the sugar war (first draft of first part)

This is all true: the August after Sweet Stuff Sugar Substitute went on the market, I lost my virginity twice, the youngest Knox boy almost got arrested for stealing a sock full of quarters, Harvey Senior died of severe insulin shock, and Resa took my hair. Those last three all happened on the same day. I sometimes call that day the last battle of the Sugar War, but by that time it was already pretty obvious that we had lost. We lost the day Gurley's Grocery started using dimes.

I was 19 the summer of the Sugar War and living in the bricked-off section of my grandma's garage. I had moved there after I flunked the first semester of art school because moving back into your parents' place after you'd already moved away was pretty embarrassing, and Gran said she could use the company. I had my own bathroom, but I still had to go inside Gran's part of the house whenever I wanted to use the kitchen, and every time I saw her, she asked me if I'd found a job yet. I finally told her I was working part-time down at the Harvey's on Lee Street just so she'd leave me alone. But after a week or so, I started feeling guilty for lying about it, so I walked the three blocks to Lee Street to apply for a job at Harvey's. That's how I met Resa.

Berry Branch only had two grocery stores, unless you count the Super Wal-Mart, which was right on the edge of town and technically closer to Fernville. We always shopped at the Harvey's because it was close to the house, but Berry Branch was so small that our house wasn't really that far from anywhere in town. It would take maybe a minute longer to get to the Gurley's if we went in the other direction, but Gran also knew Harvey Senior's wife from church, and I guess she thought shopping at Harvey's was like supporting their family. She didn't realize the name thing was just a coincidence. Harvey Senior didn't even work there anymore.

Harvey's was the last store at the end of a little shopping center beside a Chinese restaurant called Great Wall. There was a coin laundromat on the other side of Great Wall, so the parking lot always smelled kind of like deep fried dryer sheets. There were always five or six scrawny cats hanging out in the shade under the cars, and if they saw you carrying anything out of any store in the building, they would run up and crowd around your feet and make a lot of noise, waiting for you to drop something they could eat. They were a sad little gang, we all thought so, and more than once I saw Resa "accidentally" bust open a cheap bag of catfood on their behalf. She fed them behind the dumpster around back, and Junebug always pretended not to notice.

The first time I saw Resa was the night I went in to apply. She had bright orange hair, and was standing behind the fifth register in her green Harvey's apron, hooking paper clips together. The whole place was completely silent and smelled a little like Mop N Glo. I would have thought they were closed if she hadn't been standing there looking so bored. When I walked over and asked her for an application, I saw that her nametag had a piece of masking tape over it with the word Pumpkinhead written in black Sharpie where her name was supposed to be.

She didn't say anything for a moment, just tilted her head to one side and looked at me. She was thin, almost bony, but her face had a roundness to it that made her seem like she would be soft all over. The first thing she said to me was, "Your hair would make a good wig."

I don’t remember how I had my hair that day, but back then I usually wore it in two French braids or two enormous buns like Princess Leia. I didn't wear it down very often because it went to my butt and got tangled up in everything I tried to do, which, admittedly, wasn't much, but it was less hassle to put it up every morning than to try to hold it out of the way whenever I had to pee.

I didn't really know how to respond, so I just said, "Thanks."

She dropped her paper clip chain on the counter and crossed her arms, leaned against the cash register. Her nails were painted bright orange to match her hair. "You wanna be a stockboy?" she asked me. "We ain't got room for any more cashiers."

"I'll do whatever needs doing," I said. "I just need a job."

She didn't get me an application. She just picked up the phone next to the register, pressed a button, and said into the receiver, "Hey Junebug, come up here. There's a guy you need to talk to." Her voice was broadcast all around the empty store.

The manager of Harvey's was Harvey H. Hartley, Junior, but everybody called him Junebug. He was something like twelve years older than me, so we didn't really know each other yet, but when he came walking over, I recognized him right away on account of his picture was up all over the high school for scoring so many touchdowns when he played for the Berry Branch Bucks. He was still built like a football player, except that his middle was starting to get soft. We watched him hurrying over with a frown that made the little white scar on his chin stand out. "Now I told you," he said, looking at Resa, "you can't call me Junebug over the intercom. During store hours, I'm Mr. Hartley." He pointed at his nametag. It said H.H. Hartley, Jr., Manager.

