Fresh produce
A Cormac McCarthy imitation

Fresh Produce

A Cormac McCarthy Imitation

 

Setting forth with the filibusters

See the kid. He is tall and secretly tired. His car groans to a halt in the graveyard of metal, the many sheets of its weary heart still crinkling as he steps out. He is pockets-stuffed with coins and ready for a blowing. The angry boombox in the sky loudens its heat against the kid’s skin and he finds solace under the verdant green awning. He strides through the automatic doors with the gait of a vaquero yet his flickering countenance betrays the youthful unease of his endeavor. He surveys the scene and recognizes no one. Still unfettered he approaches the short dame wearing an apron who stands closest to him. She smells like nickels and pennies, a musty hazy odor adrift in the vast complex. The kid wobbles his head to waft away the air before him. Welcome to trader joe’s, she says.

 

On alien ground

The kid walked silently now, sneaking through the vitamin section like a voyeur. His running shoes gave off little sound as he attempted to not alarm the colony of women there. They wore athletic tank tops grey and pastel-colored. There was only one other man in the area, an old fellow inspecting the neon paper signs. His chin was shaved clean but his head was balding; the patches of hair still clinging on were white like polar bear fur. Son, he beckoned, couldye help out this old man for a minute? The kid furrowed his brow at the stranger. Is this whare I can get some Vi… vi-viagra? The kid shook his head. You’ll need a perscription. The stranger nodded understandingly. He reached out and patted the kid’s shoulder five times. Thank ye, he said. As he shuffled away, it looked to the kid as if the man did indeed find what he was searching for. He noticed that the old man left an empty metal cart behind. The kid took it for himself.

 

Shooting antelope

It had gotten dark and cold when the kid arrived on the square adobe tiles of the meat section. Misty gusts of air battered his head from above. Rows of red vermillion cuts, flecked with streaks of ivory white, glistened under the fluorescent lights that pierced the gloom, the carne rojo still alive behind the tempered borosilicate. The world’s market lay before him, a marvel of modernity so grotesque and yet so enthralling. Muscle, bone, and sinew grown on the antipodes of the earth somehow made their merry way into his sorry town. Their proteins, calcium, actin and myosin the same exact structure as those of his own flesh, into which life was breathed and exhaled like dust. Technology slaughters, he mumbled, and waved over the butcher.

 

Wagon repairs

The floor was old and worn in places and the mortar dips between tiles rattled the rotations of his cart wheels like each was a microcosmic San Andreas. Passing by the dairy coolers the kid encountered a singularly nasty ridge. The wheel lodged itself in the groove and the cart tipped over, an impromptu exhibit of projectile motion wasteful and glorious. A bottle of cider he picked up launched up over the shelves and rained Martinelli’s fateful fruit firewater from above as the glass shattered over a middle-aged woman’s head. Shame, the kid thought. He stooped over to pick up his items. 

 

A crossroads in the waste

The kid reached the checkout station after 40 minutes of wandering, his penitence complete. There the exchange of souls began in earnest. It was a serendipitous meeting of fate, a unique set of actions and consequences that brought to fruition his payment of forty dollars and fifty-nine cents and her receiving of fifty dollars cash even. Here’s your change, mister. His sweaty palms lubricated the quarter, dime, nickel, and penny and once again that strong stench clogged his mouth. He breathed it in, slowly, as he stepped out towards that sizzling boneyard, headed back into the colorless suburban desert.