The Bleeding Chameleon

The Pecan Problem

Ian told Matt many times before that the day he quit, they'd quit together. So it was Matt specifically who motivated him to show up to work the sixth day that week. The customers weren't worth the fuss, and Grant hardly came around. The first day went by as a breeze; he organized the shelves and read his book. The second day passed at a snail's pace, so he and Matt walked around the park — Matt even bought him pineapple shaved ice. In contrast to the second day, the third day only steadily increased in business. Then came the run in with the infamous girl in red.

And so the sixth day had just begun, and Ian had a task at hand; purchasing the ingredients for banana nut bread. The prior night he scoured the world-wide-web for the perfect recipe; moist, sweet, and tasting of banana. Each was a hair off from his desired result. The reviews would complain about too much flour or too little, or too much sugar or not enough. He spent hours nitpicking, choosing the one exhausted state told him looked best; not too many reviews, not too little — just enough. A whopping four-and-a-half out of five stars too.

First, he had to find the ingredients at his local Trader Joes. He found flour, bright green bananas, chocolate chips (just in case he felt crazy), but he couldn't find the nuts. There was not one pecan in the entire store. It was bizarre, unamerican, and furthermore, a blatant disregard for his basic needs. But he brushed it off. Never mind that then, he would just go to some other store nearby. He didn't have to buy the pecans at Trader Joes, in fact he hadn't had to buy pecans at all. He could have skipped the nuts all together. But banana nut bread without the nuts is just banana bread — and for that he wouldn't settle..

He went to Walmart, Meijer, hell, even Walgreens (he was losing it); NO PECANS. It was the weirdest and most disgusting thing he'd ever seen, and he'd had enough of it. What is a man without pecans? A man who has nothing left to live for.

Practically foaming at the mouth, burning the blacktop where it lay, he walked into work. Oh, South Carolinian officials would hear about this all right. Hell hath no fury like a man with his basic human requirements stripped away. He took a breather and paced each aisle. He had every ingredient, save for the pecans. The damn pecans! The bananas would go bad waiting for him to find some. Okay, South Carolina, you've truly ruined me, he thought. He settled. He'd go home later that night and make banana nut bread, hold the nuts. Pathetic.

When his anger subsided, Matt came in with horrible news, ruing it all.

"Look at the dam," he said, slamming the door behind him.

Oh boy, what now?

The younger employee walked to the back door. "Why, what's wrong with it?"

It only took him asking to find the answer. The girl in red struck again, this time over night. He parted the blinds further. The top of the dam resembled a shark's tooth, broken much worse than two days before. Frustration bubbled at the bottom of his stomach.

"How the hell? It's worse than it used to be."
The pecan situation, the heat, and now this?

"Where are you going?" Matt asked before Ian started moving. With no time to waste he wandered past the door, out into the sticky heat.

"Parks and rec office."

If the dam broke everyone in its path would die. Matt and Ian both, and who would be to blame? The park managers that ignored it or the employees that did the same?

So there he stood, in front of a middle-aged woman with curly brown hair. She crunched loudly on baby carrots, typing away on her desktop computer. She watched him enter, but wouldn't look up from the screen. He waddled closer.

"Excuse me."

Rather than looking up, she typed louder, almost punching the keyboard. Her name-tag read Nancy.