The Hill

Fourteen was the number of carts which could fit in the corral before they became a parking hazard.  Really, fourteen was the maximum and assumed the carts had been nested correctly, which they never were.  The cart corrals were all at the bottom of the hill; a steep grade that made the calves ache and the breaths heavy.  Fourteen up the hill, back to the store.  That was a good run.

It was mid-morning and the sun was bright.  It should’ve been hotter, but the salt breeze that brought in the gulls kept the misery at bay.  A little sweat and burn had nothing on the chapped lips of February, regardless.

A white Lexus sedan wheeled into the lot, honking at the crows who gathered around a discarded frosted donut.  Four tanned and curated occupants poured forth, jostling for the best angle in their cellphone picture.  One of the girls stuck out her tongue and held up the peace sign.  They were happy, or at least thought they were.

The clanging of a cart in the corral, like the crash of a cymbal, as a man bent with age made his way back to a rusted truck.  Ten in that one, but they were all jumbled up.  I fixed them.  Plenty of room, if everyone took a little care.

A cigarette butt caught the sunshine and looked like ivory on the blacktop.  I put it in my bag and thought about how they used to be more of a problem.  It wasn’t that people had become more responsible; it was that fewer were smoking.

I remembered when this building had burned down.  It was a different business then, but the hill was still the same.  I remembered a mother and her kids giggling as they rode their cart to their car, the cases of coca-cola bouncing around the undercarriage.  Down the hill.  A cart to the corral.  That was a long time ago.

The folks from the Lexus made their way inside.  Their license plate said they were from North Carolina, but their bumper stickers told me they’d been here before.  A passing logging truck blasted its horn as it approached a nearby roundabout, and pulled my focus.  A tree grows, a tree falls.  Another fourteen up the hill.

Inside the store the air conditioning was jarring.  Artificial.  Sterile.  None of the smell of clam flats and pine needles and slightly sour apples that made this place what it was.  I parked the carts and saw the Lexus people taking more pictures by the bags of coffee.

Outside again I watched a woman push her cart towards a corral.  It looked like she had some trouble walking.  She got close, then gave a hearty shove and turned away while it sailed towards the others, bumping and bouncing until finding itself sideways in the blue plastic chute, blocking the way for any that would come after.  She drove away, having done her best.

Fixing the carts at the bottom of the hill, I saw one of the Lexus folks by the ice freezer.  He had flip flops and a bright blue shirt and was hollering at someone inside.  It sounded like he didn’t know how much ice to get.  He put his sunglasses on his head to look at his cellphone and had to be asked to move by another customer.  He hollered again without looking up.

I caught a napkin blowing across the lot and put it in my bag.  The sun was finally pulling beads of sweat from my forehead and I could smell the gasoline from the pump station, somehow sweet against the bitter tar of the asphalt. 

Fourteen in this one, up the hill.