Wal-Mart had always been the place to get what a person needed.
Megan whimsically pushed her empty shopping cart through the aisles of the sparsely populated superstore, her chest and arms draped atop the handlebars, dodging product displays and random passersby as needed. Drunks and misty-eyed loners notwithstanding, Independence Day was the perfect time to shop; one could peruse products as they pleased, and avoid employee interaction with ease. Megan passed the confectionary aisle even though she knew that she would, inevitably, return to procure milk chocolate of the basest quality. There was a natural order to everything, but not really; she just liked to do things in the sequence that they resurfaced within her mind. It was a matter simplicity, really.
She came to a halt amidst the dairy section and scanned for the cooler that contained plastic containers of milk. Having located it, she tugged upon the stainless steel framed glass door and leaned in to inspect the merchandise. Rows upon rows of
Anderson Erickson products were laid out before her roaming eyes, as was the ubiquitous array of
Great Value house brand crap. In an apathetically fastidious fashion Megan twisted the caps free from the first and third jugs of milk present in each column and as each cap broke free of its plastic mooring, she made certain that it would look, to the careless eye, that nothing was amiss. The fail-safe mantra of
step inside, walk this way, you and me babe, hey hey gently pressed outward from between her lips as she did so, and as the moisture condensed it became a miasmic cloud of pale blue. Same old, same old.
Backtracking, she rolled through the candy aisle and swept up a mammoth sack of
Snickers miniatures into her left hand. Megan wasn't in a thieving mood, so she dropped it into the once-vacant cart and proceeded into the main thoroughfare, barely dodging a pallet of Cool Ranch
Doritos. Under dissimilar circumstances, she would have snagged one of them, too, but she had a date with the Lawn & Garden department. Time was not of the essence, but her ability to focus was prone to wane with so many diversions present, so she kept moving in steady, elongated paces.
As Megan made her way through the disheveled electronics department, a pimply twentysomething with a disastrously overgrown mullet passed by, pushing a mop and yellow bucket with one hand, and holding a walkie talkie in the other. From the transceiver blared the distorted, scratchy order of
Get over to dairy right now, Chet. We have a milk emergency to which the kid responded "Milk emergency my ass. I have a break in five." His response was in stark contrast to the smiley faces that adorned each and every clearance item within the store, but Megan still tried to empathize with Chet, although the best she could manage was to keep pushing her cart along casually.
Lawn mowers, pruning supplies, hoses, tool sheds, special pink tool belts for ladies;
what the fuck ever, Megan just came for one thing, and that was long-handled shovels. They needn't be the best that money could buy, they just had to be suitable for the forthcoming task. Shuffling through the selection, Megan took note of one particular model, if only because it reminded her of the stereotypical gravedigger shovel, and that was the most appropriate design imaginable. She didn't care what the shaft was made from, be it oak, fir, mahogany, or any other kind of lumber that she had no inclination to ascertain. What concerned her was -
snap- satisfactory durability and, having stepped into the shaft to snap off the metallic component, Megan lifted the fractured end to inspect its splintered, ragged fringe.
Perfect.
Megan pushed the shopping cart through the vacant checkout lane (Wal-Mart was, after all, essentially devoid of customers on an otherwise festive national holiday) and began to unload her cache of merchandise upon the rolling conveyor belt, much to the chagrin of the cashier. The young man at the station looked a tad perturbed by Megan's actions, as if his job entailed nothing of the sort.
"You don't have to put those shovels up on the belt. I can just check one of them with the scanner gun and charge you for six. Okay?" There was apprehension in the man's voice, and Megan caught a whiff of his breath, which reeked of
Combos (Cheddar Cheese Pretzel, to be precise),
Surge, and sexual frustration all rolled into a single, taut package. Even so, the man had soft, weary eyes; eyes that were tired of working the evening shift, especially on Independence Day, and they weren't malignant like that Taco Bell motherfucker Megan had encountered just thirty minutes prior, so she'd be diplomatic about the affair.
