The Store

by Bentley Little

  Maybe the vigilante overtones she was reading into the notice weren't really there.

  Maybe.

  But she didn't think so.

  Putting on her Store hat, she walked out of the locker room and onto the floor.

  Shannon showed up early for the sweep. Holly was there already. So was Francine. And Ed Robbins. The three of them stood in the parking lot at the designated meeting place, trying to keep warm. Summer was winding down, and the mornings and evenings had started to get chilly, a foreshadowing of fall.

  "Should've made us some coffee," Holly said. She smiled at Shannon. "Or hot chocolate."

  "And brought some doughnuts," Ed said.

  Francine rubbed her arms. "Anything sounds good to me."

  They kept their conversation light, trivial, purposely avoiding the reason they were gathered here this morning.

  It was exactly what Shannon had feared. They'd had training on Wednesday evening, from a policeman, and he'd shown them how to work in teams of two to subdue a person, how to load a recalcitrant subject into a police van, how to manacle an individual if necessary.

  They would be "sweeping" Juniper of the homeless.

  They would be keeping the streets "clean" by removing people who were unemployed, whom The Store had rendered jobless.

  "We got a lot of them with the curfew," the policeman had told them. "But there are still quite a few out there. Hopefully, you'll be able to clean them up." Clean them up.

  She hadn't told her parents about the sweeps, although she wasn't sure why. Embarrassment, she supposed. Shame at taking part in anything this inhumane -- even if her involvement was coerced.

  More people were arriving now, and soon there were a dozen of them waiting for their sweep leader.

  Jake.

  She didn't know until he announced it that he would be in charge of the sweep, didn't know until she saw him that he would even be here.

  Her heart was pounding in her chest as she stood next to Holly, watching him. Even after all this time, he still had an effect on her. She didn't often see him in The Store -- like most of Security, he remained in the monitoring room, invisible -- but she was always aware of his presence, he was always there in the back of her mind.

  She wasn't sure if she hated him or still loved him, but he definitely provoked an emotional response within her. Her hands were sweaty, her heart pounding, and she felt nervous even being this close to him.

  His eyes met hers, and she quickly looked away.

  "Okay!" Jake announced. "Teams!"

  He read off a list of pairings and told each team where they were to conduct their sweeps. Shannon was to work with Ed, and the two of them were supposed to round up derelicts at the park. They would be provided with batons and handcuffs, if necessary.

  Shannon talked with Ed for a moment. She didn't want to do this, and she made that clear to him, but he was a gung ho member of The Store Corps, and he considered her attitude treasonous.

  "But it don't matter," he said proudly. "I don't need your help anyway. I can do it by myself."

  "Whatever," she said.

  They were driven into town in three vans and dropped off at their assigned locations. The vans were parked equidistantly from each team, providing easy access.

  Shannon and Ed walked slowly onto the grass of the park. Behind them came a loud scream, and Shannon turned to see one of the other teams -- Rob and Arn beat a homeless man across the back with their batons and force him into the van behind them.

  She felt sick. It was not the same as it had been at the training session.

  It was nothing like that. The man was neither hostile nor belligerent. Instead, he seemed confused, hurt, and though he was not uncooperative, they hit him anyway, intentionally hurting him, inflicting pain, and he cried out as he stumbled into the back of the van.

  "There's one," Ed said excitedly.

  She followed his pointing finger, saw a bearded man in a long coat who looked like the guy on one of her dad's old Jethro Tull albums.

  "He's mine," Ed announced.

  She stood, watching, as he ran across the lawn and tackled the man. He had no baton, but he began beating the surprised derelict with his fists, shouting joyfully while the man bellowed in pain and vainly tried to ward off blows.

  This was wrong. She didn't know whether or not it was legal, but it was wrong, morally and ethically over the line, and she felt queasy as Ed stood, hauled the man up by the collar of his coat, and she saw the bright red blood streaming down his face.

  Grinning hugely, victoriously, Ed dragged the man toward her.

