by Amy L Cornell
I have checked out at Kroger and realized I had forgotten something. I double back to grab what I need so I can head home. I leave my cart full of paid groceries at the front of the store and wend my way back to the aisles. I pause at the seasonal sales—the ones with all the Valentine candy—because something feels off. A couple stands in the middle of the section arguing. I can feel the tension as I approach them. I can see heat in the air, and I begin to realize it is not an argument but a tirade. The man yells at the woman who tries to calm him as his anger comes streaming out of his body, especially his hands and fingertips. He towers over her and his thick dark hair and bushy beard give him the presence of a yeti. His arms wave around his body in an awkward pantomime. I hear him now because he is screaming at the top of his lungs: Who does that!? Who steals a pair of eye-glasses!? and one of his long arms suddenly, purposefully, swings at a cardboard display of jumbo candy bars and the pyramid of chocolate goes crashing to the floor sending candy bars everywhere.
I debate for a moment about whether or not I should stop him. Do I need to rescue this woman who is neat and coiffed and clearly trying to calm him by talking as quietly and as small as she can? “Please,” she says, “Not here. Keep it together.”
I try not to look; I am Lot’s wife.
He says, “Fucking state. Fucking Indiana.” He blames his problems and his bad day on the state of Indiana, and I immediately think: No one in Indiana stole your fucking glasses. Hating one’s life in fucking Indiana is not a reason to have a tantrum in the candy aisle at the grocery store. Suddenly, I am frozen with uncertainty. What is one supposed to do in moments of outrageous public behavior? I had not a clue and no Hallmark movie had prepared me for this moment of utter bafflement at how to intervene to stop a man’s apelike conduct toward an aisle of chocolate and an entire state. Not to mention how to comfort? Assist? his soft-spoken companion who desperately wanted to go home and end the spectacle.
Eager to get home to my kids, my dinner, and out of the store, I scan the aisles for what I forgot. Except that the couple, standing a few feet from me, are effectively blocking the aisle I need, and I am trapped in rows of foil wrapped hearts. How do I look for a way out without looking at them?
He screams “Fucking Indiana” again and stomps out of seasonal Valentine displays and into the nearby pet food aisle where he purposefully pushes over a huge stack of bagged dogfood as the woman follows him, begging him to stop. She puts her hands across her face in a gesture of defeat. Forty-pound bags of Alpo stacked to shoulder height topple over and the highest one lands awkwardly and busts open, dog food scattering over the shiny aisles.
Everyone in the vicinity of the dog food freezes, and even though the Muzak is belting out Olivia Newton John singing “Physical”, we can all hear and feel everything that is happening. This section of the grocery store has become a mini stage. The shopper audience is hushed and can’t look away even though we all know we must.
The woman, who clearly knows how to handle this rage, backs away from the man and the mess. No one can look at the couple or the carnage because if you do you might get sucked in. We know we need to bear witness, but we can’t, we don’t. Women with babies pretend to play with them in their carts. Men picking up milk and eggs for their wives look at their shoes. Shoppers to want to help, pick up the scattered bars of Toblerone, or lead the woman to safety, but none of us do. We are caught, silently wishing a store manager would come.
The woman says in a gentle voice, so gentle that we must strain to hear it. “We should go. Let’s get what we came for and go.” The woman has trained and modulated her voice to calm this man. He kicks the bags of dog food again, and they spill more. He screeches again, “Who steals a pair of glasses?! Fucking Indiana. I hate this place.” We all hear that. Clear as a bell. Everyone considers what this means for us—residents of this state—our home. Do we care that a raging bearded man unapologetically hates the state we call home?
I had come back into the store for a jar of Vaseline which is one more aisle away. I need to get it and get my groceries and go home. The woman’s hands are in front of her, like she is about to block a tackle. She is wearing glasses and a sad hat with a pom-pom that has wilted like the grey snow outside. “Please,” she is silently mouthing. That please is sad. So weary. I want to hug her. All of us perusing the pet food aisles, the chocolate selection, and the ones that are blocked from their shopping because of mounds of dogfood spilled in the main thoroughfare are all contemplating that “please”. We silently join her in the plea. But don’t look! To look would be to include oneself in the drama and it is late, and we all want to be home after the long February day. Is there a store manager on the way? I turn my head and stare right at the mess and the waving arms. The woman has set down her basket of groceries, “Jake,” she says, “Let’s just go. We’ll find them.”
And he points in a circle around him. Casting a spell on each of us. “All of you fucking idiots,” he says. The mother with her baby seems wounded at being called an idiot. “All of you Indiana assholes are responsible. Mind your own fucking business.”
By now all of us have silently communicated and conspired to remain silent and let his tirade ring in his own ears. He will be haunted by his actions forever we think. I am surrounded by spilled dogfood and foil covered chocolate hearts. I am afraid he will call me out for being a fucking Hoosier if I move. But I must go. My groceries at the front of the store may be stolen or put back. My heart is heavy for the woman trying to calm him.
She holds him by his coat sleeve. Ahh, at last, a manager is arriving as they are leaving. “Clean up in Aisle 14,” he says into a walkie-talkie as he steps and crushes dog food with his penny loafers. She has left her basket and carefully walks around the dogfood. She sags further with every step. And he wants to make sure everyone hears him. “Fucking Indiana,” he says again enunciating every syllable in Indiana, and with that pronouncement, I am freed to go. I grab what I came for and head quickly to check out. I meet a few other eyes, spectators to the great valentine-dogfood carnage in Aisle 14. We silently ask each other: Did you see that? Did you steal his glasses? He’s an asshole. You can’t blame your stupidity on a state. Can you? I was about to step in, but he seemed to calm down. What were you going to do? Thank god the manager arrived. He must be a New Yorker. Only New Yorkers behave like that in our state, in our lovely little Kroger.
Fucking Indiana I thought as I checked out and grabbed my cart. The parking lot lights had flipped on while I was in the store, and temperatures had dropped again. I felt chilly and overwhelmed by Kroger, but I would have a story to tell at the dinner table that night. I imagined I saw the man’s glasses on a window ledge or better yet, on a chain around his neck, symbol of his own arrogance.
As I pull out of the parking lot, humming Physical, I see the man. He stands outside Kroger all alone, arms folded across his chest, his head hangs a bit, still steaming, tapping his toes, folded tight unto himself —defeated Yeti, dogfood-spilling-tantrum-thrower. Fucking Indiana indeed. I hope the woman is long gone. I hope she left him on the sidewalk and took their old Subaru and drove as far as she could away from him and the store stopping only for Diet Pepsi and Snicker Bars on her way to another place leaving him stranded in fucking Indiana.
Amy L Cornell recently received her MFA from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing in Louisville, Kentucky. She is active with Women Writing for a Change where she leads writing circles for incarcerated women. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana and is proud to be a Hoosier.
January House Literary Journal 
Leave a comment