Member-only story
At first the man with the case of Bud Light and the half-gallon of milk had insisted on keeping track of the time, but the girl with the birthday cake didn't care anymore. Anyone could look at their watch, but it was as if time was something that mattered only to outsiders, those who hadn't made the blunder of trying to get groceries on a Sunday afternoon in Southern Indiana, and had to circle from the registers to the back of the store, having seen the enormity of the collection of customers clogging the main artery where transactions must be completed, just past the meat department, coming to a halt near the pastries, walking a few inches, then hours later a few more, not sure if a purchase had been finalized and the line was moving, or whether another exasperated shopper had simply given up, or whether the collective shuffling of feet had yielded a hopeful (but deceptive) little distance to travel, observing with some envy the toddler buckled into the front of the cart playing happily with her mother and buried in snack foods that she couldn't open, then the tired-looking old man with the mask under his nose reading the same section of a Field & Stream magazine for the thirtieth time, and the woman with the pierced septum and the AC/DC tattoo looking around for attention of any kind, from anywhere.
Word of the cause of the delay traveled from the front of the…
