Shortchanged
Tammy’s about to get her associate’s degree and she’s got a chance to get a real job, with a desk and a chair and vacation days. There’s just this one thing…
Mosely, Kentucky. Fall 2023.
Tammy’s nearly fifty-year-old feet ached. She pulled the push broom backwards, scraping it along the curb as she did, watching the bristles grab the cigarette butts like they were rescuing fallen soldiers strewn over a battlefield.
She had tried to teach the new purple-haired kid this technique, using the slant cut of the bristles and pulling the broom toward you, lifting the handle high so you could catch them angled against crevices and not have to move with the broom, but he was apparently too dumb to learn. Years of standing on her feet had taught her tricks like this one to dull her near constant heel and arch pain. The kid clearly felt no such urgency. When he tried, he pulled too hard, and the broom bounced along the cement, completely missing the cigarette butts. Worse, he didn’t seem to notice. Now he stood beside her holding a regular broom and pail, waiting to sweep up the pile she made. Too dumb even to sweep. An assistant sweeper, at best.
Tammy tried conversation. “You know, my ex-boyfriend's mamaw always said men can’t sweep but women can’t make good dumplings.”
The purple-haired boy scratched the back of his head. “Shit. I cain’t do neither one. Seriously. I cain’t cook nothing but cereal.”
“Well, it takes all kinds. I hope that little boyfriend of yours does all the cooking.” The boy grabbed a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, a reflex, then put them back.
“Kevin? He’s real good at cooking. Wants to be a chef. He’s managing over at the McDonald’s in Battersburg, but he wants to work in a big restaurant someday.”
“Why do you smoke? I thought all you kids vaped nowadays.”
“I don’t know. It’s untelling. But I used to light my mommy’s menthols off the stove for her. I guess I just take after her.”
“Well. I know your mommy. You don’t totally take after her. I reckon you got better taste in men.”
The boy chuffed a noise of agreement and looked back down at his phone.
At the edge of the parking lot, a twenty-something blonde woman in a long blue denim coat appeared. She was walking toward them quickly, one hand pulling the unzipped coat closed, the other holding a purse. It was a cold day.
“I got this.” Tammy handed the push broom to the purple-haired boy and went back inside to the register. She watched as the woman stepped inside and hurried to the back of the store. She recognized her, like she did nearly every customer who came in—the woman with two kids who lived in the brown trailer across the road behind the billboard with the giant picture of a sausage biscuit. The Dollar Store sat on the main road between Mosely and Battersburg, but out-of-towners rarely have need of a Dollar Store in early December. They’d come in near Memorial Day or July Fourth to get charcoal and lighter fluid, or maybe some material comfort the family members they were visiting didn’t possess. Sometimes they came in on Christmas Eve and picked up the $5 and $10 pre-packaged Christmas gifts for family members they had forgotten about during the holiday season. But that was always the last days before Christmas. This early in December, she saw locals.
It was her fault for thinking a kid too dumb to sweep could price a toy. And that poor woman thinking she had enough to get her kids toys. She pulled the sticker off, scanned the bear with her pricing gun, then printed a new one.
She couldn’t see the woman; she was hidden in the aisles. But Tammy couldn’t leave the store with a customer alone inside, so she started unboxing some chewing gum she’d brought up that morning and then stocked the shelves near the register. She watched the boy outside light a cigarette and look through his phone. As annoying and stupid as these kids were, she appreciated this one’s thoughtfulness. Her asthma was terrible, so she had asked him not to smoke around her, and he was obliging, always waiting until she went into the store. She emptied the cardboard box of its contents: four containers of spearmint gum and two containers of peppermint. She arranged the magazines and pulled the candy bars, mints, and chewing gum forward to make the area neat, then folded the cardboard box and tucked it into the recycling bin behind the counter.
The woman in the denim coat moved toward the register with a half-gallon of milk and two white plush bears. Tammy said, “Cold enough out there for you?”
