Smith's Monthly #19 Page 9

  “It would be an honor,” Fred said.

  I could tell he was clearly touched that we had remembered and he didn’t have to force his limerick on us.

  “You are going to produce Fred’s book for him?” Mary asked, smiling.

  “I am,” I said. “But I am surprised you have heard some of his limericks?”

  “I have been appropriate,” Fred said, “in my telling and choice of subject matter.”

  “I find them wonderful and funny and unique,” she said.

  “They are unique,” I said. “Now Fred, would you please honor us?”

  “I would be glad to,” Fred said.

  Then there was a pause and if an oak tree could clear his throat, or even had a throat, I was sure Fred would have cleared it.

  “There was a woman named Mary

  Who found my voice to be scary.

  But I told her of Buckey

  And how she’d be lucky

  To find a pirate to marry.”

  For a moment the silence in the room seemed to grow and then Mary smiled at me and raised her right eyebrow and I smiled back and then we both started applauding and cheering while smiling at each other.

  Yesterday the idea of marrying anyone would have scared me to death. Now, even though Mary died many years before I was born, the idea of marrying her just made me smile.

  It would take some figuring on how to be together, but I was sure we could do it with Fred’s help.

  “Thank you. Thank you,” Fred said.

  If an oak tree could bow, Fred would be bowing.

  “I would be honored to put your book together,” I said.

  “Wonderful,” Fred said.

  “I might be able to actually give you a short introduction as well,” I said.

  “It would have to be in limerick form,” Fred said.

  I smiled at Mary. “Oh, it would be.”

  Then I said, “How about this?”

  “There was a pirate named Buckey

  Who one day was very lucky

  To travel in time

  To listen to a rhyme

  From Fred, a friend, an oak tree.”

  Mary smiled, stood and came over and gave me a long kiss that I did not want to break.

  “That was wonderful,” she said, finally, pulling away, but still holding me.

  “It will do,” Fred said.

  “That’s the nicest thing you have ever said about my writing,” I said to Fred, winking at Mary.

  “Don’t push it,” Fred said.

  But I could tell the oak tree was as happy as I was.

  They met on a Tuesday, a hot Tuesday in Southern California, and filled up an entire shopping cart with groceries and conversation and dreams.

  Sometimes not getting a shopping cart can lead to a lot more than just carrying your food to the checkout counter under your arm.

  A grocery store love story.

  SHOPPING CART LOVER

  I called her my “Shopping Cart Lover.”

  It was Tuesday.

  A hot Tuesday.

  Middle of June.

  The parking lot to my local Safeway Grocery Store was full and I should have realized there would be a problem right there and just went back to my small apartment overlooking Interstate Five, one of the best apartments in all of Southern California. It’s a nice place, one bedroom, and the rumble of trucks and cars going by reminds me of the ocean.

  I love the ocean, how the waves crash on the beach, the wind always blows, the smell of brine and fish fills the thick air. I didn’t often make it to the ocean due to my living circumstances and no job and not having a car, but living near the freeway reminded me of the ocean all the time and I liked that.

  My ex-wife used to say I could make a silk shirt out of an old cotton rag and a vivid imagination.

  I would always say, “At least I have a silk shirt.”

  If she hadn’t left me for that manager of the hardware store last year, I wouldn’t have had a chance to meet my Shopping Cart Lover.

  Lucky for me my wife left.

  I only go to my local Safeway grocery store once a month, when my card is refilled from the State of California. I do maintenance around the apartment complex to pay my rent and I save most of unemployment except for a few dollars to buy my Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

  Today California refilled my food allowance on my card, so I could stock up on food that would last for the month. And maybe by next month the application I had put in three months ago at the local bike shop would work out and I would get hired. The store owner liked me and said I did good work, but with the economy he just couldn’t hire me yet.

  I had told him I would wait.

  I had always wanted to work on bikes, the peddle kind, not the motor kind, ever since I was a kid, maybe even open my own bike shop. But out of high school I had ended up working construction instead and then had gotten married and the bike shop idea sort of went the way of those old cotton rags my ex-wife used to always talk about.

  So when she left me and I found my nifty apartment overlooking Interstate Five, I decided that I would work for a bike shop now and just wait until an opening came around or I had my own shop.

  I saved as much as I could so that if I got the chance I would start my own bike shop. But until then I fixed a few of the neighbor’s bikes for their kids and tried to watch the dumpsters for old bikes and bike parts. My apartment was pretty full of bike parts now, so I had lots to work on and fix up for the time I had enough for my own shop. It kept me busy at night, listening to the ocean of Interstate Five and fixing bikes.

  Life was pretty good.

  The bike I rode to my local Safeway grocery store I had put together with parts of about seven others. I had built a sidecar on it made out of parts and baskets from kid’s bikes to carry my groceries and more bike parts when I found them.

  It really was amazing what a guy could find in dumpsters.

