Trapped in the Walmart parking lot like Shackleton in an ice pack. People saying stupid things. 
A failed coffee expedition. Indian Casiono. Taking my chances on the icy highway.

Part I

The wind circled the Econo Line like a pack of starved wolves, sniffing and scratching for a way inside. I felt the Econo Line shiver on its chassis as a gust swept through the parking setting off a car alarm close by. I counted the horn blasts: an even 10 before someone silenced the panic, perhaps an apologetic Walmart employee working the graveyard shift or maybe the car just cried itself back to sleep like a neglected child.

I too should have been sleeping like a baby. The previous day was spent with the icy breath of a winter storm on the back of my neck as I raced just ahead of the snow. The chase finally ended with me and the Econo Line encircled in the snowstorm’s suffocating, white embrace. We now sat in a Walmart parking lot at winter’s pleasure, trapped like Shackleton in the ice pack, my vessel and me.

I should have been exhausted and upset over a siren interrupting a well-deserved sleep. But I was not asleep. I was shivering beneath three layers of insulation thinking about hungry wolves. It made no difference, really. I did not have fixed agenda or a timeline. I was satisfied that sleep would overtake me at a time of its choosing, and it did, eventually. Precisely at what time that was I don’t know but the noise that woke me, what sounded like a drum pounded by an imbecile, must have started in the early hours judging by the dull light of dawn insinuating itself through the windshield.

It was not the polite rap of a knuckle, mind, but the kind of pounding intended to rouse all occupants. Another vicious round of knocks was followed by a muffled appeal I could not make out. I placed my ear to the membrane of quality American steel and listened to someone shouting: “You have to move!”

With a heave, the Econo Line’s side door slid open to reveal a fireplug of a man wearing a high-visibility safety vest of garish orange adorned with silver reflective tape. It was a snug fit, the vest, over his corpulence. Even his hands, chaffed and cracked by winter labor, looked to be swollen with whatever indulgence he obviously allowed himself. His breath froze between us in a cloud that carried the faint hint of onion.

I must have appeared confused, stunned by both his appearance and the light of a new day gleaming off a fresh blanket of snow because he repeated in another shallot-reeking cloud, “You have to move,” and added, “I gotta plow this section.” A stubby thumb protruded from one of his meaty, drum-pounding mallets towards a dump truck whose front grill was burdened by a plow, bearing ugly scars in its yellow paint. The driver’s door was hanging open, and the seat belt dangled from within like a grayish entrail suggesting the operator had made a quick exit from the cab and had no time to discuss the weather over coffee inside the Econo Line. The truck grumbled like an ox ready to be flogged into a duty. “You can move to a section I plowed already,” he suggested, turning and pointing at a clean section of asphalt.

I woke the Econo Line’s V6 and endured his predictable grandpa-like grouse at being stirred. I got him rolling to a new spot not far from where we had been but closer to Walmart’s main entrance.

The new snow had been scraped away like fluffy, white shaving cream from a jawbone by a deft razor. I considered my own chin. I had allowed little sprouts of salt and pepper stubble to germinate into an overgrown garden of wiry hair in desperate need of harvest. Perhaps I would add a package of disposable blades and a tube of Cremo to my purchase of a large coffee provided this location enjoyed the simpatico relationship of a Starbucks ready for business at this rooster-crowing hour.

A search of Walmart’s brightly lit interior found plenty of long, tall rows filled with bargains but no industrious baristas. Amid the limitless goods I did find a frumpy woman wearing the company’s blue frock and bent to the task of stocking a shelf. She looked as if she never slept and when I inquired about coffee she pointed absently to an unseen destination and mumbled the number of an aisle. After I apologized for not making myself clear, she explained there was no coffee shop in that Walmart location. Then she told me to have a nice day. Who could possibly have a nice day in this town, in this life she occupied, in my own? It was a stupid thing to say. I hate it when people say stupid things!

Despite the failure of the expedition, my visit was not completely unsatisfying. With so few shoppers in the early hours, the men’s room was immaculate and the music playing from a speaker embedded out of sight somewhere in the tiled ceiling was easy to ignore. I took my time in the generous stall reserved for mobility-challenged customers and their various ambulatory contraptions and with the job of brushing teeth and hair in front of the long, communal mirror above four separate basins each with its own liquid soap dispenser.

By the time I emerged from the store, the fireplug and his savage plow had finished their work and moved on. The pair left mounds of snow packed around the lamp posts high and thick enough for a pack of wolves to build a den or the living quarters for a family of Eskimos.

Years ago, when I still had a job, a colleague informed me that ‘Eskimo’ was considered pejorative; ‘Inuit’ was preferred. At some point in my race to outrun the inclement weather, I passed a series of billboards spaced out over several miles promising me wealth, excitement and indulgence at a casino proudly operated by a native American tribe whose name I was unfamiliar. I doubted if, at this point in history, the casino’s first nation operators had issues with etymology.

The wind that tormented the Econo Line throughout the night had blown out of town but had not been strong enough to carry the leaden clouds along with it. More snow could have been building up inside them. I didn’t want to spend another night or longer on this desolate island of American budget commerce especially without a cup of black coffee to cajole me into another day. The freshly scraped parking lot could deceive a driver as to the condition of the highway, but I was willing to take my chances. One of those mega-convenience-store-truck-stops was surely somewhere nearby. Even a McDonald’s would do.

Stay Tuned for Part II