The woman sat the items on the counter as Tammy spoke, then ran her hands together for warmth. “Lord, children. You’re telling me. I cain’t wait for winter to be over.”
Tammy scanned the milk. “You want a bag for this?”
“No thank you. I can carry it.”
“Well, sad part is…” She scanned the first bear and plopped him into a bag. “…it ain’t even technically started. It’s only the fifteenth. Winter don’t technically come till the twenty-second. So, it’s actually still the fall. Can you believe that shit?” She scanned the second bear and laid him in the bag with the first.
The woman in the denim coat said, “Well.”
Tammy smiled back at her. “But if winter weather can come early, maybe spring can too. All right. That’s $14.69.”
The woman looked startled. Tammy looked down to see if she had made a mistake, then looked outside at the purple-haired boy, who was pretending to sweep and still smoking. He had to be on a second cigarette by this point. “Everything okay?”
The woman shoved some items around inside her purse. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t bring no more cash on me. I just got a ten. I musta did my math wrong. How much was them bears?”
Tammy looked down at the machine. “They’re $5.99 each.”
The woman shuffled around inside of her purse, then directed a watery smile just below Tammy’s face. “I thought it said $3.99. I’m sorry. I got the money. I’ll come back with it. I just only had this ten with me. I’ll just get the milk for now.”
Tammy put in her manager’s code, voided the bears, and said, “That’s $1.69.”
The woman handed over her ten-dollar bill. “Sorry about that. Here, I can put them bears back for you.”
Tammy handed her the change and counted it carefully. “Don’t you worry about that. I needed something to do anyway. I’ve been bored outta my mind.” The woman grabbed her milk and stepped back outside the store. Tammy followed her, pushed open the doors, and yelled toward the boy. “Hey! I’m gonna go to the back. Get back in.” He swept the last of the butts and parking lot detritus into the long-handled pail, took a final draw off his cigarette, then tossed it to the ground and made his way back into the store.
Tammy left him to the register and grabbed the two white plush bears. She found the rest of them huddled together on a rack in the toy aisle above a sticker that read $3.99. That boy. It was her fault for thinking a kid too dumb to sweep could price a toy. And that poor woman thinking she had enough to get her kids toys. She pulled the sticker off, scanned the bear with her pricing gun, then printed a new one. Christmas Bear $5.99. She placed the sticker below the bears and placed the two bears back with their bear kin on the shelf.
She was getting too old for this shit.
Tammy was a dedicated employee, but she had worked her fair share of jobs. Straight out of high school, she had a dream job over at Martin’s Department Store. Worked her way to management and did good work. When the big stores opened up, Martin’s cut more and more people, and the more they cut, the harder she worked. By the end of things, she did it all: ordered merchandise, stocked the shelves, unloaded the trucks, took care of the cleaning. She even ran the catalogs for work clothes and formal orders. But then they built the cut-through and Battersburg, once an hour away, became a fifteen-minute drive. The store closed.
She worked odd jobs, but nothing close to the freedom she had felt in management. Then, with Martin’s closed, the Dollar Store soon opened. She applied. Now she’d been there nearly ten years, working for much less but doing the same work she had always done. She was only months away from her anniversary. She hoped not to be here for it.
She’d been taking online classes at the community college, now that they were free, and she would complete her associate’s degree in business management in just a couple of weeks after finals. She only had time to take a couple of classes a semester, but she did well in them.
There had been breaks in the schooling, of course. Tammy was what they called a “non-traditional student” — even though half of her classmates were young kids who transferred their free community-college coursework to bigger universities. Most of the other half were women similar to Tammy in age, size, and temperament, women holding down full time jobs and pushing forward at whatever speed life would allow them.
When Trussie’s fancy Lexington daughter heard about Jackie and Nicole, she got so outraged that she told local churches to call, complain, and threaten to move their family members to other facilities over account of two women married together working there.
