Junglebell Rock

                                                        Junglebell Rock



                                                        a short story by

                                                          K.L. Stover



          It is only the first week of December, but Ruby already feels stretched out. She wishes she could escape the holiday stress for one year. One year without the slightly surreal twist of time and routine, normal days darting to one side or another for office parties and church cantatas and holiday sales. Just once cheat the dread and the stress and the rush, not feel the familiar fatigue, the yearly confusion matching lists of relatives with things they don't need and won't like.

          The strip mall is an automatic drive from home. The daylight runs out all at once, the sunset shedding its light like slow freezing paint. Clouds of purple and mauve cluster low on the horizon, which can't hold back the cold of night.

          After Thanksgiving it all just gets a little edgier, the velocity of days increasing in a steady squeeze; patience a short strand meted out on a long haul.

          At the center of the most joyous season lies a deadening force. The bleary-eyed glare of harsh headlights on a busier highway when it's not even suppertime, the increasing sense of competition for creature comforts, fast-food meals eaten on the half-run, the hard crunch of dirty snow, conversations that end abruptly in a blast of cold, a honked horn, a busy restaurant, parking spaces closing up like the miraculous metallic healings of a steel suburban wound.

          Under the mall roof the stores are all joined in architectural conspiracy, a many-headed hydra of calculated commerce. No one notices the stale box dry nondescript, non-smell of retail. No one really sees the shining fake plastic glisten overhead and in the flashing windows, the same tired displays made anew each season.

          Everything is marked down everywhere on every sign in every store and all the faces of the clerks mingle with the sound of salvation bells and cash registers and jinglebell muzak. Small kids balk and blat, old women complain of sore and swollen feet. 

          You first feel the electricity from the store lights in the pit of your stomach until you become electric yourself, then you don't notice the invisible buzz. Until you're home and dry, when it takes the form of a raw nerve exhaustion. That's when you realize the energy stays ungrounded, but it's you who is spent. When you realize that all you've really wanted to do since three o'clock is crawl under a heavy quilt and sleep.

          These thoughts pass vaguely through Ruby’s mind as she finally finds a parking space.

          It is spitting snow again. There is no sky, only clouds. Ruby starts walking, pulls Matthew behind her. She forgets the boy, remembers him, stops in the low light of the parking lot and wipes his red nose with the same frayed kleenex she has been using herself. Matthew’s right boot is coming off, and he drags it sideways behind him, as if caught in a snare. Ruby doesn’t notice. She keeps walking.

          Unnoticed, Christmas music plays everywhere. Jinglebell Rock on xylophones at the Rexall. Jinglebell Rock on the organ at Quik Pik. Jinglebell Rock on electric guitar at the Stop’n Shop. Jinglebell Rock on the radio.

          “Jungle bells… jungle bells…jungle all the way,” Ruby sings under her breath while watching the lady in front of her decide which of the two flannel shirts in her cart she likes better.

          For the third time, the woman picks up the blue and gold shirt and drapes it over the side of the carriage. She holds up the black and red one and compares it carefully, chewing her lip to one side without knowing it. Both shirts clash with the woman’s sea-green quilted ski jacket.

          Ruby tries not to notice when the lady chooses the blue and gold plaid thermo-lined over the black and red one. Satisfied, finally, the woman discards the latter by draping it on the counter in front of an unused register. She wheels her cart to the front.

          But then she changes her mind. Or seems to.

          The checkout girl snaps her gum and watches as the lady steps carefully back around Ruby, who has taken up the space just vacated by the woman’s cart. The woman reaches around behind Ruby as if the younger woman is just a wooden post, grabs the red and black shirt and returns, once again, to the front of the line.

          The checkout girl looks at the woman without looking at her and continues to snap her gum.

          Ruby holds her breath when the woman holds up both shirts again to compare them. This time the woman’s jaw alternates, chewing both sides of her lips. Finally she drops both shirts on the counter.

          Before the woman can change her mind again, the salesgirl snaps her gum even faster, rings up the merchandise and bags it, all in one motion.                                                                                                                     

          "54.12," she says, in a nonexpressive voice. She staples the sales receipt to the outside of the crinkly plastic bag as dramatically as possible, letting the growing line of customers know that the transaction is final and there will be no more indecision on her watch.

          The woman winces and hands the clerk her credit card.

          And then it’s Ruby’s turn. She has two items, a multi-outlet power strip and a photo album. At least I know what I want, she thinks. Or what I don't want.

          She pays the girl in cash, takes the change, grabs the bag by both plastic handles, grabs Matthew’s  frozen little hand and leaves the store.

          She doesn’t feel unscathed, but she has finished her shopping for another year.

