Sunday morning, I put on my church clothes, walked down to the Piggly Wiggly at opening time, planted myself at the end of my old register, lane four, and waited for Miss Corrine.
She does not shop Sundays. She came Sunday.
Her son drove her. He is a circuit judge, he wore a golf shirt, and he stood back by the carts with his hands in his pockets and did not say one word the whole time, which I found out later was on purpose.
I bagged her groceries. I was not employed by that store, I did not touch a register, and I asked the young man on four if he minded. He said no sir.
Cans on the bottom. Bread on the side. Eggs on top.
Then she put her hand on my arm and we walked out to the curb, and it took eleven minutes because it always does, and there were about forty people in that store watching us do it.
The director came out from the office about halfway and stopped.
Because Miss Corrine had already been to the customer service desk before I got there, and she had asked for the manager, and she had put a paper grocery sack down flat on that counter.
Every paper sack that store has handed out since 1962 has printing on the bottom panel. Nobody reads it. It has been on the bag your whole life if you are from here.
Bagged for you by a neighbor. This store belongs to this town and everybody in it, and there is no charge and never will be for a hand to your car, a hand to the curb, or a hand up the steps at your house if you need one. Ask us. We would rather you asked.
She could not read it. She had it by heart since 1968, because her first husband bagged in that store nine years and used to say it to her at the supper table.
She said it out loud at the service desk from memory, with her hand on the sack, and asked the manager if he would be so kind as to check her.
The Tolliver family owns that store and has since 1959. Beau Tolliver is seventy-eight and he was at the eight o’clock service and he was in that parking lot by ten fifteen.
I went back on the ninth. Same vest, same lane.
The director is at their store in Wetumpka. Beau did not fire him and told me why, which is that a man who was never taught a thing should not be ruined for not knowing it, and that he would be teaching him himself a while.
There is a line on the schedule now called curb assist, with hours on it. Mine on Thursdays, anybody’s the rest of the week, and two of the high school boys have started signing up.
Miss Corrine comes Thursdays. Eggs on top.
He held a write-up over his head and called me a warning label. The answer to him had been printed on the bottom of every sack in that building since 1962, and he had handed out about ten thousand of them without once turning one over.