A Hometown Moment
His cart had a bum wheel and it turned right into the shelf. But even it if had been freshly oiled, Clover would still have knocked down the row of tomato paste. Nobody peeked their head down his aisle, even though surely someone had heard the crash. The store was that small.
Clover was suffocating. He needed the alcohol to live. But instead of the boozy peace he used to attain, now he felt restless and ashamed inside, while his body became this bumbling shell which was dying, literally rotting away. And he began to cry. Nobody could really remember how long he had lived in the town, because even though Stockton Falls was small, nobody paid attention to the past. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been doing his shopping like this, so drunk he couldn’t see. So drunk that sometimes he wet his pants. Clover didn’t want this life, but it seem to have found him all the same. Town drunk. And neither he, nor anyone else, chose to remember any other incarnation he may have had.
She peeked her head around the corner and her face nearly broke when she saw his unabashed weeping. Clover didn’t notice her taking the list out of his shaking hand. He didn’t notice that she found all of his items and placed him in his cart. And he didn’t notice that she put a twenty in his front shirt pocket.
When he felt cried out, he started pushing the cart again and saw it was full. He didn’t know how. Clover chalked it up to being drunker than he thought.
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