  "Stay away," she warned him.

  "You're supposed to be helping me, Shannon. You're not much help so far."

  "Knock it off, Ed."

  He was close to her now, and he pushed the bloody man in her direction.

  She ran. She heard Ed laughing raucously behind her, and then she was at the edge of the park, panting, feeling nauseous, feeling faint.

  She bent over, gulped air, and promptly threw up into a bush.

  Then Jake was there, leaning over her, and there was malicious glee in both his voice and his expression. "Get back in there, Davis."

  She wiped her mouth, hand shaking. "I . . . I can't do it, Jake. I can't -"

  "How the fuck did I ever go out with you?" He straightened, moved away.

  "Get busy," he ordered. "You have a quota to meet. And you'll be out here until you reach it."

  Behind her, Ed continued to laugh. "Yeah!" he yelled.

  Shannon closed her eyes, tried to stand straight, tried to walk away, but almost immediately she saw the derelict's gashed and bleeding face, and she doubled over again, heaving into the bush until there was nothing left in her stomach to throw up.

  2

  There were no vagrants on the street.

  Ginny noticed it for the first time, although she had the feeling that that had been the case for a while and she simply had not registered the fact.

  She looked up Granite as she pumped gas into the tank of the car. She had not liked seeing the homeless people, but there was something even more ominous about their absence. The streets and sidewalks looked clean, even the empty buildings appeared freshly restored, and she found herself thinking of _The Stepford Wives_.

  That was it exactly. There was something artificial here. Clean and wholesome, yes. But not in a good way. In a creepy way, an unnatural way.

  The pump stopped at nine dollars and eighty-nine cents, the tank full, but she topped it off until the counter read ten dollars, then walked into the office of the gas station to pay.

  Barry Twain was working this afternoon, and he smiled at her. "Hey there, Ginny. How goes it?"

  "Could be better."

  "But it could be worse." He squinted at the fuel monitoring box next to the cash register. "That'll be ten dollars."

  She handed him a twenty, and he gave her back two fives.

  "How are things with you?" she asked.

  "Not good. I heard The Store's going to start selling gasoline."

  She stared at him, shocked. "What?"

  Barry laughed wheezingly, pointing at her. "Gotcha!" he cried. "Gotcha good that time!"

  Against her will, she broke into a smile. "That you did."

  "You bought it! Hook, line, and sinker!"

  "It's not that far-fetched."

  Barry's smile faded a little. "You're right."

  "I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't mean to --"

  He waved her apology away. "Don't worry about it. Gasoline's one thing that can't be sold inside a store. And even if they do build that auto center and eventually decide to sell gas, I'm not worried about it. I've built up a lot of customer loyalty over the years. And I have a lot of friends in this town.

  Like you."

  She smiled at him. "Barry, I'd still keep coming here even if your gas was two dollars higher than theirs."

  He cackled. "Hell, maybe they _should_ come up against me. Then I'll be justified
when I jack up my prices, and I'll make a fortune."

  "I'll go to Texaco." she said.

  "Traitor!"

  She laughed, waved, walked out the door. "Later, Barry!"

  "See you, Ginny!"

  On the way home, she did see a homeless man. A big, burly, bearded guy in a dirty fringed jacket.

  He was being shoved by a group of uniformed Store employees into a black Store van.

  She drove past quickly, not wanting to see the faces of the Store people, not wanting to discover that her daughters were among them.

  She told Bill about it when she arrived home, describing what she'd seen, and he nodded, admitting that he'd witnessed a similar scene the other day.

  "But these homeless people," she said. "Where are they taking them? What are they doing with them?"

  He shrugged tiredly. "I don't know."

  "Our daughters are involved in this."

  "How does it feel to have members of the Hitler Youth in your own family?"

  "This isn't funny."

  "I'm not joking."

  They looked at each other.

