The Girl Kandace Is Bored and Goes up to the Store

5/5/2014
rev 7/7/2014

The Sheriff's wife had forgotten the list. Again.

Chips, she thought. And cream of chicken soup.

Go outside, she said to her boys.

And the other chips. For his lunch. Where did she leave the list?

Go outside, she said again, barking this time.

Gladys covers that stool. Hangs over the edges like her butt is the top of a mushroom or a cupcake.

One of the boys started bawling. Out, she heard herself yell in the small store.

The boys went out. The smaller one sat down on the edge of the porch with elaborate collapse and too much looseness in the arms.

That one is a queer, she thought, then crossed the idea out with her free hand.

Frozen pizza. Two bottles of pop.

Gladys had her enormous breasts propped on the counter. This was a joke just this morning at the Post Office, the great weight of Gladys' breasts requiring her to always prop them on whatever burly structure was nearby. The Nelson boy had a cow down and now had it in a harness hanging from his loader and he suggested such a contrivance for Gladys and her breasts.

She took her shopping to the counter. Gladys slowly focused on the pile and sighed and started to tally. The Sheriff's wife squinted out at the gas pumps. The girl Kandace was there leaning on the tailgate of the red jeep belonging to a boy who lived down at the yurts. The girl's hip rocked out and that knee straightened and she propped her hand and her skinny elbow jutted. That is a girl flirting, thought the Sheriff's wife. The sun came through the girl's yellow skirt.

The least that little bitch could do is wear a slip, said the Sheriff's wife.

That little hooker, she thought.

Gladys heaved herself around to look. She snorted and went back to her tally.

The girl Kandace flipped her yellow hair out there in the white sun. The boy from down at the yurts was hanging up the nozzle. The girl laughed, threw her head back, her big white teeth, her red mouth.

That little bitch, said the Sheriff's wife. She is asking for it.

All the boys watch her, said Gladys.

And all the men.

Gladys and the Sheriff's wife looked. The girl did a little wave as the boy got back in the jeep. She turned on the toes of her flip-flops and walked toward the store.

If her mother wasn't such a fall-down. Teach that little hooker to be a lady. She finished saying this as the door jangled open and the girl entered with a blast of white light and heat and perfume.

The Sheriff's wife said You have a good day, Gladys and shouldered past Kandace and out.

You too, love, said Gladys, too quiet and too late.

Gladys turned and watched Kandace sway into the store. Just a filly, she thought. Under all this there is a filly like that, she thought, and settled her breasts onto the counter. What a cow I am, she thought.

* * *

Kandace got tired of TV. Her mother was sleeping it off in the back room, snoring. She thought, He will come home soon. She felt it in her chest, the hot surge of warning in the boring day. She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth while she looked in the mirror. She spit and rinsed and turned this way and that. She pulled in her tummy and arched her back and she thought I will not always look like this I will get old and ugly so I will let them see me now. She folded the top of her skirt over once, then twice to show more above the knee. She brushed her hair with a little water. She took her mother's sunglasses and two dollars from her frumpy old shoulderbag. She stepped out into the glare. She headed toward the woodshop and prepared to be seen. She heard the jointer running before she turned at the head of the driveway, and the men laughing in there, and she smelled the pine. The lowering sun on her face and the heat off the road. She took out her phone and studied the screen and pretended to chew gum and flipped her hair back as she walked in front of the shop's big overhead door. She knew they were watching. She had known them her whole life, they gave her blocks of cutoff wood when she was a girl and always warned her away from the machines. She kept her gaze on the mountain, blue in the north. Rain, she thought. She walked and behind her one of the men laughed and their half-deaf talking resumed. She glanced at her reflection in the window of a parked car and adjusted her posture. To look purposeful but unhurried, to show confidence, this is what she tried to do, but she was careful not to show her effort or her calculation. When she was out of the carpenters' line of sight she prepared to show delight and surprise around the next corner at the Trading Post, where the new woman worked. She reminded herself that Meredith had brought the jewelry back from Taos, and to remark on it. She turned the corner and saw in a stealthy glance that the Trading Post door was closed. Two men sat in the porch rockers but they didn't notice her. She thought I can get up on the porch and look through the window at the display of T-shirts and mugs and they will look at me and I will be able to look back in the reflection, but she did not.

She started to cross the Post Office road right when the red jeep pulled up to the gas pumps in front of the store. The college boy Billy got out and waved to her. Just lifted his hand and smiled. She smiled back.

Hi Kandace, he said. How's it going?

She held up her thumb and finger a little apart like she was picking a cherry and she looked at him through the gap. Just a little bit boring, is what, she said, and smiled.

You? What're you up to? Not out foraging. She put this word in quotes with her fingers.

They chatted. She laughed. He grinned. He was done pumping and said Okay, then, and she waved and turned toward the store as he climbed back into the jeep.

Those fat cows watched the whole thing, she thought when she saw Gladys and the Sheriff's wife. Their faces looked to her like moons behind the Visa and Mastercard stickers.

She pulled the door open. The bells jangled. It was cool and dark inside and it smelled of bread and money. The Sheriff's wife's fat arm banged her as she let her eyes adjust. Gladys muttered something, too quiet to hear. The girl walked very slowly under the evaporative cooler, feeling her sweat dry. She could feel Gladys watch her. Gladys had put on like two hundred pounds. Kandace could remember when Gladys had been pretty and busty, and now she is just enormous and has breasts like gallons of milk.

She bought a popsicle and walked toward home as slowly as she thought she could without seeming strange. Several motorcycles growled by, each with a couple astride, heading for the Park. She didn't see anyone then. The highway went silent again and the heat from it distorted the cliffsides and the sky itself was leached of blue above its long scar. The chairs on the Trading Post porch were empty. She sat there in the shade and slouched down with her elbows up on the sticky arms of the chair. Smoke rose from an inch of cigarette in the can of sand. She rhythmically clapped her knees together, feeling the sweat stick and unstick. The sun lowered into the trees and the breeze started and cooled her. Her hands were sticky with popsicle. She got up and walked toward home.

As she approached the house she saw her stepfather upstairs, vague behind the curtain. She saw the shape of his workshirt collar and the epaulettes. She imagined his horsey smell. She would have to talk with him if he was upstairs and she felt the tedium of the day come down on her as the sun set and she thought I will be pretty old and he will still be in my life. He will be an old man. I will know him long after my mother is dead. From drinking. From lying in bed all day. She imagined the weight of the pistol and imagined several TV murder scenarios. She thought of her future in prison and felt a wave of grief for everything she would never have, for going to the electric chair for her hatred of him.

* * *

He stood at the top of the stairs. She came in and started up, then saw him there.

'S it going, Kandace? he said.

T.J.

Where you been?

Out, she said and sidled past him. She could smell him. She pushed her door open against the weight of the piled clothes.

You eaten? he said.

Uh huh, she said, though the popsicle was not enough.

Nothin in the house.

Don't I know it, she said. Goodnight. She met his eyes for a moment and smirked.

Night, he said as she clicked the door shut.