15
Tony fingered the pistol in her pocket, the only piece in the store with bullets, and tasted expectation on her tongue. The scrawny woman who had been buying stuff had just gone outside, the door slapping shut behind her, but that didn’t matter, Tony didn’t need anybody more than Mrs. Martin in the store. This show was for her, even if she’d never know it.
Yesterday afternoon when Tony had come in the Exxon with her mother to buy beer, Mrs. Martin had been talking on the phone and scratching herself a strip of “Holiday Hurrah!” lottery tickets on the counter. She scratched and rubbed, flicking off the little crumbs of waxy ticket residue as she went. Tony’s mom had said Tony could pick out a snack. Tony selected a Little Debbie oatmeal single. She and her mom went to the counter, then Mam said, “Forgot the Frosted Flakes.”
Mam had gone back for the cereal. Tony had stood at the counter, one hand on the box of oatmeal cakes, one hand on top of the case of beer.
Mrs. Martin had put the receiver down on the counter and she’d jerked the beer out from under Tony, snarling, “You ain’t old enough to buy beer, little girl!”
Little girl. There were few words that stung Tony like those two words.
It was all she could do to clench her fists and not drive one down the old woman’s throat.
Little girl!
She grabbed the beer back, letting one set of fingers scrape the woman’s forearm as she did. The woman squawked and reached for Tony, who skipped back several feet, still clutching the beer.
“Don’t you never grab nothing from me, little girl!” said Mrs. Martin.
Oh, just you wait, bitch, Tony thought.
Then Mam had come up with the Frosted Flakes and a carton of vanilla ice cream and the confrontation ended. Mrs. Martin hung up the phone and rung up Mam’s total.
This is for you, Mrs. Martin, Tony thought as she put her hands on her hips and strode forward through the center of the store. Little Joe and Leroy were making their way up the left aisle, joking with each other and playing with packages of disposable diapers and cans of motor oil on the shelves, clearly unsure of what they were supposed to do but ready for the word. Whitey, who thought he had a fine-ass revolver at his beck and call was moving up the right aisle, humming something that sounded a little like “Turkey in the Straw.” Knowing Whitey, it could be the kids’ song or maybe it was some gospel thing. Whitey’s mom sang in a gospel ground, and Whitey, when he wasn’t spending evenings with the Hot Heads, sometimes went along as a backup tenor.
Mrs. Martin stood at the front counter, her elbows planted against the counter, her eyebrows pinched in a prissy, pencil-drawn line. She was wearing a festive Santa pin with a string to pull to light up the eyes.
“You kids got money?” Her voice was higher than usual, betraying genuine, growing concern. “Got no money you best get your behinds out of here ‘cause I ain’t puttin’ up with no nonsense!”
“Mmm, doughnut sticks,” said Whitey from the other side of the store. There was the sound of crinkley plastic wrap being collected and thrust into pockets.
“Answer me!” demanded Mrs. Martin. “I’ll call the police, don’t think I won’t! You’re nothing but trouble, you’ve shoplifted from here before and I won’t take it anymore!”
Tony reached the counter. The woman’s eyes widened and she stepped back, but not far enough. Tony smiled, shrugged, then grabbed the front of Mrs. Martin’s sweater and yanked her forward over the counter. She pressed the mouth of the pistol to the Exxon nametag. “Hey little girl,” she laughed loudly. “How’s it hangin’? Oh, it ain’t is it? You’re just a fucking *!”
The Hot Heads took the laughter as the sign. Leroy pulled out his bb gun and waved it in the air, then began slugging jars from the shelves with the butt end. The jars burst on the tile floor. “This is a stick-up! This is a stick-up!” crowed Little Joe, and he did a karate-like kick and sent a small display of videos-to-rent flying like geese out of a pond. Whitey ripped open a box of trash bags and yanked one out. He began shoveling goods into it - paper cups, bottles of aspirin, boxes of Hostess cupcakes, cans of Spam, some die-cast John Deere toy tractors.
Mrs. Martin stared, gog-eyed, her pointy eyebrows twitching. Tony licked her lips and tasted the fear steaming off the woman. “Open the cash register,” Tony said. “I want everything in there.”
“I can’t,” whispered Mrs. Martin. “It locks at four o’clock and….”
Tony leaned over and bit the woman’s cheek. The skin split and Tony could taste the hot blood. The woman wailed and tried to jerk free. “You’re lying,” Tony said through the flesh. “You are, aren’t you?”
Mrs. Martin sputtered, “Yes.” Tony opened her mouth straightened, the gun never wavering from Mary Jane’s little tag of identification. Keeping the rest of her body perfectly still, the woman reached over with one hand and punched keys; the register opened with a “ding.”
“Get it all out, and no pennies,” said Tony. “Put it in a bag. Don’t get a freakin’ bag with holes. Half the bags here got holes in ‘em.”
Mrs. Martin was trembling so badly she had to dip her hand in three times before she could come up with the bills. Her cheek was a welt of teeth-marks and blood. It seemed to be swelling nicely. Tony waited, smiling. Behind her, the racket was increasing. Whitey was indeed singing “Turkey in the Straw” at the top of his lungs. Little Joe had moved from cowboy yodels to Indian whoops. Glass shattered. There was a loud thumping, and Tony guessed it to be the ATM machine being whacked off the wall.
“I know you, don’t I,” said Mrs. Martin as she crammed money into the bag. Her voice was tremulous but determined. “I seen your face here before.”
