The Store

by Bentley Little

  The picture was of herself, as a teenager in the mid-seventies sometime, dressed in the absurd fashions of that era. She was at some sort of concert or rally, and her best friend, Stacy Morales, was next to her, posing in front of a bunch of other girls The ERA rally.

  It all came back to her now. Spring, 1976. Her senior year in high school.

  She and Stacy and a bunch of other girls from Cortez had traveled in Stacy's mom's van to ASU, where the campus women's center was putting on a rally to support the Equal Rights Amendment. It had been her first exposure to college life, and the students, the campus, the ideas, the lifestyles had all made a huge impression on her. She'd left the rally feeling energized and empowered, as though she could do anything. It was as if a whole new world had opened up to her. She returned to her own school the next day feeling like an adult among kids, and her grades actually went up that last semester as she'd studied her hardest to make sure she'd be able to get into a good college.

  As she stared at the photo now, she experienced more than a twinge of nostalgia. Behind Stacy was a female college student wearing a T-shirt bearing the partially obstructed slogan: A HARD MAN is GOOD TO FIND. Next to her was a large-breasted young woman, shirt raised, flashing her tits at the camera and shouting joyfully. In those days, sex had been seen as liberating, and it had felt as though the dawn of a new era was upon them. No longer were men going to be allowed to have dominion over women's sexuality. The Pill had given them freedom, had given them control over their own bodies, and sex was going to be something in which women participated, not something to which they were subjected.

  But those days were long gone. Today many of the feminists were as bad as the old male chauvinists had been. There was a prudishness in the women's movement now, a fear of sexuality that was more reactionary and regressive than the attitudes of most modern men. What had happened to the progress they had made back then? What had happened to the concept of "liberation"? Nowadays, women who called themselves feminists were advocating restrictions and censorship, trying to inhibit freedom rather than expand it.

  They'd become just like the people they were fighting.

  Bill walked over, looked at the Polaroid. "What's that?"

  "Nothing," she said.

  "There's another box for you over there."

  She nodded. "I'll check it out in a minute."

  She looked again at the photo, then slipped it into the right front pocket of her shorts and followed Bill across the gravel to the garage.

  She had a hair appointment at one o'clock, but they finished cleaning out the garage by midmorning, and she accompanied Bill to both the Baptist church and the dump before coming back to make lunch. They ate outside, on the deck, and afterward he did the dishes while she took a quick shower and changed. Or, rather, he had Shannon do the dishes. For when Ginny emerged from the bathroom, he was back in his room, in front of his computer, while Shannon was rinsing out the kitchen sink.

  "He gave me two bucks," Shannon explained.

  "I've been working all morning!" he called from his room.

  "Next time," Ginny told her daughter, "I'll give you three dollars if you make him do it himself."

  "Three bucks for doing nothing?" Shannon laughed. "Deal."

  "Four!" Bill called.

  "Three bucks and no work beats four bucks and work!" Shannon called back.

  "Sorry, Dad!"

  Ginny shook her head. "I'll see you two later," she said.

  Ordinarily, Ginny enjoyed getting her hair done. She liked talking with the other women, catching up on all of the gossip that she missed out on at school. But the mood at Hair Today was grim. Although she had never known Rene to be anything less than cheerful, the hairstylist seemed downright sullen this afternoon. She spoke hardly at all, and when she did her voice was curt, brusque.

  Among the other women at the salon, rumors were flying. Kelli Finch, whose husband owned and operated Walt's Transmission and Tuneup, had heard that The Store was going to open an auto center and start performing repairs as well as selling parts. Maryanne Robertson, who worked part-time at The Quilting Bee, said there was a rumor that The Store was going to sell quilts on consignment.

  Rene said nothing at first, but finally admitted that more than one customer had told her that a beauty salon would soon be opening inside The Store next to the espresso bar. "Pretty soon," she said sourly, "downtown'll be completely dead."

