Town & Country Food Store pt. 2

I didn't like Joe the first time I met him, and it wasn't just his mullet. There was also his junior-high mustache, his penchant for sleeveless t-shirts that highlighted his matted armpits, his boundless energy and obnoxious personality.

I disliked him more the longer I knew him.

He suffered wild mood swings, one minute laughing hysterically about something only he found funny, and the next, sprawled across the front counter, weeping and howling for his sorry life. He carried a faded, dog-eared Olan Mills 8x10 photo of his daughter, and when he was in what he called a “shame spiral,” he would pull it from his back pocket and hold it to my face, a visual aid to his failure.

"This is my 4 year old daughter, Melissa. She's got problems because my wife drank when she was pregnant. The doctors say she’ll be in a walker for the rest of her life. She’ll never get to be a normal little girl. We were all fucked up on dope and alcohol, and we ruined her life! Melissa doesn't live with me anymore. The court gave my mom custody of my baby girl and she won't even let me talk to her on the phone. After we lost Melissa, my wife left me. I don’t have anyone but Jesus. "

The first time I saw Melissa's bald head and vacant stare, I felt guilty. Seeing Joe's naked grief and the snot leaking into his wispy mustache just made me nauseous. Joe sobbed for several minutes, pounding his fists on the counter, finally excusing himself to the bathroom. He came out a new man, full of dirty jokes and high-pitched giggles. His energy was so great that he bunny hopped down the aisles of potato chips and candy bars, shouting, laughing, and slinging drool onto the dingy linoleum floor.

I was raised by lying dope fiends and petty thieves, but I naively believed Joe when he told me he replaced his love of drugs with a love for Jesus. He certainly talked about Jesus enough to make it seem plausible. Until my boyfriend Eric pointed it out, I was under the impression that Joe was just a hyperactive, recovering addict with emotional problems.

“Joe was acting all crazy again tonight. He started laughing about a fat lady in an orange shirt. He thought she looked like a pumpkin. He just kept saying ‘FUCKING PUMPKIN’, and laughing until he fell in the floor. He just laid there, cackling and kicking his feet. I think he might be mildly retarded.”

“Rebel, you do realize that he’s smoking crack in the bathroom, right?

“You think so? At work? He told me he stopped using when he lost custody of Melissa, and his wife finally left him.”

“Doesn’t it seem strange to you that the motherfucker always disappears in the bathroom before he comes out all hyper and stupid?”

"Holy shit, Eric! That explains so much! The motherfucker is a CRACKHEAD!"



On slow nights, Joe would force me to play Lotto.

"Hey, Rebel. Let's get a ticket. Which one do you want?"

"I shouldn't buy a ticket. I'm pregnant and I’m broke because I work at Town & Country Food Store."

"What's a dollar? Especially if you can win fifteen thousand dollars? If you win big money, you can buy your baby a car. C'mon just pick a ticket. I can feel it. Today is definitely our lucky day. Which ticket do you want to play?"

He would pester me into buying a ticket, and he’d buy one too. If I lost, I quit playing. Joe would only stop after a winning ticket or he ran out of money. The desperation in his face as he scratched and cussed at a mounting stack of losing tickets bothered me. After a losing session, he would emerge on the other side covered in latex shavings, sweaty and dazed. It only took a visit to the bathroom to bring him back, artificially invigorated, ready to tell me lies about previous jackpots, and his plan to open a garage when he finally hit big.

As Joe's addiction progressed, he no longer had cash to pay for his Lotto. Instead, he would "borrow" a few dollars worth of tickets, scratch them, and pay for the tickets with his winnings. If there were no winnings, he spent the rest of the night short-changing customers to make up the loss. I stopped playing.


It was autumn, and when I got to work, Myra was in the alley dumpster. I was walking into the building when she popped her head out and frowned at me.

"Myra, what are you doing in the dumpster? You have some trash in your hair."

Myra ignored me and continued frowning. I stood, waiting for an answer. It was clear that no response was forthcoming when she disappeared into the dumpster again. I turned and entered the store, where I was greeted by a store full of uncomfortable looking customers and the familiar sound of Joe sobbing behind the thin half-wall of the manager's office.

The sobbing turned to pleading.

"Please don't call the cops, DeeDee. PLEASE! I'll do anything you want, just don't call the cops. If you do, I'll go back to prison, and I need to take care of Melissa! I didn't mean to do it, it was the crack. I need to go to rehab. You can help me. Please help ME!"

DeeDee was not sympathetic.

I listened to him beg while I rang up customers. I fetched their cigarettes and made small talk with them as if there weren’t a broken man within our earshot. Myra came inside, still frowning, holding a trash bag bulging with strips of lottery tickets.

"Myra, please tell me what the fuck is going on," I whispered as she passed.

Stone-faced, she walked to DeeDee's office, holding her bag of evidence. Soon, two policemen arrived. The officers flanked him, grabbed his arms and led him toward the door. Joe struggled with them briefly, whipping his head wildly from side to side, desperate for escape. When they cuffed him, there was nowhere to go, and the fight left him. His body went limp. The police struggled to support his dead-weight, and settled on pulling him by his cuffed arms, the toes of his shoes dragging the dirty floor behind them.

As he passed, I saw that his face was slack, and he was drooling on the floor.

They were putting him in the back of the cruiser when Myra turned to me.

"Last night, Joe smoked crack in the bathroom, and stole five hundred dollars worth of lottery tickets. When we did the ticket inventory this morning, we were four hundred tickets short. DeeDee and I watched the surveillance video and saw Joe scratching big strings of tickets, twenty at a time. Towards the end, he just sat on the floor and pulled his hair and screamed. Fuckin' weirdo. Did he ever make you look at that picture of his poor kid? Anyway, we called him up here, and he confessed to the whole thing. He said he just knew that he was gonna win big. Now he’s going to jail, and I hafta work the fucking second shift with you. And you’re gonna straighten the cooler tonight, because I’m not doing it.”