  I locked up my bike in the bike rack near the front door of the Safeway grocery store and went inside.

  It was much cooler inside, which instantly felt good and put me in a good mood for my afternoon of shopping. It was always better to be in a good mood when shopping. I knew it never did much good to buy food angry. The food just never tasted the same.

  My ex-wife thought that attitude was weird, but I tended to always get good food when I shopped happy.

  Inside, by the produce section, was a big empty room where hundreds of grocery carts were normally stored in rows jammed into each other. The shopping carts were always hard to get apart like they resented being wheeled once more around the store they knew so well.

  There were no grocery carts in that large area.

  None.

  It was cool in that grocery cart room, much cooler than the hot afternoon outside, but still there were no grocery carts.

  It seemed that when California filled everyone’s cards with money for food, the store got real busy.

  I went back out into the parking lot and the heat to find a used cart there, but two kids with Safeway uniforms were already doing that and by the time I watched them push the rows of carts into the store, the hordes of shoppers waiting for a cart had grabbed them all.

  I was left standing next to the produce section near the main door without a cart, waiting.

  It was cool there, so I didn’t mind. A cart would come to me soon enough.

  A woman with brown hair, glasses, and a long nose stood beside me, also waiting.

  She didn’t look annoyed at all, which my ex-wife would have been. This woman had this calmness around her that attracted me to her and I looked at her even harder without actually looking at her and being rude and pervert-like.

  She wore an old, blue-cotton tee-shirt with a light-blue cloth jacket covering it, not because it was cold, but because the tee-shirt was torn slightly from what I could tell. The jacket and shirt together still looked nice.

  She had on faded jeans and well-worn leather sandals that showed toes
with blue-painted toenails. She clearly was no better off than I was, except more than likely I had a nicer apartment with my ocean sounds of Interstate Five.

  Her brown hair was long and pulled back and tied. Her skin looked well-washed.

  A kid with greasy hair and a nose ring who worked for the store came in with one cart and pushed it toward us.

  I laughed and turned to her. “Want to share?”

  “That’s all right,” she said, her voice soft and wonderful. “You go ahead. I’m in no hurry.”

  “Neither am I,” I said, smiling at her.

  People used to say back ten years ago in high school that I had a good smile, a smile that made people feel good, so I gave her my good smile.

  For the first time she actually looked at me over the shopping cart waiting to be claimed by one of us.

  I wasn’t a handsome man, but I had showered. I also had my long brown hair combed back and tied out of my face. And I was thin. Besides that, running around looking in dumpsters for bike parts kept me tanned.

  My ex-wife said that my staying thin as I got near thirty was one of the best things I had done for myself. I don’t think I gave it much thought. I just didn’t eat much and now couldn’t afford to drink more than two Pabst Blue Ribbons a night if I wanted the Pabst to last the month and still save money for my bike shop.

  Besides, more than two and I screwed up the bike part I was working on every time. Two was my limit.

  I guess that kept me thin.

  “You go ahead and take it,” she said, smiling. “But thanks.”

  I smiled back and nodded, but didn’t touch the cart.

  “To be honest,” I said, “I thought it would be fun to share a shopping cart again. I haven’t done that since my wife left last year.”

  “It’s been two years for me,” she said, smiling. “Although for the last year he didn’t shop with me much.”

  “Come to think of it, I did all of the shopping the last year of my marriage,” I said. “So I guess it’s been longer than two years for me as well.”

  “Who knew a person could miss joint shopping,” she said, smiling, a sort of wistful look in her eyes.

  I really liked her smile even though she had one chipped tooth on the right side. It gave her character and made her even more unique.

  “You sure you don’t want to give it a try again?”

  She hesitated, looking at the door to see if another cart would roll to her rescue, but there wasn’t one in sight that wasn’t firmly attached to another shopper’s hand.

  “You have a lot of things to buy?” she asked.

  “Just basics,” I said. “They don’t give me a lot of money on my card every month.”

  At that she smiled even wider. “I don’t get much either,” she said. “It would feel nice to actually have a full shopping cart for a change.”

  “If we combine forces, we might just do that,” I said, again giving her my best smile.

  “You are very nice,” she said, nodding. “Let’s do it.”

  “We’ll trade off pushing,” I said. “You first.”

  I bowed like I had seen some movie star do in a movie once and she laughed and took the position behind the cart.

  At that point I suppose I should have asked her name, but I just liked the idea of not knowing her name and she clearly didn’t want to know mine either.

  It was a great adventure.

  An adventure in the aisles of the Safeway grocery store.

  Who knew going to the Safeway grocery store on a hot Tuesday would be an adventure.

  It is a wonderful world.

  She picked up a bag of oranges.

  I picked up a bag of potatoes.

  Then she picked up some lettuce and bagged it and weighed it.

  “How do you keep that fresh for a month?” I asked.

  “I don’t,” she said. “I come back and buy more oranges and lettuce in two weeks. I use part of my unemployment for that.”

