The Shopping Cart Pioneers by Ann Wuehler

Jilly sat at the table as her father packed their few clothes into a suitcase, a battered old blue one with a broken doo-hickey on one end - duct tape worked just as well as getting a new suitcase, he had told her once. The can of tuna had been polished off. Her father had eaten one spoonful. He said he wasn't that hungry after his long day; he lied, she knew.  

The candle flickered and stuttered, grew steady again. 

“Are we going to Aunt Belinda’s?“ 

Aunt Belinda had a small house over by Harrisburg. She collected shot glasses and had shelves of them. And Aunt Belinda never went on and on about the terribleness of the American political system, how everyone was being fooled. 

Uncle Stevie told jokes about God that he'd heard on The Vicar of Dibley, his favourite show, right up there with Three's Company. 

Both were normal and nice, and Aunt Belinda smelled like sugar cookies. She never smelled like whiskey or hunger. But Uncle Stevie had lost his job, been laid off as a teacher, and her father had started looking grave whenever Belinda called to ask about Grandma. 

“No, not going to your aunt’s. She doesn’t have her house anymore,“ her father said gently, folding Jilly’s jeans, folding them as small as he could. “And she lived all the way over in Harrisburg, that’s quite a walk.“ 

“Where did Aunt Belinda go? Are we homeless now, Dad?“ 

His big shoulders looked broken and wounded to her eyes. His t-shirt stuck to his chest. It was hot in the apartment, the sky outside full of clouds but no rain. She was hot, 

too, it would be hard to sleep tonight. And she was still hungry. That milk from earlier still seemed present in the back of her throat. 

“We are homeless now, Jill. But it’ll be okay. We can find a shelter. Belinda and Steve went to his in-laws in Pittsburgh, they're fine. And it’s summer. Summer is great if you have to be homeless. I’d be more worried if it were winter. Isn’t there an old shopping cart on the corner, up by the park?“

“Uh, I guess it’s still there. The one tipped over by the swings?" Jilly answered. “I guess winter would be cold. And there’d be snow. What about your class? And - what about mom?“

“I’m not going to class anymore. And your mom...well, she’ll be okay.“ He had told her this many times and it had yet to be true. It was like a blanket with holes, or just maybe holes with no hint of the former blanket left. “How about if you and I took a trip?“

“A trip? The car’s got a flat," Jilly scoffed, trying not to mind that they would have to leave her books and Grandma's rocking chair.  

They were taking some pictures, her father’s papers, some other stuff her father deemed important. A tarp would go with them, a sleeping bag, the rabbits, Bilbo, of course; they would never leave behind their pets. 

“In the olden days,“ her father said rather formally, with his special, teasing half-smile in place, though his eyes were still too-wide, “Mormons set out for Utah pushing handcarts. Walking from Missouri to Utah. Walking.“ Grey eyes, grey hair.

Walking.

Jilly squinched her nose up. 

“Walking? Didn’t they have horses, didn’t the pioneers have horses? And go to Oregon?“

“Some did, sure. I thought you studied this in school.“

“A little, a few days. It was mostly how hard it was and that it took six months and they ended up in Oregon City. Or they split off and went to California for gold. And the Chinese and Irish built the railroads. But pioneers didn't walk,“ Jilly supplied. 

They had had to work on a map with other kids, drawing pictures, making a presentation, finding out facts. Each group had been given a different task - her group had to talk about what food the Oregon pioneers ate. Mostly beans and hard tack and bacon and coffee and whatever game they could shoot. It didn’t sound good at all. Hard tack was little hard biscuits, like crackers. Hard awful crackers. 

Perry Leipniki had said they must have farted a lot. This earned him detention, when he announced this during their presentation. 

She had messed up horribly when it came to her time to read her paragraph, getting all tight-mouthed and tearful, but her teacher, Mrs. Thermin, jumped in and made pretty Nancy Guitierrez continue with her part. 

Nancy, all the time looking at Jilly, had read her part perfectly. And on the playground, she had pinched Jilly viciously for messing up their report. 

Jilly had rubbed Nancy's face in a mud puddle for that and had gotten in trouble, and then had been forgiven on account of Grandma, for some reason. 

