They waited at the edge of the crowd, not wanting to push ahead of the others who had gotten there first. But more shoppers kept arriving, and they soon found themselves engulfed in a tight mass of bodies.
A man could be seen inside, getting ready to unlock the sliding glass doors. Now the pushing intensified. Sky could feel someone’s fists digging into her back, urging her forward. But she couldn’t move; there was no place to go.
Suddenly Luke grabbed both girls by the arms and pulled them toward him. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “Somebody’s going to get hurt.” They were working their way through the crowd when the doors finally opened and escape became impossible. The bodies moved like a river in flood, rushing fiercely downstream. Luke wrapped his family in a strong embrace and held them firmly. They became a boulder, the four of them, strong against the rapids. The human river flowed around them.
And then it was over. They stood there for a moment, gazing at the spectacle inside: people fighting over shopping carts, grabbing canned goods off the shelves and throwing them into bags.
“I’m afraid to go in there,” Ana said.
“I don’t think we should.” Luke checked his watch.
“Surely they’ll calm down now that they’ve made it inside and are getting what they want. And they’ll have to form an orderly line to check out.”
“Maybe. But it’ll take a long time, and I think the other stuff is more important. I say we skip the groceries for now and go to Home Depot.”
“You’re right,” Ana said. “Home Depot first.”
They hurried back to the car and left the Albertsons parking lot, driving south on Guadalupe, past the historic old adobe Santuario with the polychrome Virgin out front, past the Railyard, and the park, and on down the long commercial corridor that led to the big chain stores.
At every filling station they passed, there were lines snaking out onto the street, blocking a whole lane of traffic—except for a few that had signs out front saying CLOSED: NO GAS.
Mouse had her nose pressed to the window. “Wow,” she said. “Good thing our cars run on sunshine.”
“Yes, honey,” Ana said. “But most people still use gas, and things are going to be pretty rough for a while. I wouldn’t go around school bragging about our electric cars and our solar panels.”
“Why do you always think I’m going to do stupid things? I’m not a baby.”
“I’m sorry, Mouse.”
“I don’t brag about our stuff.”
“Good.”
“But you need to understand…” Luke had shifted into his lecture-the-kids voice. Sky recognized it right away. “Lucky as we are, compared to most people, this is going to affect us, too. The long-haul trucks that move goods around the country also run on gas. And—well, with all those refineries shut down…”
“What?”
“There are going to be things we can’t get anymore. That’s why there was such a crowd at the store.”
“All those people knew this would happen?”
“Yes, Mouse. They figured it out. We did, too. That’s why we left so early.”
“Oh.”
Sky sat numbly in the backseat, listening quietly, turning it all over in her head. The shelves at Albertsons would be empty soon. Then what? Would they just shut the doors, and turn out the lights, and send everybody home? What about the drugstores? What if people got sick and couldn’t get medicines? And the clothing stores, too, and the gas stations? With nothing to sell, the shops would all close one by one until Santa Fe became a ghost town. Whatever it was you wanted or needed, you’d better be prepared to grow it yourself, or make it, or buy it locally—because otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to get it at all.
“You all right, Sky?”
She must have moaned or something.
“I feel kind of sick.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Ana said, “try not to worry too much. We’ll manage. We’re in good shape, really. It’s just going to be a little…different for a while, that’s all.”
“I know, Mom, but…”
Ana reached across to the backseat and gave Sky’s hand a squeeze.
They pulled into the Home Depot parking lot. It was even bigger than the one at Albertsons, yet every space was taken. There wasn’t a crowd at the door, though. The people were already inside, shopping like their lives depended on it.
“Take the girls and go on in. I’ll keep circling till I can find a place to park.”
“Okay,” Ana said.
“I’ll get the heavy stuff—the lumber, and the sheet plastic, and the plywood, and the fencing, and the propane. That has to be picked up around back anyway. You get a cart and do the garden center and the rest of the smaller items. If you see something we forgot to put on the list, grab it. We’ll meet up at checkout. If I can’t find you when I’m done, I’ll call you on your cell.”
About an hour later, their cart nearly bursting at the rivets, Ana pulled into one of the many long checkout lines. She phoned Luke to tell him where they were. Then there was nothing to do but wait.
Sky watched the people shop and found it disturbing. Everyone was pushing, and grabbing, and arguing. No one was polite. No one smiled. You’d think those were the very last lightbulbs that would ever be sold on the face of the earth.
Who knew? Maybe they were.
A family pulled into the next line over. They were dark-skinned and foreign-looking. The husband wore a beard, and the wife had covered her hair with a lavender head scarf.
They had two children—a cute little girl, younger than Mouse, and a teenage boy. He was taller than his father, his chin already shadowed with a starter beard.
Sky wiggled her fingers at the girl and she lit up, grinned, and scurried to hide behind her mother. Seconds later she was peeking out again. Sky would pretend to lose interest, looking away with her arms folded, then she’d turn suddenly and flash a smile. Each time the girl would let out a squeal and run to hide.
“That’s enough, Raya,” the woman finally said. “Calm down.”
