Editor's Note: This story originally appeared in This Land, Vol. 1, Issue 4, December 1, 2010.
Autumn. 2010. 1946 South Harvard. Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I’m slouched in my car in the parking lot of QuikTrip counting customers; this wasn’t the Pakistan assignment I’d hoped for. At the northwest corner of 21st and Harvard, Store No. 27 hums round the clock, guarded by sixteen gas pumps standing at rigid attention like soldiers. A tall monument exhibiting the familiar QT logo looms above me, hubristically. Catty-cornered across the intersection is Burger Street, to the east is Arby’s, looking a bit anemic these days, on the southwest corner is the now abandoned May’s Drug Store building, soon to be the home of a CVS Pharmacy. The midday traffic around me is furious.
In 30 minutes 108 people have entered the store. That’s a customer every 16 seconds, if my friend’s calculation is correct, a near stampede by retail standards. And you can’t help but notice that the people going into the store are not the same people coming out of the store. This struck me as strange. Maybe there’s a story here after all.
Spring. 1958. 5th and Boston.
Fresh out of the Air Force and financially strapped, Chester Cadieux was threading his way through a throng of businessmen and shoppers in downtown Tulsa to make a sales call on a customer.
“Chester, you look awful.”
“You don’t look too good yourself, Holmes.”