FICTION
The Little Things
by J. L. Hagen
I stood in the checkout line at the South Haven, Michigan, Meijer store, waiting my turn. A short, dark-haired, copper-faced young woman was ringing up the shopper in front of me.
I placed my items on the conveyor, starting with six 1.5-liter bottles of wine. You get a discount if you buy four or more. Since my wife and I are on Social Security, we try to save a few dollars. As the bottles stopped at the scanner, the cashier glanced in my direction.
She giggled. “You ready to haveparty!”
I couldn’t place her accent. “You wanna come?” I winked and offered a seductive smile. Admittedly, it had faded a bit since I turned seventy, three years earlier.
She laughed again. “I just return from camp.” Then she called out, “Al-co-hol!”
A bearded employee at the next checkout lane glanced over his shoulder. “Okay, we’ll switch.”
She was underage and couldn’t ring up “adult beverages.”
I tried another peek at her face, but her back was turned. What camp had she referenced—church camp? Band camp? Had I actually flirted with a high school student? As I hustled out the exit door, I felt my face flush.
“Thank you for shopping at Meijer,” the greeter singsonged.
As I navigated the two-lane back to my house on Lake Michigan, the grocery store girl flashed into mind, and my neck prickled again. Then, another image replaced it—Hortencia Rosas. And Benny Jones.
“You’re still such a damn fool,” I mumbled.
A chain of free associations conjured up the little store Mrs. Beatrice Jones ran from the front of her house in Loyale, where I grew up. Despite its size, in the mid-fifties, when I first rode my bike over for a five-cent soda pop, it was a bustling business. It sat at the head of Gateway Lane. This mile-long street led from the main highway to the passenger ferry service between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. In that asphalt desert, especially in tourist season when the wait to board could take five hours, the store must have appeared like an oasis.
The Bridge from Loyale to “Down Below” had changed all that, but somehow the store survived. Mrs. Jones was kind to a fault and always willing to give a few bucks from the till to support causes. Her husband Alex, who packed around 300 pounds on his five-and-a-half-foot frame, shared not only her physical stature but her disposition as well. They were polite, cheerful, patriotic, and, no doubt, steadfast Catholics.
As was their son, Benny. He looked and spoke like his dad. Soft voice, round face and sandy blond, short-cropped hair. But Benny stood four inches shorter and weighed-in 150 pounds less. And on a football field, he ran a hundred times faster, eluding tackles on the way to his next touchdown. Anyone who tried to take him down regretted it for weeks after nursing painful sprains and bruises. I know. In 1965, when I was a sophomore and Benny a freshman, I faced him in a junior varsity practice scrimmage.
After we collided in a tackling drill, my brain swooned and my hand felt wobbly, almost numb. I held it up. My ring finger at the first joint made a sharp L-turn to the left over my pinky.
“Coach … coach!” I squawked. I extended my arm so he could see the terrifying injury.
He popped it into place. “You’re all right. Get back in line and go again.”
I shuffled my position so some other lineman could enjoy the dubious pleasure of hearing his ears ring for the next three days.
Benny’s center of gravity was so low, he was impossible to knock down, like trying to topple a one-hundred-fifty-pound tombstone. Two years later, he was the reason the Warriors went 8-0. He won the U.P.’s Most Valuable Player award.
That should have earned him a scholarship to play college football. And he should have had his pick of any girl at Loyale High School. But his classroom performance didn’t match his talent on the gridiron, and his height placed him at an apparent disadvantage when it came to opportunities for romance. That is until Hortencia Rosas enrolled after Christmas break.
“Did you see the new girl?” Maki exclaimed during lunch on the first day back.
“She’s in my Home Room,” Red said.
I turned to Maki. “What new girl? Is she—?”
“Wait ‘til you see her.”
“Yeah, she looks Indian,” Red added. “Must be boarding, over from the Island.”
“Nah, that’s not right,” Maki said. “Jeanie Marchant told me she’s staying with them.”
“She’s tiny,” Red said. “Can’t be over four-and-a-half feet—”
“She’s sixteen,” Maki butted in. “And get this, she’s Mexican—from Acapulco.”
“Acapulco?” I said, “What the heck is she doing in Loyale in