"I found you a new stockboy," Resa said. "Feel free to thank me with money."

At the mention of a stockboy, Junebug's square face seemed to brighten up. He looked all around, not paying much attention to me. "Well, where is he? Think he can start right away? The truck came today and both the Leroys are out sick. I still got two pallets of sugar and flour that need to be shelved."

Resa nodded toward me. "He's right there."

"Hi," I said.

When he looked at me again, Junebug's expression caught itself somewhere between confusion and disappointment. "Oh," he said. He looked from me to Resa and back again. Then he turned to her and, quiet like I wouldn't be able to hear him even though I was standing right there, he said, "Sweetheart, that ain't a boy."

"Don't you call me sweetheart, Junebug Hartley," she said. "During store hours, I'm–" She looked down at her nametag as though she'd forgotten what was on it. "Pumpkinhead. And so what if he's a boy or not?"

Junebug turned back to me with a sigh. "I'm sorry, Miss, but we're only hiring guys right now. It's just that the job requires a lot of heavy lifting and–"

"Wait a second," Resa interrupted. "You're not hiring him because he's a girl? That's outrageous! This is an outrage. I am outraged, Junebug."

He kept talking to me. "We don't need any more cashiers either, but I can put your application on file, and if an opportunity comes up–"

"You think women can only be cashiers?" Resa demanded. She reached behind herself and untied her green apron strings. "That's so sexist! I can't believe I even work here! In fact, you know what? I quit." She pulled the apron off over her head and handed it to Junebug.

He rolled his eyes but took it from her anyway. When she bent down to grab her purse from underneath the register, Junebug said to me, "Well, it looks like a position just opened for cashier. You want it?"

Resa straightened. "You think I'm that easy to replace?"

"Hell, I wish you was that easy to replace," said Junebug. "But you don't ever leave."

"I'm leaving now!" she said, and began storming away toward the sliding glass doors that led outside. "And don't you try to stop me!"

"Why would I want to?" he hollered after her. "I been trying to get rid of you for two years!" When the doors slid closed behind her, Junebug said to me, "Sorry about that. She's a drama queen."

"No, I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean for her to quit over me."

"What? Oh, no, that's what Resa does. She quits a couple times a week. Always shows up again for her next shift." He looked at his watch. "It was almost time for her to go home anyhow." He picked up the phone beside the register, pressed a number, and said into it, "Break's over, Darlene. Resa quit again."

"So there's not really an opening for a cashier, then," I said when he hung up.

"No, not really." He reached up and scratched the back of his neck, eyeing me. His shirt had a round wet spot in the armpit. He said, "Are you strong? You look kinda skinny."

I shrugged. "I helped my cousin with his furniture when he moved to Atlanta last year, so."

Darlene came out of the break room and took her place behind register two, already looking just as bored as Resa had.

"It was, you know. Couches and stuff. A bed frame. I didn't drop anything."

Junebug nodded. "Well, I didn't mean to assume nothing. If you can carry heavy boxes around every day without hurting yourself, you can have a job. Think you're up for it?"

"Sure," I said.

Just then, the doors slid open and Resa came right back inside like nothing had happened. "Hey, Junebug," she said. "I think I saw some Happy Cat back there with a hole in the bag. You mind if I take it?"

"Yeah, go ahead. Can't sell it with a hole in it," he told her. "Hey, I think I'm gonna give your friend here the stockboy job, see how it goes. What do you think of that?"

"Good," said Resa. "But she's not my friend."

I'm not sure why I was disappointed when she said that, since I didn't even know her yet or know if I wanted to be friends with her in the first place, but then Resa flashed me a smile for the first time, and I remember thinking that even though we'd just met, that smile was like we had some kind of secret between the two of us, and I couldn't help smiling back at her.

"I just have a thing for strays," she said.