  "Doesn't it feel a little Red Guardish?" he asked. "What if we do something that ticks Sam off? Is she going to turn us in? Is The Store's gestapo going to come after us and load us into vans?"

  "Stop it," she said. "You're scaring me."

  "I'm scaring myself."

  She confronted Shannon about it later, after dinner that evening, and the girl burst into tears, running from the room. Ginny told Bill to stay out in the front, and she followed her daughter back into her bedroom.

  "I'm sorry," Shannon sobbed, throwing her arms around her mother as she sat down on the bed. "I'm sorry."

  Ginny held her. "Sorry for what?"

  "There was nothing I could do. They made me go on the sweep."

  "What happened?"

  "I didn't help. I just stood there. I just watched. But I . . . I didn't do anything to stop it. I just stood there. I just watched."

  "What happened?" Ginny repeated.

  "They . . . beat them up. The homeless. They beat them up and put them in vans and . . . drove them somewhere."

  Ginny felt cold. "Where?"

  "I don't know. They didn't tell us." She started sobbing again. "Oh, Mom, it was awful!"

  "It's okay." Ginny held her tightly. "It's all right."

  "There was nothing I could do!"

  "It's all right," Ginny said again.

  "I wanted to make them stop it, but I didn't! I couldn't!"

  "It's all right." Ginny hugged her even harder, a tear squeezing out of the corner of her own eye. "It's all right. It's all right."

  3

  Ginny emerged from Shannon's bedroom a half hour later.

  "So?" Bill said.

  "She was there, but she was just a witness. She refused to help."

  "Help with what?"

  "She doesn't know much more than we do. Apparently, The Store's forcing its employees to volunteer for what they call morning sweeps. They're trained by a cop, and they're sent out to, quote unquote, clean up the streets. When Shannon went out, that meant that they beat the homeless men with fists and batons, and threw them into vans. The vans were driven away and none of the homeless men have been seen since."

  Bill pounded his fist against the counter. "_Goddamn_ it!"

  Ginny put a hand on his arm. "She wants out."

  "And we want her out. But what the hell can we do about it?"

  The pipes shuddered as Shannon started the shower in the bathroom.

  "She has something she wants to show you," Ginny said. "She's going to bring it out after she takes a shower."

  "What is it?"

  "I'm not supposed to say. She wants to show you herself."

  "Come on."

  "All right. Don't tell her I told you. It's _The Employee's Bible_."

  "_The Employee's Bible_?"

  "She had to smuggle it out of The Store and she's really nervous about it.

  I guess it's a book they're given when they get hired. It's forbidden for outsiders to see it."

  Bill felt a rush of excitement. "It probably explains all about The Store," he said.

  Ginny nodded.

  "This may give us some info we can use."

  Shannon came into the living room after finishing her shower, dry-eyed and wearing a bathrobe. She handed him a black-bound book and sat on the couch. She wouldn't meet his eyes, would only look at her hands, which were twisting and bunching the robe in her lap. "We're not supposed to show this to anyone. It's for Store employees only. But I thought you'd want to see it."

  _The Employee's Bible_.

  Bill flipped through the pages, scanning the subheadings: THE STORE IS

  YOUR HOME. BECOMING ONE OF US. DEALING WITH TRAITORS. DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.

  TERMINATION PROCEDURES.

  Shannon nervously twisted the robe material. "I'm not supposed to bring that home. It's not supposed to leave The Store."

  He continued looking through the book. It was appalling, frightening, both its words and the accompanying drawings making his skin crawl. But he'd been hoping for more. Weaknesses. Trade secrets. Achilles' heels. It seemed to be mostly propaganda, ham-handed attempts at intimidation, and there was not really anything that could be used against The Store. Even the references to what he knew were illegal acts were couched in careful language, carrying another, more innocent, meaning.

  "I work tomorrow," she said. "I have to bring it back."

  He nodded, turned to the index, scanned the entries. "School's going to be starting in a few weeks. What's going to happen then? Are they going to let you quit?"

