Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“How is he, you know?” she said, and I said I’d been thinking of calling the hospital; in fact, would do it right now, since I had a few minutes before the store opened, and went to the office.

“Good morning, Kevin,” the manager said. “Everything straightened out up front?” He said this almost every time I saw him and he meant was the floor swept in my section and was I getting the more perishable items that wouldn’t last the week right up on top for everyone to see or at least working with Finerman ordering replacement produce, since the company prohibited markdowns on its fruits and vegetables. This was really his office, he made us very aware of that; made us feel uncomfortable whenever we had to use just one of the three desks in it. And he red-circled the check-in numbers of our timecards if we clocked in three minutes late more than once a week or two minutes late more than twice a week and even complained to our department superiors if he thought we were spending too much time in the washroom, which happened to be within seeing distance of his desk overlooking the store, as I guess everything else was, except the stockroom in back, where the staff took their breaks. That was why I was a little jittery and maybe too hesitant when I asked if he’d mind my using the phone to call about Nelson. He said I needn’t bother, he had called himself last night and the hospital said Nelson’s doing satisfactorily and it wouldn’t know of any improvement in his condition for two days. “He has those kinds of burns.”

“I’d still like to call, if you don’t mind, and find out if he just might have improved overnight.”

“I never knew you and Nelson were that close.”

“We weren’t, exactly. I mean, Nelson liked me and me, him and we had lots of respect for each other, as we were both on the company softball team that made the league playoffs two years ago, Nelly at short and me at second.”

“It’s also that the company’s been complaining to me recently about the excess calls from this phone, and on both exchanges. That they’re completely out of proportion to the excess calls of their other stores. They even sent me a notice to post on the bulletin board, which I haven’t done, because I thought a brief mention of it at our next staff meeting might serve as well.”

“I’m sure they could make an exception with this one.”

“I’m sure they could, too, if this were the only exception. But I can’t be explaining to them why each excess call of my employees — or at least the calls I find out about, because I’m not always in this office — is an exception. I’d be explaining to them all week, if that were the case.”

So he wasn’t going to let me use the phone. He didn’t care about Nelson, except that he had to be replaced by a less efficient man at the register and that might lower the day’s profits a fraction of a percentage point and — good God! — how was he ever going to explain that to the company. He didn’t care about the pickers or even his own employees. And if it had been me burned and Nelson who wanted to call the hospital, it would have been the same excuse: excess calls. I said Thank you,” I don’t know for what, and called the hospital from the pay phone in back. Nelson was doing satisfactorily, a woman there said, though chances of his complete recovery wouldn’t be known for at least another day.

“You see the TV cameras?” Mary Sarah, another food clerk, said when I got back to my section. They’re setting up outside — two of them from different stations. What’re you think they’re for?”

“Probably to film the scene of yesterday’s bombing.”

“And the paper today? There was a picture of our market, real as life except for the boards, and another of Nelson, all bandaged up, waving from his hospital bed, although he looked so grim and weak, it seemed maybe strings were making his fingers move. My hubby, Mike, and I talked about it and couldn’t decide what all that degree business meant. Though because third sounds so much the worse over second, we almost agreed it wasn’t, because that would have been too obvious, so we wouldn’t have even considered the question in the first place. Do you have a clue?”

The store bell rang, everyone got to his post, the doors opened and the usual early-morning surge of customers, eager to get what they believed were daily-delivered fresh produce, bought grapefruits, oranges, peaches and tomatoes and raspberries that had been in the boxes and bins out here, or in the refrigerated cases in back, for a few days.

“It’s getting so exciting outside,” Mary Sarah said, coming by after the early rush had ended and squeezing and thumping a melon to see if it was ripe enough for dinner tonight. “Could you put this away for me?” she said, which I did. “And the newspaper article said it was all because of those things — those berries there,” and she pointed, to the four crates of different kinds of berries that in a half hour I was going to dump into the street and destroy. I’d already figured out how I was going to do it. I’d wait till Finerman went in back for his every-half-hour-on-the-half-hour smoke, and then I’d stack the crates on one another and carry them outside.

“Morning, Kevin.” It was Mrs. Blau, another morning regular. For six months in the cold season, she bought nothing but anise, artichokes and apples; and during the warmer months, it was plums, peaches and carrots with their tops. “You shouldn’t be selling those things,” she said, meaning the berries.

“I know that, Mrs. Blau.”

“I should be boycotting your store for selling them, because by having them, you only encourage people to buy. Haven’t you seen the television reports?” I told her I hadn’t and she said the educational network last week devoted an entire hour to the plight of the berry-pickers and the cynicism and greediness of the growers. The pickers are the most underprivileged and underpaid workers we have. Because of that, they’re forced to live in hovels and have too many children, thereby causing even more future problems for them and the world. I shouldn’t even be in this store, do you realize that? And maybe I won’t,” and she handed me the plums, peaches and carrots I’d weighed for her and bagged, clipped and marked, said “I’m sorry for putting you through so much unnecessary work, Kevin,” and left the store.

It was nearly ten. The cameras were set up and a couple of policemen were keeping pedestrians away from the equipment and newsman, whom I recognized from a local evening news show as one of the most well-known television reporters on the city scene. People were trying to get his autograph while he held a sheet of paper up in front of him and was practicing his report to an unmanned camera. Suddenly, Mary Sarah was right on top of me, excited and out of breath and saying “You know what Paul Dougherty of WYBT just said outside about you, Kev?” And Larry, the youngest food clerk, said “What, Mary, what?”

“He said that you, Kevin Wilmer, have just smashed all the grower-grown berries that hadn’t been picked by union-member pickers, as an act of protest against the growers and as a form of allegiance or something to the boycott movement, though I don’t know if he was talking about you or the pickers, now, Kev.”

“What’s all that about?” Finerman said, his cigarette pack and matches already out of his pocket and in his hands, as he was on his way to the stockroom for a smoke.

“What’s all what about?” I said, stacking a crate of raspberries on a blackberry crate.

“What Mary Sarah said.”

“Paul Dougherty said you dumped and smashed berries outside,” she said. “But you didn’t do that, did you Kev? I would have seen it from number six, or at least heard about it.”