PACK A MARLBORO LIGHTS, box. Make it two.” Sammy Cutler fished a crumpled twenty out of his pocket. He threw a container of Tic-Tacs onto the conveyer as well, joining a couple of frozen dinners. The grocery store clerk, a young Latina woman with soft skin and hair as dark as coal, looked as bored and tired as Sammy felt. Sammy had just finished a double shift on the new highway being built. He figured he had another month, tops, of good weather before the construction trade shut down for the long winter. He didn’t have a backup plan at the moment. Employers weren’t knocking down the door for ex-cons.
He slipped one pack of cigarettes into the pocket of his flannel shirt, the other in his leather jacket. He noticed his hands, big and rough and hairy and swollen from another day of manual labor.
“Where the hell is Manny?”
Sammy glanced at the complaining man, standing in the next grocery line over, wearing a starched white shirt and a name tag that indicated some authority. Top grocery guy. He grabbed a plastic bag and began packing groceries that were piling up in the area past the register.
“Griffin,” the man said. “Griffin!”
Sammy felt his body go cold.
“-your change, mister.”
Sammy looked down at the green bills and silver coins placed into his hands. Then back up, at a man who entered his sight line, approaching the grocery store manager. The man was small, hunched, with small green eyes and cropped hair, grayed at the sides but mostly a dark red.
“Work this aisle, Griffin. Where is Manny?”
“I don’t know.”
Sammy bristled at hearing the voice. He’d never heard the man speak. Never even laid eyes on the man. He’d been so young.
Griffin.
And surely there were other people with the name, however unusual it may be.
But he looked the part. Sammy had served with some of them, the ones who liked little kids. You could spot them from a mile away. Meek and squirrelly. Like they carried an inner shame that never left them.
Yes. This was the man that had killed his sister twenty-six years ago.
Sammy felt himself move, his focus on the grocery clerk named Griffin shifting from front to profile.
“Don’t forget your groceries, mister.”
Sammy’s trembling hand reached out. His grip closed over the plastic handle of the bag.
“Don’t worry,” he said slowly. “I haven’t forgotten.”