  "They're cutting down my hours. But I can't quit. My work contract runs through October. The end of October."

  "That's only two more months," Ginny offered.

  "Two more months of sweeps? Two more months of . . ." She shook her head.

  "Forget it."

  "Maybe there's something in here," Bill said. "Some loophole we could exploit. Maybe we can get you out of there."

  "They're smarter than we are," Shannon said dejectedly. "There aren't going to be any loopholes."

  She was right. If there were any, he couldn't find them, but he scanned as many of the book's pages as he could into his PC before giving it back to her.

  He'd study it more carefully tomorrow, see if he couldn't come up with something.

  He wished Ben was here. And Street. Three heads were always better than one.

  Both Shannon and Ginny went to bed early, but he wasn't tired, couldn't sleep, was too wound up, and after kissing Ginny good night, he remained in his office until well after midnight, faxing and E-mailing messages to Arizona's two senators, to their local assemblyman, to the county Board of Supervisors, to the Better Business Bureau, to the Federal Trade Commission, to the FBI, to the Commerce Department, to anyone he could think of. He even sent a fax to The Store's corporate office in Dallas, addressing it to Newman King himself, detailing his complaints and suspicions, his problems with The Store, demanding that his daughter be released from the involuntary servitude in which The Store illegally and unconstitutionally held her.

  Ginny was asleep and snoring when he finally crawled into bed, and he put his arm around her and cupped her breast. She stirred, moaned, backed against his hardening penis. He wanted to make love to her. It had been over a week since they'd done it, but he restrained himself, moved his hand down to her belly, closed his eyes, and concentrated on falling asleep. He wanted to do it, but they couldn't. They had no protection. He had no condoms, and she was out of spermicide for her diaphragm.

  They'd have to go to The Store tomorrow and buy some.

  THIRTY

  1

  There was a faculty meeting the week before school started, and Ginny called up various friends on the staff to see if any of them needed a ride.

  None of them wanted to go with her.

  She'd been afraid of that -- it was the real reason she'd called, to gau
ge the mood of her coworkers -- but instead of intimidating her, making her nervous about showing up, it angered her, fortified her, and she was determined not to cave in to any sort of pressure.

  She drove alone to Juniper Elementary, took a seat at the front of the assembly room. The other teachers filed in, took their seats, talking among themselves, but there remained a circle of empty seats around her, an artificial barrier that none of the other faculty would cross.

  Until Meg sat down next to her.

  Ginny had never been more grateful to anyone in her life, and though she had never really liked Meg, though "coworker" had always been a more accurate description of their relationship even than "acquaintance," she reached out and spontaneously hugged the other teacher.

  The older woman smiled. "I guess we misfits have to stick together."

  Ginny smiled back. "So where are you shopping these days?"

  Meg burst out laughing.

  "So what happened here?" Ginny asked. "Why did they all jump ship?"

  "I don't know. I've never been privy to their thoughts, never shared their confidences. You were always closer to the rest of the staff than I was."

  "Until I suddenly became a leper."

  "You have standards," Meg said. "You have integrity. You and I may have totally different teaching techniques. We may disagree on almost everything. But one thing we have in common is that we stand up for what we believe in. And we don't back down in the face of adversity. I've always admired that about you."

  Ginny was genuinely touched. "Thank you."

  "The rest of our fellow teachers are easily corruptible sheep."

  "And so are the kids and their parents," Ginny said.

  Meg nodded. "It's going to be a long year."

  The principal came out then, walking to the front of the assembly room, and those teachers who were standing took their seats, everyone growing quiet.

  "There are going to be some changes this year at Juniper Elementary," the principal said after making a few introductory remarks. "And I'm very excited about them. I hope you will be, too." He explained that the teachers' union, the district, and The Store had just finished hammering out an agreement by which Juniper's elementary, junior high, and high schools would be privately rather than publicly funded, on a trial basis, for this school year, The Store volunteering to foot the town's educational bill in exchange for a few small concessions.