"Sorry. I have a few items underneath this junk." It was partially true, as she did, technically, have an economy-sized bag of
Snickers miniatures tucked beneath the six shovels. The young cashier glanced down at her cart, shrugged, and rang up each piece as lackadaisically as minimum wage dictated.
"That's a gentleman for you," a voice behind Megan uttered, and she turned back to see a balding man in his forties that held a gallon of skim milk in one hand, and a box of
Honey Nut Cheerios in the other. He smiled, almost sheepishly, and Megan smirked in response, if only because he wore a Hawaiian T-shirt, and because she thought him lucky to have picked one of the gallons of milk of which she hadn't loosened the cap. If his appearance was slightly amusing to Megan, she could only assume that this other customer thought the same of her respective style. Fair enough. "A bit hot for a pullover?" the man enquired out of curiosity, and Megan struggled to think of an adequate reply.
"Ladies don't sweat, and I don't perspire. Trade you for that kickin' tee?" The man smiled and shook his head in silence, gently acquiescing that the conversation had reached its demise. Megan returned to see the cashier leaning over, attempting to reach down into her cart to remove the back of chocolate treats. She picked the bag up to assist him, accompanied by a quaint apology.
"No problem," he replied. "The total is eighty-two-oh-five." She took five twenty dollar bills out from her pocket and handed them to the cashier. As the young man counted change, an even younger employee (most likely a high school student, judging by his gawky movements and short, bleached hair) wandered over to bag her items, which to Megan seemed totally absurd, considering that her purchase, in its entirety, consisted of six long-handled shovels and a fucking bag of
Snickers.
This fourth individual peered at her with an almost feeble curiosity, apparently spellbound by the seemingly exotic creature standing before him, and muttered "Do you want your items bagged, ma'am?" with a voice that cracked -and shattered- like the porcelain cup she once threw into the girls' bathroom during middle school. Megan stifled the urge to laugh, and quelled the languid desire to kick him in the kneecap.
"No, thanks. I've got that covered?" she asked with rising intonation, as if it were a query befitting the situation. The boy simply shrugged (much like the cashier before him) and tossed the shovels and chocolates back into the shopping cart, trying to act cool while doing so. Having received her change, Megan thanked the cashier and began to push her cart away, but the bag boy halted her progression with a vapid inquiry.
"Ma'am?" The boy looked completely apologetic, so Megan paused her exit. "Sorry to bother you, but, um" the boy faltered, as if he struggled to get whatever it was that troubled his mind off of his chest (so to speak), "well, first, ah, I really like your bandanna."
Oh fuck me. I can't seriously be expected to put up with this shi-"It's a Japanese flag, actually." The boy looked genuinely enlightened, and this confounded one Megan Erickson greatly.
"Really? That's awesome! And those blue highlights look great." Despite her reservations, Megan approved of the lad's taste, however incorrect he had been in his assumptions.
"Jay!" the cashier shouted as he helped the older man with his milk and Cheerios. "Ask her if she needs any help, or leave her alone."
The bag boy winced, asked Megan if she needed any help and, by virtue of his insatiable desire for both curiosity and attention from women, inquired as to the purpose of buying six shovels. "Just some digging" was her inevitable reply. The boy didn't push the issue any further, but continued his previous line of questioning.
"One more thing. Sorry, sorry," he belched out, eager to satiate his raging, hormonal inquisitiveness, "but those blue highlights, how do you get dark hair to turn blue like that? I mean..." the boy trailed off, unsure of how to express his disbelief. Megan thought about this for a second, but she really didn't think, nor did she feel or search for an answer; it was just, unabashedly,
there.
"Tak's place. Tak's time."
The boy nodded, knowingly. "So it costs a lot of money, then? Like something to do after a refund check, I bet."
The balding man, now on his way out, stopped to correct the boy. "No, I think she's talking about those things that you stick into a bulletin board. Something in the metal, right? And thanks for
not bagging my groceries, kid."
What Megan really wanted, right then, was a piece of chocolate. Or a cigarette. Or a machete.
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Miaowara Tomokato