***

The whole reason the Sugar War started in the first place was because of Sweet Stuff. They had this jingle that got stuck in your head like crazy: It won't be sweet enough unless you add Sweet Stuff! Every third TV commercial or radio ad or billboard was for the Stuff, and that jingle, man, it was catchy. People were buying it like a good lie, no doubts or questions. I even tried some myself in a batch of Harvey Senior’s homemade cupcakes that Junebug brought to work one day. Tasted just the same, and it was good for you too, much better than regular sugar. Zero calories, zero carbs. The only problem with the Stuff was it got so popular that, after a while, I think we all forgot it wasn't the real thing. I guess Old Harvey's proof of that.

The first strike came on the Sunday after the Wal-Mart in Fernville began stocking Sweet Stuff. I never went to the Wal-Mart since I didn’t have a car and it was too far to walk, but Junebug explained what was going on when he showed me and Resa the weekly sale paper. Gurley's had lowered the price of a five-pound bag of regular sugar to 59¢. Junebug said the idea was to offset the attraction of the pricey Sweet Stuff and keep people from going out to Fernville for their groceries, but I could tell he was offended personally by what the Gurley's sale paper was calling the Weekly Manager's Special.

"Knox thinks he'll take our business, too," Junebug muttered. "Bastard wouldn't know what loyalty was if it bit him in the face."

Kenny Knox had actually bitten Junebug in the face once. Resa told me it was during a wrestling match in P.E. when they were seniors in high school, and that's how he got the little scar on his chin. But she also said that Junebug didn't like to talk about it, so I never asked him if it was true. I don't even know how Resa found out, seeing as how she wasn't even from Berry Branch in the first place and would've been too young to see it happen if she had been. But apparently, the Hartleys and the Knoxes hadn't gotten along since then, and it didn't help that Kenny was managing the only real competition Harvey's had in town.

I had only been working at Harvey's for a few days when Gurley's launched that first attack. The job didn't require much thinking, but my arms and shoulders got a good workout from toting boxes around and stocking the shelves. I think Junebug took it easier on me than on the other stockboys since I was a girl, and sometimes when I looked up he was even helping me out at the other end of one of my aisles, which was definitely not the manager's responsibility. But I didn't complain about it. I liked having him there to talk to, and it was nice having him around even when we weren't talking, like how I imagine it would be to have an older brother looking out for you.

So far my work schedule had almost exactly matched Resa's, so we were sort of getting to know each other, too. We were the same age, but in some ways she seemed a lot older than me, more worldly and experienced. And she was so damn confident. If I didn't know better, I'd say she had never been afraid of anything in her life. Sometimes the customers were flat-out rude to her on account of she had such a unique style, but their comments didn't seem to bother her one bit. Every time someone called her a name, she'd just write it down on a piece of tape, stick it on her nametag, and own it. I admired the hell out of Resa, and I would've told her that if I'd had half the guts she did. But since I'd always been too chicken to say what I felt to anybody, I ended up just watching her all the time and wishing I could be like her, or at least close to her.

After Gurley’s put their sugar on sale, Resa's the one who suggested we ought to take counteractive measures. When she said that, Junebug's eyebrow went up right in the middle. He only had one thick eyebrow and it went over both his eyes, so when it moved, his whole face looked different. "Like how?" he asked.

A little while later, he came and found me shelving bags of dried peas. He had four blank posterboards with him, along with some markers and tape. "Hey, Pippi," he said. He had started calling me Pippi Longstocking because of my braids. "How good are you at making signs?"

"I flunked out of art school," I told him.

He handed me the supplies. "That means you're better than the rest of us," he said.
While Junebug took over stocking my shelves - which could have waited until I was done with the sign, but I guess he wanted to have something to do with his hands - I taped the four posters together and drew a giant bag of Southern Snow granulated sugar on it. It was the cheapest sugar Harvey's carried. Beneath the bag of sugar, I wrote, "Southern Snow, 5-Lb Bags, Only 49¢!" Across the top of the huge sign, I wrote, "MANAGER'S SPECIAL." It was exactly what Junebug wanted. As soon as I was done, he took the sign up to the front of the store and stuck it in the big plate-glass window facing the parking lot, whistling the whole time.

