“I know it’s not snazzy, but you would not believe how much it can hold,” Amy said, sensing his objection.
“How much are we getting? The storm won’t last more than a day.”
“Harrison, you do not understand,” she said impatiently. “It’s supposed to snow. If it snows, we are stuck. Fordays! We donotknow how to do snow here. We are not one of those states north of the Red River where everyone toboggans to work. There are not enough snowplows to help us, so we need to be prepared. Did you not hear about the Snowmageddon of ’21?”
He vaguely remembered a statewide power outage during a freak winter storm that went on for a week. “I think I might have heard acouple of things,” he said uncertainly. But Amy didn’t hear him. She was already in the van.
He climbed into the passenger seat and looked around. Duchess was in the dog booster behind them, curled up and asleep. “This thing is like a cockpit,” he said, taking in the enormous dashboard and the futuristic lighting.
“It’s a beast,” Amy agreed. “We need a store.”
“I saw one a couple of miles toward the highway,” Harrison offered.
“Food?”
“Yes.”
“Clothes?”
Clothes? “Umm…maybe some T-shirts?”
“Hmm,” Amy said. “Did it look like the kind of place that would have lighter fluid or fire sticks, that sort of thing?”
Harrison laughed. “Are we going to have to burn the house down to survive?”
“You jest, but we have to be prepared for all possibilities.” She put the minivan in gear and took off. At a clip, he noticed.
The minivan rode like a boat, a soft swaying on its axle. Amy turned on the radio. “Are you okay with rock and roll?”
Harrison grinned. “I’m okay with whatever you can pick up out here.”
“We used to come out here in high school,” she said. “There’s an old quarry halfway to Sherman where we would go to drink the booze we stole from our parents.”
“Sounds totally safe,” he said.
“No, it was terribly dangerous and I would absolutely die if I knew one of my sons was doing that. But come on, we weren’t saints, right?” She looked at him. “Wait…were you?”
“I…I wasn’t a saint,” he said. But he had been, sort of. Only because he was playing golf when he wasn’t at school. As Amy went on to tell himabout the night the sheriff rolled up and caused them all to scatter on foot (she lost her favorite pair of sandals, which still seemed to be a source of irritation), Harrison realized that he didn’t have a history to share. Everything in his life had been about golf. He could not begin to imagine what it would be without golf. That picture, in his head, was just a blank landscape.
Just before they reached a highway, he pointed out Carlotta Jane’s General Store and Amy pulled in.
Next to Carlotta Jane’s was a taco shack, and on the other side, a tire store. All three storefronts were festooned with Christmas lights. The glass windows were painted with pine trees and snow. Amy got Duchess, and together, they walked inside, both of them coming to a halt right over the threshold. The place was…interesting.
The wood floors and paneled walls gave off a barnlike vibe. So did the fake barn windows painted on the walls. The head of a longhorn steer hung on one wall, which Harrison thought was a choice. Just inside the entrance was a rack of cowboy hats and belts, almost as if people raced in every day for the hat and belt before they got down the road. A sign indicated boots were in the back.
On the other side of the center Christmas tree was a rack of toys and a big box painted to look like a chimney. A sign invited the patron to buy a toy and put it in the chimney to be distributed to underprivileged children. Behind that, Harrison could see a small grocery section, and next to that, home goods.
“Wow,” Amy said, cradling Duchess to her. “This store haseverything.” She sounded impressed.
Harrison turned around and pulled a cart from the line of them. “Shall we?”
“We definitely shall,” Amy replied. She pulled a mat out of her tote, put it on the baby seat of the cart, and deposited Duchess there. She pointed in the direction of the groceries.
They wandered the aisles with an eclectic selection of delicacies mixed in with the more run-of-the-mill offerings. Harrison held up a tin of caviar to see what Amy thought about adding it to the basket. Amy looked at him like he was an alien and held up a tin of bean dip.
“Now we’re talking,” Harrison said, and put the caviar back on the shelf. “Fritos? Or tortilla chips?”
“What do you think?” Amy asked.