The first time she stopped taking classes, she had to stop a whole year. Her sister Jackie and her wife Nicole had moved in with her. They both left their jobs at the same nursing home—where they had met—when a patient’s daughter found out they were two women who were married. The patient, a ninety-year-old woman named Trussie Carroll, who was friends with their mamaw, was not the problem. In fact, Trussie was so happy for them she demanded a copy of the wedding picture and proudly displayed it alongside the rest of her family photos. When you’re in a nursing home long enough, the nurses, nurse aids, custodians, and other patients become your family—which was good, since Trussie’s only daughter had moved to Lexington years before and only came in, to hear Jackie and Nicole tell it, twice a year, on Easter and Christmas, and then only to take pictures to put on social media so everyone could see what a great and dedicated daughter she was. So when Trussie’s fancy Lexington daughter heard about Jackie and Nicole, she got so outraged that she told local churches to call, complain, and threaten to move their family members to other facilities over account of two women married together working there. The nursing home didn’t fire them, but it made their lives awful—cancelling shifts, writing them up for any and everything, making sure they never worked the same shift. So they quit, moved in with Tammy, and stayed long enough to get jobs down in Florida.
Jackie said the hills were backwards and she’d never step back into them.
Tammy didn’t blame her. Jackie had a right to dream, just like she did. So Tammy took care of them both, even letting them take over the payments on her car when they moved down, since she knew their old clunker wouldn’t make the trip to Orlando. That was ten years ago, and the last she spoke to them, Jackie declared Florida was getting worse than Kentucky and they were thinking of coming back. Tammy hoped to have her degree by then.
She would have had it already, but she had to withdraw from her classes when her boyfriend left her last January. That piece of shit. After two years together, they’d planned on using their tax refunds as a down payment for a new car, but all of a sudden, he started talking about moving back to Canard County, where he grew up. Said he couldn’t make it in Mosely because he didn’t know nobody. Tammy knew it was over the first time she heard him say it. Men don’t yield their wants or needs to women. A woman’s lucky if she finds a man whose needs don’t fight hers. She told him she wouldn’t move to Canard County for the same reason, so he left.
It had been trials and troubles, but that’s life. She used the summer to get over him—she planted some of them big boy beefsteak tomatoes the week he left, and by the time she got to salting big slices of them and eating them on the front porch, she was already making fun of her ex and what musta been the only woman in Canard County that would take him, since they all had the misfortune of knowing him already. Tammy then re-enrolled in school last August, her final semester. She was finishing a degree. She didn’t make a big deal of it—there wouldn’t be a party or anything—but she would be the first in her family with any kind of college degree, and she was proud of herself.
Today was her first actual shot at an easier life. She had an interview later that afternoon at the district office of the school board for a high school secretary job. They invited her to call and make an appointment “for anytime after two on Wednesday the sixth.” She listened excitedly to the message five times in a row on her lunch break before calling them back. This was a job with a desk. A job with a pension. A job with vacation days. A job with a chair.
She had been thinking about the job nonstop since she got the call last week, though she tried to keep herself from getting too excited. She tried to focus on the tasks at hand, especially since she certainly didn’t have any good help at doing them.
“I’ll make you a deal. If you don’t mind waiting until I get back, I’ll bring you something to eat back. What’s your favorite meal from Dairy Queen?”
She checked the prices on all the products she had asked the purple-haired kid to label the day before. Most of them were misplaced or misprinted, but luckily, she could do in ten minutes what had taken him hours, so she repriced all the new holiday toys and softline while leaving him at the register—though he was equally likely to mess that up. Once she retagged the T-shirts, she joined him upfront.
“Hey kid, I’ve gotta run to the bank. It might be a couple of hours. I’ll be back before closing. Just stay at the register. Anybody wants propane or ice, just tell them we’re out. You good alone for a bit?”
“Yeah. How do I get my final ten-minute break?”
“I’ll make you a deal. If you don’t mind waiting until I get back, I’ll bring you something to eat back. What’s your favorite meal from Dairy Queen?”
“You sure? Instead of a meal, mind getting me two small peanut butter milkshakes?”