The man at the front of their line finally finished paying, and they all moved forward a few feet. One down, ten more carts, filled to the brim, still ahead of them. Glaciers moved faster than this.
Mouse was draped over the front of the cart, her head resting on a sack of seeds.
“When are we going to go?” she whimpered.
“I don’t know,” Ana said, wrinkling her forehead with feigned confusion. “When are we going to go?”
“I don’t know,” Mouse said. “I asked you first.”
“I asked you second.”
Sky went back to studying the crowd. She watched in morbid fascination as two people fought over an extension cord. A man pushed past them, moving aggressively through the congested aisle, straight in their direction. He was very large and odd-looking—that was probably why he’d caught her eye. He had a shaved head, and a big gut, and very pale skin. Except for the long, rusty goat’s beard that hung from the tip of his chin, he looked like something made entirely of balloons: round, and pink, and shiny.
But clownish though he was, with that bubble face and goaty beard, his expression wasn’t funny at all. He looked like—what? Like you’d better get out of his way.
The man finally reached the cross aisle and turned to the left. There was a little blond kid, walking beside her father’s cart, holding on with one hand. She was clueless to the fact that she was taking up precious space. The man started nudging her with his cart. She stopped, turned around, and stared at him. The harried father plucked her out of the aisle and dropped her into his cart. Goat-Man moved into the breach.
Then he spotted the foreign family, and something happened to his face.
They’re like cartoon eyes, Sky remembered thinking—the ones with concentric circles that radiated outward, going boing, boing, boing! And the thought disarmed her so that she was unprepared when the crash came.
7
He’s Only a Boy
/> GLARING ANGRILY AT THE FAMILY, Goat-Man slammed his shopping cart into theirs. The impact was so loud, and so sudden, Sky felt her stomach flip.
The little girl had been mimicking Mouse, hanging on to the front of the cart. The blow sent her flying. She hurt her leg in the fall and began to cry. The mother, shooting a venomous glance at the goat-beard man, hurried to pick her up.
“What’s the matter with you?” the husband asked. His accent was clipped, precise. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I don’t want you people here,” Goat-Man said, leaning closer, chin first, squinting with distaste. “Why don’t you go back to where you came from? Huh? Blow your own people up.”
The girl was sobbing, “He pushed me off! He pushed me off!”
Ana reached out for Sky and Mouse, pulling them to the far side of the cart. Then she leaned down and whispered, “Stay here. I’m going to get help.”
“We have done nothing,” the father insisted. “We are American citizens. We have every right. So please move your cart and wait in line like everyone else.”
“Why don’t you take your blanking cart out of this blanking line before I blanking knock it over?”
Even the most harried shoppers stopped to stare.
“No, sir, I will not. We were here first. We’re American citizens.”
“Yeah, so you said,” Goat-Man snarled. “Only, see, I don’t really care.” He grabbed the kid by the collar of his oversized parka and gave it a yank.
“And here’s something else. I not only don’t care and don’t like you, I don’t trust you either. I think maybe this kid is just dying to join the martyr’s brigade—” He suddenly realized he’d made a joke, so he stopped for a few seconds to snort over it and look around to make sure everybody got it before he went on. “So, ’scuse me, but I want to see what he’s got on under that jacket.”
“Yeah!” someone shouted from the crowd.
“Leave! Him! Alone!”
It was Mouse, yelling at the top of her voice.
Goat-Man turned and glared at her, his brow furrowed, danger on his face.
“You telling me what to do?”
“Yeah. Leave him alone. You’re mean!”
Sky grabbed her sister’s arm and whispered in her ear, “Shut up, Mouse! He could squash you like a bug. Mom’s getting help, remember?”
“But he is,” Mouse said, not yelling anymore but still perfectly audible.
“I said shut up!” Sky hissed.
Goat-Man stood for a couple of beats, unsure whether to squash Mouse like a bug or not. The father took advantage of the moment to move his cart out of the line and send his wife and daughter away with it. They were still retreating when Goat-Man returned his attention to the boy. He began tugging at the parka, trying to rip the thing open with his bare hands.
“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” the boy said, reaching for the zipper.
“Get your blanking hands away!” Goat-Man snapped.
The father was trying to get to his son, but the line of carts had closed off the space between them. “Please, stop!” he pleaded, trying to squeeze through. “He’s only a boy.”
A large woman placed herself pointedly in his way, turning her back to him—arms crossed—and refusing to budge. The father tapped her gently on the shoulder, still determined to be polite.
“Please, madam, will you let me by?”
Suddenly the woman swung a fleshy arm around and knocked him to the floor. The crowd stepped back and gazed down in wonder. Nobody tried to help him.
Mouse was howling again, and people in the crowd were yelling at her to stop. Sky was frantic. She didn’t know what to do. She put her hand over her sister’s mouth, but Mouse twisted away.
So there they were—Mouse shrieking and Sky sobbing—when Ana finally appeared, accompanied by a beefy security guard.
“Make way, make way!” he barked, and the crowd parted.
Ana scooped her daughters into a protective hug. “I’m sorry it took so long,” she said. “I’m so sorry!”
