The Store

by Bentley Little

  As nice as the new park was, he preferred the old park, with its low, sagging backstop made from rusted leftover pipe and torn chicken wire, its overgrown weed field, its tire swing, its primitive sandbox.

  Did The Store have to change everything in Juniper?

  The first thing he did when he arrived home was check his computer.

  He'd received his new assignment: writing instructions for a new accounting package.

  An accounting package being developed specifically for The Store.

  Bill stared at the color monitor, not scrolling forward, not printing out the message, simply rereading the initial introductory paragraph the company had E-mailed to him. He felt weird, uncomfortable, uneasy. Automated Interface was one of the biggest software firms in the country, and over the past several years he'd written documentation for programs that had been developed by their company for a host of major corporations: Fox Broadcasting, RJR Nabisco, General Motors, General Foods. But even though The Store was a national corporation, he had a local, personal connection to it, and it felt strange to know that he was helping to develop a product for its use.

  He felt as though he was working for The Store.

  In a sense, he was working for The Store, and he didn't like that. He knew now how all those old antiwar protesters felt when they ended up getting jobs at Rockwell and McDonnell Douglas and other aerospace defense firms. There was a moral dilemma here. He had rationalized shopping at The Store, had told himself that he wasn't betraying his principles by patronizing the establishment or by letting his daughter apply for a job there, and he felt comfortable with that.

  But this seemed different somehow, and he reread the message yet again before scrolling forward to check out the details of the project.

  He knew he couldn't decline this assignment. He didn't have that luxury.

  If he refused to perform the job assigned to him, Automated Interface would simply let him go and hire another tech writer. So, in a sense, it was out of his hands, it was not his decision to make.

  He felt guilty, though, felt as though he should do something to avoid contributing to the strength of The Store, and he was still sitting in front of the screen of his PC, rereading the assignment, when Ginny arrived home from work.

  They went out for dinner that night. Chicken. He still called the place "Colonel Sanders,' " but the colonel was long dead, and he'd sold the franchise to some corporation years before that. These days, the bright red-and-white sign in front of the restaurant read KFC.

  He wondered how many young kids knew that KFC stood for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  Not too many.

  Their entire lives were run by corporations these days. Companies test marketed names and logos and spokespeople, held conferences and meetings to determine how to best capture their target audience, based decisions on demographics. Chain outlets were given ethnic names or folksy appearances, attempts were made to disguise the individual tentacles of huge conglomerates by making them seem part of some other, smaller company. Actual small, locally owned businesses were becoming a thing of the past.

  Shannon saw a group of her friends at one of the other tables and asked if she could stay and hang out with them, and Ginny said it was okay as long as she was home by ten. Sam was meeting two of her friends at the movie theater, so he and Ginny dropped her off on their way back.

  "Looks like we have at least a couple of hours to ourselves," Ginny said, snuggling next to him in the car as they drove home.

  "Looks that way," Bill agreed.

  "You in the mood to make use of it?"

  He grinned. "I'm always in the mood."

  He wasn't exactly in the mood, though, and it took longer than they'd planned. They barely had time to get dressed and make the bed before Shannon arrived. Sam returned twenty minutes later, and both girls went immediately to their respective rooms, closing and locking the doors behind them.

  Later, after they'd both showered, after they'd watched the late newscast from Phoenix, they lay in bed. Bill thought about Shannon's request tonight for her own charge card, and he cleared his throat. "Do you ever worry that the girls are too . . ." His voice trailed off.

  "Materialistic?"

  "Yeah."

  She rolled over to face him. "Sometimes," she admitted.

  "It's our job, you know, as parents, to instill values in them." He paused. "Sometimes I wonder if we've done our job or if we've completely failed."

  "Society's self-correcting. Kids always rebel against their parents and that's why the pendulum always swings back."

  "But I didn't think they'd be so . . . materialistic."

  "You thought they'd be more like us."

  "Well, yeah."

  She sighed. "So did I."

  They grew silent again. He thought about Shannon, about Sam, but it wasn't really the girls that were bothering him. It was his new assignment, it was Doane's business, it was The Store, it was . . . everything.

  He fell asleep trying to think of ways to avoid writing instructions for The Store's new accounting system.

  3

  Samantha looked at the descending numbers above the elevator door. She was reminded of an old Dr. Seuss movie she'd seen when she was little, _The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T_. In the film, there'd been a series of dungeon basements, and an elevator operator dressed like an executioner had sung out the gruesome specialties of each subterranean floor as the elevator went down.

  Mr. Lamb wasn't dressed like an executioner, but the feeling here was pretty close to the one in the film.

  The personnel manager had called her yesterday to tell her that she'd gotten the job. Her hands on the receiver had grown sweaty as she heard his voice, and she thought of the lie detector test, the urine sample. She wanted to tell him to go to hell, that she refused to work for The Store. But in a small scared voice she heard herself agree to go down to The Store the next morning an hour before it opened.

  "There are a few formalities we have to get out of the way before you start," Mr. Lamb said. "Once they're out of the way, we'll begin training."

