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{the gift} graham hillard In life you were pretty much helpless. You did what you could to protect yourself, but you rolled the dice just getting out of bed in the morning. Such were Courtney Rhodes’ thoughts as she stood in line at the end of her shift, purse draped over her shoulder and employee discount card in hand. The gift shop would be closing soon, and the aisles behind her were filled with last-minute shoppers eager to carry home a stuffed killer whale—the staff were encouraged to call them orcas, though the park had none—or a T-shirt emblazoned with dolphins. Immediately to Courtney’s right, inches from the fraying yellow rope designed to separate the check-out line from the mass of shoppers beyond, were a boy and girl of similar height and build, and Courtney watched as, prompted apparently by some unspoken slight, the two of them began simultaneously to hit one another. Yards away, a woman in a fading red bikini top yelled the boy’s name, and, without responding, he sat down on the ground and began to cry. His sister crossed her arms and hollered, a monosyllabic yelp of triumph, and the woman strode quickly across the space that separated them and slapped the girl’s face. Though Courtney heard gasps and saw other tourists shaking their heads, no one confronted the woman, and after a moment she and the children left the shop. Courtney had been working at the aquarium for only a few months, but already she had grown accustomed to such scenes. A five-acre attraction built at the last minute with expiring federal money, the park served a demographic for whom Sea World—ninety miles to the south and a mere two hours by car—was an impossible dream. Dreary, poorly-maintained, and staffed largely by high school students from the local agricultural magnet, the aquarium reminded Courtney of various scenes from her own childhood—second-rate county fairs, carnivals run by the swarthiest of gypsies. The place was a dump, the height of tackiness, yet, if Courtney were honest, she had wanted the job badly and had been thrilled to get it. As chief trainer and veterinary assistant, Courtney held significant responsibility for the well-being of Murphy and Chet, the park’s three-year-old seals and star attractions. Her pay was low—the friends with whom she had studied Veterinary Science claimed not to believe the number she gave them—but whereas many of these friends had gone from school to jobs as pet store clerks or fourth assistants at larger parks, Courtney had worked with her animals from day one, jumping right in to a training program of her own design and setting right the many errors the previous trainer had made. The situation was far from perfect, but she was living the life she had planned rather than a variant of it, and she understood that this fact was precious. Not that her friends and family hadn’t hectored her. Her first week on the job, Courtney had looked up from a bucket of minnows to see her sisters giggling and hooting in the audience. A few days later her cousins had joined the scene, one of them going so far as to convince the sixteen-year-old who worked the crowd to call him down as a volunteer. Humiliated but determined to stay in character, Courtney had watched with horror as the boy intentionally tipped the bucket into the pool. It had taken Murphy twenty minutes to regain his composure, and Courtney’s boss had lectured her for an hour on volunteer management before sending her home almost in tears. That her relations found the job demeaning and ridiculous seemed to Courtney an outbreak of snobbery too ironic to be believed. Yet “those fish,” as Courtney’s father called the pair, seemed to them the very embodiment of frivolity—a harbinger of future humiliations with which the family might one day be visited. Today was Sunday, however, and the long weekend she had just put in was coming to a close. Weeks earlier she had promised her youngest brother a souvenir from work, and she would soon be through the line and on her way home—zipping through the Florida night with the windows down and the radio up, the smell of her exhaust drifting into the car and mixing with the raw, pungent grip of the ocean. Looking up, she saw that her boss had exited the office at the back of the gift shop and was waving at her. In her hand was a thin white envelope, and she gestured with it as if fanning herself. Stepping out of the line, Courtney moved down an aisle filled with swimming gear and sunscreen and stopped in the door of the office. Jenny, her boss, had taken a seat behind the desk and motioned for her to come in. “I’m going to jump right into this,” she said when Courtney had sat down. “We’ve been having some complaints.” “From whom?” Courtney asked, leaning forward and placing her elbows on the desk between them. “The customers.” Jenny tilted her head in a gesture toward the shoppers just beyond the door. “Who do you think?” “What have they said?” Jenny paused and stared at her. Her eyes were red and tired. “Look, it doesn’t really matter, does it? You must have known this was coming.” “Known what was coming?” Courtney’s heart was pounding now, but she knew that she would get nowhere by showing anger. “Jesus.” Jenny shook her head. “Look. The director has a problem with you. Who knows what it is?” Reaching down, she picked up the white envelope and handed it to Courtney. “Three weeks’ pay. Get your shit together. Leave when you like.” Courtney heard the door close. She had been in the office for less than a minute. She sat for a moment, stunned, and though she tried hard not to, she began to cry. Jenny was right, nothing could be done, but the injustice of the situation nevertheless struck her as a confirmation of what she had been taught to fear about the world. Two summers earlier, she had felt similarly helpless when her brother had come home from school with a broken nose and an eye sealed shut as if with glue. Now, as then, her powerlessness seemed to her a greater affront than anything that could be done to her. It meant that more was on the way. Collecting her purse, she pushed open the office door and stepped into the gift shop, her tears falling freely now and her face burning. The door to the park beyond was open, and she could see the families streaming past, headed in the direction of the parking lot where they would take up again the lives they had left there, carrying on for a little longer if they could. Stepping into the night, Courtney saw that the woman in the bikini top had stopped with her children on a bench and was speaking to them in a low, dangerous voice. Though the children were silent, Courtney could see in their eyes a desperation—theirs, perhaps, or her own reflected back at her. It didn’t matter. Not stopping to think but striding forward as if carried on a wave of righteous fury, Courtney slapped the woman hard across the face, putting into the blow the full authority of justice. The woman screamed, but Courtney said nothing, turning and rushing at once into the calm and warmth of the gathering darkness. |