“But Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” Mouse kept wailing.
“I know, I know,” Ana said. “It’s all right now. This man’s going to help.”
“What’s going on here?” the guard demanded of no one in particular—as if it wasn’t perfectly clear. The father, his nose bloody, was hauling himself up off the floor. Goat-Man still had the kid by the collar. The boy’s jacket was open—the zipper ruined and the lining torn—revealing nothing more threatening than a skinny kid in a T-shirt.
“What’s going on here is this,” Goat-Man said, inflating his chest, trying to look even bigger than he was. “We don’t want no blanking Ay-rabs in here. You shouldn’t allow it.”
The crowd buzzed with assent. They didn’t want no blanking Ay-rabs in there either.
“We are legal citizens of this country,” the father said. “We have done nothing wrong. I have explained all this.”
“Let me see your ID,” the guard said. Only he wasn’t talking to Goat-Man but to the boy. “You, too,” he barked at the father.
The look of surprise on the father’s face, and the way he seemed so determined to be civilized and rational in spite of the way he and his family were being treated, caused Sky to belch out another sob.
The father unzipped his jacket and was reaching into one of the pockets when the guard stopped him.
“Put your hands above your head,” he barked.
“You asked to see my identification papers.”
“What did I just tell you?”
“To put my hands above my head.”
“Then do it! Both of you.”
And so they stood there like victims of a holdup while the guard, eyes flickering suspiciously back and forth between the terrified boy and the father’s jacket pocket, reached in and brought out a wallet, which he dropped disdainfully on the floor, then the small red folder with the gold-embossed eagle on the front. Sky knew what it was, of course. She had one of her own, though she sometimes forgot to carry it. Luke and Ana each had one, as did Mouse and all the people in the store. It was the man’s perfectly legal national ID. The guard flipped it open, glanced at it, then slipped it into the breast pocket of his uniform.
“All right, both of you,” he said, “let’s go.”
“But I don’t understand….”
The crowd stepped aside to let them through—they even moved their carts out of the way. A few of them clapped and cheered.
“What?” Mouse screamed at the guard. “No! Hey, mister!”
Ana put her hand over her daughter’s mouth, gently but firmly. She was more successful than Sky had been. She was Mom, after all. She also had a bigger hand.
“Sky,” Ana said quietly, “I want you to stay here with the cart while I go and find Dad. I’ll take Mouse with me.”
“No!” Mouse protested, wiggling free, fiercely determined to stand her ground. Ana leaned down and whispered something in her ear.
Eyebrows went up.
Oh!
In a flash Sky understood everything. Ana was not going to look for Luke. She could do that perfectly well from where she was by calling him on his cell phone. They were going to look for the mother and daughter, who were probably cowering in some far corner of the enormous store. When she found them, she’d connect with Luke.
Then—what would they do? Well, most likely Luke would take the family’s cart through a different checkout line while Ana and Mouse escorted the mother and daughter safely to their car. Eventually they’d meet up in the parking lot, and Luke would help unload their purchases into their trunk. They’d tell the mother what had happened to her husband and son and offer to help in any way they could.
Sky knew these things without being told. She might not have every single detail right, but she doubted she was off by much. She knew because it was exactly what her parents would do. They’d give up an hour of crucial time while things they needed were disappearing forever off shelves all over town. They’
d risk the chance of being taken away by the security guard themselves. And they’d do it for a family they didn’t even know, because it was the right thing to do.
The crowd was still buzzing over the incident. Goat-Man, having spent his pent-up rage, was holding court, getting compliments and high fives as if he’d just slain Goliath with his slingshot. Sky turned away. She couldn’t bear to look at him.
That was when it hit her—a hard, paralyzing blow. Throughout this entire, ugly episode, she—Sky—had done nothing. Nothing! Mouse, all of eight years old, had stood up to Goat-Man. Her parents, right that minute, were helping the terrified wife and daughter.
And Sky? She was minding the cart.
8
Penance
SKY WAS UP ON THE ladder, a net bag over her shoulder, stripping the last of the fruit from one of their apple trees. These were the hardest to reach, the ones they’d left for the birds.
This was a lot harder than the regular harvest. There was the endless climbing up and down, and scrambling among the branches, and moving the ladder from tree to tree—all for a few measly baskets of fruit. It didn’t make sense. Their pantry was filled with apples and pears.
But Ana had insisted. Not everybody had an orchard, she’d said. Lots of people would be thrilled to have whatever they didn’t need. She’d even told Mouse to cull the windfalls from the ground, looking for any that were only bruised, or only partially rotten. She would cook up the good parts and feed the mash to the horses.
By a little after three, they were finished with the picking, and the project moved indoors. Sky peeled, cored, and sliced the fruit while Mouse did her slow but meticulous best at arranging the slices on dryer trays. Ana presided over the stove, making applesauce and jam.
“Mom?” It was Mouse’s worried voice.
“What, sweetie?”
“Will that family be okay?”
“I hope so. Daddy gave the lady his phone number. They can call if they need any more help. I doubt she will, though.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”
Saving Sky Page 3