She knew her father did not believe in striking back against people, that it was linked to being stupid or something. But as she had observed so many times, it was how the world really worked. Her father believed everyone was peaceful and nice. Or they had the potential to be peaceful and nice? Something like that. But they just weren't.

Nancy had never bothered her again after the puddle. 

Her father had been speaking for some time. She nodded, guilty for not listening as she should. 

“Sure they did. They didn’t ride in their wagons the whole time, that would tire out the horses or oxen. They would have walked nearly the whole way, from the East all the way to the West. They had to cross rivers and go over the mountains. Many died out of sheer stupidity, they had no idea what they were doing! Going West for land they couldn't afford, which would be bought up by corporations anyway when they couldn't make a go of it. It was a scam! Do you remember me telling you about Oklahoma? About Idaho? What if...what if we went there, Jilly?“

“I’d rather go to Arizona,“ Jilly said, watching the candle. 

Wax tears moved down the sides. 

Everything was a scam, corporations were evil. Yeah yeah.  

“Do you know how far Arizona is from Pennsylvania?“

“Oh about a thousand miles, or so,“ Jilly replied, taking a stab at it. She was not good with maps or figuring out what road went where. She had never been, really, out of the Lehigh Valley, except to visit Aunt Belinda, but that was years ago. She had been a baby then, not even five. No Bilbo or rabbits at that time, but they’d had a cat, a big silvery cat. 

Oh, she had gone to the beach in Maryland. 

“Try more like 2000, through some of the worst country ever invented, deserts and mountains. You’d have to cross the Rockies, the Mississippi River and the badlands, salt flats.“ Her father grit out, shaking his head at how little she knew. “Why Arizona? It’s hot there, all the time.“

Two thousand miles. He had to be lying. “I like summer, it’s always summer there. And they have the Grand Canyon.“ 

She had never seen the desert. Live, in person, that is. She wanted to get her own way. Be taken seriously. Have someone follow her. 

She liked how Arizona felt in her mouth, the soft rounded Spanish name of that state. It was easier to spell than Pennsylvania. It would be cool to say, yes, I'm from Arizona. It was exotic. 

“Idaho has the River of No Return. Oklahoma has those endless flat spaces, you can’t even imagine, Jilly.“ 

Except she could, she could see the big grassy places, of course she could. 

Jilly kept watching the candle. It was so hot. She felt sick and stupid with how hot it was. 

“The what kind of river?“

“The Salmon, it’s called the River of No Return. A bad evil river, right through the heart of Idaho. People die on it, it’s mean. Marilyn Monroe was in a movie about it, we’ll have to see that. Some day.“ 

Her father was by the sink now, filling an old soda bottle with water from the tap, though their water tasted funny anymore. Frakking, her father had said once. She knew that had something to do with drilling for water, or drilling the water. 

It would ruin the planet. The bad guys were drilling holes all over the planet and it was bad. 

“Idaho? I don’t want to go to Idaho, Dad. That doesn’t sound good at all, a river that can kill you.”

“Any river can kill you. You can drown in a stream. Do you still have that thermos your aunt got you for Christmas? We should fill that with water, too.“

Jilly went to get it, her pink and white thermos with the Hello, Kitty! logo on its side. Her father made a face every time she used it. But he filled it and set it on the table. 

“Are we leaving Pennsylvania? Where did they take mom?“ She had to know, had to ask and her father would tell her, he always told the truth. 

Except when he lied about being hungry or that Idaho was better than Arizona.

“Well, I guess we are leaving Pennsylvania, we’ll have to walk. But let’s just see how far we can get, okay? Jilly, your mom went to the hospital to make sure she’s okay. Like last time.“

Jilly nodded, not wanting to make her father’s mouth turn down any further. She did not wish to see him cry. 

Walking. 

Walking to Arizona. 2000 miles. It was too big to contemplate. 

Where would they go? 

This was their last night in the apartment. 

The rabbits were content in their cage, Bilbo curled nearby. They had no worries.

Her father’s stomach rumbled, very loudly. 

Both laughed. 

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I'm a writer from Eastern Oregon with a cat and a tiny garden. I have seven novels out and work two jobs until, well, until everything works out and there's a happy ending, of course.

Insta: oregonann