Some of the white people who had no shoes, holes in their clothes, and moth-eaten hats squinted at Darlene differently afterward, like they had indigestion from the story and couldn’t spit up. Did they know things they couldn’t tell her, or did they despise her? How could a store burn down at night and nobody see anything, Darlene would think, and complain to anybody who would listen, as well as many who would not, and interrogate anybody she thought might have seen something that person did not want to have seen. In bad dreams, she watched the orange flames chewing Mount Hope to death, lighting the neighborhood and the faces of people she’d served every day, who peered into the glow while her husband shouted for help and melted behind the windows.
But after a year and a half, Darlene’s desire for revenge subsided enough for a daily routine to take shape, one that avoided anything to do with Nat and focused instead on everything related to raising a son and struggling to pay the phone bill and the rent and the car insurance, things Nat had done without her help and that the store’s income had covered, barely. The loss of even one of those sources of support—the store, her income, her husband—could’ve crushed Darlene. But losing all three, combined with her guilt about her part in the tragedy, eventually drained away her spirit and the last of her fight. At that point she merely wanted to sit still, to look beyond reality and ignore the world; she wanted to switch places with the boring chores of life so that she would matter again, and all the obligations would grow small and distant and useless.
As her insurance money began to run low, an eccentric white man who claimed he’d once met Nat gave Darlene a job she called a Hail Mary pass, the kind of job you take knowing that it won’t cover your expenses, hoping that you’ll get an additional job the next day (or a better one the next month), admitting that you simply need to get out of the house. She became a clerk and cashier at a chain drugstore called Hartman’s Pharmacy, the type of lackluster store where red-and-green crepe-paper Santas and reindeer faded in the chaotic, dusty window display until February, the month when she started.
She had worked there for only a couple of weeks when they came in. Two of the five suspects they hadn’t had enough evidence to convict. Both of them lanky and tattooed, with grayish skin, pimples, and dead killer eyes. With a long line full of talkative people, Darlene didn’t see the men until they arrived at her register. She turned to the last customer in front of the two guys, and when the customer left and she saw these two so close, with nothing in between, close enough to squeeze her neck shut, she stumbled back as if somebody had pushed her.
They dropped a case of Schlitz cans on the counter with a smug bang. Darlene pushed around behind Carla, at the other register, and went into the back. The two hadn’t recognized Darlene, and when she disappeared they became confused at first, then angry when she didn’t come back after a few minutes. In court, they had shaved and worn ties, but since then, they had let their hair grow long. One of them had on a filthy T-shirt that said ALABAMA in metallic letters. Dirt highlighted the wrinkles on their knuckles and outlined their fingernails. One of them had a wispy mustache. Then the names exploded in her mind—Claude and Buddy Vance, whose father, Lee Bob, was considered the ringleader.
Where the hell she run to? Buddy asked.
Claude laughed. She got workaphobia?
Buddy, the older, taller one, in the Alabama T-shirt, rapped on the counter a couple of times with the flat of his hand. Excuse me!
Carla, in the middle of her own transaction, asked them to wait a second and told them, Ain’t nothing gone wrong. She stepped toward the back room, but just as she reached the door, it swung open so that she had to jerk back. Darlene poked her head out.
Darlene, what’s the matter? You got customers.
It’s them, she said. They’ve got their nerve coming in here.
Them? What them? What them is they?
Them! Darlene insisted, as if pushing that word would reveal its hidden meaning.
Shoppers piled up at her checkout line and began grumbling. Darlene did not attempt to answer Carla in full; instead she swung the door the rest of the way and stomped back to her cash register in order to keep the weakness she could feel flooding into her arms and legs from causing her to fall. She willed herself to bravery, thinking of what Nat would’ve wanted.
Composing herself, she focused on the case of Schlitz, but she couldn’t find the price tag.
It’s nine ninety-nine, Claude said. Like the display says right over there. He was quieter, more intense than Buddy, the type who would probably whisper to you as he strangled you to death.
Buddy pointed. The display featured twelve-packs of Schlitz cans, two for $9.99. They only had one. One would not get them the discount; it would be $12.99. She tried to explain the problem, haltingly, without meeting his eyes, but then words became unsayable, her mind a little tornado.
Buddy’s feet kept shifting, like a wrestler’s, and at last Darlene glanced up at his forehead turning red. Now she could see his short temper, the rage that Nat did not survive. She stared at his veiny hands on the twelve-pack, the hairy fingers that might have held the tire iron (she imagined a tire iron, though they never figured out what blunt instrument) that smashed into her husband’s temple and left him limp, dead on the floor of his own store, because she’d had a headache and she needed Tylenol. That’s why she would never use Tylenol anymore, why she walked in any other aisle in the drugstore rather than walk by the Tylenol, why she wouldn’t touch the Tylenol whenever anybody bought some. Why she wouldn’t say the word Tylenol. Why she wouldn’t think the word Tylenol. From the book she knew that thinking certain words might bring back her bad luck.
Let me tell you what I think of your twelve-ninety-nine shit beer! Buddy said, and tore open the cardboard box and ripped out a can. He shook it vigorously and popped the tab in Darlene’s direction so that the foam spewed both high and low. Claude smiled up at his brother and prepared to run.
People in the two lines stepped back—some horrified, some admiring of Buddy. A chunky man in a baseball cap reached out to bend Buddy’s arm so that he would stop, but Buddy grabbed a second can and opened that one too.