Every Last Mother's Child

by William J. Carty, Jr

  Chapter 15: Jackie’s Supermarket

  Jackie’s Supermarket had been the only grocer in the village Franklinton. Although it billed its self as a supermarket it was not that large only about 25,000 square feet. It served not only the town of Franklinton; but the surrounding district. It had been part of the community for over a hundred years. It not only sold groceries to people of Franklinton and vicinity, it sponsored some of the sports teams, both youth and adult. When the local school had needed help in replacing an athletic field after a wild land fire; it had led the effort to raise funds to replace it. The market also boasted a deli where many of the town’s people enjoyed their lunch as they visited. Now three months after the announcement of the evacuation the family that owned the market was still trying to help their community. While many merchants had raised their prices the Shiloh family had not, even when their suppliers had raised their prices to them.

  The town was slowly being deserted between people finding work off planet or by simply being evacuated to home. Where there might have been ten thousand people in and around the town there might be six thousand people now. The family that owned the store was in a quandary about their own evacuation. They were still trying to make a decision about going on to Home or to one of the imperial planets. The problem was if they went on to one of the imperial then the family would have to break up. They were a large family with multiple spouses, and many children. They had been together for several generations the thought of separating was unthinkable. Yet if they went on to Home they would be destitute and have to start all over. To make matters worse they were going to have leave many of their things behind. The crown was allowing them three containers; but it wasn’t going to be enough for nearly thirty people. They had started to pack some things up, but their evacuation date was a couple of weeks away. So they were in no hurry.

  It was after dinner with the younger kids in bed and the older kids finishing chores or visiting what few friends were still in the neighborhood. The adults were lounging around large dining room discussing their future.

  “I talked to Ferguson the other day,” Jasmine one of the younger wives spoke into the moody silence. “He was telling me that the crown was allowing some people to take their businesses with them.”

  “Yeah I heard,” Moshe one of the younger men spoke up, “the same thing; but when I tried to find out more by going to EvacNet there was nothing on any of the public pages.”

  “I have been checking with some of our suppliers,” Lindsey, one of the older women who was the family’s business manager spoke. “They’ve been hearing the same thing. Some of their suppliers have been telling them some of their stock is being sent on to Home.”

  “Well that makes sense,” Lenora remarked, as she sat sipping coffee, “The people evacuating to Home will need to be supplied with food and other grocery items.”

  “I heard that only the big grocers and retailers were being allowed to take stock with them.” Alex the oldest of the men commented. “That is unfair!”

  He was having the hardest time of all of them having to leave the store and Trena. He had married into the family as a young man just out of school nearly fifty years before. He was the last of that generation. All of the wives and husbands he married of his generation were dead now. Mackey the girl who brought him to the family all those years ago; had died the previous winter. While he was still in love with the rest of his wives and husbands they were not of his generation. Now even the market he had helped to build over the years was going away too. He had a lot of memories of raising their family in this building that was over a hundred years old. Now it was going away, and he wasn’t certain how he was going to support his family. That, more than anything was disturbing him. How were they going to support their children and themselves when they left Trena? He was nearly certain that the family might have to break into smaller groups and be scattered to the four winds.

  “Folks,” he said after a few minutes of silence had descended over the spouses as if a curtain had been lowered, “I think it might be time to split up. I can’t see how we can stay together and be able to support each other on Home!”

  “No!” Lindsey, who was considered by all of them to be their senior wife spoke sharply, “We will not split up! Together we are stronger than we are separated.”

  “But we won’t have the store to support us!” Alex turned to the woman who was ten years younger than he, “how can we support ourselves without any income! We don’t know how to farm; we aren’t tradesmen, doctors, or school teachers. Things the evacuees will need to help us get established on Home. We’re shopkeepers without a shop or store how can we survive on Home?”

  “It’ll work out,” Lindsey slammed down her coffee cup, coffee flying everywhere. Sheepishly she went to the sink and got a rag off the drain board. As she started to wipe the spilled coffee, “We’re not the only family that is facing this problem. From everything we’re being told. Marshal Wilson has everything thought out. They must have thought these things through.”

  “I don’t know Lin,” Lenora commented as she filled her senior wife’s coffee cup and her own. “The magnitude of just getting us off world is bad enough. Just accounting for every one of us has got to be enough.”

  “You know it might not be that bad,” one of the men remarked, “Len can hang out her shingle. Certainly there will be some call for an attorney. If only to do wills. Then me and Jasmine can offer ourselves up as handymen.”

  “I can always sew,” one of the men said.

  “Regardless of where we go on Home,” Alex commented, “They’ll need a butcher. I can’t image the crown being able to lay its hands on enough prepackaged stuff to feed us all.”

  “We may have to reinvent ourselves,” Lenora remarked, “but we can do it. As long as we work together like we always, do we will survive this!”

