The Beginning Place Read Free Page A

mother.” And run and hide in bed.
     
     
    At the small supermarket in the last city, where Hugh had first moved up from carrier to checker, things had been easygoing, with plenty of time for conversations or loafing around back in the stockrooms, but Sam’s did heavy business, and each job was specialized and without relief. It might look like your line was going to finish with the next customer, but there was always another one coming. Hugh had learned how to think in bits and pieces, not a good method, but the only one available to him. During a working day he could get a certain amount of thinking done if he kept coming back to it; a thought would wait for him, like a patient dog, until he returned. His dog was waiting for him today when he woke up, and went to work with him, wagging its tail: He wanted to go back to the creek, to the place by the creek, and with time enough to stay a while. By ten-thirty, after checking through the old lady with an orthopedic shoe who always had to explain that canned salmon used to cost ten cents a can but now it was so outrageously overpriced because
it was all being sent abroad on lend-lease to socialist countries, while she paid for her margarine and bread with food stamps, he had figured out that the best time to go to the creek place would be in the morning, not in the evening.
    His mother and her new friend Durbina were studying some kind of occultism together, and lately she had been going to Durbina’s at least once a week after work. That gave him a free evening; but only once a week, and he never knew which evening, and would have to worry about not getting home ahead of his mother.
    She did not mind getting home before he did in daylight, but if she expected him to be there and he wasn’t, or if she came home to an empty house in the dark, then it was no good. And lately it hadn’t been good when she stayed alone in the house while it was getting dark. So there was no use trying to count on going out in the evening; it was like night school, no use thinking about it.
    But in the morning, she left for work at eight. He could go to the creek place then. It was two hours, anyhow. In daylight there might be people around, he thought (in the afternoon, while Bill took over Seven to give him his break), there might be other people, or signs saying private property, no trespassing; but he would take the chance. It did not look like a place where many people came.
    He was home at his usual time, quarter to seven, tonight, but his mother did not come and there was no telephone call. He sat around reading the newspaper and wishing he had something to eat, like peanuts, the peanuts he had eaten last
night that his mother had wanted to take to Durbina’s tomorrow, that was tonight. Oh, hell, he thought, I could have gone to the creek place after all. He got up to go, but could not go now, not knowing when she would come back. He went to make himself dinner, but could find nothing he wanted; he ate bits and scraps, and made up and drank a can of frozen orange juice. He had a headache. He wanted a book to read, and thought, Why don’t I get a car so I can drive downtown to the Library, why don’t I go anywhere, why don’t I have a car, but what was the use of a car if he worked from ten to six and had to stay home evenings? He watched a news-in-review show on television to shut out the dog of his mind that had turned on him and snarled, showing its teeth. The phone rang. His mother’s voice was sharp. “I wanted to be sure before I started home this time,” she said, and hung up.
    In bed that night he tried to summon up images of solace, but they turned to torment; he fell back finally on a fantasy from years ago, a waitress he had used to see when he was fifteen. He imagined himself sucking her breasts, and so brought his masturbation to climax, and then lay desolate.
    In the morning he got up at seven instead of eight. He had not told his mother that he was going to get up