“Sure. Why not a large?”
“Well, I already eat. But that’s one for me and one for Kevin. If that’s okay. It’s his favorite.”
“Shit. That’s sweet. Not a one of my exes was that sweet.”
The kid blushed a bit and didn’t respond to the compliment. The heat buzzed on and vibrated the tin of the ceiling. He said, “While you’re gone, can I listen to music at the register? My headphones is dead.”
“Sure. Have fun.”
Before Tammy got into her car, she could hear something high-pitched with an electric beat pulsing against the dusty glass doors of the Dollar Store.
The district office was only a few minutes away, up on the hill behind the high school, but Tammy gave herself enough time to stop over and change her blouse in the Pick-and-Pay bathroom. She had paid to have it professionally pressed a week before, but she didn’t bother taking it into her house. Between her sisters, daughters, and neighbors, there was a better chance than not that somebody would borrow it without asking and wear it off before her interview.
Only the locked doors of her car provided enough safety to keep it presentable.
Just a few years before, Tammy would have changed her top in the car. She figured anybody desperate enough to look at her titties, held up by their two-dollar brassiere, was welcome to the sight. But she was days away from having a college degree and would need to be a more careful and dignified version of herself if she was going to get the sort of work that paid people by the year instead of by the hour rounded down to the minute. She told herself she’d celebrate, in the unlikely chance she got the job, by buying a couple of new bras.
A woman in a white blouse with a headset greeted her at the district office. Tammy recognized her—Paula Conley, a former classmate.
“Hey, Paula! I didn’t know you worked here. It’s good to see you.”
“Been here four years this January. You doing okay?”
“Finer than frog hair. You?”
“Cain’t complain…but I might anyway.” They both laughed—it was the next step in the dance.
“How’s your sister?” Tammy didn’t mention Paula’s brother, who had been arrested for arson the year before. There were two types of arson, generally speaking—collecting insurance, which was basically a tradition around their part of the state, and the bad kind, the violent kind. Paula’s brother had not collected insurance.
She had seen people fighting on social media and had heard news stories about LGBTQ stuff, stories that she hadn’t paid much attention to, but here was something against gay people in writing on a school form.
“She’s good. Living up Hippo. The baby just started middle school.”
They chatted some more and Paula, satisfied that Tammy had given due deference to her family history, said, “Well, I’m excited about your interview. Here,” she handed Tammy a stack of papers, “you fill these out beforehand. Just in case. Superintendent Miller will come out and talk to you for the first interview. He’ll be out in a second.” She motioned toward a small table and chair, the kind you might find in a classroom, pushed against a wall.
Tammy lined up the forms evenly and opened her purse. She had purchased a new pen for this and hadn’t yet taken it from its packaging. Not wanting to seem unprepared in front of Paula, she opened it quietly inside her purse, coughing while she ripped the plastic to hide the noise. Paula grinned pearly teeth at her and returned to the computer.
The paperwork was usual—paper versions of information she had given online: name, Social Security number, address. This being an interview to be the secretary at a school, there were other forms she had never filled out before—health insurance forms, optional death insurance forms, and even a form for a background check. They did not do those at the Dollar Store. While she was slightly annoyed at how long it took to fill everything out, Tammy’s studies in business had already taught her that this was their way of having you do the onboarding without getting paid, whether or not you got the job.
Form by form, she flipped through the paperwork with her most careful handwriting.
Finally, at the end of the stack, she got to something called “Moral Attestations.” They certainly didn’t do those at the Dollar Store. She was asked to initial, line by line, agreeing to specific moral codes of conduct. She would not steal time or materials. She would not speak to any news outlet as a representative of the school or about school occurrences. She would uphold the dignity of the education profession in her behavior outside of work. She initialed, initialed, initialed. Then, the final line. Revised June of that year. She would not reference, acknowledge, or support alternative gender or sexual identities while serving in any role with the Mosely Independent School District.
