Chapter 11

The band playing on the stereo in the back room reminded Sedgewick of Rash Dangerously. It was loud and unfocused, a bass line that tore across the scale, drums and guitars that hardly mashed and a voice that grated across the speakers and somehow hurt your own voice. Occasionally there was a glimmer of hope, a surprising chord change a voice not-quite tolerable, which was a vast improvement.

The back room stereo was a direct challenge to the Cub Radio they piped through the store, the top 40 slush that somehow encouraged people to buy tortillas and milk. But the music kept Jimmie and Alex on task, pacified them enough that they managed to do good work. The manager overlooked the infraction as long as they could still hear the occasional pages, not that anyone ever paged the back room stock boys.

Late at night in the summer after the store had closed they jimmy one of the intercoms so it stayed on and rest it on the stereo speaker, broadcasting their thrash across the store. It was a jarring sound when you were out on the floor, but it also made you want to rock your head to the music, to jump up and down a bit as you walked to the back room to refill your pricing gun. It made you want to do things that weren’t exactly acceptable when customers were filling their carts with groceries. It was a minor perk that slightly made up for working into the wee hours of the morning.

Sedgewick walked into the back room, ready to tackle a short shift at work, a four-hour evening stint that worked well with his class schedule. As he came in, he remembered those late night shifts and the wee hours. Walking home so late at night Sedgewick appreciate the term wee hours. They were quiet and slightly magical hours, completing befitting the term.

“Hi guys,” Sedgewick said, feeling an energy he didn’t always have.

The nodded at him and Jimmie paused before lifting a case of instant macaroni and cheese. He asked Sedgewick to work aisle 10, to make a dent in the pallets of paper products that were clogging the backroom. Sedgewick nodded and started loading a truck with the massive boxes of paper of all kinds. An entire pallet of paper products might consist of only a dozen boxes, two complete trips to the floor.

He pulled his truck through the tiled produce backroom and onto the floor, making sure the tall stack of boxes made it out under the door. He crossed the store, passing the long meat section in the back, the aisle of freezers in the middle, and turning down the paper aisle, just short of the pop displays and the beginning of the dairy section in the corner.

A child walked past, a tiny little person in an orange and red wrap (Sedgewick wasn’t sure a wrap was the proper term—but it seemed the best he could do, it was longer and lacked buttons like a blouse, but it wasn’t simply a sweater or a shirt. Wrap seemed to do the trick.), loudly clomping her feet as she walked. She lifted each knee as high as possible and brought her bulky shoes down on the tile floor with an echoing thump. Her mother looked back with a glare, but the girls eyes were following Sedgewick and his massive cart piled with boxes.

She caught Sedgewick’s eye and he smiled at her, then lifted his knees high into the air for a step or two. She stopped walking entirely and her mouth gaped open. Her mom called and she rushed ahead.

He pulled the first box down and slid it across the floor to the shelf where it belonged. He never imagined there could be so many different types of toilet paper before. He’d always thought there were two: the nice quilted kind his grandmother bought and the cheap tissue-thin stuff you found in public restrooms. But Cub devoted an entire quarter of an aisle to paper products for the toilet.

A square woman wearing black stockings and a short skirt came walking down the aisle. Her body looked square and her face matched with sharp angles and short hair that accented the look. She pulled at her skirt when she thought Sedgewick wasn’t looking, and when she needed toilet paper above where Sedgewick was working he gladly pulled it down for her and apologized for being in the way.

She flashed a smile that brought a softness and unexpected roundness to her square features. Sedgewick thought she should smile more.