"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 37: EVELYN GOES SHOPPING
Posted by John Allen Small on Monday, June 9, 2014 Under: A Story A Week
(NOTE: Here's another entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project that reads like it should be part of a longer story. As Michael Nesmith once said: Someday, baby, someday...)
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
Evelyn Drake jumped in spite of herself. She hadn’t expected the stockboy to sneak up from behind her like that. Well, maybe he didn’t really “sneak”, exactly; not exactly fair to lay all the blame at his feet, not when she’d been the one whose thoughts had been elsewhere.
Even so, you wouldn’t think that a thoughtful employee would go around startling the customers like that…
Either way, she recovered quickly enough and managed to ask, “Could you please tell me what aisle your jars of spaghetti sauce are on?”
The stockboy just smiled. “Aisle seven, ma’am. Just two aisles down - right across from the soups. You can’t miss it.” Evelyn quickly nodded her thanks and pushed her shopping cart forward without a word. But as she darted around the corner, she thought she caught a glimpse of the stockboy still staring after her... she could almost feel his eyes upon her.
Was he looking at her legs?
And so what if he is?
She stopped long enough to peek back around the corner, but the stockboy was no longer there. Just as well. They certainly weren’t paying the boy – and that's exactly what he is, don't forget, only a boy, surely no more than 18 if that – to go around staring at older women’s legs.
Assuming that’s even what he’d been doing in the first place, of course.
Had he been?
It didn’t matter.
Like hell it doesn't…
Evelyn finally found the particular brand of sauce she was looking for and steered the cart in the direction of the checkout lanes. The old lady in front of her was dickering with the store manager over some insignificant little price discrepency, but Evelyn barely noticed. She had other things on her mind. She always did anymore, it seemed.
But never like she did today.
A bag of groceries was thrust into Evelyn’s arms, even though she couldn’t remember ever actually having paid for them. She looked up and found herself face-to-face with that same stockboy, the one she thought had been watching her legs earlier. Funny how she hadn't noticed how cute he was earlier.
“Have a nice day, ma’am,” was all he said. But there was something in his voice, something about the way he had said it… She started to blush, and the stockboy merely smiled again.
“Well,” she heard herself saying to nobody in particular as she headed out into the parking lot, ”you were standing there in the checkout lane. Maybe he was just checking you out…”
As she opened the back door of the car and deposited the grocery bag on the back seat, Evelyn shook her head and laughed at her own silly little joke.
Her heart wasn't really in it, you understand, but she needed something to laugh at...
(Copyright 2014 by John Allen Small)
(Copyright 2014 by John Allen Small)
In : A Story A Week
Tags: fiction
John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996).
Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.)
John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something.
In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems.
He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.
