Free Flying Shoes by Lisa Howorth Page A

day, she would have. Today, she thought to herself that whatever assholes they were, these children were hers, so far alive and well and as far as she knew unmolested and maybe pretty happy, probably more out of luck or fate than any good care or protection she and Charles had given them.
    “Oh. My day? I guess I’d have to say it sucked,” she conceded. “It sucked big-time.”
    The children looked at each other wide-eyed and laughed. “What’s for dinner?” William asked.
    Dinner. Good question. The bad day had knocked the sense out of her and she hadn’t planned a meal. She’d drop Meggie off and make a quick stop at the Jones Food Center. She wanted to scare up Teever, anyway, if only to see if he could work in the yard while she was gone, but also to ask if he’d drive her to the airport so Charles wouldn’t have to. She cringed at the thought of a plane trip. An idea occurred to her: was it total insanity to get Teever to drive with her to Virginia?
    She only had a few things to get and hoped Eliza and William would stay in the car, but that wasn’t happening. William jumped out and ran ahead, while Eliza walked slowly enough to distance herself from William but quickly enough to appear not to be with her mother. Having a locally owned downtown grocery store was such a luxury, but Mary Byrd also thought that its handiness encouraged her poor planning. Because it was only three blocks away at the end of her street, she found herself running there constantly, sometimes two or three times a day, for whatever. A big Kroger had opened recently out by the highway—the condo people were all over that—and she did shop there for certain things like seafood or panty hose, and Kroger’s prices were sometimes lower and they had seafood and better produce, but she was devoted to the Jones Food Center and valued all that it meant, as much as any ancient Athenian had valued his agora. The corner candy store for the children; the place where she could cash a counter check at midnight to pay the babysitter, buy a bale of hay or a sack of manure or a Mad m agazine or Baby Tylenol or Tampax, or tiny new potatoes from Mr. Hollowell’s farm. If the JFC didn’t have it, you probably didn’t need it all that much. From the checkers and sackers, some of whom were challenged in various ways, you could get a five-day weather forecast, gardening or cooking tips, or a rundown on who was in the hospital (published every day in the Mercury ) and why. If you needed your garden turned, Mr. Johnny could conjure up a guy with two mules who would come and do it. There was also a bulletin board where just about anything was posted: cars, services, hunting dogs, house parties, church events, messages, and bad checks. On the way out she was going to leave a message for Teever.
    William and Eliza had probably gone off to the cooler in the back for chocolate Yoo-hoos and Jungle Juice. Mary Byrd headed toward the meat counter for pork chops, passing disorderly shelves with products bearing vintage labels that could pass for stuff that had been sitting there for decades: School Days English Peas, Red Bird imitation Vienna sausages, Possum brand sardines (when she’d first come to town they’d still carried canned Negro Head Oysters), Picayune and Home Run cigarettes, Tulip brand snuff, King Leo stick candy, and Rock’n Roll Stage Plank cookies with Pepto-pink icing showing through the wax wrappers. Grabbing a jar of pasta sauce, she approached the meat, breathing shallowly. The meat bins stank weirdly of the paradoxical aromas of Clorox and spoilage. In them were stacked fatback, souse, Day-Glo–red hot dogs, and nearly every part of a cow or a hog: feet, stomachs, ears, jowls, neck bones, tails, and giant testicles labeled bull fries or pork fries , which were inexplicably packaged three to a pack. There were other things just labeled meat . Mary Byrd looked through the chops for a set that wasn’t too gray or rainbowy and then headed to