  “Where did you work?” I asked.

  “Construction firm office,” she said. “Bookkeeping.”

  “Construction as well,” I said. “The driving nails department.”

  Suddenly, besides a shopping cart, we had something else in common. That felt good.

  She kept track of what she was spending on a small calculator. I had one of those tiny spiral notebooks and an old pencil and I marked down each dollar.

  “I hate to get to the register and not have enough on my card,” I said, indicating the notebook in my hand.

  “Yeah, I did that once,” she said. “Had to leave stuff I really wanted.”

  Now we had three things in common. I had more in common with my shopping cart lover than I did with my ex-wife.

  We kept going, me talking about how I loved to work on bikes, the peddle kind, not the motor kind, and she talking about how she was slowly trying to set up her own accounting firm.

  “When I get my bike shop open, I’ll hire your company to do my books,” I said.

  She beamed at that. “Thanks.”

  Finally we both had run out of money on our cards and our shopping cart was almost full.

  Wonderfully full.

  I had been pushing it the last few aisles, so I said, “You want to push it the last distance to the check-out line?”

  “I would love to,” she said. “Thanks.”

  She pushed it like it was the most important job on the planet and I followed along proud of the moment.

  In line she sorted out her groceries first, then put that rubber thing between our stuff, which felt odd to be honest. We had shared so much in the last hour.

  Now we were divided.

  A simple strip of hard rubber indicated the wonderful adventure was almost over.

  The clerk checked her out and she stayed under her card limit by two dollars.

  A bagger with good hair and no nose ring at the end of the counter had found another cart and was putting her groceries in that.

  Now we were very separated, in two carts.

  And we had stopped talking.

  When she was all done and had her receipt in her pocket, she turned to me. “Thank you for an enjoyable day.”

  I could tell she was nervous and didn’t know what to say. We had shared a great deal in the last hour.

  “It was my pleasure,” I said. “How about next month on payment day we meet right here again at two o’clock and share a cart again.”

  Her smile returned, chipped tooth and all. “I would love that.”

  “So would I,” I said, giving her my best smile again as the clerk worked at checking out my groceries.

  “Until next month then,” she said.

  “Until then,” I said.

  She turned with a smile and pushed her own cart out of the door of the Safeway grocery store.

  I watched her walk away like watching the end of a good movie. It felt good to have happened, but sad that it was over.

  Usually I didn’t feel conflicted, but for the moment I did.

  I smiled at the clerk who just shook her head and finished my groceries and the bagger put them in the now only half-full cart.

  My groceries looked small and sort of sad sitting in that cart all alone. It seems my food had shared the same experience I had. My food would taste great.

  “Next month,” I said to my groceries as the clerk handed me my receipt and I headed out of the store toward my bike.

  I had a date with a wonderful woman in one month.

  A date with my shopping cart lover.

  I smiled and almost started to whistle.

  Between my shopping cart lover, fixing bikes, and listening to the ocean sounds of Interstate Five, life just couldn’t get much better.

  Poker Boy and his team have saved the world countless times. The Ghost of a Chance agency follows a similar charge. Superheroes and ghosts, all working for the greater good.

  But as two new members join the Ghost of a Chance team, both ghosts and superheroes face a
challenge that threatens to end the world.

  The Ghost Agents, including newly dead recruit Elliot and almost dead Deanna, team up with Poker Boy and his team to save the world.

  HEAVEN PAINTED AS A FREE MEAL

  A Ghost of a Chance Novel

  For Kris.

  Even more popcorn for the brain.

  SECTION ONE

  Jumping on Board

  ONE

  THE WIND HITTING his face around his goggles felt wonderful as Elliot West fell away from the drop plane just over sixty seconds before he was going to die.

  The day around him was a perfect spring afternoon. From ten thousand feet, he could see hundreds of miles in all directions over the vast Treasure Valley in Idaho. All the spring colors of the patchwork farmlands shown in bright shades of brown and greens.

  The clear air seemed to give everything a touch of vividness, a sharpness of detail that just couldn’t be imagined by anyone standing on the ground.

  Bogus Basin Ski Area above Boise looked almost small from this height, with the snow still clinging to some of the ridgelines. He could see beyond Shaffer Butte into the towering peaks of the central Idaho Mountains, still mostly covered in pure white.

  Below him and to the right was the wide gray ribbon of Interstate 80 that came out of the sprawling city and ran to the east toward the desert town of Mountain Home and to the west toward Oregon. Tiny dots of cars seemed to just creep along.

  The Snake River twisted to his left, high from spring runoff, and he could even see from his position where the Boise River joined into the Snake River, something in all his jumps he had never noticed before.

  Every time up here he noticed something new, felt something different, experienced a new high. Deanna, his girlfriend, called him a flat-out adrenaline junkie and at the moment he couldn’t have argued with her.

  The sound of the wind increased as he picked up speed, holding in stable position for a moment.