All I wanted that night was to get out of Kelly’s quick. Kelly’s Market kept late hours, same as me, so once a week, hard on midnight, that’s where I’d find myself. This was in Arrowhead, in the San Bernardinos. Up there, even now, nothing good ever happens ’round midnight. Especially in February.

*

I’d been living here twelve years, drifting down originally from the Bay Area, where I’d flunked out of law school. It was the second time Berkeley had told me to go. Some years before I had flunked out after three semesters – unnerved, I think, by all the students, afraid to go to frat parties, socially crippled – then got it together at a JC, transferring later to Davis, where I took a BA with honors. Ancient history, right? Astonishing, still, that Berkeley took a second chance on me; humiliating when it ended. Since then? Odd jobs, a lot of time alone, Prozac. And then luck came my way: a grandfather died and I inherited a one-room moldering cabin in the woods. It felt like home.

Younger, I’d had ambitions: To be a scholar, a litigator. To make a landmark contribution. A book, a case. Later my fear was I would end my days unnoticed.

In the mountains I let my hair grow long, it’d silvered in my twenties, grew a scraggly beard and let myself fatten up. Santa, a wiseacre called me one time; a glum, unsmiling Santa, maybe, in wool shirts, black suspenders, knee-high boots. Never did get a pipe. I worked in a print shop. I thumped the scale at 315. And by this time I’d just about quit on anything that mattered. Jolly? I could not have told you the last time I’d laughed. Who knows, then, maybe I was looking for a reason.

In Alaska I maimed a leg. Two summers after my first expulsion I took a job on a bow picker harvesting oysters out on Windy Bay. Hoisting up baskets stacked ten deep in eighty feet of water. I’d never been so tired; my concentration flagged. A two-foot knot of rebarb, bent at an angle. I slipped. The rusty grappling hook bit my knee.

Now, years later, in bad weather the wound still ached and the knee barked. As if a gentleman of my girth spent his mornings doing squats. On bad days I clutched a cane. It was not a disability. Vodka helped.

*

It wasn’t something I did all the time, parking in a handicapped spot, but the lot outside was pretty much empty. It was raining. In front of the market, by the entrance, I shared the blue-hashed zone with one other night owl. This car, I saw, had a permit and looked a lot like a ruined Datsun I had in ’78, when I was seventeen, my first ride. That was some time ago.

Inside, Kelly’s was empty and garishly lit, cavernous as a disco hall gone belly up. I’d never noticed this before. I had about twenty minutes to get provisions and get out before the doors closed at twelve. Inside my windbreaker I tucked a laminated photo. Up front above a plate glass wall was a cedar plank cut with words: COME SEE US AGAIN. At this hour Kelly’s Market was the one place still open in the village, Arrowhead’s aging strip mall, the shops here done up in half timber and stone like a Bavarian ski lodge; next door loomed the pavilion, a big octagonal joint tipped with a spire, shuttered now and up-for-sale. In the 1940s it was a ritzy club. Sometime in the 70s, though, the good times gave out.

Most nights here I’d buy a basket’s worth, but tonight I opted for a full cart. Reason was, I wanted time to talk to Allie. Or just be near her. It was for her, a gift, something I’d worked up in the shop between jobs. An old-time photograph, black-and-white, big as a wall calendar. Allie worked the night shift, and on Thursdays I knew I’d see her behind register one. Small talk, that’s all we had exchanged so far, but it was encouraging. Those days I didn’t cut much of a rug. And Allie, I sensed, had a soft spot for misfits. This gave me hope.

In the corner of one eye she had a tattoo. A teardrop. Tiny and sorrowful. How many years had she lost? I wondered. Prison ink.

“How lovely,” she’d say, I imagined, accepting the print. “Isn’t it beautiful and sad?” In my mind the moment was lucent.

Into the cart’s top tray then I set the print. Winter. The lake here iced over, past dusk, in the 1940s; and across the pure ghostly ice skaters glide hand-in-hand, bundled up, silhouetted by a rising moon. This was something I’d never seen. Winters these days were mostly flurries and slush. It’s something I wanted to share with Allie.

Then I trundled the cart down the aisles looking for whatever was tasty or cheap. Swansons, Breyers, Smirnoffs – this was my usual haul. A bachelor’s diet. In my labored rush I clipped an end-cap display, knocking to the floor boxed chocolates left over from Valentine’s. Stale and bittersweet was the smell. Picking them up was an ordeal. And I imagined someone watching my mishap; in Kelly’s the surveillance cameras were hidden within smoky half-globes fixed to the ceiling. Thinking about it made me edgy.

What’s worse than being watched?