So that's how the Sugar War got started. I still don't know if it was Kenny Knox's fault for lowering his price first or if it's Resa fault for saying we should fight back, Junebug's fault for agreeing to retaliate, or my fault for making the humongous sign. Hell, maybe it's Wal-Mart's fault for selling Sweet Stuff in the first place. Whenever I try to figure out who to blame, though, I always end up blaming Sweet Stuff itself. As far as I know, it's the only thing that actually claimed any casualties.

***

Resa had different colored hair every day, and not one of the colors was something people could naturally grow, unless they'd maybe been exposed to radiation or something. Her fingernails and eyebrows usually matched her hair, although the day after the Sugar War started, they were both lime green while her wig was lemon yellow. She was in the break room when I went to clock in. The masking tape on her nametag already said Freak.

"Been busy today?" I asked her.

"Old ladies," she said, retying her green Harvey's apron which had come aloose. "We're gonna need more sugar." All the yellow and green made her look sort of like a bottle of Mellow Yellow. "Hey, Pip," she added, "are you the one who drew that sugar in the front window?"

The first time Junebug called me Pippi in front of Resa, she wrote it down on a piece of tape and stuck it on my nametag like the way she always did with hers. It didn't take long for everyone at the store to start calling me Pippi, although Resa was the only one who shortened it to Pip. "Yeah," I said.

"It looks pretty cool," she told me.

It was just a stupid drawing of a bag of sugar on a bunch of taped-together posters. After Resa complimented it, though, I started feeling like maybe it was kind of good. It made me happy that she noticed. "Thanks," I said. "Junebug asked me to do it, so."

"You ever do people?"

"Sometimes." One of the art classes I'd failed had had live models. "But I'm better at things that don't move."

Smiling a little, Resa came over close to me and put her hands on my shoulders. I'd already learned that personal space was an alien concept when it came to her, but it was still startling how close she sometimes liked to get when she talked. That intensity made everything that she said or did seem more important. She didn't even blink. "If I promised to hold really still for you," she said, "would you draw me sometime?"

Resa didn't have eyelashes. I'd known from the start that she didn't have eyebrows because they were a different color every day and obviously drawn on, but it took me a few days of knowing her to realize that her dark lashes were fake too. The only reason I even noticed is because she liked to get right up on you to talk. That day, I remember thinking how odd it seemed that her eyes were plain brown like mine when everything else about her was so interesting and vibrant. She smelled sweet, like apples. If I'd put my hands on her waist, we could have been dancing.

I don't even remember how I answered her, but it must have been something like a yes. She was the kind of girl that you didn't really say no to, even if you wanted to, which I didn't. I had this inexplicable desire to do whatever it would take to please Resa. I'd never been so desperate for someone to like me before.

Whatever it was that I said made Resa smile bigger, and we were standing there like that with her smiling at me when Junebug walked into the break room talking on his cell phone. I hurried and pulled away from her like he had caught us doing something wrong, but he wasn't paying us any mind, and Resa just chuckled at me. She said, "See ya later, straight girl," like I had told her I was straight even though we hadn't talked about it at all, and then she left the room to go back to her register, and I stood there watching her leave, not really getting what had just happened but wondering suddenly if Resa maybe liked girls. It hadn't occurred to me before.

In an irritated voice, Junebug was saying to his phone, "No, Mama, we ain't gonna start selling that stuff, but we got a good price going on real sugar right now, and... Well, I know he's not supposed to have... Yes, but we... Isn't the medicine supposed to...? Alright, well, you're gonna have to get it at Wal-Mart. Gurley's don't carry it either."

***

We had a truck come in the next day, and I spent my entire shift unloading boxes. I didn't see Resa at all except when I first walked in, and then again when I was getting ready to leave. Her hair was a dark blue bob, and she had a shiny gold star right at the corner of her eye like an anime character. She was standing at register five talking to Junebug when I walked by, and she stopped me to ask where I'd been all day. Her nametag said Rainbow Brite.

"She's been building up those skinny arms of hers, right Pippi?" Junebug said. He bumped his big fist against my arm. "A couple more trucks, and we'll make a man outta you."

