The fluorescent lights of the supercenter out on the edge of town always hummed at a frequency that made my back teeth ache right behind my molars, especially on a Tuesday afternoon when the inventory trucks were backed into the loading bay and the whole store smelled like wet cardboard and stale popcorn. I had no business being in there at 3:14 in the middle of a workday, but my old black lab, Buster, had gone through his regular bag three days early because I had been a little heavy-handed with his evening scoops after our walks.
I was standing in aisle four behind a stack of paper towels when I grabbed the twenty-five-pound bag of red-label chunks and hoisted it onto my shoulder. My lower back gave a familiar little twinge, that dull ache I have lived with ever since I took a tumble off the tailgate of my brother’s flatbed back in ninety-eight. I shuffled toward the front where only two registers were open, dragging my boots across the polished concrete floor.
The line at register three was three carts deep, filled with the usual assortment of gallon jugs of spring water, discounted bakery muffins, and cheap plastic storage bins. I dropped the heavy bag of dog food onto the black rubber belt with a dull thud that made the cashier jump a little behind her register screen. I was just standing there shifting my weight from one foot to the other, watching the conveyor belt crawl forward, when the woman right behind me cleared her throat.
She was wearing a purple fleece pullover and a pair of silver-rimmed glasses that kept sliding down the bridge of her nose. She looked like the kind of person who volunteered at the county library and kept three different kinds of hand sanitizer in her glove compartment. She leaned in just enough that I could smell her peppermint gum over the scent of the floor wax.
“Do you have a dog?” she asked. Her tone had that particular brand of bright, intrusive curiosity that always makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight.
I looked down at the twenty-five-pound sack of brown kibble sitting right there between us. I looked back up at her face. I mean, obviously? Why else would I be buying a giant sack of animal feed with a picture of a golden retriever on the front grinning like it just won the lottery?
I don’t know if it was the hum of those overhead lights or just the sheer monotony of standing in a Tuesday afternoon checkout line behind a woman buying twelve cans of creamed corn, but something in my brain just clicked over to mischief. I felt that old familiar stubborn streak pop up, the same one that used to get me sent into the hallway back when Sister Mary Catherine was trying to teach us seventh-grade geography.
“Nope, no dog,” I said. My voice was completely flat, deadpan, the way I used to talk when I was trying to convince the feed store clerk that a tractor part was still under warranty.
She blinked twice behind her silver frames. Her eyebrows went up so high they almost touched the edge of her fleece collar. She stared at the bag, then back up at my face, her mouth opening just a fraction of an inch.
“You don’t have a dog?” she repeated, like I was speaking some kind of ancient dialect she hadn’t studied yet.
“I’m actually starting the dog food diet again,” I said, leaning in just a bit closer so she wouldn’t miss a word. “It is honestly the only thing that gets the stubborn holiday weight off my frame.”
The cashier stopped scanning a box of frozen waffles halfway down the belt. Her hand froze right there above the laser scanner, her eyes darting over toward us. The young fellow with the backwards baseball cap standing three people back in the queue suddenly dropped his phone into his palm and went entirely still.
“The dog food diet?” the woman asked, her voice dropping an octave into something that sounded suspiciously like genuine concern mixed with absolute horror. “You mean… for humans? You eat that?”
“Well, you probably shouldn’t,” I said, shaking my head with a grave, serious expression that took a lot of work to keep on my face. “I probably shouldn’t either, seeing as how the last time I tried it, I ended up in the intensive care unit with tubes and IVs all over my arms.”
By this time, the whole line was dead silent. You could have heard a pin drop on that slick concrete floor. Even the register printer stopped clicking for a second. The woman stepped back half a step, her hand coming up to hover right over the zipper of her purple fleece.
“Good grief,” she muttered. “Did the dog food poison you?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” I said, keeping my face as straight as a fence post. “The food itself is actually quite high in protein and surprisingly crunchy once you get past the initial aftertaste. It works like a charm. I lost fifty pounds before waking up in the hospital with the whole medical staff standing around my bed.”
The cashier let out a sharp little snort that she tried to turn into a cough by slamming her fist against her chest. The guy with the baseball cap behind the woman was already biting his lower lip so hard his face was turning red.
“If it didn’t poison you, what landed you in the ICU with all those tubes?” the woman asked, her voice trembling just a little bit now, like she was talking to someone who had just escaped from a maximum-security ward.
“I just stepped off the sidewalk to sniff a poodle’s backside and got hit by a delivery truck,” I said.
I swear, the guy standing behind her almost lost it completely. He let out a loud, explosive honk of laughter that he tried to muffle with the sleeve of his flannel shirt, turning bright crimson as three separate people glared at him down the line. The cashier dropped a box of freezer bags right onto the scale and didn’t even bother to pick it up.
The woman in the purple fleece stared at me for three long seconds. Her lips parted, her jaw working up and down like she wanted to say something, but no words came out. She looked at the bag of dog food, then back up at my eyes, searching my face for any sign that I was pulling her leg. I didn’t crack a smile. I just kept my face carved out of solid granite.
“That’s just disgusting,” she whispered, taking another full step back until her cart bumped right into the knees of the old man behind her.
“It’s actually super convenient,” I kept going, digging my hands deep into the pockets of my canvas jacket just to sell the bit. “You just put some kibble right here in your pockets and snack on a few pieces whenever you get hungry out on the trail. Keeps your energy level right where it needs to be.”
The cashier finally managed to drag her scanner across the barcode of the dog food bag, the little red light blinking against the brown paper like a tiny warning beacon.
“That’ll be thirty-four dollars and twelve cents,” she said, her voice shaking slightly with suppressed laughter as she refused to look either one of us in the eye.
I pulled out my worn leather wallet, counted out two twenties, and dropped them onto the plastic counter. The woman in the purple fleece didn’t say another word. She grabbed her cart handles with both hands like she was steering a ship through a gale, staring straight ahead at the register monitor and refusing to glance my way again even when the receipt printer let out its long, cheerful zip.
I scooped up the heavy red bag of kibble, hoisted it back onto my shoulder where the canvas sat familiar against my collarbone, and gave her a little two-finger nod as I turned toward the sliding glass exit doors. The afternoon sunlight hit the parking lot asphalt with a glare so bright it made my eyes water, bouncing off the hoods of three different pickup trucks lined up near the cart corral.
The guy with the baseball cap was still leaning against his cart inside the sliding doors, doubled over with his shoulders shaking, trying to catch his breath while his girlfriend patted him on the back with a look of pure bewilderment. I didn’t look back as I pushed through the rubber doors into the heat. I just loaded the heavy bag into the back of my old Ford, climbed into the cab, and sat there for a minute with the engine idling while the radio kicked on with some old country station playing out of Jefferson City.
Buster was waiting for me back home on the back porch, pacing back and forth across the wooden boards with his tail sweeping the dust from side to side like a broom. When I pulled up the gravel drive and climbed down out of the cab with the bag under my arm, he trotted right down the three wooden steps to meet me, his ears perked up and his nose twitching at the scent of the fresh grain.
“Don’t worry, old boy,” I muttered, dropping the sack onto the concrete beside his red plastic bowl with a heavy thump that raised a little puff of gray dust. “I didn’t save any for myself.”
He didn’t care about any of it. He just sat there staring at the corner of the bag where I ripped it open with my thumbnail, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth while the evening shadows stretched long and thin across the yard. I stood there for a second with the empty cardboard flap in my hand, listening to the cicadas starting up in the maples down by the dry creek bed, wondering if that woman in the purple fleece was already telling her husband about the crazy man in aisle four.
