5 Items or Less

I was six miles south of the Canadian border. I drove through an abandoned town with boarded up windows. There was nothing here, a no-man's land occupied by only dairy cattle and weathered barns.

I pulled off the side of the road next to my client's home. Across the road a lean haggard figure stood over a pile of firewood. He wore a shirt of tattoos and jeans the color of motor oil. Three rottweilers were chained in a dirt yard. Every so often he'd pause with his ax and take a toke off a joint. He looked me in the eye and went back to work with his ax.

There was a store opening later that day in South Burlington. Beautiful people pushed their cartloads of fresh organic purchases across a parking lot filled with Audi's, Mercedes, and Subaru's with ski racks.

I'm looking for my car, my place. A birch is there to remind me.