A Magazine in God's Waiting Room

Chapter Four

I realize this is not a bookstore but someone's garage. I have realized this too late because I am already parked in their driveway and the little fat old lady has already waved at me. Either this is a legitimate business that just happens to be in a garage or my grandmother is trying to get me murdered and honestly it is 50/50. I rest my forehead on the steering wheel while I gather the energy to go talk to another human being. I get out of the car and hit the key fob on my way up to the garage. As I am walking up the guardian of this little hole waves at me.

"Hi there have you come to look at my books?" She asks, I am trying really hard at not being an asshole so instead of saying 'the fuck else would I be here for?' I say

"Yeah my grandma told me about this place"

"Oh really who's your grandma?"

"Enid Thompson?"

"Oh my Mason right?" I nod "She told me you might be stopping by she actually picked out a few books for you to look at, here" She reaches behind her and picks up a stack of five books "she paid in advance so you just pick the one you want and off you go, you can also look around for a different book if you'd like" I take a quick peek at the books Grandma Enid has hand picked for me. My Sister's Keeper, Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five, and Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock.

"Well which one do you think I should get?" I ask so I don't have to exert anymore brain effort in this interaction.

"Well I am a sucker for Jodi Picoult but I think Slaughterhouse Five might suit you better"

"Then I'll take that one"

"Great, do you need a bag? Bookmark?" she asks, reaching down in a bucket by her feet.

"Yeah a bookmark actually thank you" She pulls a bookmark that's holographic with a kitten winking on it.

"How about this one?" she asks.

"You know what it's perfect" I say, taking that and the book and the bookmark from her hands. I get into Clarissa and decide to go somewhere scenic to read my book. I decided on the nearby lake where, if I remember right, there should be some picnic tables I can sit in and smell lake water. A rare treat for me, being from Elkton I normally just go right for seabreeze. I try to find it on GPS by just typing lake into Google and thank goodness Google is a good friend to me and hooks me up with the exact place I was thinking of. I wave through my windshield to ole Betty Crocker and head towards my next destination on my tour of this small town.

I arrive after being shocked several times while driving at the sheer amount of roadkill that is on the side of the roads here it seems like an amount that may be present in a Wrong Turn spin off. The amount that tips you off that something is not quite right in this town. Maybe something's not quite right in this town anyway, I mean what kind of town has a bookstore that is run out of a garage? Maybe I am being too judgemental. I zone out on the lake and think if there may be some dark secret hidden in this town.

A honk from behind me snaps me out of my Hardy Boys. I look behind me and see some Camry driver arguing with some Hummer driver. I make note to not make eye contact with them when I get out of the car. I make my way over to the picnic tables and start reading and begin to realize that this place was not built for people like me to calmly read a novel about WWII but instead this place was carved out of nature specifically to allow redneck truck drivers to rev and race as much as they please with no intervention from local law enforcement. I have spent enough time in small towns to know that the idea of them being cute and quaint was fabricated. They are either racist or weird or both and this one seems to be both. There is no reason to have this many dollar generals in one place; it is near insanity.