Spontaneous Marriage on Aisle 9

Pies, Love, Straightknives and Eternity

Long ago, I was a ‘courtesy clerk’ (read bagboy/gofer) at New Deal Market in scenic Stockton California. Here I had many astonishing adventures, and at least a couple of enlightenment experiences. I was 17.

It was a busy Saturday, late afternoon, 102f outside. On the overhead, I heard the Manager call for pies on Aisle 9. This meant a customer was there, and the frozen pies that we had on sale needed to be immediately restocked for that (now waiting) customer.

I ran to the freezer (we were not allowed to walk much), got a large, heavy box of pies, and ran back to Aisle 9. There was only one customer on the aisle, and she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She was wearing a stark white dress and she was glowing. So friendly, so attentive… just shining. A palpable angel.

I began to show off, kneeling below her with the large box, and ‘spin-cutting’ the top off with my straightknife while engaging her in small talk and looking up at her. I was so excited that I actually didn’t understand what happened next until some time afterwards.

One moment, everything was fairy-tale. The next, her white dress was shotgunned with crimson spray, as if something bloody had exploded between us. Her face registered sudden shock as she reflexively raised her hands to both protect and hide her face. She screamed. In a way I had never heard before, while fleeing toward the exit.

Staggered, I looked down to notice I had opened the tip of my left thumb rather deeply, and it was pulse-squirting blood in copious and continuous quantity. I had painted a variety of nearby objects with it as if my thumb were a cross between an airbrush and a paint-spill.

I never saw her again. The thumb required stitches, and I declined that ordeal to no appreciable effect.

Her and I got married. Over frozen pies. In a supermarket in Hell. And that was a moment of enlightenment. Funny how we fear it. And have the other, actually strange kinds of marriage. Our certificate was her dress, and I signed it with my blood.

Somewhere, in another world — near at hand and yet invisible to ordinary eyes, she and I ‘have many children’.