  "I'll be there," Samantha said.

  The employees' section of the parking lot had been full when she'd arrived this morning, but she had yet to see anyone other than Mr. Lamb. The interior of the building was dark, only dim security lights vaguely illuminating the cavernous room. Lights were on in Mr. Lamb's office, though, and it was here she was taken to sign tax forms and additional information forms and a secrecy oath.

  "Secrecy oath?" she said, reading the paper in front of her.

  "It's just a legality. An assurance to us that you will not use what you learn at The Store to assist one of our rivals in the retail business."

  The entire idea rubbed her the wrong way, and the phrase "secrecy oath" put her in mind of clandestine organizations and secret societies, but she read through the document and could find nothing specifically offensive in it, and she signed and dated the paper at the bottom.

  Mr. Lamb collected the forms. "Very good," he said. "We're almost done.

  Now all you have to do is run the gauntlet."

  A chill washed over her. "The gauntlet?"

  He looked at his watch. "We'd better hurry. They're waiting. And The Store opens in forty-five minutes. We need to get this done." He stood, walked around his desk, and she followed him out of his office and down a short hallway to an elevator.

  Now she stood in the slowly moving elevator, staring up at the lighted numbers as they descended past the basement, past the first subbasement, to the second subbasement.

  Why did The Store have two subbasements?

  She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

  The elevator doors opened, and as they walked out, she realized why she had not seen any of the other employees upstairs.

  They were all down here.

  A bare cement hallway stretched endlessly before her, looking much longer than the length of the building above, and it was lined along both sides with men and women dressed
identically in green store uniforms. The sight would have been intimidating enough, but the employees were also completely silent, their faces serious, unsmiling.

  "The gauntlet," Mr. Lamb said.

  She wanted to turn around, wanted to go back upstairs and leave, and this time she would have done so, but the elevator doors had already slid shut behind her, and Mr. Lamb had placed a hand on her back and was guiding her forward, into the hallway.

  Most of the faces before her were familiar, but they looked upon her as if they did not recognize her, and her heart rate accelerated. She tried to catch the eye of Marty Tyler, then May Brown, the first two people on either side of the hallway, but both stared at her blankly, and she quickly looked away.

  What was she expected to do here? What was the point of this? She glanced over at Mr. Lamb, next to her.

  "Strip," the personnel manager said. "Down to your underwear."

  She shook her head. "I don't want to do this," she said, her voice sounding small and frightened. "I . . . I changed my mind. I don't want the job.

  I don't want to work here."

  "It's too late to change your mind," Mr. Lamb said. "Strip."

  She looked at the employees lining the hallway, but they were still silent. None of them had spoken or had as yet made a sound.

  "Leave on your panties and bra," Mr. Lamb said. A hard smile touched the corners of his mouth. "If you're wearing a bra."

  "I can't --"

  "Strip!" he ordered. "The Store opens at eight! We don't have time for games!"

  Frightened, she bent down to untie her tennis shoes. She looked up, expecting to see people laughing at her, giggling, but the faces remained unsmiling.

  She took off her blouse, her pants.

  She stood at the head of the hallway in her underwear, shivering with fear as much as cold. Her left arm was held over her bra, her right hand covered her pubic area. She turned toward Mr. Lamb. "What now?"

  "You run the gauntlet. If you make it to the end, you will join our Store family. You will be one of us."

  _If?_

  She looked down the hallway, saw for the first time that many of the employees were holding objects in their hands. Objects that could be used as weapons.

  "Run!" Mr. Lamb said.

  She ran, felt a coat hanger hit her buttocks, felt a flyswatter slap her left breast. The pain was tremendous, and her eyes were teary, but she kept her focus on the far end of the hallway and maintained an even course between the two rows of employees, forcing her legs to run faster. A knitting needle was shoved into her upper arm, and she had to will herself not to scream.

  "You're ugly!" someone yelled.

  "You're flat!"

  "You're worthless!"

  "You have no ass!"

  "You're a moron!"

  "You can't do anything right!"

  They were all people she knew, but she couldn't tell who was yelling what.

  It was all so disorienting, the jabs and the verbal abuse, and she could barely see for the tears, but she forced herself to keep moving forward. A cleat kicked against her shin, and now she was crying out loud, sobbing, but still she kept going.

  "Loser!"

  "White trash!"

  "Bimbo!"

  And then she was at the end of the hallway, facing a blank cement wall.

  She took a deep breath, wiped her eyes, then turned. She saw Mr. Lamb at the far end, nodding.

  She'd made it.

  It was over.

  She was bruised and bloody, but they all gathered around her, the employees, hugging her. "We love you," they said in unison. "We love you, Samantha."

  She was still crying, but the hugs felt good, and the warm words were welcome and she hugged her new co-workers back, kissing their cheeks, laughing through her tears.

  "We love you," they said.

  "I love you, too," she told them.

  "Congratulations." Mr. Lamb walked up to her, smiling, handing her a folded green Store uniform and a copy of a black book identified by gold embossed letters as _The Employee's Bible_. "You're one of us."

