Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 1 9 54 He sucked in a raspy breath, gathering his strength, and Ruthie felt a jab of fear in her gut. Was this a shooter? A stabber? Just that morning she'd read about three children stabbed in an Oklahoma elementary school. Not to mention Columbine, Sandy Hook, Umpqua. But she'd never heard of a massacre in a grocery store. Was this a new breed? Would the pathetic image of her body pitched forward over a cart full of frozen broccoli fet- tuccine and chicken parmesan come to represent the next step in American decline? She cursed herself for leaving her pistol in the truck. "It's coming," the man said. "I've seen it. Aisle five, the reaper. Do you even know? I'm from here." He stamped his foot. "Right here. And all you…you…" He paused, his lips twisting as he reached for the word. "Tourists. You come here and it's coming. I've seen it. I've heard it." A blue-vested manager appeared in the produce between the potato bin and the onion bin. Brown-haired, pale, and over-young, she ap- proached slowly, clearly hoping the man would disappear—be sucked back into the vast, mysterious sewer of the Twenty-First Century. "Sir," she said. "is used to be a lake!" the man went on. "You don't even know. A lake of water, and then a lake of fire!" "Excuse me, sir," the manager said again, and reached out to touch the man's shoulder. As soon as her fingers were an inch from his sweatshirt, an internal sensor tripped in his head and he swung around and smacked her arm away. e manager shrieked and the man stumbled back as though stung, a stream of unintelligible invectives issuing from his mouth. Ruthie and the other customers watched in stunned, motionless silence. ough it had been a lake once, Ruthie knew. One of the biggest in the world…. en the muscular man sprang into action: tossing his basket onto the conveyor, sprinting across the linoleum, and grabbing the back of the man's sweatshirt with both fists. e man screamed, trying to twist free, and the muscular man swung him roughly to the floor. He planted his fists into the man's dirty shoulder blades, pivoted neatly, and drove his knee into the small of his back, pinning him. en he looked up, sweaty and proud, like a golden retriever who's brought home a squirrel in its jaws without knowing what to do with it. Ruthie and the rest of the customers answered with shocked eyes. e homeless man flailed and shouted, then went still. A hush fell over the Super 1. Ruthie heard the hum of the ice ma- chine, the distant hiss of produce misters. e teenage girls leaned close together, their eyes wide. e bright, frozen tableau of the prostrate man, the muscular joggler, the stunned manager, and the huddled girls struck Ruthie briefly as beautiful, a portrait of humanity awash in the modern world. She thought of a line she'd read in a photography book she'd bought on a whim years before. "It's just light reflecting off surfaces." Just light…. e thought drifted through Ruthie's mind. ey would come to the valley, and then they would go. As the lake had. As would she. As would even the mountains. AND IT'S COMING. I'VE SEEN IT. I'VE HEARD IT." "You come here

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