                                                      ___________



         The laundramat is open, even on Christmas eve. A small brass bell rattles above the entrance as Ruby opens the door. Inside, lengths of green and gold garland droop from the yellow walls, Scotch tape peeling from the heat of the machines. She releases Matthew’s hand, drops the frozen garbage bag of dirty laundry.

         Everything is coin-a-matic, except the aging girls with dirty kerchiefs and baskets of clean clothes, who sweat imperceptibly as they feel the damp legs of blue jeans in front of the thundering dryers. They do not speak to one another as they fold the clinging flannel shirts at the scarred Formica tabletops. There is no need for talk here. There is nothing to say when one has been here six hundred times and used the same machines to wash the same clothes. Their children mingle restlessly, grimy hands rubbing red eyes and soiled cheeks, sprawling on the beaten tile floors.          

          Matthew finds a penny on the floor and quickly clicks it into the gum machine. He lifts the metal flap and two pieces of black gum slide from the slot. He drops one, puts the other in his mouth. On hands and knees, he reaches under the Coke machine for the piece he dropped. His little fingers just fit under the sharp lip at the bottom of the soda machine.

         “What does my gum say?” he asks his mother.

         “Get up off that dirty floor, Matt.” She takes the tiny piece of gum, reads it, hands it back to him. “It says FORD MOTOR.”

         “Why?”

         “I don’t know,” she sighs, as she separates the socks from the towels.

         A discarded magazine jams the swiveling wheels of the basket carriage. When Ruby frees it, it opens to a picture of a woman who claims she lost 27 pounds in just two weeks. It strikes Ruby that the woman still has nearly two chins. She tosses the magazine and fills the double-load washer that still spins after she raises the lid. She engages another machine for her husband’s work clothes, the bleach bottle glugs while the washer fills.

         Gilbert wears his blue monkey suit every day, everywhere he goes. It zips from the collar to the crotch and has “Gil” stitched in yellow letters above the left front pocket. Ruby hates the tainted blue uniform, would like to burn it. It will never be free of the greasy black oil stains at the elbows and wrists.

         Like all the other young men that Ruby knows, her husband spends most of his time trying to master machinery. Always haunting junkyards for rebuilt starters and cleaner carburetors. Gilbert no longer works at the garage, and when people ask her (which is seldom), she has learned to say that he is “self-employed.” This seems to impress others, but it doesn’t impress Ruby. She knows that no money is the same if you park your ass on the couch all day or buy groceries for three kids and make a car payment in the same week.

         On the hard plastic turquoise chair in the corner the magazine is open to a page with big bold lettering. YOU TOO CAN BE RICH.  A woman by the Coke machine pouts in a hand mirror and applies purple lipstick. The lipstick doesn’t match her eye makeup, and Ruby is certain the magazine is hers. Ruby doesn’t know anyone who is rich. She never thinks about it.

                                                    ____________



           There is no car in the yard, and the driveway is a glare of ice.

          “Give me your hand, Matt.”

          They climb the wobbling steps that Gilbert says he’ll fix. Ruby sets the frozen garbage bag of clean laundry on the Maytag on the porch and catches her breath. She gets a peculiar feeling as she picks up the clean clothes from the top of the broken washing machine, as if someone is sharing a private joke at her expense. The Maytag needs a new drive belt.

          She checks the porch mailbox. Time savers, coupons, shopping tips. One need not ask how expensive groceries are when flyers are stuffed in the mailbox six days a week.

         She doesn’t smile as she opens the door to the apartment.

         Gilbert’s home, fooling with the bedroom lamp at the kitchen table. Snips of copper wire, strippers and tiny screws are scattered about the table. He says nothing.

         “Where’s the Plymouth?” she asks.

        “At Ralph’s.”

        He doesn’t look up as he answers, wears the same scowl as always when he’s working with his hands. In the dim light over the table, he looks scruffy, older than twenty-six. He used to shave back when she was first pregnant with Matthew, but not anymore.

        “What’s wrong with it now?” she asks, placing the folded clothes into five careful piles on the kitchen counter.

         “Needs a head gasket. Ralph’s gonna do it.”

         “How much?”

         “I dunno. He don’t know yet. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

         “But tomorrow’s Christmas.”

         “Oh yeah. I’ll call him Monday.” Gilbert stands on the rickety chair to unscrew the overhead lightbulb.

         “Where’s Tammy and Wanda?” asks Ruby, balancing three piles of clothes with her chin.

         “I dunno. Maybe they’re skating.”

         Ruby carries the stacks of clean clothes into the girls’ room. “How you getting to work Monday?” she hollers, tucking socks in Wanda’s drawer.

         “Leland’s gonna give me a ride as far as Stetson.”

Ruby says nothing.

         Before picking up the last pile of clean, folded laundry, she snaps on the clock radio on the kitchen counter. Jinglebell Rock is playing, sung by Gene Autry. As she places the towels and washcloths in the bathroom closet, Ruby begins to sing along.