I gave him a smile, but Resa's drawn-on blue eyebrows pulled together in a frown. "You mean to say," she said to him, "that you've been forcing this poor girl to haul big ole boxes around all day for minimum wage while you've been sitting up in your office eating brownies? Junebug Hartley, just who do you think you are?"

His eyebrow went up. "Now hold on a minute--"

"Oh, he helped with the truck," I said. Junebug had in fact done the majority of the heavy lifting that should've been my job and only stopped after I assured him I could do the rest. The other stockboys had rolled their eyes, but I thought it was nice of him to want to help me, if unnecessary.

"You're the one who said I oughta hire a girl as a stockboy," Junebug pointed out. Then he added, "And they were blondies, not brownies." All the Hartleys had given up chocolate when Harvey Senior found out he was diabetic, but Junebug still had a mighty sweet tooth.

"I can't believe you," Resa said anyway, reaching back to untie her green apron. "Making her tote all those heavy boxes - and in this heat! That's exploitation, Junebug. Poor thing's clearly exhausted. Just look at her!"

Junebug looked at me. I shrugged.

Resa pulled the apron off over her head. "Well, I won't stand for it," she announced, thrusting the apron toward Junebug. "Consider this my resignation."

Junebug looked at his watch and then took the apron from her with a sigh. "Fine," he said, "I'll see you tomorrow. But you keep doing this, sweetheart, and one of these days I'm not gonna take you back."

"One of these days, I'm not coming back," Resa replied. She grabbed her purse and came out from behind the register, then hooked her arm through mine. "Come on, Pip," she said. "Let's get off this plantation."

Resa practically dragged me out with her as she marched off. It was about two hours to closing time and already dark outside. As soon as we got to the parking lot, the stray cats came running up to Resa like they expected something from her, but she didn’t seem to notice them, and one almost got kicked in the head when she stepped over it. I assumed Resa would let go of me to go to her car, but she didn’t. She just started walking me in the direction I normally went when I got off work, towards Gran’s house, her arm around mine the whole time.

"I saw that little Knox kid in the store today," she said. "Betcha he tells Kenny about the sugar sale." That little Knox kid was Kenny's youngest brother Chet, who was fourteen and not actually little in the traditional sense. He was almost as tall as Junebug. Resa had told me that Kenny sent his brothers into Harvey's sometimes as spies, but I didn't really see why that would be necessary. A grocery store was always just a grocery store to me. I'd never been to Gurley's, but I imagine it didn't differ that much from our store on the inside.

"You think Kenny'll be mad?"

"Oh, livid!" She laughed. "You watch; as soon as he finds out what we did, he's gonna drop his price again to beat us."

Forty-nine cents was already really low for a five-pound bag of sugar. I couldn't imagine Gurley's selling it for less. "And then what? You think Junebug'll want to drop our price again?"

"Of course," said Resa. She gave me that smile that looked like we were in on something together. "We couldn't let them win."

Resa walked with me all the way to the corner of the parking lot. I kept thinking she'd let go of me, but when I turned the corner and started heading down the road, she just came along, talking the whole way. First she told me everything worth knowing about some of the other cashiers, Darlene and Keisha and Mary Beth, and then she started on the stockboys, Jeb and Leroy and the other Leroy and Catfish Hanson. She didn't know much about Catfish except how he got his nickname, which was pretty disgusting, although she laughed the whole time she was telling me. Resa had this amazing laugh that got inside your chest and shimmied around until you couldn't help laughing with her. And her voice, when she wasn't arguing with Junebug, was low and soft and feminine, and everything she said sounded like a secret. By the time we got to Gran's, I felt like I'd known her for years.

My little space in the garage didn't have a lock on it, so every time I left, I rolled an old push-mower in front of the door to discourage people from wandering in. It was embarrassing having to move things around to get to the door, as though no one had been there in a long time and I was just taking Resa to somebody's storage room in their garage, but she didn't say anything about it. When I opened up the door, she walked right into the place and plopped down on my red beanbag chair like she came there all the time and nothing was weird at all about her following me home. I looked around to make sure I didn't have anything embarrassing laying out in the open, and then I sat on the edge of my bed facing Resa.