She froze. It was a strange line. An addition to the rote declarations that seemed totally out of place with the others. She had seen people fighting on social media and had heard news stories about LGBTQ stuff, stories that she hadn’t paid much attention to, but here was something against gay people in writing on a school form. She thought of her sister Jackie and her wife Nicole down in Florida, a state they left Kentucky to be in and were now fleeing from to get back to Kentucky. She thought of her cousin AJ, who shortened their name to just their initials and asked people to use “they” when referring to them. She thought about that dumbass kid who wanted two small peanut butter milkshakes, one for his boyfriend, and who was probably miscounting change and listening to God-awful music at the Dollar Store while she was here having her interview for a better job.
“Hey Paula.” Tammy stood up, careful not to wrinkle her blouse, and stepped back to Paula’s desk. Paula’s hair seemed suddenly bigger, blonder, wider. Tammy pointed to the one un-initialed line on the document. “What does this line even mean?”
“Oh, you know. They added that this summer. People pushing all that gender nonsense and now we gotta change our forms. It don’t mean nothing. Just gotta sign it. One more hoop to jump through.”
Tammy returned to her seat and read the line. She would not acknowledge. She would not reference. She would not support. These words meant something. She clicked her pen closed and put it in her pocket. She put the papers together neatly in a stack. She returned to the seat meant for children to learn in. She waited.
Paula called her back and walked Tammy down a short hallway crowded with open doors. Behind them, women typed on laptops, made copies, or spoke on the phone. No one standing on her feet for no reason. No one opening or tearing down boxes. No one waiting for a teenager to spend half an hour sweeping a four-hundred-square-foot parking lot so she could use the bathroom.
The Superintendent’s office was at the other end of the hall, the only room with closed doors. It was also the only room with a solid wooden entrance—large polished double doors with a faux arch enveloping the hall above them. Paula knocked, waited for a signal to enter, and then announced Tammy to the Superintendent.
The entire room was ornate and chic—clearly any piece of furniture here cost more than her car. Soft lighting hummed out of silver lamps shaped into letters representing the district initials, and giant planks of hardwood stretched the length of the room. A large man, younger than her by a decade, wore a tailored gray suit and stood up to greet her. He shook her hand, then sat down in a leather chair behind a heavy wood desk with a nameplate that read Dr. Jason Miller, Superintendent. He pointed to a chair and motioned for Tammy to have a seat.
“You like those floors? They’re great, huh? Remember old Mosely High School from before they consolidated?”
“Yeah. I went there.”
“What impresses me is your work history. Almost a decade at Martin’s. Man, I used to love that place! My mom got me a pair of new boots and a Carhartt coat every year when they were open.”
“Oh, I see you did. Me too! Go Cougars. I had them pull up the gym floor and do this office with it. That shelf over there,” he pointed to a blue shelf behind her lined with diplomas and awards framed in metal, “is actually made out of the old bleachers. I played forward all four years. Graduated in ’03. Wanted to bring the gym with me.”
“That’s nice.” Tammy tried not to slouch. She put her purse on the floor, then wondered if that was gauche. She picked it back up quickly and held it in her lap alongside her stack of papers. She made sure her posture was straight.
“Now, if you can hand over those.” The Superintendent reached for her paperwork. “Oh, yes. I remember your application. Not a whole lot of office experience.”
“No, but I am finishing my associate’s in business management next week.” She thought about saying sir after no, but couldn’t bring herself to say it. Even if this man was educated and rich, he was from these parts. He might find it as offensive a word as she did. He was also a good ten years younger than her. She chose to speak slowly and look him in the eye to show her respect.
“No worries. We can teach any hire what they need to know, and you’ve got the credentials. But what impresses me is your work history. Almost a decade at Martin’s. Man, I used to love that place! My mom got me a pair of new boots and a Carhartt coat every year when they were open.”
Tammy softened. He was human. She placed her purse back down to the floor. “Yeah. It was a special place. Hated seeing it closed. Good people.”
The Superintendent nodded. “It was a shame. But you picked right back up. At your current place of employment now for almost ten years.”
