Undecimus Gradus

My favorite grocery store as a boy was called Gregory’s Great Sales Supermarket. It was a petite, local store that always carried root beer hard-candy, and it smelled strongly of aging lumber. The building was one of the oldest in our small countryside town. A fresh coat of paint was lathered on almost every year in order to keep it looking somewhat healthy without sacrificing the ancient lumber.

I knew my way around the store like I knew my way around my school hallways; enough to get me to where I needed to be. The sales counter, the root beer candy, and items we’d call contraband if we found ‘em in our kids’ bags were the equivalent of my home room, the cafeteria, and the restroom. I could reach them from anywhere, eyes shut, with or without knowing the least bit about anything in between.

The chime of the bell and the gust of cold air were the sweetest welcome on a hot summer day. I waltzed in with my usual drama, overplaying the heat outside and imagining myself having just been saved from being stranded in a desert for months. “Water,” I begged with my tiny voice, “water, please, help,” I fake choked, making dry coughing sounds toward the sales counter.

“G’evening, Ron, g’evening, Billy,” Gregory’s son Clyde groaned at us with half-shut eyes, flipping through his deck of cards. Billy is my older brother, who distanced himself from my desert survival exercise. He’d reached the age where everything was embarrassing, all the time. As I made my rounds gliding my fingers along the price tags and tapping boxes and chip bags, I smashed my shin directly into a shelf full of peanut butter and jelly jars.

“Ouch!” I puffed, bending down and rubbing my leg. I turned to look behind me. Yeah, I had come down the marshmallow aisle. So what is this shelf doing here? I looked left, then right, and realized the aisles fed into a central area just to my right. Someone had decided to change up the supermarket maze. I didn’t pay it much mind. After all, it wasn’t much different. Later on I would realize that the change had been made to provide easier access to the liquor; and, unfortunately, give Clyde a better line of sight down to the refrigerators. 

The cheep of the scanning machine was a good sound. The crinkling of the paper bag, the ruffling of my root beer candies. I maintain the position that I was a good kid, kept up with my manners. But I can never recall actually saying thank you, at least, I can’t recall with full confidence. I do remember, very clearly, slowly walking out of the store—ring-a-ling-a-ling—very slowly, eyes glued to the paper bag as I pulled the root beer candies out, tore open the baggie, and plopped one into my mouth. The first few always tasted the most authentic, I remember thinking. In retrospect, I reckon it had something to do with the cigarette smell in the parking lot fusing to the root beer flavor. 

“Give me one,” came the usual demand from Billy. 

“Frig off, Billy. Mom said I get the root beer candy,” came my usual response.

“I bought it,” Billy objected. While it was true that Billy’s money was used in the transaction, it was also true that it was I who handed Clyde the bills. Technically, I had bought it.

“Nuh—uh!” But I couldn’t quite put it into words.

Billy snatched it away, per usual, took a generous four or five candies, wasted them by eating them all at once, then shoved the bag back into my arms. Our arguments afterward were of low importance and high grandiosity. Typically, it ended with input from Mom. One day she would tell me to grow up and share, the next she would tell Billy in an affable voice “that it was nice of you to share,” then change her tone to a scolding “but that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to take them.” She’d send him to his room with a slap to the rear. Those were my favorite days. But this particular day, our argument was ended early when Jen walked by. She earned the title of “Ron’s Biggest Elementary School Crush” about ten months earlier when school reopened for the fall. Luckily, I could still see her over the summer, as we were neighbors. 

“Hi Jen!” I chirped, “want a root beer candy? They’re my favorite.”

“Sure,” she replied with a smile. My little heart jumped about six miles in the air.

“Oh I see.” Oh no, Billy. “She can have some, but your great older brother is the ‘world’s fattest jerk’ for daring to want a share of what he paid for.”

“Shut up, Billy! Jen is nice to me, and you’re not.”

“Really? After I keep giving you the gift of candy? If that’s how you’re going to act, you don’t get any more candy.”

Jen was backing away at this point, which I didn’t notice. I’d had enough of Billy.

“Fine, I’ll race you for it. If I win, you shut up about the candy forever, and if you win, you never have to buy me candy again.”

“Ha! You are so on, loser!” His smile told me something was wrong.

“Or at least, I’ll share my candy with you from now on!” His lips relaxed a little.

“Fine. Race to the candy, then.”

“Fine, go!” I yelled, racing off as fast as I could. My little feet pounded on the cement, but I couldn’t get them to move fast enough to keep up with Billy. He reached the door—ding, ding—about five seconds before me. A very generous lead for a store so small. Ding, ding, it was my turn to enter, and I raced over the tiles as quick as I could. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, glancing desperately around; he’d gotten stuck in the floor redesign. I smiled wide and devilish as I rounded the corner and—CLUNK! I smashed my face right into an open refrigerator door, scaring the customer looking into it and knocking me to the ground. 

My lip started quivering violently as my eyes filled with water; I wiped it all away before I turned to look at Billy, standing just barely down the aisle, holding a fresh bag of hard candies. 

“You alright, kid?” The customer asked.

I put on an angry face and stormed out of the store, ignoring my brother’s stupid idiot grin.