Heavily, splay-footed, I clomped on. Already sweating. A fat man’s walk. Five minutes to twelve I slogged by the booze vault. No Smirnoffs. Then, stumbling, to the frozen foods. No fudge swirl. By now, flustered, I speared whatever was at hand to fill the cart. Around this time someone somewhere – the manager? – politely hectored whoever was left in the store to head to the check-out counters. Then Musak resumed, mid-song. I’d never noticed it before, an ambient loop of soft rock oldies. I started to listen. These were the same tunes I’d had back in high school, on 45s, spinning them in the basement, alone, Friday nights. I still liked the grooves.

Then I went on, half limping.

To the check-out counter: Register one, the only one open. I knew Allie’s name, of course, by stealing glances each week at a name tag clipped to her vest pocket. Best part of the night. It read: HAPPY TO SERVE YOU SINCE ’92. It’s what we shared instead of conversation; still, I felt we had something. One night maybe I’d roll up here wearing my own name tag. BEEN LOOKING SINCE ’85.

In my mind I see Allie holding the photo close to her bosom. I’m emboldened. The Historical Society, I tell her, is having its winter ball. I have two tickets. “Why Frank Barstow,” she’ll say, “aren’t you a charmer?” Again she accepts. In my imagination Allie knows my name.

As I began to unload the cart’s contents onto the conveyor belt, worn and grimy as a bum’s shoe leather, Allie gave me a hair-of-midnight nod. I gave it back. She’s dark, slim, mid-forties. This was going well, I thought. I touched the print, then reached for more groceries.

And then the song came on.

Hearing it, I paused, mid-lift, Pop Tarts in hand, lost for a moment in a reverie. How lonesome I felt! Like Christmas ’75. In the cold, looking up at a pale changeable moon through a telescope. Craters and seas, peaks and shadows. Learning to see. Now I looked away and let a faint bemused smile twist my face. This soul lullaby, it’s one I never owned: Dancing in the Moonlight. A one-hit wonder – funky, celebratory, erotic.

And that’s when I saw her. I’d been gazing for no reason down the row of registers, across the store, to an odd fluorescent blur. A bag girl, chunky and cute, perhaps no more than seventeen. Brown smock, crooked bow tie, horn-rimmed glasses.

She was dancing.

Out of time, with incongruous charm, twisting, gesturing. No rhythm at all. Was she new? I’m sure I’d never seen the girl. I watched transfixed, delighted. It was a show! I was grinning now, leaning back on the Certs rack, watching this wonderful silliness. The spaz dance. Let Allie wait, let her grumble. I felt her disapproving stare. Yeah, it was inappropriate; I was forty-six. But this moment of unabashed zest – so surprising, so unlikely the girl knew the song – brought me more happiness than I’d known in a while. I reveled in it. I laughed. “Look at her move,” I said, unable to contain myself. I’d not smiled like this in some time.

And then the song ended.

And she kept dancing. Clumsily, haltingly, waltzing alone to the station’s end. Where her crutches stood. Tremors. Rigidity, exaggerated reflexes.

It was no dance.

Hatred, raw hatred’s what I felt now bearing down on me. I turned to Allie. “You sick evil bastard,” her expression said. I couldn’t erase my smile. I tried. Like a parasite a grin locked on my big red face, hardening into a rictus of panic and shame and disbelief. Sweat wet my hair.

It’s then I remembered Ralphy. A kid in grade school, a stumbling dweeb, we’d all thought, a loser. His scissor walk, his uncontrolled gestures. He twitched. He stammered, drooled. He had crutches. I never taunted him, but I never stopped it. He made me laugh. It was the year Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Remembering all this now shamed me. “Listen class,” Mrs. Burn, our fourth grade teacher told us, “Ralphy can’t help himself. Never stare.” She took a dramatic pause, then taught us a new word. “It’s called cerebral palsy.”

By now I’d regained enough composure to hastily unload the cart and Allie, furious, rang up the total. Eyes averted I swiped a credit card. Then crumpled the photo, shoving it back inside my windbreaker. On the way out I’d toss it. All that was left now was to bag the thirty-odd items.

And slowly, painfully, to register one the girl hobbled. An asymmetric gait, left foot dragging. Orthopedic shoes. Was I still grinning? All I wanted was to get out quick.

“Your card’s rejected,” Allie said.

I had no words.

Then the girl was here, leaning her crutches on the register’s end and locking her leg braces. I kept my eyes down. “Plastic?” she said, her voice mumbly and wet.

“What?” I said, looking up. I wanted to apologize.

“Rejected,” Allie said.

About the Author

Zachary Ash lives in the San Bernardino mountains east of Los Angeles. His work has been published in Timber Creek Review, Bewildering Stories, and Beverly Hills Review. He has studied creative writing with Bret Anthony Johnston and Mary Yukari Waters. And this fall he will begin an MFA at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His favorite genres are dark fantasy and historical.