Ursula Le Guin: The Beginning Place

“Checker on Seven!” and back between the checkstands unloading the wire carts, apples three for eighty-nine, pineapple chunks on special, half gallon of two percent, seventy-five, four, and one is five, thank you, from ten to six six days a week; and he was good at it. The manager, a man made of iron filings and bile, complimented him on his efficiency. The other checkers, older, married, talked baseball, football, mortgages, orthodontists. They called him Rodge, except Donna, who called him Buck. Customers at rush times were hands giving money, taking money. At slow times old men and women liked to talk, it didn’t matter much what you answered, they didn’t listen. Efficiency got him through the job daily but not beyond it. Eight hours a day of chicken noodle two for sixty-nine, dog chow on special, half pint of Derry Wip, ninety-five, one, and five is forty. He walked back to Oak Valley Road and had dinner with his mother and watched some television and went to bed. Sometimes he wondered what he would be doing if Sam’s Thrift-E-Mart had been on the other side of the freeway, for there was no pedestrian crossing for four blocks on one side and six on the other, and he never would have got to the place. But he had driven there to stock up the refrigerator the day after they moved in, and saw the sign CHECKER WANTED, which had been up for one half hour. If he hadn’t fallen into the job he might have gone ahead and bought a car so that he could work downtown, as he had planned. But it wouldn’t have been much of a car, whereas now he was saving enough to amount to something when the time came. He would rather live in town and get along without a car of his own but his mother was afraid of inner cities. He looked at cars as he walked home and considered what kind he might get when the time came. He was not very interested in cars, but since he had given up the idea of school he would have to spend the money on something, finally, and his mind always fell into the same habit, as he walked home; he was tired, and all day he had handled things for sale and the money that bought them, until his mind held nothing else because his hands never held anything else, and yet kept none of it.

In early spring when they first moved here the sky above the roofs had flared cold green and gold as he walked home. Now in summer the treeless streets were still bright and hot at seven. Planes gaining altitude from the airport ten miles south cut the thick, glaring sky, dragging their sound and shadow; broken swings of painted steel play-gyms screeched beside the driveways. The development was named Kensington Heights. To get to Oak Valley Road he crossed Loma Linda Drive, Raleigh Drive, Pine View Place, turned onto Kensington Avenue, crossed Chelsea Oaks Road. There were no heights, no valleys, no Raleighs, no oaks. On Oak Valley Road the houses were two-story six-unit apartment houses painted brown and white. Between the carports were patches of lawn with edgings of crushed white rock planted with juniper. Gum wrappers, soft-drink cans, plastic lids, the indestructible shells and skeletons of the perishables he handled at the counters of the grocery, lay among the white rocks and the dark plants. On Raleigh Drive and Pine View Place the houses were duplexes and on Loma Linda Drive they were separate dwellings, each with its own driveway, carport, lawn, white rocks, juniper. The sidewalks were even, the streets level, the land flat. The old city, downtown, was built on hills above a river, but all its eastern and northern suburbs were flat. The only view he had seen out here had been on the day they drove in from the east with the U-Haul. Just before the city limits sign there was some kind of viaduct the freeway went over, and you looked down over fields. Beyond them the city in a golden haze. Fields, meadows in that soft evening light, and the shadows of trees. Then a paint factory with its many-colored sign facing the freeway, and the housing developments began.

One evening after work, a hot evening, he crossed the wide parking lot of Sam’s Thrift-E-Mart and went up the exit ramp onto the narrow sidewalk rim of the freeway to see if he could walk back, walk out into the country, the fields he had seen, but there was no way. Rubbish of paper and metal and plastic underfoot, the air lashed and staggering with suction winds and the ground shuddering as each truck approached and passed, eardrums battered by noise and nothing to breathe but burnt rubber and diesel fumes. He gave it up after half an hour and tried to get off the freeway, but the suburban streets were divided from the freeway embankment by chainlink fence. He had to go clear back and across the Thrift-E-Mart parking lot to get to Kensington Avenue. The defeat left him shaky and angry, as if he had been assaulted. He walked home squinting in the hot level sunlight. His mother’s car wasn’t in the carport. The telephone was ringing as he let himself in.

“There you are! I’ve been calling and calling. Where were you? I called twice already before this call. I’ll be here until about ten. At Durbina’s. There’s a turkey dinner in the freezer. Don’t use the Oriental Menu dinners, they’re for Wednesday. There’s a Mixon’s Turkey Dinner.” $1.29, his head rang it up, thank you. “I’m going to miss the beginning of that movie on Channel Six, you watch it for me till I get home.”

“O.K.”

“Byebye then.”

“Bye.”

“Hugh?”

“Yes.”

“What kept you so late?”

“Walked home a different way.”

“You sound so cross.”

“I don’t know.”

“Take some aspirin. And a cold shower. It’s so hot. That’s what I’d like. But I won’t be late. Take care now. You’re not going out, are you?”

“No.”

She hesitated, said nothing, but did not hang up the phone. He said, “Bye,” and hung up, and stood beside the telephone stand. He felt heavy, a heavy animal, a thick, wrinkled creature with its lower lip hanging open and feet like truck tires. Why are you fifteen minutes late why are you cross take care don’t eat the frozen Oriental Menu don’t go out. All right. Take care take care. He went and put the Mixon’s Turkey Dinner into the oven although he had not preheated the oven as the directions said to do, and set the timer. He was hungry. He was always hungry. He was never exactly hungry, but always wanting to eat. There was a bag of peanuts in the pantry cupboard; he took the bag into the living room and turned on the television set and sat down in the armchair. The chair shook and creaked under his weight. He got up again suddenly, dropping the bag of peanuts he had just opened. It was too much, the elephant feeding itself peanuts. He could feel his mouth hanging open, because he could not seem to get air into his lungs. His throat was closed off by something in it trying to get out. He stood there beside the armchair, his body trembling in a jerky way, and the thing in his throat came out in words. “I can’t, I can’t,” it said loudly.

Very frightened, in panic, he made for the front door, wrenched it open, got out of the house before the thing could go on talking. The hot, late sunlight glared on white rocks, carports, cars, walls, swings, television aerials. He stood there trembling, his jaw working: the thing was trying to force his jaw open and speak again. He broke and ran.

Right down Oak Valley Road, left onto Pine View Place, right again, he did not know, he could not read the signs. He did not run often or easily. His feet hit the ground hard, in heavy shocks. Cars, carports, houses blurred to a bright pounding blindness which, as he ran on, reddened and darkened. Words behind his eyes said You are running out of daylight. Air came acid into his throat and lungs, burning, his breath made the noise of tearing paper. The darkness thickened like blood. The jolt of his gait grew harder yet, he was running down, downhill. He tried to hold back, to slow down, feeling the world slide and crumble under his feet, a multiple lithe touch brush across his face. He saw or smelled leaves, dark leaves, branches, dirt, earth, leafmold, and through the hammer of his heart and breath heard a loud continual music. He took a few shaky, shuffling steps, went forward onto hands and knees, and then down, belly down full length on earth and rock at the edge of running water.