  The next morning, Lindsey was in the store’s small business office going through the mail when she saw the crown notice. She opened it was just about floored. The crown was offering to transport their entire store to Home. She poked her head out of the office and saw one of the older kids stocking shelves, “Lamar! Go get Pops and bring him here.”

  “Yes mama,” the boy said getting to his feet and going to find Alex.

  Alex came into the office wearing a stained apron. He had been cutting meat in the back when the boy had found him. “What’s up babe?”

  She handed him the print out she had made of the crown notice. He read it in silence. Then read it again to be sure, then asked, “Is this for real? I’ve heard there’s been some pranks played on people telling them that they can take something near and dear to them.”

  “No Pops,” Lindsey responded, “I was afraid of that too and asked for confirmation. It’s for real. I took the liberty of telling them yes.”

  A few days later Marcel, one the middle daughters was sweeping up the trash in front of the store when she noticed a car with a sign saying it was from the evacuation command on its side parked a little ways from her. Two women got from the car and came up to her.

  One of the women a chubby blond asked, “Are the owners about?”

  “My family owns the store,” Marcel replied, “How can I help you?”

  “I’ve got it,” Moshe came out of the main entrance. He had been wiping down tables in the deli when he saw the car pull up. He knew why the two women were, and why they had come to the store. They were here to talk about their store. “Hi I’m Moshe. Let me take you in to talk to Pops and Lin.”

  The two women followed him into the store. As they did they noticed that Jackie’s Market was more than grocery store, it was more like a general store; which was what the crown wanted. The women saw more than food as they follow the youngish man through the store. It was just large enough to serve a few thousand people and small enough that it wouldn’t be able to serve a large urban center. Most of what they were seeing was modern enough that the equipment shouldn’t cause any maintenance headac
hes on Home for a while. Moshe took the women to the back of the store where an older man and middle aged woman were working with an automated loader as it unloaded a truck of meat. The older man was swiping a wand over the tags that were attached to the carcasses of the meat being unloaded. The meat was encased in a clear shell. The meat was preserved in such a way that it was good for years. The plastic coating was to prevent bugs and other critters from dinning on the meat. The meat didn’t need refrigeration until it was prepared. Even the normal handling of a butcher didn’t affect the preservative. The coating was easily defeated by simply rinsing the carcass in warm water. It was a perfect system that allowed meat and other perishables to be stored almost indefinitely.

  Two teenagers came up, and took over for the adults. The two women walked with Lin and Pops through the store. The two evacuation command reps were taking notes as they walked through the store. They saw several glass fronted refrigeration units. This surprised the women.

  “Pops,” one of the women turned to the old man and asked, “why all the refrigeration we don’t use refrigerators to preserve food. Haven’t needed to freeze or refrigerate food since the early days of star flight.”

  “That’s right,” Lin opened one of the freezers and pulled out a novelty ice cream treat. “These will not spoil if left out in the room; but they taste much better if they are cold. We sell a lot of singles to kids. Have you ever had warm bear or milk? A lot of our refrigeration is for the convenience of our customers.”

  “I see,” the woman said wondering if they should take the refrigerators when they moved the store. Almost as reading her mind her partner remarked, “We don’t know what type of food preservation we’ll need on Home. We’ll take everything.”

  They continue through the store noting that it was more of a general store than a grocery. There were tools, small appliances, fabric, office supplies and small electronics. The two crown reps were now more than convinced that the store would be idea for one of the small towns on Home.

  They were in the family’s home, atop the grocery, talking with the adults in their large kitchen and dining room.

  “Well it isn’t very big,” the older woman said, “Which is good. Tomorrow or the next day you’ll be getting several containers. If you need help loading them we can get some people to help load them.”

  “No we have enough hands to help us.” Moshe commented. The adults around the room nodded in agreement.

  “Do you know how to load them?” the younger woman asked.

  “Oh yeah,” one of the woman replied, “nice and tight!”

  “When do we have to be loaded?” Pops asked.

  “Two weeks,” the older woman, “Think you can do it?”

  The adults looked at each other a couple of them shrugged, then almost as if they were thonians, they nodded with Lin finally speaking for all them turned to the women, “We can do it.”

  “I saw the holo of packing that woman’s house,” Lenora commented, and then asked, “Is there anything that isn’t shown on that holo we need to know?”

  “No,” One of the women responded, “The list of stuff you shouldn’t load will be different, because of who you are.”

  The two women left shortly after that. A couple of days later Moshe was standing in the front of the store taking a break from inventorying the pharmacy portion of the store, when ten container carriers with cargo containers on them came into the parking lot. A driver got out of the lead carrier and came up to him. “Hello. Are you Mr. Dramel?”

  “Yes I am,” Moshe responded. The family name was Dramel; his name was Moshe Abrams before he joined the Dramel family. Once he married Dramel became his last name. Although his name was one of the many last names added to the family’s, “How can I help you?”

