Everyone was quiet. What was the point of this story, Oscar wondered, except to freak them the hell out?
They got off at Visalia and took a two-lane road to the north. Here, in the eastern part of the valley, there were hundreds of citrus groves. Lemons and oranges were plump in the trees, in rows that extended to the horizon. Every mile or two, they saw a makeshift fruit stand. The citrus groves were broken up by low, open fields; there were signs for squash and bushels of cucumbers. With the opening up of the landscape, the small quiet roads, Oscar felt more of the city fall away. The old wood-frame houses had tall, square structures behind them that looked like guard towers.
As they approached the junction with the highway that led up to the mountains, there was a cluster of buildings—a diner, flanked on one side by a dozen trailers. Across the narrow two-lane road stood a rectangular brick structure, the Franklin Cash Store.
“Let’s stop here,” Tracy said. “We can eat and grab some last-minute supplies.”
She parked in the dirt lot in front of the diner and they all stumbled out of the car. Gwen put her hands on her hips and leaned back, stretching; Oscar bent to touch his toes; Todd spinwheeled his arms like a batter on deck, loosening up his shoulders. “That was long,” he remarked.
“Yeah, I know, sorry guys,” Tracy said. “I was so pumped up to get here, I lost track of time.”
They had lunch in the diner, where the clientele was equally divided between locals—farmers and ranchers—and people headed up to the mountains. When they were finished, they walked across the road and over to the Franklin Cash Store. The building was boxlike, one story. It was painted white, or at least it had been white at one time; age and weather had stripped a layer of paint away. In the window there was a picture of the store in a previous incarnation, when it was the depot of a backwater train station. Tracy pulled the door open, which caused a bell to ring loudly, and they all stepped inside.
The place was chock full of stuff, so crammed with odds and ends that Oscar didn’t know where to look. Right in front of them was an old-fashioned punch-button cash register, and all around the store, on a continuous ledge that ran two feet below the ceiling, there were bottles and boxes and tins, everything from Morton’s Salt containers to SPAM tins to Hershey’s boxes to colored bottles of liquids and medicines that hadn’t existed since his grandparents’ time. Old street signs were mounted on lateral beams, and there were hand-painted messages on every wall. Don’t forget to be happy, one of these read. Never give up or grow up.
Oscar saw built-in shelves filled with random, haphazardly arranged goods—wooden signs with religious sayings painted on them, hand-knit scarves and socks, weird contraptions made from pieces of farm equipment, stacks of old paperbacks, colored soaps in the shape of feet, a display of local honeys and jams. Glass-fronted cabinets were stuffed with old newspapers and magazines, and flip-flops waved from a circular rack. There was a cluster of metal watering cans beside a bright pink piano decorated with black and white polka dots, and a bench with a leopard-skin cushion. There was an elaborate candleholder with half-burned candles, a pile of straw hats, a stuffed boar head wearing sunglasses, a cloth pig with an arrow through its shoulder. Right beside them a small refrigerator had a handwritten sign that read, Nightcrawlers and red worms. Fish love ’em! Straight ahead, on the back wall, was a collection of orange crate labels, and the railroad sign from the picture in the window. To the left, there was an old drugstore counter and a half dozen red-topped stools. A tall woman of indeterminate age stood behind the counter, and two middle-aged men in farm clothes and baseball caps sat facing her, nursing Coors Lights. A yellow sign on the wall behind her read, Danger: Men Drinking. A small black dog was perched on the end stool, watching them.
“Howdy!” the woman said cheerfully. “Come on in and take a look around!”
“Wow,” Gwen exclaimed. Her expression changed from uncertainty to wonder. She stepped in and wandered cautiously down one of the aisles.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Todd, equally happy, and Oscar looked at him. What was wrong with them? This was the store of crazy people. This was the store of someone who was not right in the head. Then he saw something else behind the counter: a display of Green Bay Packers paraphernalia—Topps cards, schedules, four or five felt banners, pictures of players from Paul Horning to Charles Woodson, a Sports Illustrated cover from their Super Bowl win in 1997. In the center of it all was a huge life-sized cutout of Brett Favre, who looked about twenty-five. The whole display was ten or fifteen feet wide and extended from the floor all the way to the ceiling.
Todd walked over to the counter, smiling. “This is the last place I’d expect to find a Packers fan,” he said. “Are you from Wisconsin?”
“No sir,” the woman said. “I just love ’em. I’ve always loved ’em.”
She was like an oversized bird, all wings and splayed feet, dressed in overalls, with a plaited pink and white shirt underneath. Oscar thought he detected a Midwestern twang, but maybe this was just the sound of rural white people everywhere.
“I grew up in Oconomowoc,” Todd said. “About two hours from Lambeau Field.”
“Are you an Aaron Rodgers fan or a Brett Favre fan?” the woman asked. “We have a lot of debates around here.” She glanced at the men on the stools, one of whom nodded at Todd and raised his glass.
“I’m both,” Todd answered. “I loved Brett, but it’s kind of hard to argue with Rodgers winning a Super Bowl. Plus he’s a California boy.”
The woman nodded, as if he’d passed some kind of test. “That’s Henry and Carl,” she said. “We call Henry the mayor of Franklin. Of course, Franklin only has ten people, and two of them are dead, so it’s not saying much.”
Both men chuckled and sipped from their beers.
“And Carl’s the grandpa of the town, but don’t call him old. And I’m Annie.”
“Sweet Annie,” one of the men corrected.
“And that there,” she continued, pointing at the dog, “is Vince Lombardi.”
Todd grinned. “It’s nice to meet you all.”
Oscar slipped down another aisle to escape forced social interaction; he suspected that the men at the counter would take one look at him and try to drag him out to the fields. But even from thirty feet away, he could hear the conversation. He learned that the store had opened in 1918 as a train depot, and had been converted into a dry goods store in the 1930s. Sweet Annie’s family had always run it, and she lived in the small house in back. They operated on a cash-only basis, with the occasional barter arrangement for locals. Sweet Annie had never visited San Francisco or Los Angeles; the biggest city she’d ever been to was Fresno. “What do they have in those places that they don’t have here?” she asked. “Smog, crime, and traffic.”
And Todd said, “You’re absolutely right.”
“And we even have crime here, or at least we did once. See those?”
She pointed to the high windows above the counter, where there were three jagged holes in the glass, spaced several inches apart.
“Are those . . . ?” Todd started.
“Yep. Bullet holes. We had some excitement around here about a year ago. Did you happen to see those trailers across the street?”
“Yes.”
“Well, turned out some no-good youngster was cooking up some of that meta amphetamine. When the sheriff and his men came to arrest him—we