“Yes, sir.” It slipped out before she could stop herself. He didn’t wince. He kept talking.
“Now, that’s what we like to see. Dedication. I don’t know if you have noticed, but the schools,” he dropped his voice, like he was about to say something scandalous or share a family secret, “they’ve got high turnaround these days. Pure politics. And this is a good place, Tammy. Good pay and benefits. You can ask around the office if you’d like.”
“Thank you.”
“Now, I don’t like to use the word interview. That’s a formality. I just like to get to know a person. And them us. You got any questions for me?”
“I don’t think so. I graduated from the schools here, and me and Paula go way back. I’m just excited for the chance to work here. I’m a hard worker.”
“Your reputation precedes you. You don’t have to convince me.” As he spoke, he lifted a piece of chocolate from a bowl, popped it in his mouth, chewing and talking at the same time, balling the aluminum wrapper with his fingers and flicking it onto his desk. He tilted the bowl towards Tammy, who shook her head no, then continued. “Listen, you impressed me more than any other applicant. No need to sell yourself. I just wanted to meet you. File paperwork. You know. All that stuff. Stuff we hope you’ll be doing for us soon.”
Tammy tried to push down the excitement growing under her skin. She didn’t know if she had the job yet. But the conversation seemed promising.
“I mean, heck, I’ll be honest. If you’re ready, we can just start processing things. I don’t like games. I like straightforward people.”
Her excitement grew. “Well, I’d sure like that.”
“Sounds great.” The Superintendent flipped through the papers she had given him without truly looking, then handed them back across the desk to her. He leaned back, smiled big at her, then put his hands behind his head. “Did you get your paperwork finished?”
“It’s all this crazy politics, the last thing we need more of. I’m here to put an end to it. We got all these people out here trying to push all this LGBTQ ABCDEFG stuff. And not just on each other—onto the kids!”
Tammy suddenly remembered the last line on the form. “Yeah. I had one question. I just didn’t know what it meant. This line here about alternative genders. What’s it about?”
“Nothing to worry about. You shouldn’t need to know what it means. Good, decent folk don’t. That’s just something we added when the state made some changes. Nothing that will affect you. Like I said, turnover is awful. It’s all this crazy politics, the last thing we need more of. I’m here to put an end to it. We got all these people out here trying to push all this LGBTQ ABCDEFG stuff. And not just on each other—onto the kids! You’d be surprised, but even some of the teachers try to talk about this garbage. Now everybody’s just fighting back and forth. So we just made it fair for everybody. Cut it out. It’s not appropriate inside the schools anyway.”
Tammy was trying to take in what she was hearing him say. She knew she wasn’t the most educated person—even with a degree just a week away. She knew she wasn’t trained in how she was supposed to act in certain situations—she never had a use for it. But she also knew for damn sure she wasn’t stupid. She didn’t respond.
The Superintendent kept talking. “It won’t affect a secretary, anyway. You just don’t talk about it, and they don’t either. If some teacher or student tries to talk about any kind of gender mumbo jumbo, just shut it down. That’s not for inside the school.”
Tammy’s silence assured the Superintendent that she had no more questions. “Well, it was nice to meet you, Tammy. You just finish this and hand the paperwork to Paula on the way out and we'll get things rolling.” Tammy nodded and stood. She reached out to shake his hand, but he had already taken another foil-wrapped chocolate and turned toward his computer. She pulled her hand back to her side and walked out of his office.
She walked down the short hallway, past the women making copies, making phone calls, and using computers while seated at desks, women waiting on their next paid vacation. She walked past Paula Conley, who was talking on the phone, her hair a giant yellow balloon. Paula called out, “See you, Tammy!”
Tammy left the school building.
She went to the Dairy Queen and ordered three peanut butter milkshakes.
She changed back into her work shirt in the bathroom. She threw the paperwork in the trash can of the bathroom.
