"The Forest Umbra"

 

 

Kristin found the book because she was working with Argus, the big fat fuck of a manager who had her dusting and straightening aisle three. People mostly bought cigarettes, beer, ice, lottery tickets and junk food at the Mini. Aisle three was the wasteland of things that corporate said they had to stock but that nobody ever bought. She knew that Argus was watching her on the security monitor, so she set the book on the floor. Her long black hair hung loose and covered her pug face full on raggedy when she bent over.

“What’d you find? Bring it here,” Argus called out. He got first pick of lost things – usually lighters and dropped change, but sometimes cheap jewelry and dollar bills. Kristin knew he watched the security tapes every day to make sure the employees weren’t stealing his left behinds.

She picked up the book. The front cover was blue sky and buildings, like a textbook. Puglia – A Journey Across All Seasons, it read. She flipped it over. The back cover had a picture of a broken up, dirty Jesus, the dumpster diving brother of the clean, framed one in the church basement where she went to her meetings. She had a meeting tonight and Tyler said he’d take Riley but chances were he’d blow her off. Just like he blew off paying his share, or even giving a shit about his daughter, who looked just like him, all squinty grey eyes and wide mouth. Grandma would watch Riley, but then Kristen would have to hear about how Jesus would forgive her sins if she would just find repentance and accept Him. She always wanted to ask Grandma if Jesus would watch Riley for a few days, in exchange for repentance. The found book had an elastic bookmark band on the back, so she snapped it.

 

Argus handed a pack of Marlboros to the oily man who worked at the KFC across the street and played the lottery every Tuesday. Kristin hadn’t heard the door chime when the man came in, so it was probably broken again. Outside, the sky was turning a sickly tornado yellow. It took her five snaps of the book band to get to the counter. The KFC man didn’t look at her. He had once asked her if she wanted to hang out and then had been mad when she’d said no. She preferred to just watch people rather than deal with them. People watched her all the time, so it was even.

“Give it to me,” Argus said impatiently, his palm outstretched.

Kristin handed him the book. He thumbed though it looking for dollar bills. Argus had told her he had once found a ten-dollar bill in a book in middle school when he was hiding in the library and that experience had stayed with him.

“We’ll keep it for five days, if no one claims it you can have it,” he said as he tossed it into the empty cardboard lost and found box under the counter. “I’m going to lunch. You’ll do aisle four when I get back,” he declared as he slid off the spinning stool. He tugged on his brown jacket and lumbered out to find food. Kristin took her place behind the counter. It smelled like Argus – boiled corn, basement and sweat - so she picked up a floral car air freshener and sniffed it. Sweet chemical flowers burnt her nostrils and made her eyes water.

 

She fished the book out of the box and for no good reason, let if fall open. The page read, Puglia’s Cave Culture – The Puglian caves became cloistered shelter for solitude seeking hermits and ascetics who only ventured forth for nourishment. She closed the book then let it fall open again. She thought of playing pickup sticks with her cousins, the way the sticks would fall differently every single time no matter how hard you tried to make them fall the same way. On the page were pictures of barefooted people, faces and heads hidden by red pointed hats and cloth masks with tiny eyeholes, all of them wearing big red sacks. Below the picture, a caption read, Puglia’s Holy Protagonists - Rather merry collective behaviors might seem contradictory in this culture of death made of sympathy.

 

The door chimed. Kristen looked up and watched as Mr. Coombs, her old GED teacher, walked straight to aisle three. She was surprised to see him; he was not a regular at the Mini. With his spiky red hair, big ears and freckles he must have always thought, that because he looked funny, he was funny. Nobody had ever laughed at his lame ass jokes in class. Once he had told them that his wife had just given him a precious, healthy amazingly beautiful daughter and that he was the happiest man on earth. Then he sang those exact words and started to clap. Nobody else clapped so he stopped, his hand dangling at his sides like old Easter lilies. He had looked right at Kristin, as if he were embarrassed. She had learned things that made her wonder in his class, but after four months when her belly wouldn’t fit behind the combo desk anymore, she had quit both the class and wondering. A few months ago, she’d heard that something had happened to Mr. Coombs’s wife. Maybe his wife was the roadside memorial on the highway out by the hospital. Sometimes you knew who it was. Sometimes it was just pictures, teddy bears and flowers that faded and blew away until all that was left was the white cross.

 

She watched Mr. Coombs in the security monitor. He was staring at the boxes of Mac n’ Cheese and Hamburger Helper. He squatted and stared at the cans of cranberry sauce and sweetened condensed milk that she had just set in a long, neat, shallow row on the bottom shelf. Kristen watched him in the real world too, but grew bored with his staring. Maybe he’ll steal something, she thought. Maybe he’ll pull a gun and rob the store. She let the book fall open. Boxes of bright green and yellow peppers, red tomatoes and round loaves of bread jumped out at her. The page read, Puglian Flavours – Trying to understand the culture of a place means fully immersing oneself in its scents and tastes to find whatever contributes to forming its identity and peculiarity.

