Bentley Little - The Store

THE STORE

by Bentley Little

PROLOGUE

The DeSoto drove along the rutted dirt road through the series of low desert hills that signaled an end to the Texas flatlands. A cloud of dust accompanied the car -- enveloping the vehicle, not merely following in its wake -- but the dust was preferable to the heat, and the windows remained open.

It was the third day of their honeymoon, and although Nancy didn't want to admit it, she and Paul seemed to have run out of things to say to each other.

They had not spoken since Houston, save for Paul's occasional requests to hand him the map, and though she tried to come up with something that they could talk about, there seemed to be no subjects that would sustain a conversation more than a few minutes. She figured she'd better save those for El Paso and dinner.

She fanned herself with the map. The unbearable temperature didn't help any, either. She couldn't think in weather like this. She'd never been so hot and uncomfortable in her life. She would've liked to take off her top and her bra. The old Paul would've liked it, too. It was the type of wild spontaneity that newlyweds were supposed to engage in, the sort of madcap antic that would make the honeymoon memorable, that they would be able to look back at and laugh about years later. No one else would see her -- they hadn't come across a single other car for the past two hours -- but even without asking, she knew that Paul would not approve.

They were supposed to have been married three years ago, but he'd been drafted, sent off to Korea, and though she'd wanted to marry before he shipped out, he wanted to wait . . . just in case. Each time she mentioned it, he'd remind her of Scarlett O'Hara's first husband in _Gone With the Wind_, the boy she'd married just before he'd gone off to his death in the Civil War, and though Nancy knew he was joking, his underlying meaning was serious, and it terrified her to think that he might not return.

Return he had, though. Alive and unharmed. But there'd been something different about him after the war. He seemed changed somehow, although it wasn't anything she could really put her finger on. She'd noticed it immediately, had considered asking him about it, but she figured if he wanted to talk he would, and she decided to let him be. She was just happy that they were together again.

Man and wife. And if the silences were a little too long, they were comfortable silences and she knew that once they started their new life in California, once they made friends and had kids and settled into marriage, those silences would disappear.

Ahead, at the foot of a sandstone cliff on the right side of the road, was a small brick building that appeared incongruous out here in the middle of nowhere. A strip of green grass fronted the structure, bisected by a short white sidewalk. There were no windows on the building, only a large black-on-white sign on the wall to the right of the door.

"That's odd," Paul said, slowing the car.

Nancy nodded.

This close, they could read the words on the sign:

THE STORE

GROCERIES -- PHARMACEUTICS -- MERCANTILE

Paul laughed. " 'The Store?' What kind of name is that?"

"It's straightforward and honest," she pointed out.

"Yeah. I guess it is that. But you'd never make it in a big city with a name like 'The Store.' You'd need something catchier, something with more pizzazz." He laughed again, shook his head. "The Store."

"Why don't we stop?" Nancy suggested. "Maybe they have cold soda. A nice cold soda sounds real good right now."

"Okay." There was no parking lot, but Paul pulled off the side of the dirt road and stopped directly in front of the small building. He turned toward Nancy. "What do you want?"

"I'll go in with you," she said.

He placed a firm hand on her arm. "No. You stay here in the car. I'll get us the sodas. What do you want?"

"Yoo-Hoo," she said.

"Yoo-Hoo it is." He opened the driver's door, got out. "I'll be back in a flash."

He smiled at her, and she smiled back as he walked down the short sidewalk, but her smile faded as she watched him open the glass door and step into the store, disappearing into the murky dimness of the building. She suddenly realized just _how_ odd this place was. They were fifty, maybe a hundred miles from the nearest town, there were no visible telephone lines or electrical wires, she could not believe that there was water, and there certainly was not any traffic. Yet the store was open and ready for business as if it were in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh and not in the middle of the Texas desert.

Something about that made her uneasy.

She stared hard at the door, trying to see into the store, but she could make out nothing. No shapes. No sign of movement. It was the glass, she told herself, and the angle of the sun. That was all. Besides, if the interior of the building were really as dark as it looked from out here, Paul would not have gone inside.

She tried to make herself believe it.

Paul emerged several minutes later looking stunned, carrying a large paper sack. He opened the driver's door of the DeSoto and sat down, placing the sack between them.

"You were just supposed to get sodas," she said.

He started the car.

"Paul?"

He didn't respond, and she began digging through the sack. "Light bulbs?

What do we need light bulbs for? We're on vacation. Tissue paper? Whisk broom?

Masking tape? What is all this?"

He glanced furtively back toward The Store as he put the car into gear.

"Let's just get out of here."

Nancy felt a chill pass through her. "But I don't understand. Why did you buy all this? And where are our sodas? You didn't even buy our sodas."

He looked over at her, and there was fear on his face, fear and anger, and for the first time since they'd gotten married, for the first time since she'd known Paul, she was afraid of him. "Shut up, Nancy. Just shut the hell up."

She said nothing but turned around to look as they sped away. Before the car rounded the curve of the hill, before the dust completely obscured the scene behind them, she saw the door of the building open.

And, in a sight she would remember until her dying day, she thought she saw the proprietor of The Store.

ONE

1

Bill Davis quietly closed the front door of the house behind him as he stepped outside. He walked off the porch and stood for a moment at the head of the drive, doing knee bends and breathing deeply, the air exhaling from his lungs in bursts of visible steam. When he reached the count of fifty, he stopped. Standing straight, he bent to the left, bent to the right, then walked down the drive to the road, where he inhaled and exhaled one last time before beginning his morning jog.

The dirt changed to asphalt at the bottom of the hill, and he ran past Goodwin's meadow and turned onto Main.

He liked running at this time of morning. He didn't like the running itself -- that was a necessary evil -- but he enjoyed being out and about at this hour. The streets were virtually empty. Len Madson was in the donut shop finishing up the morning's baking as the first few customers straggled in, Chris Schneider was loading up the newspaper racks, and here and there individual trucks were heading off to construction sites, but otherwise the town was quiet, the streets clear, and that was the way he liked it.

He ran through downtown Juniper and kept going until he hit the highway.

The air was chill but heavy, weighted with the rich scent of moist vegetation, the smell of newly cut grass. He breathed deeply as he jogged. He could see his breath as he ran, and the brisk air felt invigorating, made him glad to be alive. On the highway, the view opened up, the close-set trees that had been lining the road falling back, making visible the sloping landscape. Ahead, the sun was rising behind broken clouds that floated, unmoving, over the mountains, the clouds silhouetted against the pale sky, black in the center, pink-orange at the edges. In front of the sunrise, a flock of geese was flying south in a morphing V-formation, the shape of the flight pattern varying every few seconds as a different bird moved into the lead and the other members of the flock fell in behind it. Shafts of yellow light slanted downward through the clouds, through the pine branches, highlighting objects and areas unused to attention: a boulder, a gully, a collapsed barn.