She was looking back at me, the star at the corner of her eye glinting in the light from my lamp. "So, where are we doing this?" she asked.

I had no idea what she was talking about, but as soon as she said that I felt my stomach get really cold, which is what happens when I'm nervous. I had this sudden feeling like me and Resa were about to do something important. It was a lot like how I felt when I was fifteen years old, sitting in David Cantrelle's jeep parked behind the Dairy Queen after a football game, right before he kissed me for the first time. Like I was about to lose something and find something both at once. I said, "I don't know. What are we doing?"

I must've looked as anxious as I felt, because Resa laughed at me. "Relax, straight girl," she said. "Yesterday you said you'd draw me. I just want to know where I should sit."

"Oh," I said, and exhaled a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. I don't know if I was relieved or disappointed. "Right there's fine. Let me just. I need to get my stuff." I stood and went to the closet to get my big sketchpad and chalk pastels. I figured I'd sketch Resa in shades of blue because her hair was blue that day, but when I got everything together and turned back around, Resa was holding the blue hair in her hands instead of wearing it. I was so startled to see her like that I almost dropped my box of chalk.

Resa had this thing called alopecia universalis, which is some kind of rare disorder that makes you lose all your hair. Under those bright colored wigs she wore every day, her scalp was as smooth as an egg shell, and almost as pale. I'd known since I met her that she was always wearing a wig, but I guess I just expected her to have hair under it, maybe even just really short hair, not this perfect round smoothness. There wasn't even any peach fuzz, as if she'd gone over her whole head very carefully with a razor. I stared at her.

Resa snorted. "Pick your jaw up off the floor, Pippalotta. Ain't you ever seen a bald chick before?"

The truth was I hadn't, but that's not why I couldn't look away. "Sorry," I said.

She shrugged. "It's no big deal. I haven't had hair since I was thirteen." And then she folded her thin arms behind her head and leaned back on the beanbag chair, closing her eyes. She said, "I want it to look like I'm asleep."

I sat back down on my bed with my sketchpad and chalks and began to draw Resa in blue. I was glad she had her eyes closed because I found myself more than once forgetting that I was supposed to be drawing her and instead just looking at her hairless skin, imagining running my blue-smudged hands over the curve of her scalp. Somehow, without the wig on, it seemed like she was lying there completely naked. I wasn't sure why it affected me so much to see her that way. I hadn't even been this distracted when I had to draw an actual naked guy in art class.

While I drew her, Resa talked. She told me that she had moved away from home after her mother died when she was seventeen, that she'd been on her way from this tiny town in Florida to New York City but only made it as far as Berry Branch before she decided it was as good a place as any to stop and try to save up some money. She said she was still planning to move to New York as soon as she could afford it, that Berry Branch was just a stop along the way. A really long stop. When she got to New York, she said, she was going to be a dancer.

Resa's smooth head filled my page, her slender arms and neck, round face. Even though they were fake, I added in her eyebrows and eyelashes and the little gold star. I let her go on talking after I was done drawing her, just listening to her voice and watching her pink lips move while she told me all her plans. Even now, I don't remember ever seeing someone more beautiful.

When Resa finally opened her eyes, I turned the sketchpad around so she could see what I'd drawn. She sat up on the beanbag chair and took it from me. And then she just sat there looking at it for a long time. I was worried she hated it because she didn't say anything, so I said, "I'm sorry it's not very good."

"Don't be an idiot," Resa said. "It's gorgeous."

She asked me to sign my name so I did, and then I tore the drawing out of the pad for her and rolled it up. She gave me a hug when she took it. Resa was thin, but I was really aware of her small breasts pressing against mine when she pulled me close. "Thanks," she said in my ear, and tugged on one of my braids.

"You're welcome," I said.

I watched Resa leave my place that night with the rolled-up drawing in one hand and her dark blue wig in the other, and I probably wouldn't have admitted this at the time - hell, at the time I didn't even realize it - but by the moment she stepped around the old push-mower and out of my grandma's garage, I was about half in love with that girl.

***