The Badger

and cheese ravioli cans. I tried to guesstimate how many cans had been piled in there there by pretending I knew a formula for volume and density. In the end, I came up with a number over one thousand but less than a million. I had plenty of time to work it out back there on the those chairs. Everybody who walked by knew I was in a Walmart time-out. And so it went, tick-tocking closer to the argument I hold with myself in these situations. It was the kind of internal dialogue that happens at the break-up of a meaningful relationship. Should I cut and run? I’d ask myself. But I had already invested so much time. I believed we could still work it out. A lady sat down next me in one of the white plastic chairs. I felt a camaraderie and began shifting my thoughts toward an organized rebellion when the eyelash man beckoned me with a sweep of his arm. I resented him thinking that he was helping me and so, in protest, ignored him for three seconds, I didn’t dare express my indignation any longer as both of us knew that he held the power. He was dangling my prescription, which I began wishing held a sedative, as I walked toward him sensing a rat holding the trap. My instincts were spot on. I walked toward the front of the line, feeling the collective anger and resentment building within those bound without amusement in the winding line. “I’ve already stood in this line,” I wanted to assure them. “This is just and fair.” I sent them all silent messages of peace on Earth and goodwill as I fast tracked to the front. I caught a glare from a tall man in line who was so thin I almost handed him my giant bag of peanut M&M’s. Here, take these. Gird yourself for this long journey to the cash register. I looked at him, trying to convey sympathy and the righteousness of my green-mile walk to the front, but he pursed his lips and I felt certain he was going to spit on me. They all saw me as a line jumper and within the cement walls of Walmart, line jumping was a serious felony. I felt I was seconds away from a mob attack but was saved by an unlikely heroine. The smiling Cheshire cat clerk called “next in line” and all those judging eyes turned away from me and toward the back of the head in front of them. Her call for “next” set them back into a calibrated autopilot and they remained calm and orderly on their invisible conveyor belt as I raced up to the eyelash man. “Your prescription is ready,” he said as I smiled and reached for the treasure he held. But just as my hand was about to grasp my hard earned prize, he snatched it away putting the white crisp bag inside a plastic covering with a hanger attached. He seemed to have lost that hazy, bewildered look he had the first time we met. He was now a man of action and decision. But while he now moved with the determination of an executioner, everything happened in slow motion for me: his shuffle through the rows of hanging prescriptions, the exaggerated small talk with another tech standing nearby and the final hanging of my own bag among the thousands of others belonging to the people in the line behind me. I was still staring at him, unable to accept his cruelty when he brushed me away with the power vested in him through the blue one he wore. “You can take your place in line and the cashier will ring you up.” He turned his back on me, and in a final insult I read the “How May I Help You” message printed on the back of his vest. I’d like to think that I took my long walk of shame to the back of that line with dignity, that my eyes sparkled and the glory of my human spirit rose above the despair of that time and place. But it was not so. I fumbled with my M&M bag, finally tearing at it with my teeth and by the time I arrived to the back of the line--racing and beating a haggard looking woman with a cart overflowing with meaningless, plastic merchandise forever found in eternal supply within the walled mart--I munched on my M&M’s staring quietly at the back of the head in front of me. “Next,” I heard a voice call from a faraway land as my feet shuffled forward, accepting my place in the circle of life on the inside.

Sunflower

by ana kateri salas montano

Carmello works with each huff of air.

Customers like him, he has hands they’ve seen before. His coworkers know those hands and probably don’t like them. Carmello thinks.

Each hanging shirt, on the aluminum rack is a woman and a man walking behind one another. Carmello moves them, a man and a woman, kissing necks, putting collars to lips and pulling them down the line.

Carmello’s shirts aren’t as clean. Whites aren’t as dutch white. Colors, like mirages.

Carmello thinks the other employees, they must not like him. They must talk about him behind his back.

Carmello thinks more, but he can’t hear it over the machines.

Carmello

by ethan risinger