The Morning I Ran Out of Coffee

 

 

Coffee.  That’s all I needed and I expected it to be a quick in and out trip to the store and then back to my porch to enjoy the quiet morning.  Instead I’m standing in line behind the Coupon Queen who seems to have forgotten the concept behind an Express Lane.  Self-Checkout hasn’t made it to the sleepy town of Blue Maple yet so here I was standing in line feeling impatient and irritable, the beginnings of my caffeine headache crawling up the back of my neck.   I shifted my weight back and forth between my feet and silently counted to myself, refusing to let my own impatience destroy my day. My left leg throbbed, a sure sign the hard linoleum floors were not something my back was going to let me just stand on without some protesting. 

  I heard a heavy sigh behind me and some unintelligible muttering.  I looked over my shoulder expecting to exchange understanding looks with the customer sharing my fate.  Instead I was confronted with eyes dark with anger coming from a man in a ratted jean jacket.  He glowered at me and a feeling of dread heightened my senses. Dad called it my “dog-sense” and that I should always listen when it starts talking.  At this moment the Dog-Sense was telling me this character was not about to engage in any friendly chit chat while we waited.  I looked away.  I was not a confrontational person and this man was a confrontation waiting to happen.  I stepped to the side, glancing at ½ gallon of buttermilk in his hand.  “Do you want to go in front of me?  I’m not in a hurry.”   I was, but I didn’t like him behind me, he was making me uncomfortable and I preferred to have him in front of me where I could see him.  

The man lurched forward and his buttermilk-holding hand shot up and pushed me back into the shelf of impulse purchase items. Tubes of chap stick clattered to the floor.   

“Hey!” I protested, scrambling to regain my balance and composure, my face flaming with indignation, “Asshole!”

He didn’t bother with a response, in his free hand there was a gun. I froze, my indignation turning into stunned disbelief as my mind tried to comprehend what I was seeing. He lifted the weapon and pointed it at the cashier, his hand wavering slightly.    The Coupon Queen let out a squeal, her rusty-red hair quivering as she drew a pump hand up to her throat, her eyes wide.   

I stood there like a statue, staring in shock and anticipation.  I’ve never been the hero.  I’ve imagined scenes just like this one and being the one to come to the rescue, but in reality, I get stopped by my own disbelief that the scene is unfolding right in front of me. It takes precious moments for me to react and usually its too late or someone else has swooped in and saved the day.  

The cashier, a local high school girl, was visibly shaking as she tried to punch the code on the computer to open up the register.  I wondered if following the rules and giving the thief what he wanted was the best course to take. Lately the news had been drenched with stories of mass shootings and random attacks and the gun control issues were being argued vehemently in political circles.  This most certainly wouldn’t become a mass shooting, there were only three of us standing there with the thief, but three was still too many by my count.  I wasn’t quite ready to die.   I noticed the gunman was still clutching his buttermilk.

I surreptitiously reached into my bag, which I had opened to get to my wallet as I approached the counter just a few moments earlier.  My fingers brushed the smooth barrel of the Smith & Wesson 9mm my fiancé had insisted on buying for me.  I wasn’t keen on handguns having being raised in a home that was all about rifles and shotguns. I named it Peaches.   For months we spent every Saturday afternoon at the shooting range, firing Peaches and perfecting my aim.  I carried it in my bag wherever I would go, knowing it was there and feeling secure knowing it was in reach but hoping I would never actually have to use it.

I tried to pull Peaches from my bag in one smooth motion, but this isn’t the movies and I’m clumsy by nature. It caught on the handle and dropped with a clatter to the floor. “Shit!” I cried out and quickly bent down to pick it up.  I saw the thief’s boots, scuffed and dirty turned to face me before I felt the anger flowing off of him.  I glanced up as my hand wrapped around Peaches, my heart hammering in my chest.   He was pointing his gun right at my head and his face was hardened into a deep scowl, “That was stupid, Lady.”  

“No, you’re the stupid one!”  The Coupon Queen’s voice shrilled and there was a loud pop as she pulled the trigger on the Glock she was holding in her hand, having pulled it from the depths of her purse.  Cold buttermilk splashed over me and the ½ gallon of buttermilk dropped to the floor next to me now with a sizable hole in the side , splattering thick milky juice on my jeans and shoes, glugging as it poured out onto the floor.

 I squeezed my eyes shut as I pulled my own pistol back towards me and fell back out of the way.  The thief stumbled and dropped his weapon just inches from my own.  He bent to pick it up and I scrambled to push it away, sliding on the buttermilk and letting out an awkward cry, “Arrggh!!   I know it didn’t look graceful or smooth like it does in the movies, but in the heat of the moment, appearances were not a priority.  I pushed myself back up to my knees just as the cashier launched herself ungracefully off the counter and latch on to the thief’s back causing him to fall face first into the tiles and spilled buttermilk, knocking down the gum and candy display in the process.   She let out a curse and grabbed him by the hair and started pounding his head into the floor, grunting and crying.   Coupon Queen picked up the gun the thief had dropped and ejected the clip, giving it a cursory look.  “Two rounds?  Can’t afford the ammunition?”  She opened her bag and pushed the weapon inside, giving the bag a satisfactory pat.  “Should have gotten a coupon.”

 

 

The Pickle Jar

 It wasn't about the broken pickle jar.  Although the rumor is that was what the fight was about.  It was a standard jar.  Millions of them being massed produced and stuck on supermarket shelves before finding their way into a shopping cart and into the refrigerator of one of a million different homes across the land.   It wasn't special, it wasn't rare and it most certainly held no sentimental value.   It was a jar of pickles.   There were only three pickles left in it , floating in a murky pool of salty dill juice, flanked by errant seeds that had escaped and would eventually sink to the bottom of the jar.     It had sat on the refrigerator shelf for two weeks, starting out so full it was a challenge to pry a single baby dill out of the tightly packed array of late night craving stardom.  As the supply dwindled, the jar was shoved to the side or pushed behind the ketchup and mayonnaise until someone would get the afternoon munchies or a case of the mid-day boredom.   It was nothing more than a jar of pickles, until the day it was accidently dropped on the kitchen floor, the edge of the glass hitting the plated aluminum foot of the table leg at just the right angle to send a fracture across the surface.  As pickle juice exploded across the linoleum and the three errant pickles bobbled in a bizarre twisting skid towards the cabinet, that pickle jar took on a whole new meaning.   

Jason was already angry about dinner not being ready when he got home from work.  Karla was angry that he felt she had to make sure dinner was ready for him when she also worked all day.  The fact is, they had been angry with one another for months and instead of talking about it, they had resorted to childish games of silent treatments and passive aggressive statements as a way of communication.   As those pickles slipped across the floor, everything they had not been saying was suddenly there at the surface and ready to be said. There was no way it was going to be a pretty scene.    It began with Jason yelling at Karla about being clumsy and Karla yelling back at him being a bully.   Voices began to rise in anger, the words became more and more vicious as accusations and hurtful comments were hurled back and forth like a heated tennis match.  A dish was broken accidentally at first, and then the feeling it brought was satisfying. More dishes were broken and then furniture was upended and the shattering of glass could clearly be heard by any passerby.   

Then as suddenly as it had begun, it just stopped.  Jason and Karla exhausted like two dogs who had fought with all their energy until there was nothing left and no winner to be had.   They looked at one another.  They looked at the chaos around them.  They looked at the red and blue lights of the police cruiser as it pulled up in front of their house ( because of course someone called that fight in ).   They reached for one another and decided that moment...   they were hungry for a pickle.