Free Dirty Work by Larry Brown

one o’clock. I saw this girl sitting behind the counter, and hell, I didn’t know her. And you know, somebody who looks like me, coming in on her at that hour of the night. Shit, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t figure she’d let me have it. But I wanted some beer. I was gonna go back home and smoke some dope and watch
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
Watch old Willsmother Jack again. Loved him so damn much he killed him. Which would be a hell of a thing to have to do for somebody. And then when he tears that damn sink out of the floor and throws it through the window. I’ll get high and rewind that last three or four minutes four or five times.
    “So I didn’t know what to do. I was just standing out on the front there. She was watching me. I guess she thought I was some kind of a creep. I guess I looked like I was.
    “But I went on in and spoke to her, you know, and she spoke, asked me what I wanted. I told her I wanted some beer. She said it was after midnight and she couldn’t sell me any.
    “She’s got blond hair. She’s built real nice. I was looking at her breasts and I know she saw it. She’s really just a kid. But very grown up somehow. I’ve sort of got some guilty feelings about some of this. But I noticed she was dressed kind of funny for as hot as it was. She had on long pants and a long-sleeved shirt. I mean it was air-conditioned in the store, but it wasn’t
that
air-conditioned. I didn’t mean to stare at her. She just looked so good it was hard not to.
    “I told her I knew Earl and all and we went to high school together and he always let me have it if it was late. And she says Earl was the one who told her not to sell it after midnight and Earl was the one who told her he’d fire her if he caught her doing it. So I felt like a dumbass. But I got kind of pissed off. I mean, you go over there and get a hole shot in your head and then come home andhave to listen to some shit from a teenager about buying a little beer after hours. Hell. She wasn’t going to sell it to me. So I just politely went down to the cooler and got two six-packs of Bud and carried it and put it on the counter.
    “She asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. I told her I was buying some beer. I told her my name was Walter and I lived down the road and I came in there and got it all the time. I told her not to get upset. She said she wasn’t upset, she just didn’t want to lose her job. I told her there wasn’t any reason to be scared of me. But, hell, it was late, and she was alone in there. She was upset. But I knew what the beer cost. I already had the money out. The sales tax, too. She told me I’d better just get out of there before she called the law. I wasn’t worried about that. I knew I could get away before the law got there. Unless I passed out first.
    “Well, I put my money up on the counter. She wasn’t going to ring it up at first. I said fine, don’t ring it up. But I said there the money was anyway. And she just changed all of a sudden. I remember what she said. She said I’m sorry for looking at you. For staring at you, she said. I said well hell, that was okay, most people did. And she reached under the counter and got me a sack. Rang it up. Sacked up my beer. I told her I didn’t mean to scare her. But I told her, a lot of people were scared of me. She said she wasn’t scared, it was just the first job she’d ever had.
    “Hell, I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t thinking about trying to get over on her or anything. I figured I’d just take my beer and go back home and watch Nicholson. Gethigh. She asked me if I was walking and I said yeah. Then she asked me how far away I lived. I told her it was about three miles. She said she knew me, that she’d heard of me, that she’d heard Earl mention me before. And hell, we just got to talking. She said I just surprised her because I walked up and she didn’t hear me, just looked out the window and I was standing there. She