South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [11]
It was a chilly day, and sunny at last. As usual she was nearly the only one out walking. Sometimes she saw a tall woman with the beagle on a leash, an ancient-looking man with a cane and a sparkly grin, an old lady trundling slowly along with a walker. These people usually smiled at her, but no one ever said anything, and she didn’t, either. She felt shy.
She always saw a car or two, or a few rumbling pickups, but there was never any actual traffic. There were always vehicles on the streets, people going in and out of the bank and the stores, but so few of them that it still disconcerted her, a little. If she’d stood in the middle of the street and screamed, there might only have been ten or twenty people available at any given time to come running.
She had never been anywhere so empty, or so silent. After that first exhausted night, the silence had actually kept her awake. It took awhile to figure out what made her feel so Uneasy, what was missing. It was the accustomed constant background sound of traffic, horns, sirens, voices drifting Up from the sidewalks at all hours of the day and night. Here there was just—nothing, pretty much. Wind. Waves. Gulls. If she stood outside at noon, she could hear the bells of two different churches tolling from opposite ends of the town. On pea-soup days, a foghorn blasted, mournful and patient. At nine every night an air siren blew, and she always saw children running for home just afterward. That was it.
The effect of the stillness was primeval, like the woods and swamps and the lake. She had fallen in love with the lake. The feeling it gave her—boundlessness. Hope, maybe. Awe. It was the best thing about McAllaster so far, aside from Arbutus. She wanted to paint it. She was actually trying to paint it, and it had been how many years since she’d allowed a thought like that in her head? But today even the lake couldn’t distract her. Before long she turned right and then right again.
It was too late by the time she got to Benson’s SuperValu, either to support Gladys in her cause or to slow her down. She pulled the double glass door open just as Gladys marched out. She swept along, giving Madeline a regal nod as she passed, and Madeline was left alone to face the woman at the register. A badge pinned to her shirt said “Terry Benson.”
Terry Benson had been popular in high school, Madeline thought. She had been popular and pretty and had worn her honey-colored hair feathered or curled or layered or waved, whatever the current style had been, and she had believed—still did believe—very much in her looks. She was still pretty, in a widened way, with a broad but shapely rear end and a prominent bosom. She stood with a hand on one hip and glared at the groceries Gladys had dumped on the conveyor belt. “You’re the one staying with Mrs. Hansen, aren’t you?” she asked when Madeline walked Up.
“That’s right.”
“Do you plan on paying for this? Because we don’t take returns. Not on food. What is she thinking?”
“Nothing’s been opened,” Madeline pointed out, still not sure of her stand in this little war, but wanting to help Gladys if she could.
“She took it out of the store, I’m not putting it back on the shelves, what would my customers think?”
“Can’t you just—”
“I won’t take those groceries back. I can’t! People can’t get the idea they can take food home and then change their minds.”
From outside, the horn of Gladys’s jaunty little red car beeped and Madeline glanced at her, sitting so erect behind the wheel. Proud, stubborn, cranky, and—fragile, somehow. Madeline took a breath. She reached for her wallet, thinking the total couldn’t come to more than sixty dollars or so, she probably had that much. But before she could pull out any money Gladys tooted the horn again.