Mr. Coombs presence in the Mini was starting to annoy her, so she called out,

“Need help?”

He stood up and looked toward the counter, not seeing her at first. His eyes were bleary, unfocused and red as shit. Kristin didn’t know what to make of that.

“Diapers?” he said, as if he were asking her why he was there.

“Aisle four,” she said, examining him. He was wearing shorts and flip-flops like he was going up to the lake. “Aisle four,” she said again when he didn’t move. She jabbed her finger in the air to the left.

He started, then stopped in front of the counter. “Kristin Diaz.” He said her name like he was taking roll. “You were in my class.”

 

Kristen said nothing, as there was nothing to say. She had always sat in the back of his class by the door. He had probably thought that it was because she didn’t want to disturb the class if she had to pee, but it was really because she wanted to be the first one to leave. She’d overheard the secretary and him talking about how she was all front baby, from the back you would have never known because she was so skinny and all. Mr. Coombs had told the secretary that Kristen was just one his permanently pissed off students and that he had wondered if her child would be born in a rush and gush of angry. Seeing him now in the store made her feel unsettled. Kristin did not like to feel anything more than what was necessary to get by.

 

Mr. Coombs just stood there. Kristin glanced out the window; a mud red hue edged the sky. She snapped the book band rhythmically. A row of florescent lights flickered in the back of the square store, making the refrigerator case shimmery and strange. She lSshshet the book fall open. It again opened to caves, so she stuck her chipped blue nail polished finger into the pages and flipped to one that read, The Baroque – The soul and magic of the Puglian architecture is an absurdity where the decorations are so rich and flashy as to overcome the very rules of all design.

He still hadn’t moved when she looked up, so she closed the book and said, “Diapers are on aisle four,” loudly and slowly like how she talked to Tyler when he was wasted. Mr. Coombs came up to the counter. She glared at him, but he seemed not to notice. He was looking at the book.

“Puglia?” he gave her a quizzical look. He pronounced it Poo-lee-ah

“Puglia.” She said it like Pug-lie-ah.

“The g is silent,” he said as a GED teacher would.

She snapped the elastic book band and glanced at the security monitor even though they were the only ones in the Mini. “That’s stupid.”

Mr. Coombs picked up the book, set it up like a display. The dirty Jesus was staring at her.

“You’re right, Ms. Diaz. All letters should be seen and heard. We should say ka-nee for knee and ka-no for know, like ‘I ka-no your ka-nee is bleeding, because you fucking fell on my ka-ni-fee,” he said it in a weird deep voice then he drum tapped the counter.

She smiled slowly, kept snapping the book band and used her foot to move the stool back and forth.

“You weren’t funny in class,” she stated. His face folded back in a grin, looking like that accordion file where she had to put the delivery receipts.

“I was not…” he stopped, his expression going strange for a second, like Riley’s right before she wailed. But whatever it was, it passed. “You going to Puglia?”

“Somebody left it on aisle three,” she said.

“Someone left Puglia on aisle three? Think Italy’s missing it yet?” He cupped his hand and called out, “Broken Italian heel clean-up on aisle three.” He leaned his elbows on the counter, grinning still. His skin was so pale she could see the blue veins in his wrists and forearms.

“Shut-up,” she smiled again, her face more girlish by degrees. He watched her pluck the book band like a bass string.

“You been there?” she asked, imagining all teachers got to go to places like Italy as a reward. She wondered if he had gone with his wife.

He shook his head. “I wanted to.” Suddenly, he started singing to her, “memories of back when she was bold and strong and waiting for the world to come along,” Kristin sat stock still, wondering if he was just high or crazy too. It made her want to cry or scream, she wasn’t sure which. She wasn’t sure why she felt anything at all. He must have seen the confusion on her face, because he had stopped singing.

“I wanted go, but then I didn’t,” he said softly. Kristen looked down at the counter. Old lottery tickets were scattered helter-skelter under the plexiglass. No winning numbers at The Mini. “I know, diapers on aisle four,” he tapped his temple. She watched him walk to aisle four, listened to the slapping sound of his flip-flops on the vinyl floor. He came back with a bag of Huggies.

“How come you didn’t go?” she asked as she scanned the bag. She didn’t want him to sing again as it seemed like such a private thing to do.

He looked at her for a moment as if confused as to where he didn’t go. Finally, he found his words. “Moment just came and went, like moments and things and people do,” he tilted his head and shrugged a shoulder, pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, took out his debit card.

She swiped the card, the receipt printed. “You want the book? It’s free,” she snapped the book band once.

“No, you keep it, Kristin Diaz,” he drum tapped the counter again, gathered up his diapers and receipt. The door chimed when he walked out. The sky had gone bad ugly, the air heavy and pregnant with the coming storm. She lay the book down and opened it. The page read, The Foresta Umbra – The obscured heart of a wild, enchanted and evocative land where the inhabitants roam amongst the shadows.