THE GOOD EARTH GROCERY by Richard Dokey
Lorraine liked Winston, but Winston did not know it. Thurston, Winston’s younger brother, liked Lorraine, but no one knew about that, not even Thurston, who had been placed in a county facility for the mentally challenged on Acacia Street. Winston did not know what else to do after their mother died.
Melvin, the older brother, did not care if anyone did anything. Melvin said, “We have lives of our own to live, don’t we?” He said, “No one has a claim on anyone else’s life. There are too many things I want to do.” Melvin had no particular regard for Thurston anyway, so, in Melvin’s mind, he was justified.
Winston did care, so he became the de facto caretaker for Thurston. Caretaker meant, as much as Winston could figure, that he saw Thurston whenever he could. It meant that he took Thurston candy bars (Thurston was partial to Snickers and York Mint Patties). It meant that he took Thurston to lunch at A Taste of Thai, where Thurston always ordered panang curry in hot pan. It meant that he sat with Thurston in the park across the street for a while talking about anything Thurston wanted to talk about, which wasn’t much, so they ended up sitting for a time, watching the people and listening to the sounds. Then Winston returned Thurston to the facility on Acacia Street. Winston loved his brother, as much as Winston could understand about love. For Thurston’s part, feelings were a mystery. He knew that what he felt for Winston was not what he felt for Melvin. Thurston liked that. He was rewarded by a kind of singularity, like owning a thing nobody else could own.
Melvin never asked anything about anything. Melvin and Winston lived together to share expenses, and that was the name of that. Melvin thought Winston was all right, in a Winston way, just soft around the edges. The brothers were self-reliant. They recognized this quality in each other as something to be admired. They just had different ways of showing it.
Then Melvin found a new job with the Southern Pacific Railroad and in no time was made second clerk at the freight office downtown. Winston took courses at the community college at night and found a position as a building inspector for the city. His first big job was to inspect the construction of The Good Earth Grocery on the south side of town. Good Earth was part of the urban renewal project. One day he saw the manager of Good Earth standing on the sidewalk watching the work. Winston told the manager about Thurston.
“He’s slow,” Winston said, “but dependable and reliable and will work all day if you ask him to. Tell him to do something, he does it. It would be good for him to be in the world a little more.”
The manager, whose name was Sid, didn’t frown or bat an eye. “Well,” he said, “we’ll need folks to stock shelves and to wheel shopping carts for customers.”
“Just something part time, maybe,” Winston said. “He can do what you said. Easily. And he’ll never take a thing.”
The manager smiled. “All right,” he said. “We’ll see about it when the store gets finished.”
Lorraine was the new bookkeeper for Good Earth. That’s how she met Winston. Right off, she liked him.
She heard from Sid how it was with Thurston and how Winston was setting everything up and taking care of Thurston. She thought that was particularly fine, and felt warm.
Then Melvin moved into a duplex on North Center Street. “Everyone should have their own place,” Melvin said. “Everyone should take care of their own business and get on with their own life and let everyone else get on with theirs. I don’t want to live in a bubble and see the same things over and over and not do what I want to do. I don’t want any more about what Thurston needs and taking care of Thurston when it’s nobody’s fault anyway. Thurston’s being taken care of, isn’t he, Win? Thurston can’t stack one experience on another to make some kind of person anyone can relate to. Now, you’re doing these extra things, and that’s fine, but you’re you and I’m not you. I’ve got my life too, damn it. I won’t be held back by something that can’t go forward and isn’t anybody’s fault. I’m moving out, Win. I’ll help with any money as much as I can.”
There cannot be two generals. Melvin knew that Winston was amenable to taking command. He didn’t need to make a speech, but he made it, and now he felt better. He moved into the duplex on North Center Street and began to entertain women.
Here was a sense of abandonment not unfamiliar to Winston. He felt a bit frightened and unprepared. He felt he had to do something, even if he didn’t know what to do.
Mildred, the mother of the boys, had divorced their father before any one of them had reached the age of ten. She raised the brothers on whatever she could bring in. She moved them, back and forth, sometimes to Twin Falls, Idaho, where she had gone to school, sometimes to Medford, Oregon, where she got a job in her brother-in-law’s steak house, and then to French Camp, between Stockton and Tracy, California, where she changed residences some six or seven times, as she lost one job and found another, before collapsing from a heart attack after her second bypass. “I won’t give up my sausage and eggs for breakfast,” she declared. “I won’t give up my bowl of vanilla ice cream,” which, smothered by Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup, she put down each night before bed. “There are few enough pleasures in this life,” she said. “I won’t give up all my things, just to stay alive wanting them.”
So the brothers were on their own.
Lorraine knew none of this. She only knew what she saw in Winston’s face when Winston came in to Good Earth Grocery. She liked how Winston was with Thurston, how he taught Thurston which bus to take, how he kept Thurston clean and neat and how he taught Thurston about being polite and appropriate with anyone in the store, and how the customer was always right. She realized that Winston understood that Thurston was a reflection of himself, that what Thurston was, was what Winston thought about Winston. After all, she reasoned, you can’t teach someone something you know nothing about yourself. In watching Thurston, she opened a window into the man she had come to admire so much. There were few enough Winstons in this world. When Lorraine found out that Melvin was a brother too, she hoped she would never see him come into Good Earth. She could not stand being around people who saw only themselves.