  TEN

  1

  They were supposed to go for a hike, she and Jake. It was a beautiful day for it, the temperature warm and pleasant, not too hot, the deep blue sky filled with huge white clouds, but Shannon sensed something wrong almost immediately.

  Jake was more subdued than usual, not himself, and he seemed not to care where they went. Ordinarily, he chose where they would hike, and if she made any suggestions he would invariably shoot them down. But today he acquiesced to everything she said, and that wasn't like him.

  It worried her.

  They hiked in silence, stopping only periodically to drink from their canteens. Usually, they walked together, hand in hand, meandering along the trails that led through the forest, talking intimately. Today, though, they walked single file, she in the lead, and it felt almost as though she was hiking alone. She had to keep sneaking surreptitious glances behind her to make sure that Jake was still there.

  Shannon slowed. She'd never been this far along the trail before. Ahead, it wound down the side of a hill toward a small canyon below. A series of blue green pools connected by a thin stream lined the bottom of the canyon to the right of the trail. To the left of the trail, at the bottom of the canyon, was a meadow.

  She turned around, looked at Jake. "You want to go down?" she asked.

  He shrugged.

  She started walking.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were at the bottom and she was almost in tears. They'd walked close together, but they hadn't touched on the way down, hadn't even held hands. He hadn't helped her down the steep parts.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  She took a deep breath, turned, faced him. "What is it?" she asked.

  "What's the problem?"

  "Nothing."

  "Something." She stood there for a moment, looking at him. "Oh, Jake," she said. She moved forward to hug him, but he caught her wrists before she reached him and held her at arm's length. He would not meet her eyes, and she felt her stomach drop. She knew what was coming.

  "I . . . don't think we should see each other anymore," he said.

  Her mouth was dry, her vision suddenly blurry. "You don't . . . I thought . . ." She cleared her throat. "I love you," she said.

  He still wouldn't look at her. "I think it's time we started dating other people."

  "You found someone else! That's why --"

  "No," he said. "That's not the reason."

  "Then what is it?"

  "My job."

  She started to say something, then shook her head, not sure if she'd heard him correctly. "What?"

  "I'm not allowed to date anyone outside The Store."

  "Outside The Store? You mean you have to have all your dates -- where? at the snack bar? In the hardware department?"

  "No. I can't date anyone who doesn't work for The Store."

  "That's stupid! They can't do that!"

  For the first time, he looked at her full on, and she saw nothing in his eyes, no sadness, no remorse, no regret. "I don't want to date someone who doesn't work for The Store," he said.

  "I can get a job there. I can --"

  "No."

  She realized that she sounded desperate, but she couldn't help it. "I love you," she repeated.

  He shook his head. "I'm afraid we have to stop seeing each other."

  She wanted to remind him of everything they'd been through together, everything they'd done. They'd made out on this very trail, a half mile back.

  They'd gone to Winter Formal together, made love afterward. They'd eaten the same ice cream cone -- he licking one side, she the other. They'd done everything couples were supposed to do. They'd even almost had a child together.

  Didn't any of that mean anything to him?

  She wanted to say all that and more, but she could tell from the flat look in his eyes, the neutral expression on his face, that it would not get her anywhere. She would
not be able to appeal to him on any sort of emotional level.

  He did not care.

  For him, the relationship was already over.

  She closed her eyes, trying not to cry. Why had he gone hiking with her?

  Why hadn't he told her at the outset that it was over? Why had he waited until they were out here in the middle of nowhere before springing this on her?

  "Are you okay?" he asked.

  "Fuck you!" she screamed.

  She'd intended only to nod, to be dignified and pretend as though he meant nothing to her and this was no big deal.

  But she'd loved him.

  "Fuck you!"

  He shrugged. "We'd better go back."

  "I wouldn't walk back with you if you were the last person on earth! Go to hell, you son of a bitch! Walk back by yourself!"

  "If that's the way you want it."

  Through her tears, she watched him walk away, up the trail. Again, she thought of the _The Sound of Music_, when Rolf turns in the family at the end, betraying his love for the sake of the Party.

  It was like Jake and The Store.

  "Nazi!" she screamed. "You fucking Nazi!"

  The echo of her cries sounded throughout the canyon.

  But Jake did not turn around.

  2

  Saturday. Samantha's first day of work.

  Ginny awoke early to make Sam a special breakfast -- her favorite Spanish omelette -- but her daughter only picked at the food.

  "This isn't a Shannon situation, is it?" Ginny teased. "You're not turning anorexic on us, are you?"

  Samantha gave a perfunctory smile. "No, Mom." She made a big show of eating a few more bites of her omelette, but when she thought her mother was no longer watching, she put the fork down.

  Ginny frowned, Three weeks ago, Sam had been ecstatic about the thought of getting a job at The Store, visibly excited by the prospect. But ever since her first interview, she'd seemed . . . different. Definitely not enthusiastic. For the past week, since she'd begun taking her nightly training classes, she'd seemed downright withdrawn.

  It was as though working at The Store was something she was doing out of obligation, something to which she'd committed but had subsequently changed her mind about.