "I'll be there," Bill said.

  Ginny called at lunch to find out how things had gone. He'd phoned her earlier, when he'd first run to the police station, to tell her that he'd found a dead body and wouldn't be home before she left for work. Now he filled in the details, explaining that they didn't know who the man was or how he'd died but that the body was being taken up to the county coroner's office in Flagstaff.

  "Was he murdered?" she asked.

  "I don't know," he said. "I guess we won't find out until they do an autopsy."

  "That's so creepy."

  You don't know the half of it, he thought. He was silent for a moment, considered telling her about the animals, but something kept him from it, and he switched the subject to The Store's desecration of the land.

  "So that's what that blasting was," she said.

  "They totally destroyed it. Drive by after work. You won't even recognize it."

  "And that's how you found the body? When you were looking at the damage?"

  "Yeah. I was walking onto the meadow -- or what used to be the meadow to check it out, and I saw an arm sticking out of the debris. I hauled back to the police station and told the cops." He leaned back in his chair, looked out the window at the forest. "There's not a tree left on that site, Gin. By the end of the week, the rocks and the hill and everything else will be gone, too. It'll just be a flat cleared space."

  "What did you expect?"

  "I don't know. I guess I figured they'd make a token effort to make the store blend in with the area, you know, not piss off the locals. But they just raped the place. Slash and burn. It looks like some Third-World construction site." He paused. "I'm going to the town council meeting tonight to talk about it. I think they violated the town's zoning ordinances, but when I talked to a guy at town hall, he made it sound like the Planning Commission granted them an exemption."

  "Did you ask Ben if he knew anything about it?"

  "No. I'm going to call him later."

  "So what are you planning to do?"

  "Nothing. Ask some questions, get some answers. I can't say I'll be completely surprised if our local leaders sold us down the river, but I want to make sure they're held accountable for it. You want to go with me tonight?"

  "No."

  "Come on."

  "I have to work in this town. Those people you'll be butting heads with are my students' parents. I'm staying out of this."

  "All right. I'll go with Ben."

  "That's fine."

  Ginny only had a half hour for lunch, and she said she had to hurry up and eat before recess ended, so he let her go, hung up, and walked into the kitchen to fix his own lunch -- a can of ravioli.

  Later that afternoon, he called Ben, and the newspaper editor told him that the body was that of a transient, a hitcher apparently passing through town on his way to Albuquerque. A preliminary examination indicated that the man had died from exposure, not from any injuries or inflicted wounds.

  "I guess he was just lying there in the brush and got scooped up by a Cat or something while they were clearing the lot," Ben said. "It's kind of weird, but it's perfectly understandable."

  "Is it?" Bill asked.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Nothing. You going to the council meeting tonight?"

  "I always go. It's my job. Why?"

  "I need someone to sit next to. Ginny doesn't want to go."

  "Candy ass. I sit by myself every meeting."

  "You're a he-man."

  The editor snorted. "Why are you going?"

  "To stop The Store from building here in Juniper."

  Ben chuckled. "A little late for that, don't you think?"

  "Probably. But have you seen what they've done to that land?"

  "It's their land."

  "There are zoning ordinances, building codes, rules, laws."

  "And sometimes they get waived."

  Bill was taken aback. "What have you heard?"

  "I'm not a complete dunderhead. I ask questions when I see things that seem a little odd to me. I'm supposed to do that, you know. Being a reporter and all." "And?"

  "And, off the record, I was told that concessions had to be made if Juniper was going to get The Store. Otherwise, it was going to go to Randall.

  There was sort of a bidding war going on between our two fair towns, and whoever came up with the sweetest incentives would get the extra jobs, the added property tax revenue, and all those other wonderful perks that new businesses bring."

  "Shit."

  "You're going to be a lone ranger on this one. The town's hurting. A lot of people here would peddle their own mama's ass if it would bring in new jobs.

  They're going to think bending a few cosmetic rules a small price to pay for economic security."

  "What do you think?"

  "What I think doesn't matter."

  "But what do you think?"

  Ben was silent for a moment. "Off the record?"

  "Off the record."

  "I'll deny I ever said this. I'm supposed to be impartial. My livelihood's involved here, too."

  "Understood."

  "I wouldn't've minded if The Store went to Randall."

  Bill realized that he'd been holding his breath. He exhaled. "Why?" he asked.

&
nbsp; "I don't know," the editor admitted.

  "Come on. You can tell me."

  "I'm being honest," he said. "I really don't know."

  "But you don't like The Store."

  "No," Ben said, and his voice was low, quiet, serious. "I don't like The Store."

  2

  They ate dinner early so he'd be able to get to the council meeting on tune. Samantha offered to go with him, but he could tell that both of the girls were apprehensive about him speaking in front of the council, and he told her that it was okay, he was going with Ben.

  Shannon was more direct. "Don't embarrass us, Dad."

  He grinned. "Do I ever?"

  "Constantly."

  He and Ginny laughed.

  The girls didn't.

  After dinner, he drove to the town hall, glancing out the window at the empty storefronts and abandoned buildings as he drove. Downtown had been slowly dying ever since the lumber mill had closed in the late eighties. Blame had been placed by the locals on "environmentalists," a nebulous group that included not only the loose coalition of scientists, national ecological organizations, and ordinary Arizona citizens who had rallied to the defense of the endangered pine squirrel and had succeeded in getting the federal government to impose a moratorium on logging in this section of the Tonto, but also anyone who supported any sort of government regulation, be it health and safety standards or prohibitions against the dumping of toxic waste. The truth was that the pine squirrel had only hastened the inevitable, probably to the long-term advantage of the town. Logging could not have continued at its previous pace for more than another half decade before the entire supply of timber in the region would have been depleted. Trees were a renewable resource, and the logging companies had been pretty good about reseeding the land, but the fact remained that they were cutting a lot faster than the trees were growing.

  Tourism had always been Juniper's second-biggest industry, and it would have disappeared had the area's scenery been marred by deforestation. No railroad ran through Juniper, no major thoroughfares passed through the town, it was neither convenient to reach nor strategically important to any company or corporation. The beauty of the pine country was Juniper's only selling point.