The Wal-Greens: A Short Story

Who I am is just the habit of what I always was, and who I'll be is the result. This comes clear to me at the wrong time. I am standing in a line, almost rehabilitated. Wal-greens is the store in downtown Fargo. I have my purchase in my arms, and I am listening to canned carols on the loudspeaker. I plan to buy this huge stuffed parrot with purple wings and a yellow beak. Really, it is a toucan, I get told this later in the tank.
You think you know everything about yourselF—how much money it would take, for instance, to make you take it. How you would react when caught. Bnt then you find yourself walking out the door with a stuffed toucan, just to see if shit happens, if do-do occurs. And it does, though no one stops me right at first. My…show more content…
I think of Dawn the minute I see the bird, and wish I'd won it for her at a county fair, though we never went to a fair. I see myself throwing a half-dozen softballs and hitting every wooden milk jug, or maybe tossing rings. But those things are weighted of loaded wrong and that's another reason I never could have won this toucan for Dawn, because the whole thing's a cheat in general. So what the hell, I think, and lift the bird. Outside in the street it is one of my favorite kind of days, right there in the drag middle of winter when the snow is a few hard gray clumps and a dusty grass shows on rhe boulevards. I like the smell in the air, the dry dirt, the patches of water shrinking and the threat of snow, too, in the gloom of the sky. The usual rubber-neck turns to look at me. This bird is really huge…show more content…
The car drives into the parking lot, a solid plastic luggage rack strapped on its roof. A man and a woman jump out, late for a con-nection, and they leave the car running in neurral. I walk out of the depot and stand before the car. At that moment, it seems as though events are taking me somewhere. I open up the hinges on the plas-tic rack, stuff in the bird. No one seems to notice me. Encouraged, I get in. I put my hands on the wheel. I take the car out of ueutral and we start to roll, back out of the lot. I change gears, then turn at the crossroads, and look both ways. I don't know what you'd do in this situation. I'll ask you. There you are in a car. It isn't yours but for the time being that doesn't matter. You look up the street one way. It's clear. You look down the other, and a dump of people still are arguing and crying to describe you with their hands. Either way, the road will take you straight out of town. The clear way is north, where you don't know anyone. South, what's there? I let the cat idle. My patents. It's not like I hate them or anything. I just cau't see them. I can close my eyes and form my sister's face behind my eye-lids, but not my parents' faces. Where their eyes should meet mine, nothing. That's all. I shouldn't show up at the farm, not with the toucan. Much less the car. I think a few seconds longer. The bird on the roof. It is for Dawn. You could say she got me into this, so Dawn