gentleness....''
At the end of the center aisle, there was a gigantic display of red wine. There were six green-glass gallon jugs lined up along the floor, in two rows of three. On top of these bottles was a sheet of cardboard, and on top of the cardboard another six jugs of wine. There were five levels in all, a total of thirty jugs. They rose up to just below my chin.
''I charge you to keep the commandment unstained...''
I took out the ski mask and pulled it over my head. It smelled of my brother, of his sweat, and at first it made me gag, so that I had to breathe through my mouth.
'That's the Bible. The Word of God. Once I had a listener call in...'
I slid the machete out of my sleeve.
''Who wrote the Bible?' she asked me...'
When I turned to head back down the aisle to the front of the store, I was remarkably calm, and this calmness seemed to feed on itself, growing stronger and stronger with each passing moment, like panic might in a similar situation.
The cashier was reading his paper. He was sitting on a stool, with his arms resting on the counter. He was a good six inches taller than I and probably outweighed me by ninety pounds. It made me wish that I'd brought Carl's pistol. I had to stand in front of him for several seconds before he looked up. Then he just stared. He seemed neither frightened nor surprised. Very slowly, he closed his newspaper.
I gestured threateningly at him with the machete, nodded toward the cash register.
He reached across the counter and turned down the radio. 'What the fuck do you think you're doing?' he asked.
'Open the register,' I said. The words came out sounding hoarse, nervous. It was how his voice should've sounded.
He smiled. He wasn't as young as I'd thought at first; close up, he looked like he might even be older than I was.
'Get out of my store,' he said calmly.
I stared at him, bewildered. The stench of Jacob's sweat in the ski mask was making me dizzy. I realized that things weren't going to happen like I'd planned, and it gave me a sinking feeling, a hard little pip of nausea in my stomach.
'You gonna chop me up?' he asked. 'You gonna kill me with that thing?' His voice began to rise in anger.
'All I want is the money.'
He scratched at the tattoo on his arm, then took his beard in his hand and lifted it toward his nose, thinking. 'I'll give you this one chance,' he said. He waved toward the door. 'You run now, and I'll let you go.'
I didn't move. I just stood there, speechless.
'Either run or stay,' he said. 'That's your choice.'
I lifted the machete, held it up over my head like I was going to hit him. I felt foolish doing it: I could tell that it didn't look real. I waved it in the air. 'I don't want to hurt you,' I said, meaning it as a threat, but it came out sounding like I was begging. 'I've killed people. I'm a murderer.'
He smiled at me. 'You're staying?'
'Just give me the money.'
He climbed off his stool and, almost casually, made his way around the counter. I retreated into the center of the store, the machete held out in front of my chest. He walked toward the door, so that for a moment I thought he was going to leave, but then he pulled a set of keys from his pocket and twisted shut the lock. He turned his back on me to do it, as if to emphasize how little he feared me.
'Come on,' I said. 'Quit screwing around.'
He slid the keys back into his pocket and took a step toward me. I retreated into the center aisle. I held the machete in both hands, straight out in front of me. I was trying to look threatening, trying to regain control of the situation, but I knew that it wasn't working.
'Anything I do to you now,' he said, his voice laced with a sudden malice, 'will be in self-defense. That's how the police'll see it. You came in here with that knife, threatened me, tried to steal what's mine. You've put yourself outside the protection of the law.'
He came toward me slowly, grinning. He seemed to be enjoying himself. I continued to back away.
'I gave you a chance to run because I knew it was the Christian thing to do. But you wouldn't leave. So now I'm going to make sure, no matter what happens to you once the police arrive, that you'll never do this again. I'm going to teach you some respect for other people's property.'
He was in the aisle now, stalking me. I was about ten feet away from him. I held the machete in my right hand and waved it again, but he didn't seem to notice. He was staring at the shelf to his right, as if searching for something. I watched as he reached up and pulled down a can of peas. He hefted it in his hand, and then, very calmly, without any hurry to the motion whatsoever, reared back and threw it at me. It hit me in the chest, hard, with a loud cracking sound, just below my left nipple. I stumbled backward, gasping. It felt like he'd broken one of my ribs.
'This is a rare opportunity,' he said. 'There aren't many situations where you can hurt someone as bad as I'm going to hurt you and get away with it.'
I had no idea how to handle this. He was supposed to have just given me the money. Then I was going to make him lie down on the floor and count to a hundred while I ran off to my car.
'I'll even be congratulated for this,' he said. 'Taking a bite out of crime. They'll call me a hero.'
I continued backing down the aisle. I assumed that the building had an exit in the rear, probably through the storeroom I'd noticed earlier. I thought that if I could just hold him off till I got there, I could make a break for it, could get outside and sprint for my car.
He reached up again, pulled down a jar of olives from one of the shelves, and threw it at me. It hit me in the shoulder this time, then fell to the floor, shattering at my feet. A dull, tingling ache spread down my arm, and my fingers, as if of their own accord, opened, dropping the machete. It landed in the olives. I had to pick it up with my left hand.
'That's enough,' I said. 'I'll go now. You can keep the money.'
He laughed, shaking his head. 'You missed your chance. The door was open, and now it's shut.'
At the end of the aisle, something caught my arm. Without taking my eyes off the cashier, I tried to jerk it free. I looked back, quickly, and saw the display of red wine, the huge column of jugs. There was a large staple in the sheet of cardboard that divided the third tier of bottles from the fourth, and it was on this that my sweatshirt had become hooked.
I glanced toward the cashier. He was six feet away. Another step and he would've been able to reach out and grab me. In a panic, I yanked my arm away from the staple, but instead of freeing myself, I simply pulled the sheet of cardboard out of the display. The bottles it had supported balanced there for an instant, like in a magic trick, trembling, and then began to fall. The whole display came apart before my eyes, the jugs hitting the floor one after the other in a loud, prolonged crash.
There was a brief silence in the store, a pause through which the preacher's voice found its way toward us down the aisle. 'And is there a difference,' he asked, 'between a sin of
The tiles at my feet were red-black with wine. Shards of glass lay scattered about, like jagged islands. I stepped back from the mess, retreating all the way to the rear wall, watching as the puddle spread out across the floor.
The cashier made a whistling sound, shaking his head. 'Now who do you think's going to pay for that?' he asked.
We both stared down at the shattered bottles. The sheet of cardboard hung from my arm, swaying. I tore it free and dropped it to the floor. My fingers were still tingling, and my chest ached each time I took a breath. I wanted to begin working my way toward the storeroom, but my legs wouldn't move. They held me there, pressed up against the icy door of the cooler, paralyzed.
The cashier stepped forward, moving around the edge of the puddle. He paused at the far side, no more than
