dad crazy. He had a bug up his butt about The Store, anyway, and this would only make him worse. So she said good-bye to Sam, pushed it out of her mind, and by the time she returned to the refreshment table she had completely forgotten it.
SEVENTEEN
1
The addition was finished.
The grand opening of The Store's new grocery department was tomorrow.
It was impossible to believe that it had been completed so quickly.
Groundbreaking had been only a little over a month ago. By the time Ben's photos of that morning had appeared in the paper, they were already out of date.
Construction had moved ahead so rapidly that, according to the town council, it was all Juniper's various inspectors could do to keep up.
Bill had jogged by there this morning, and already the banners had been strung, the helium balloons tied in place. A page of coupons had appeared in the paper on Saturday, offering such outrageously low-priced items as one-cent lettuce and twenty-five-cents-a-pound catfish fillet. The Store was bribing people to shop in its food department, and Bill knew the bribes were working, because he and Ginny were going to stock up on a bunch of groceries tomorrow and if _they_ could be bought, anyone could be bought.
He wished there was another place in town to buy foodstuffs. But Ben had been right. Buy-and-Save was scheduled to shut its doors next week -- just after The Store's grocery department opened. Already, the place looked abandoned. He drove down Main, slowed as he passed the market. The windows were dirty and dark, and there were only two cars in the parking lot. Employees' cars, probably.
Once Buy-and-Save closed, there'd be only The Store.
He wondered what had happened to Jed. Rumor had it that he'd skipped town, owing bills, but he didn't know anyone who actually bought that story. It was completely out of character for Jed, and Bill had the feeling that the truth was something far less ordinary and far less benign.
And connected to The Store.
He drove by the empty cafй. The windows were soaped up, whited out. As were the windows on an increasing number of storefronts in town.
It was Tuesday, benefits day, and up ahead the line in front of the unemployment office was long. Even longer than it had been after the lumber mill closed. It wound outside of the brown brick building and around the corner to the parking lot. At the end of the line he saw Frank Wilson, one of Hargrove's old cronies, and while a small mean part of him wanted to gloat because the man had gotten what he'd deserved, he couldn't really feel good about it.
Revenge was not always sweet.
There were quite a few construction workers in line, and underneath the metal letters euphemistically identifying the building as the Arizona Department of Economic Security, he saw Ted Malory. He waved, but Ted didn't see him, and he continued on, not wanting to honk and draw attention to himself.
According to Ted's wife, The Store had stiffed him on the roofing job he'd done, not paying the amount originally agreed upon, deducting money from the payment for imaginary errors and oversights. He hadn't had a job since, had had to lay off his whole crew, and Charlinda said they'd probably have to file for bankruptcy. To top it off, his son and a group of other boys had recently been caught dropping M80s down the toilets at school, and, along with the parents of the other boys, Ted and Charlinda were responsible for covering those damages as well. Trouble came in waves, his grandfather used to say, and that sure as hell seemed to be true.
Especially these days.
Street's store was still in business, and he stopped by, bought a diamond needle for his turntable that he didn't need, then walked over to the record store.
Doane nodded a greeting as he stepped inside.
'Hey,' Bill said.
'Hey, yourself.'
'I probably shouldn't ask,' Bill said, heading over to the used-CD rack, 'but how're things today?'
'Well, you heard what happened to the radio station, didn't you?'
He shook his head. 'No. What?'
'The Store bought it.'
He stopped walking, turned to face the store owner. 'Shit.'
'Yep. They kept it quiet, but I guess the deal was finalized last week.
The station switched over this morning.' He smiled mirthlessly. 'They even changed their call letters. The station is now called K-STOR.'
'Why?'
Doane shrugged. 'I guess they want to control what we hear as well as what we buy.' He walked behind the counter, turned on his receiver, and the sounds of an obnoxious rap group blared through the speakers. 'From what I can tell, they're only playing music they have in stock. You know that old saying, 'People don't know what they like, they like what they know'? Well, that's especially true in music. That's why there were all those payoff scandals years ago. It's a fact of life: if music gets played on the radio, if people hear it often enough, they start liking it.' He turned off the receiver. 'They'll have no problem moving their stock.'
'But why did Ward and Robert sell? The station had to be making money.'
'Rumor is, The Store made them an offer they couldn't refuse.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
Doane shrugged.
'You mean they were offered big bucks? Or they were threatened?'
'Maybe both.' He held up a finger before Bill could respond. 'I'm only repeating what I heard. I don't know any more than that.'
Bill did not even feel like arguing. He should feel like ranting and raving. But he didn't. He felt drained, tried. He recalled his dream about the asphalt machine. That's what The Store seemed like to him: an unstoppable force hell-bent on bulldozing its way over the livelihoods and lifestyles of the town.
'As you heard, they've switched formats already. They're playing top forty. Period. No country.'
'No country?'
'Not anymore.'
'People won't stand for that in this town.'
'They'll have no choice. Besides, people are basically passive. They'll piss and moan for a while, but they'll get used to it. They'll adjust. It'll be more convenient for them to listen to the music they're being offered than to write a letter or make a phone call or do something to change it. It's human nature.'
He was right, Bill knew. It was depressing but true. Human beings' capacity to adjust to almost anything was supposed to be one of their greatest virtues, but it was also one of their greatest weaknesses. It rendered them compliant, allowed them to be exploited.
Doane smiled weakly. 'Promise me something. If you ever win the lottery, if you win, like, thirty million dollars in the Powerball or something, buy the station back and put on some decent music.'
Bill forced himself to smile. 'It's a deal.'
There was nothing new in the store, and nothing that he really wanted or needed, but he bought a few CD versions of albums that he already had on vinyl.
He'd probably spent more in Doane's store in the past three months than he had in the entire previous year, but Ginny seemed to understand why, and he didn't think she'd give him a hard time about today's purchases.
It was out of his way, but he drove past The Store on his trip home. In contrast to the deserted downtown streets, The Store's parking lot was crowded.
Even though it was a workday.
Even though it was the middle of the afternoon.
He drove by without slowing, glancing out the passenger window. All trace of the original meadow was gone. The contours and topography of the clearing had been changed completely, and the location now looked as though The Store had always been there.
He turned right down the road that led through Creekside Acres and drove down the dirt road toward
