He went inside the small grocery store at the intersection, the smell of cheese and lunch meat and insect spray and stale cigarette smoke and overripe fruit enough to make him choke. At the back of the store, he stared through the smoky glass doors of the coolers, his arms folded across his chest as though he were protecting himself from an enemy. Inside one door, the Dr Peppers and root beers and Coca-Colas stood end to end in neat racks. Behind the next door were six-pack upon six-pack of every brand of beer sold in Texas, the amber bottles beaded with coldness, the cardboard containers damp and soft, waiting to be picked up gingerly by caring hands.
One six-pack of sixteen-ouncers, he thought. He could space them out through the afternoon, just enough to flatten the kinks in his nervous system. Sometimes you needed a parachute. Wasn?t it better to ease into sobriety rather than to be jolted into it?
?Find what you want?? the woman behind the counter said. She weighed at least 250 pounds and swelled out like an inverted washtub below the waistline. She was smoking a cigarette and flicking the ash into a bottle cap, her lipstick rimmed crisply on the filter, a V-shaped yellow stain between her fingers.
?Where?s the men?s room?? he asked.
She drew in on her cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly, taking his measure. ?About four feet behind you, the door with the sign over it that says Men?s Room.?
He went in the restroom and came back out wiping the water off his face with a paper towel. He slid open the door to the cold box and lifted out a six-pack of Budweiser, balancing it on his palm, the cans coated with moisture and hard and clinking against one another inside the plastic yoke. The cashier was smoking a fresh one, blowing the smoke through her fingers while she held the cigarette to her mouth. He set the six-pack on the counter and reached for his wallet. But she didn?t ring up the purchase.
?Ma?am??
?What??
?You have a reason for acting so damn weird??
?Weird in like what way??
?For openers, staring at me like I just climbed out of a spaceship.?
She dropped he
r cigarette into a bucket of water under the counter. ?I don?t have a reason for staring at you.?
?So??
?He might.?
Her gaze drifted out the front window of the store, past the two gas pumps under the porte cochere. A town constable?s patrol car was parked beside the telephone booth. A man wearing a khaki uniform and shades was sitting behind the wheel, the engine off, the doors open to let in the breeze while he wrote on a clipboard.
?That?s Howard. He asked who was just using the phone,? the woman said.
?I reckon that could have been me.?
?I saw you at the A.A. meeting at the church.?
?That could have been me, too.?
?You still want the beer??
?What I want is a whole lot of gone between me and your store.?
?I cain?t he?p you do that.?
?Ma?am, I?m in a mess of trouble. But I haven?t harmed anybody, not intentionally, anyway.?
?I expect you haven?t.?
Her eyes were full of pity, the same kind of pity and sorrow he had heard in the voice of his friend Billy Bob. Pete folded his arms across his chest again and watched the town constable get out of his patrol car and walk under the porte cochere and pull open the front door of the store. In those few seconds, a line of stitches seemed to form and burst apart across Pete?s heart.
?Were you using that booth out there?? the constable asked. His skin was sun-browned, his shirt peppered with sweat, his eyes hidden by his shades.
?Yes, sir, just a few minutes ago.?
?You owe the operator ninety-five cents. Would you take care of it? She?s ringing it off the hook.?
?Yes, sir, right away. I didn?t know I went overtime.?