  It was something that Ginny had noticed but had not consciously registered. Now that Rene mentioned it, though, Main Street did seem unusually quiet. Foot traffic was almost nonexistent, and only an occasional car drove past the front window. Even Hair Today seemed less crowded than usual, although that couldn't be attributed to The Store.

  Not yet, at least.

  "Maybe you should build a new salon across the highway from The Store,"

  Maryanne suggested. "That way it would be convenient for people to go there.

  They wouldn't have to go out of their way."

  Rene grimaced. "With what? I'm in debt as it is. How am I supposed to get enough money to open a new shop?" She shook her head. "No, it's this or nothing."

  "I'll still come here," Ginny promised.

  The other women chimed in quickly, agreeing.

  Conversation stalled for a moment. The only noise was the snipping of Rene's scissors and the hissing of Doreen's shampoo faucet as she rinsed Kelli's hair. "You heard about Jed, didn't you?" Maryanne said. "Jed McGill?"

  The other women -- the ones who could -- shook their heads.

  "He's missing."

  "Missing?" Ginny said.

  "They think he's skipped town. No one's seen him for a week, and over at Buy-and-Save they're not sure they're going to be able to meet their payroll this month."

  "What happens then?" Kelli asked.

  "I don't know."

  "Buy-and-Save can't close. There's nowhere else to buy groceries."

  "Circle K." Rene suggested.

  Maryanne snorted. "Yeah, right."

  "Well, I hope The Store hurries up with its grocery department, then."

  Doreen led Kelli across the salon to the styling chair next to Ginny. "We have to have someplace to buy food."

  "But would you really want to get your groceries from The Store?" Ginny asked.

  "We have to have someplace to buy food," Doreen repeated.

  Ginny waited a beat, but no one else answered. She thought of asking again, but she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the responses and she let the question die.

  On the way home, she passed by the new park.

  Twenty or thirty boys were lined up in rows on the field in front of the backstop. A table had been set up to the left of the bleachers, and a large blue banner strung between two posts behind the table read: SIGN UP NOW FOR STORE LEAGUE FAST PITCH!

  She only got a quick look, but the kids all seemed to be wearing their baseball uniforms and the uniforms looked odd to her. Too dark. Vaguely militaristic. She thought they appeared out of place on boys so young. Wrong.

  But then she was past the park and on the road to home and it was too late to slow down and take a longer look.

  She'd have to tell Bill about the uniforms, though.

  And the auto center.

  And the salon.

  And Jed McGill.

  THIRTEEN

  1

  It rained for three days straight, the first major downpour of the spring.

  There'd been some low clouds and light mist during the preceding months, but it had been a dry season so far, and they desperately needed precipitation.

  Just not this much of it.

  The storm was a bad one -- wind and lightning, not just rain -- and sometime during the middle day there was hail, the pellets of ice ripping holes in established bushes, killing Ginny's newly sprouted vegetables in the garden, and blanketing their entire property, for an hour or so, with white.

  By the beginning of the third day, Monday, the hard-packed drive had devolved
into mud, and a section of the road to town had been washed away.

  School had been canceled, and although ordinarily the girls -- and Ginny would have been thrilled, they'd already been cooped up in the house too long and the phone call announcing the school closures seemed only to depress them.

  "I'm supposed to work tonight," Samantha said. "How am I going to get there?"

  "You're not," Bill told her.

  "I have to."

  "Explain the circumstances, trade with someone, call in sick. I don't care. You're not going in. Even the Jeep won't make it across that road in this rain."

  "I can't call in sick."

  "Yes, you can." Bill smiled slightly. "I used to do it all the time when I was your age."

  "But I can't."

  "Well, you have to do something, because you're not going to work tonight."

  Samantha turned to her mother, and Bill saw the look that passed between them, but he chose to ignore it rather than turn the discussion into an argument.