Good Earth had an area for coffee and pastries next to the bakery at the back of the store. There were two leatherette sofas and small tables with wicker chairs. Newspapers and magazines were on the tables, so that customers could be at home while they rested from shopping. Thurston sat there during his breaks, sipping Pepsi and eating animal cookies from a rectangular box. Lorraine tried to take her breaks when Thurston took his.
She tried to engage Thurston. She wanted to hear Thurston tell about himself and his brothers. Thurston nodded, smiled a bit and tried to say something, because his life was not a secret. Life was there, and you lived it.
Lorraine did not ask big questions.
“Did your mother put anything besides Hershey’s syrup on her ice cream, Thurston?”
Thurston said, “Strawberries sometimes. Always whipped cream. I remember walnuts.”
“Did you eat strawberries and whipped cream too, Thurston?”
“I ate what Mommy fixed.”
“She was a good cook, then, isn’t that so?”
“I don’t know,” Thurston said. “I like what she fixed.”
“How come you like these animal cookies so much? That’s all you have on your breaks.”
“They taste good,” he said. “They make me drink Pepsi.”
“How did you find out about animal cookies?”
“Winston brought me some. He brings me things.”
“Just Winston, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?”
“Does your other brother bring you things too? Special things, I mean.”
“Melvin brought me some rocks,” Thurston said. “Some big rocks.”
“Rocks?”
“So I could make things. I like making things with other things.”
“What did Melvin do then?”
“What do you mean?”
Lorraine did not know what she meant. She wanted Thurston to discuss something. She wanted him to remember how everything was and what everyone did, how they were and what they liked and how they lived together. She wanted to be a fly on the wall and to see how Mildred was and how Winston and Melvin were so different and why, because she had never met Melvin and never wanted to meet him. There was something in those four people, something recognizable. She wanted to know how it had all come about, and why it was the same.
For a time Lorraine was an only child, which can be difficult if the two adults in the house are not paired. Isabel, Lorraine’s mother, did not want to have children. Her father thought it was all right, if the child was a boy. Lorraine thought often about how she and her own mother and father were and how they had tormented her little brother Dennis, who came along eight years later by accident, too late for her father to give a damn and so far away from anything her mother wanted from the rest of her life that Isabel felt condemned by motherhood.
Dennis brought dead birds home to bury. He gave his tiny allowance to homeless people he met on the street. He frightened the little girl next door because he was different. Isabel slapped Dennis often. Edgar, Lorraine’s father, beat him mercilessly because Dennis reminded him of the promise he had made to himself long ago and that now was impossible to keep. Lorraine hid from Dennis’s screams in her room. She pulled a pillow over her head. Finally Dennis ran away. Nobody ever heard from Dennis again. Lorraine wanted no part of ever being a mother.
Sometimes Winston sat on a leatherette sofa waiting for Thurston when Thurston was a bit slow finishing a shelf or was still working his last cart. Lorraine made it a point to come out of her office for a cup of French roast and a plain glazed donut. Winston had clear, blue eyes and a shock of tawny hair that favored his left brow. Each time Lorraine saw the shock of hair she wanted to wet her fingers and press it into place. Winston glanced through whatever paper was on the table and seemed indifferent to people. One day Lorraine sat down on the sofa with her French roast and glazed doughnut.
“Waiting for your brother again,” she said.
Winston looked up. His eyes were bluer still, as though, when he focused them, they reflected something deep and more alive. He nodded.
“I work here too,” she said, “and couldn’t help noticing. My name is Lorraine Dexter. I know you’re Winston, Thurston’s brother. I’ve seen you with him.”
“Yes,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
“I just wanted to tell you, I admire so much what you’re doing for Thurston.”
“What I’m doing?” Winston said.
“I mean, Sid told me about it. Thurston, I mean. Sid says Thurston is the hardest-working person in the store. I admire Thurston so much. Such courage, I mean. Such a fine young man. He does work so hard. Sid says he wishes everyone he’s got should work so hard as Thurston works. And Thurston never complains. I haven’t heard him say a harsh word about anything. I admire that so much.”
“You feel sorry for Thurston.”
“Oh, no. No. Not at all. Never. Feeling sorry, what does that accomplish?”
“I wish there was more I could do,” Winston said. “I have to work too.”
“Of course,” she said. “You can only do what you can do.”
“That’s true. Yes. But there should be more. I don’t know. What else can I do?”
After awhile Lorraine was pretty much always there when Winston waited for Thurston. She was able to find out about the facility where Thurston stayed and what Thurston and Winston did when they were together on the weekends. She found out about A Taste of Thai and said, “Oh, I hear that’s the best one in town,” and Winston said, “Maybe you could come along sometime. Thurston has talked more than once about you.”
