Bentley Little: The Store

"I'm sure a lot of construction workers around here'll be happy."

"I thought you'd be happy, too. You're always complaining about the high prices in town and moaning that we have to drive down to Phoenix in order to find a decent selection of anything."

"I am happy," he told her.

But he was not. Intellectually, he supposed he could appreciate the coming of The Store. It would be a big boost to the local economy and would mean not only a temporary increase in construction jobs, but a permanent expansion of sales and service positions, particularly for teenagers. It would also be good for consumers. It would bring big-city discount prices and a big-city selection of products to their small town.

On a gut level, however, the arrival of The Store did not sit well with him -- and not just because it was going to be built on his scenic spot. For no reason that he could rationally justify, he did not want the chain store in Juniper.

He thought of the sign.

Thought of the deer.

"Well, I'm sure local shop owners aren't too thrilled," Ginny said. "The Store'll probably put some of them out of business."

"That's true."

"Just what we need in town. More abandoned buildings."

His toast popped up, and Bill took a butter knife out of the silverware drawer, grabbed a jar of jam from the refrigerator.

"I'd better get ready," Ginny said, walking around him. She went into the bathroom, and he heard her brushing her teeth as he prepared his toast. She emerged a few minutes later, makeup on, purse in hand. "Hi ho, hi ho. It's off to work I go."

"Me, too." He walked over, kissed her.

"Will you be home for lunch?"

He smiled. "I think that's a safe bet."

"Good. Then you can finish the dishes."

"Ah, the joys of telecommuting." He followed her to the front door, kissed her again, then watched through the screen as she walked down the porch steps and across the drive to the car. He waved as she drove away, then closed the door, finished eating his toast, washed his hands in the kitchen sink, and walked through the living room and down the hall to his office.

He sat down at his desk, turning on the PC. As always, he felt a thrill of almost guilty pleasure as the computer booted up, as though he was getting away with something he shouldn't. He swiveled in his chair, looked out the window.

This might not be _exactly_ the life he had imagined -- but it was pretty damn close. In his mind, the house had been a large, glass-walled, Frank Lloyd Wrightish structure, and he'd been seated at a huge oak desk, looking out a giant window into the forest while classical music wafted into the room from a state-of-the-art stereo. In reality, he worked out of this cramped back room, the walls of the office little more than an extension of his bulletin board, with magazine articles and Post-It notes affixed to nearly every conceivable space. And he wasn't nearly as cultured in his real life as he was in his fantasies -- instead of classical music, he usually listened to classic rock on a portable radio his daughters had discarded.

But everything else was on the mark. The room did indeed have a big window, and that big window did look out onto the forest. And, most importantly, he was doing what he wanted, where he wanted. His reach may have exceeded his grasp, but he had not sold out. He had not given up his dream and settled for a lesser fate, choosing the least offensive alternative. He had stuck to his guns and here he was, a telecommuting technical writer, working for one of the country's largest software firms a thousand miles away from the corporate office, communicating with his superiors by modem and fax.

The computer finished booting up, and he checked his E-mail. There were two messages from the company -- reminding him of his deadline, no doubt -- and a message from Street McHenry, who owned the electronics store in town. Smiling, he called up Street's message. It was two words long: "Chess tonight?"

Bill typed a quick reply and sent it back: "See you there."

He and Street had had two separate chess matches going for most of the past year -- one online and one on a traditional board. Neither of them were really chess fanatics, and they probably would have stopped long ago were it not for an interesting and unexplainable fact: he won all the computer games; Street won all the board games.

It shouldn't have worked out that way. The mediums were different but the game was exactly the same. Chess was chess, no matter what pieces were used or where it was played. Still, that was the way it broke down.

Every time.

That oddity was enough to keep both of them interested in the matches.

Bill fired off a quick E-mail message to Ben Anderson, informing him of tonight's game. The newspaper editor, the other member of their online triumverate, had only recently learned of the Great Juniper Chess Mystery, as he called it, but he was fascinated by it and wanted to be present at all board games and eavesdrop on all online matches to see if he could detect any patterns in their playing, any logical reason why they won and lost as they did.

The situation until this point had seemed lighthearted, their approach to it curious but not serious, their manner half-joking, but as Bill stared at his E-mail screen and thought of their past year of chess games, he was reminded for some reason of The Store.

_The sign_.

_The deer_.

Suddenly, their win-loss pattern didn't seem quite so benign, and he wished he had canceled out on tonight's match instead of agreeing to it. He already knew what the outcome would be, and he now found that a little unsettling.

He looked out at the trees for a moment before finally turning back to the computer. He wasn't in the mood to jump straight into work, so instead of calling up his two messages from the company, he exited E-mail and logged on to Freelink, his online service, in order to check out this morning's news.

He scanned the wire service headlines.

THIRD STORE MASSACRE IN A MONTH.

The words jumped out at him. There were other headlines, more important stories, but he did not see them and did not care. Feeling cold, he displayed the text of the article. Apparently, a sales clerk from The Store in Las Canos, New Mexico, had come to work with a .45 caliber pistol tucked into the waste band of his pants, hidden beneath his uniform jacket. The clerk had worked from eight to ten in the morning, as always, then, on his break, had taken out the gun and started shooting his fellow employees. Six people were hit before the clerk stopped to reload and members of The Store's security team wrestled him to the ground. Five of those . six people were dead. The sixth was in critical condition at a local hospital.

According to the article, similar incidents had occurred at the chain's stores in Denton, Texas, and Red Bluff, Utah, within the past month. In the Texas store, it was a customer who had started firing on employees, killing three and wounding two. In Utah, it was a stock boy who had opened fire on customers. The stock boy had had a semiautomatic weapon, and he had managed to mow down fifteen people before being shot by an off-duty policeman.

Corporate officials of The Store would not comment on the incidents but had issued a press release stating that the possibility that the occurrences were related was being investigated.

Bill read the story again, still feeling cold.

_The deer_.

He signed off Freelink and stared at the blank screen in front of him for several long minutes before finally getting back into E-mail and accessing his messages from the company to start his morning's work.

TWO

1

Greg Hargrove looked down at the contract on his desk, frowning. He didn't like doing business this way. It might be the wave of the future and all, but he still liked to deal with his clients the old-fashioned way -- in person. All this faxing and phoning and Fed Exing might be fine for Wall Street investment firms, but, damn it, the construction business wasn't a service occupation, or a paper-pushing job. It was manual labor. It involved real work by real men. Men who created something with their hands, who produced something tangible.