  He walked back to his office to check his E-mail and read this morning's online news. Radio reception for anything but the Juniper station was nonexistent, and he was about to pop in an old Rick Wakeman cassette when Ginny poked her head in the door.

  "Bad news. The roof in the bathroom's leaking again."

  He swiveled toward her. "I just fixed it last fall!"

  "No, you tried to fix it. Obviously, you didn't. It's leaking."

  "Shit." He pushed himself out of the chair and followed her down the hall to the bathroom. The ceiling above the toilet was darkened by a huge water stain. At three-second intervals, droplets fell into a pan that Ginny had placed on the floor next to the toilet.

  Bill shook his head. "Couldn't it have been five inches to the left? Is that too much to ask?"

  "That would be too easy. Besides, what's a leaky roof without pots and pans on the floor?" She pointed toward the wall behind the toilet. "That's wet, too. It's seeping down into the wall."

  "I can't fix anything until the rain stops."

  "But you can put a tarp up there or something, so it won't soak through the entire house."

  Bill nodded, sighed. "I'll go down to Richardson's and get a tarp. I'll pick up some tar and some tar paper for when the rain ends." He turned away from the toilet. "Goddamn, I hate doing this every year."

  "Maybe we should have the whole roof redone," she suggested. "Hire a real roofer."

  "We can't afford that. Not right now." He pushed past her, walking across the hall into their bedroom, where he grabbed his wallet and keys from the top of the dresser. He put on his raincoat. "Check for any other leaks while I'm gone." He went back into his office, turned off the PC. "I'll be back in a half hour or so."

  "Get enough to cover the whole roof."

  "Don't worry."

  The road was even worse than he'd expected, and he had to put the Jeep into four-wheel drive to make it through a couple of spots, but he lucked out and there was a temporary respite from the rain, then he was on pavement and heading down Granite toward the hardware store.

  The only other vehicle in Richardson's small parking lot was the owner's own vehicle, parked near the side of the building. Bill pulled up directly in front of the door and ran quickly inside as another heavy downpour started. He stomped his boots on the doormat to dry them off so he wouldn't slip on the slick floor.

  "Wet enough for you?" Richardson stood behind the cash register, grinning.

  On the counter in front of him was a huge sack of screws and nuts that he was separating into little piles.

  "Not really," Bill said. "But I think my roof's had about enough of it."

  He looked around. "Where do you keep your plastic tarps?"

  Richardson stared down at his screws. He cleared his throat, embarrassed.

  "Can't say as I carry any tarp," he said.

  "What?"

  "Well, if I could've predicted this storm, I would've ordered up a whole lot of stuff like that. But the truth of the matter is, Bill, I can't afford to stock much anymore. The Store's taking away most of my business, I'm strung out on credit as it is, and I only order what I know for certain'll move." He held up a nut. "Screws and nuts, bolts and nails. Mollies. Pipe and lumber."

  Bill looked around, noticing for the first time that the shelves of many of the aisles were bare, the end displays empty.

  "You don't have any kind of plastic sheets that I could use to cover my roof? No rolls of anything?"

  "Nope." Richardson shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "I wish I could help you, Bill. I honestly do. But times are tough." He gestured around the quiet store. "As you can see, the joint ain't exactly jumping."

  "The Store doesn't sell hardware, though, does it?"

  "They don't carry lumber, but they carry everything else. And they're lowballing me at every turn." He waved his hand dismissively. "I'm sure you've heard it all before."

  Bill nodded. "That's the sad part. I have."

  "I knew they might cut into my business, you know? I just didn't think it'd happen this fast. I mean, shit, I've been here since 1960. I've weathered a lot of trends." He shook his head, looked up. "And I thought people would be more loyal. I don't expect pity or charity, but I always considered my customers my friends, and I thought that would count for something. I didn't think they'd abandon me over a few pennies' price difference. It hurts, you know?"

  They were silent for a moment, the only sound amplified rain on the tin roof. "You don't have anything to help me with the leak?"