  “Where do you want your containers?” the man asked.

  Moshe looked around the lot thankful it was early morning and the store was not open yet and there were only a couple vehicles in the lot. A couple of vendors who came to the store a couple times a month to check on their product sales and to see if there was anything that they could sell to them. The lot was mostly empty. He replied to the driver, “Back them up to the front here but leave enough space for customers to park.”

  “Sure thing,” the man responded as he climbed into the cab of the carrier.

  The driver of the lead container carrier backed his unit up to the front of the store. Once he had dropped his container, he used a remote pad to back up four of the carriers and unload their containers. Within a few minutes five of the containers were backed up to the front of the store. The other five containers were dropped in such a way that they didn’t block the stores. Once the containers were parked the driver came over to the line of containers, and opened the one he had dropped from his carrier. It was packed with bundles of shipping supplies. He took one of the bundles out and cut the band holding the collapsed boxes together. It was a bundle of small boxes suitable for boxing up small things.

  “The entire container is loaded with boxes and such to pack up your store and residence.” The man said.

  “We shouldn’t need much.” Moshe commented thinking of how much of their stock was still in unopened shipping cartons. Then he thought about the stuff in their home and knew the boxes would come in handy. “When we get packed what do we do?”

  “Call this number,” the man handed him a business card. Once thought to be a thing of the past they had been making a comeback in recent years for their simplicity. It was a quick simple way to exchange information. The card said container pick up and gave a communicator number.

  He opened the next container and found more shipping materials. By this time several family members had joined him in front of the store. Lindsey had also joined them. She looked in the open containers and turned to her family, “Well staring at them isn’t going to get them loaded. Let’s get the store rooms loaded. Don’t worry about stock rotation. When we get to Home we’ll worry about stock rotation. A couple of you get those boxes stacked at the head of the aisles. I want the store rooms done first, then the pharmacy, then hardware, and everything else. I want it tight.”

  “We got it Mama Lindsey!” one of the boys said, “Me and Courtney will do the store rooms.”

  With that the family began the laborious task of closing and packing their store. Thankfully the only labor intense portion of the packing was unloading the shelves and cold cases. Early in the process as Pops and one of his daughters began to unload one of the cold cases he made the decision not to take the contents of the cold cases with them, nor the fresh produce. He wasn’t too concerned about it spoiling; most of the stuff in the cases did not need to be refrigerated to keep it from spoiling, the cold cases were mostly for the convenience of their customers. For instance many people wanted a cold six pack so they didn’t have to wait for it to get cold before they could drink it. There were some other things such as ice cream novelties and such that didn’t need to be kept frozen to keep them from perishing; but like beer was a courtesy to their customers. There wasn’t that much in the cold cases or on the rest of their shelves. Since the evacuation’s announcement they had not been restocking their shelves fully. Their business was slowly disappearing as the town was evacuated. Many of the shelves were nearly half empty. Some shelves such as those containing snacks were completely empty! Others such as the cosmetics counters were fully stocked. The hardware aisles were almost empty. When all was said in done they didn’t have as much to pack as they thought.

  Pops was looking at the contents of one of the containers when one of the village’s other merchants came up to him. The merchant had been incensed that Pops family was being allowed to take their entire business with them to Home, while he wasn’t allowed to take his. When he was told that a lingerie stop was not considered a critical necessity on Home he became incensed. When he saw how empty the container was that Pops was standing before, he turned to Pops and asked, “Will you take some of my stock and give it back to m
e once we get to Home?”

  “I don’t know,” Pops replied, “We were given a list of some items we couldn’t take. Lingerie was not on the list.”

  “Come to think of it,” Pops turned and asked suddenly, “Was this what you were going do on Home? Sell lingerie?”

  “Yeah,” the man retorted, “Why not?”

  “We really need lingerie on Home while we’re trying to establish ourselves,” Pops commented.

  “Well,” the man commented, “our people may want to enjoy themselves every once in a while. It won’t be all work and no play!”

  Pops could see the man’s point; but he wasn’t about to smuggle stuff to Home. He and his family were too grateful for this opportunity to remain as a family to do anything to mess it up by smuggling contraband to Home. Especially for someone like Mortimer’s Lingerie, who as far as Pops could tell, had done nothing really to get ready for his evacuation!

  “Why are you going to Home,” Pops asked suddenly, “Surely you would be happier on one of the more developed worlds?”

  “Yes,” Mortimer answered, “I can’t find anyplace to take me! The only skill I have is sewing! When I went to the recruiting center there was nothing I could do! None of them would take me unless I wanted to be laborer! That’s what halfwits are for!”

  “You need to be gone now,” Pops angrily turned to the man, one of his sons in laws was a beta bioperson, “before I lose control and kick your lazy bigoted ass back to your place of business!”

  Mortimer, realizing he had pissed the old man off quickly left the stores lot.