She returned to the Dollar Store, gave the two milkshakes to the dumb kid with purple hair so that he could share one with his boyfriend who worked at the McDonald’s the next town over. She said, “Hey, get on out of here. Take that on over to your boyfriend while it’s cold.”
“I still got another three hours to go.”
Tammy walked toward him at the register, and he stepped aside to let her take it. “Listen, you ain’t gonna get many chances in life to just be free, kid. Get out while the sun’s shining.”
The kid looked to the door, his hands full of peanut butter milkshake. “I can’t afford to miss my hours, though.”
Tammy took a sip off her own milkshake, peanut butter like his, and let the creamy softserve melt under her tongue before swallowing. “You know what. I’ll clock you out later. You’ll have a full shift. Go on, now, before I change my mind.”
The purple-haired kid scratched the side of his head with the back part of his hand, lifting the milkshake into the air while he did it, looking confused, like he was in the wrong store. “You feeling all right? Why you being so nice?”
Tammy would not return to the Board of Education. For the moment, this is where she was. It might be a long moment. It might be a short moment. But it was the moment she chose to be in.
Tammy almost made a joke about just wanting him out of her hair, or maybe about how she wanted to be alone, or maybe about how she was so tired she didn’t want to add babysitting to the list. But she didn’t say any of those things. She just said, “Somebody’s gotta be. Go on, and don’t tell nobody I let you leave. And don’t get used to it.”
The purple-haired kid walked straight out the door. She watched from the counter as he struggled to figure out how to get two milkshakes and himself into his car. He made the ordeal ten times more complicated than it needed to be, but eventually managed to leave the parking lot without spilling his milkshakes.
She spent the next few hours doing whatever was left to do. When there was nothing left, she just stood at the register and looked outside. Despite the cold, the sun was shining brightly, so Tammy stepped out into the parking lot, standing outside the store and letting the last remnants of light fall onto her skin. At two minutes before closing, the woman in the long denim coat walked down the hill from the little brown trailer that stood behind the billboard with the sausage biscuit on it. She crossed the road, then the parking lot, then smiled at Tammy, who followed her into the store.
She came to the register. She had a single white Christmas bear in a red scarf.
Tammy scanned him. “Did I remember you wanted two of these? Are we out already?”
The woman looked towards the bag. “No. I’m just gonna get the one today in case you run out. My little boy’s been eyeing it and won’t stop talking about it. I’ll come back later for the other one or for something else if you’re out.”
Tammy would not return to the Board of Education. For the moment, this is where she was. It might be a long moment. It might be a short moment. But it was the moment she chose to be in. “Shew. I plumb forgot to tell you. I’m so sorry—I could have told you this morning and saved you a trip. Those go on sale tomorrow, buy-one-get-one. But since it’s technically after closing time, it’s tomorrow on the computer, so the second one is free. Let me run grab that for you. I apologize.”
Tammy walked to the back of the store, grabbed a second bear, scanned him, then put him in the bag with the first. “That’s $6.34 after tax.” The woman in the denim coat gave her seven ones, and Tammy gave her exact change. She thanked Tammy, grabbed the bag, and left the store.
Tammy locked the door behind her. The till would be a little over six dollars short tonight, but she could just blame it on the dumb kid. Anyone would believe it, and no one would care.
“Shortchanged” is Willie Carver’s first published fiction; it will be included in a collection of stories forthcoming from the University Press of Kentucky.
About the author
Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. is an award-winning poet whose 2023 collection, Gay Poems for Red States, was named a 2024 Honor Book by the Stonewall Book Awards, which are sponsored by the American Library Association's Rainbow Round Table (formerly the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table).
- Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.https://www.salvationsouth.com/author/willie-edward-taylor-carver-jr/
- Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.https://www.salvationsouth.com/author/willie-edward-taylor-carver-jr/
I love it, Willie! Can’t wait to read more!
— Chrissie
A compelling story. The clarity of the simple details are truly authentic. The business with the new unopened pen was especially touching. Hard to count a win out of such a disappointment, but her standards prevail. So sad, though.