“No,” said Tony. “You think you do, but you don’t have a clue. I’m just a mirage. Just your own ignorance come back to bite you in the behind. Now give me the bag.”
Mrs. Martin passed the bag over the counter. Tony called, “Somebody get up here and get this bag, I got a wrinkled old bag of my own that I can’t let go quite yet!”
Little Joe bounced up to the counter. His lipstick war paint was already smudging, bleeding down his face in a pool of sweat. He snatched up the bag, tied the plastic handles tightly, and stuck it into his windbreaker. He zipped the jacket up to his chin. “Yeah!” he wailed. “Oh, yeah! Can’t nobody touch us! Whoooo! Too hot to handle!”
Tony couldn’t see Leroy pounding on the ATM machine, it was down behind the left counters. But she could hear him whacking and cussing, “Fucking box won’t open!”
But what Tony could see was the most beautiful sight she’d ever witnessed. The store was in total destruction. Complete ruin, like a bomb had hit dead center and blew out in all directions. Little bitch Martin got to see it all, got to see how worthless she was, how impotent, how weak, before a handful of Hot Heads. Tony aimed her gun at the ceiling and squeezed off two shots. The pistol kicked slightly in her hand. The fluorescent light exploded and showered shards upon them all. The job, christened with sparkling glass. She could see the news at eleven tonight, photos of the busted lights, the box-strewn floor. The headline of the Emporia News-Record tomorrow morning, “Band of Teenaged Thugs Destroy Store. Who Were They?”
Mrs. Martin wailed; she looked at the phone on the counter by the lottery tickets and Tony said, “Oh, you wish.”
“Yeee!” squealed Little Joe. “Whoooooo! Ya ya ya ya!” He leaped like a warrior all around the glass, grinding his shoes into it and flapping his arms. “We gonna celebrate! Yessir! We gonna celebrate! Praise the Lord!”
Tony couldn’t help but laugh. A thick bubble forced its way up her throat and she let it out. It felt fantastic.
And then the back door to the rear storeroom could be heard thumping open, and there was a call, “Hey, Mary Jane! Damn, but it’s messy outside!” He was there then, standing in the storeroom doorway behind Mary Jane. The gasoline delivery man. He wore an oily brown jacket, a pair of brown gloves, and matching brown hat. He stared, his eyes as bright and wide as new wheel covers. He swore something unintelligible, and before Tony could even think of how to handle two instead of one he was leaping forward, knocking Mrs. Martin away from Tony and Tony back from the counter.
“No!” Tony yelled as her feet went out from under her and she crashed to the floor on her shoulder. She heard and felt the joint pop at the same time, and her vision swirled in sparks of silver and white. The pistol skittered from her hand and slid beneath the rack of sunglasses at the end of the aisle. She rolled over and drove herself forward on her knees, grabbing for the gun. Her fingers came up short. NO fucker is going to stop me! No goddamn *-licking gas-man is going to….
The gasoline man roared and Tony glanced up. He was coming over the counter, arms wide, hat flying. Mrs. Martin screamed like a dog getting its tail cut off.
“Mother fucker, no!” Tony shouted, and as she crouched out of the way of the man’s looming bulk there was a piercing blast from the middle of the store and the man lurched in mid-air, hit the floor on his toes, staggered, and fell backward on his ass. He clutched his chest and gurgled. His teeth snapped together loudly. In the center of his gasoline-delivering brown uniform jacket, a flower of wet red blossomed.
“What the hell!” Leroy and Little Joe were there by Tony now, staring at the dying gasoline man, and then back down the center aisle where Whitey stood, still holding the gun out with both hands and pointing it straight ahead. A tendril of smoke haloed the weapon.
Whitey pulled the scarf down from his mouth. A string of drool came with it. “I shot him.”
“Damn!” said Leroy.
Mrs. Martin appeared over the counter, her painted fingernails scratching against the countertop. She looked at the gasoline man and then at Tony. “Oh God you little bitch he’s dying!”
Tony staggered to her feet. Her shoulder throbbed, hot and furious. “I didn’t shoot him, whore!” There were no bullets in that gun, the bullets all fell behind the stove! Whitey could not have shot that man! “I didn’t shoot him!”
In a flash, the rats deserted the sinking ship.
Leroy released the case of beer he had under his arm and darted for the door. Little Joe and Whitey followed. Tony spun to run, but the gasoline man’s hand shot out and grabbed her by the shoe. Tony bellowed and stomped the hand, kicked it, but the dying gasoline man held tight, some kind of rigor mortis, she thought.
Fucking shoe is on too tight too many goddamned socks!
“Let go, mother fucker!”
On the other side of the counter, Mrs. Martin was fumbling with the telephone, her breaths coming in great Indian whoops that would have made DeeWee laugh.
“Let go!” Tony stomped the hand, then raised the revolver and aimed it at the man’s wrist. “Now!”
He looked up at her with red-rimmed, maniacal eyes and tried to say something. Blood puddled out the corners of his mouth.
Tony pulled the trigger. The hand split and fell away, spraying her foot with hot crimson. It trembled, a fat and fleshy crab strumming the tile. Mrs. Martin screamed anew, dropped the receiver, then cried, “I’m callin’! I’m getting the police!”
Tony stomped the hand one last time and raced for the door, hurdling the wreckage and shoving the hot pistol into her Granddad’s trousers.