  "I could order some tarps. Be here in half a week, maybe five days."

  "I'd like to wait," Bill said. "But it's kind of an emergency. I need it now." Richardson sighed. "Go ahead. Hit The Store. Everyone else does."

  Bill thought for a moment. "You know what? I'll hold off on the tar and the tar paper. Why don't you order some for me. I don't need to fix the roof instantly, anyway. And I should wait until it dries out. I'll just get a cheapo tarp at The Store, keep the water out until the rain stops. It'll work temporarily."

  "You're a stand-up guy," Richardson said gratefully.

  Bill smiled. "No, but I can fake it."

  The Store had quite a selection of tarps and plastic sheeting. There was even a Home Raincoat, a monstrous piece of waterproofed canvas that was specifically designed to fit over the roof of a house. But Bill bought four packages of the cheapest tarps he could find, did not take advantage of the two for-one sale on rolls of tar paper, and quickly sped home, where he climbed up on the roof and spent the next two hours trying to weight down the tarps with rocks he salvaged from the forest behind the house.

  His efforts paid off, however, and when he walked into the bathroom, the leak had stopped.

  "Fixed!" he announced.

  "For now," Ginny said.

  "I've ordered some roofing supplies from Richardson. Once the rain stops, I'll patch it."

  "I've heard that one before."

  He slapped her rear end, making her jump, then, before she could hit him back, ran past her into the bedroom to change into some dry clothes.

  Ginny and the girls spent the afternoon watching soap operas and talk shows in the living room, while he retired to his office and dialed up Freelink.

  There'd been a shooting at one of The Stores in Nevada last week, and he'd been keeping up with all of the current events surrounding the various Store shootings over the past six months, but even though he was writing documentation for a Store system, he'd never really bothered to check into the history of the company.

  Until now.

  He accessed Freelink's Business Information database, and downloaded everything about The Store that he could find.

  He read it all.

  According to articles from the _Wall Street Journal_, _Business Week_, _Forbes_, the _Houston Chronicle_, and _American Entrepreneur_, The Store began as a small mercantile in West Texas in the late 1950s. Newman King owned a single shop on a virtually untraveled dirt road, miles from the n
earest town.

  Through word of mouth and, eventually, a series of billboards that he erected on major highways, The Store became something of a tourist spot, a must-see stop for easterners heading west on vacation. People were initially amused by the mercantile's humorously bland name and by the incongruity of its desolate location and up-to-the-minute stock, but they bought in droves. King kept his prices low and his selection large, and his combination of business acumen and self-promotion caused profits to shoot through the roof. Eventually he opened another store -- also on a small back road.

  By the mid-1960s, he owned a regional chain of discount retail outlets and had joined Texas's rank of self-made millionaires. There were scattered complaints from competitors of hardball tactics -- bribes and intimidation, illegal business practices -- but there was nothing provable and nothing stuck.

  Taking his cue from Sam Walton and Wal-Mart, King began opening big, modern stores in towns that previously had only small, local markets. He would not go into a town that had a Wal-Mart or a Kmart, or even a Woolworth's or Newberry's, but in towns with only local competition, he would dazzle the locals with state-of-the-art products and contemporary fashions and items that had previously been available to them only through catalogs.

  And they would buy.

  Sometime within the next two decades, King dropped from sight. He had gradually become more reclusive over the years, the press conferences that had once been de rigueur before each and every Store opening dwindling to four, then two, then one a year.

  There were accusations from former employees that The Store was more like a cult than a place of employment, that bizarre tests were required to get a job at The Store, that participation in strange rituals was mandatory for all management trainees, that any attempt to either quit or go public with nonflattering information was met with well-organized retaliation. King remained in hiding, would not publicly respond to any accusations, but no charges were ever filed, many of the accusers were discredited or disappeared, and after that brief flurry no complaints were ever brought up again by any subsequent employees.