“Oh, I would like that so much,” Lorraine said. “And I’ll pay for my own, of course.”
“I wouldn’t hear of that.”
She blushed. “I do like Thurston.”
It was all she had hoped for.
Then one day Winston fell from a scaffold while inspecting a grain elevator at the port. He was rushed unconscious to Dameron Hospital. He remained unconscious. After awhile the doctor called it a coma. Winston was in this coma, the doctor said. No one knew what would happen.
Lorraine went to the hospital. She sat on the bed, where Winston was in his coma. She wanted to look past the closed lids to the eyes that were so blue and brighter than anything else alive. She said, “Winston, it’s me. It’s Lorraine.” But Winston didn’t say anything. Winston wasn’t there. Just his coma was there. So she talked to what was in the bed.
Melvin came to the hospital to see Winston. Melvin was struggling to do what Winston did for Thurston, but Melvin was struggling more to do what Melvin wanted to do for Melvin. In the hallway, through the half-open door, Lorraine heard Melvin talking to the doctor.
“I’m sorry, Doc,” he said. “Thurston has to give up that job, at least until Winston comes out of it. Then Winston can just keep on being Winston again. It’s the way it’s got to be. Thurston’s taken care of where he is. Isn’t he, Doc? He’s not hurting for anything. So, there it is. Win comes out of it, everything’s back the way it was. But I’ve got to move on.”
Lorraine stood in the hallway. She thought that maybe this was the most evil thing she had ever heard. She strode into the room and said, “I’ll do the things that Winston was doing. When Winston wakes up, he’ll do them again.” Melvin’s eyes widened. He had no objection to any of it. He was thinking of that rustic motel in Fort Bragg, where he wanted to take Molly Seltzer, whom he had met the week before at Jake Balaban’s party.
Lorraine talked to Thurston. She said, “Thurston, would you like me to pick you up for work and then take you back here when you’re all done?”
“What do you mean?” Thurston asked.
“I mean, well, Thurston, Winston has to be away for awhile. There’s a big job he has to do.”
“What job?”
“A very big, important job that will take all of his time for awhile.”
“What do you mean?” Thurston said.
“Well, that’s all right,” she said. “Winston and I had a big talk, and he thinks it’s a fine idea for me to pick you up for work and take you back. I can change my break times to match yours. I can have my coffee and doughnut, and you can have your Pepsi and animal cookies. Wouldn’t you like that? We’ll just keep it all the way it is until Winston comes home.”
“I like animal cookies,” Thurston said.
“We could talk and plan and figure out what we’re going to do. We could go to A Taste of Thai. You could have curry in hot pan. Wouldn’t that be great?”
“Yes,” Thurston said.
Thurston looked at Lorraine. Lorraine felt the eyes, like a blanket on her face.
“On the weekends,” she said, “maybe we could do some special things.”
“What things?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know right off. Things you might want to do with Winston. Say, I just thought of something.”
“What?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, “what do you like to eat?”
“Pancakes,” he said immediately.
“That’s fine,” she laughed. “We could have pancakes for breakfast, then. I’ll make them for you. Now, what else, Thurston?”
“Pancakes,” he said.
“Sunday morning, too?”
“Any morning,” Thurston said. “Anytime. I like pancakes.”
“Well, then, why couldn’t we have pancakes for dinner sometime? Why not? But we can’t have pancakes every time we eat, now, can we? Tell me something else you like.”
“I like anything Winston fixes.”
She smiled. “All right, then,” she said. “We’ll just feel our way along, and you can tell me some of those things when you think of them. Then I’ll fix them for you. Sound okay? And I may have a surprise or two up my sleeve you might like just as much.”
“I like surprises,” he said.
“Well,” she laughed, “here’s the first one. Sometimes, if they will allow you to leave here, you could stay at my home with me for a day or two. That would make everything easier on the weekends, wouldn’t it? I have a spare room. You could have it all to yourself.”
“I never had any room,” Thurston said.
“Well, you will,” she said.
Lorraine took Thurston to Good Earth each morning that he worked, though this meant that she got to her desk a half hour before her regular time. She returned Thurston to the facility each afternoon when Thurston was done, though this meant having to wait an extra half hour after her regular time. In the evening, or any time she could manage, she went to the hospital to see Winston.
She drew the vinyl chair next to Winston’s bed and took Winston’s hand. She talked to Winston and told Winston all the things that Thurston and she had been doing since the last time she talked to Winston.
After a time she thought, he won’t wake up. In spite of all the stories about people being in comas for years and then waking up and being alive again, he won’t ever wake up.
There was Winston. There was Thurston. Now she held Winston’s hand. Now she held Thurston’s hand. She held the wondrous thing she had always wanted, that was hers now, for the first time.
Richard Dokey is the author of two novels, The Hollywood Cafe (River’s Bend Press, 2013) and The Hollow Man (Delta West Press, 1999) and two story collections, Pale Morning Dun (University of Missouri Press, 2004) and August Heat (Story Press, 1982). His stories have appeared in TriQuarterly, Missouri Review, New Letters, Confrontation, and Grain.