A Native Grocery Store Clerk’s Experience of the Coronavirus by Cliff Taylor

My checkstand is right by the front door. I say hello to everyone who walks in, like a good vibes-generator; about 60 percent of the people say hello back. Behind me is a big open window looking out to Highway 101, a big grassy field, and then Saddle Mountain beyond that. This is the best view I’ve had at any job ever. About a week ago we had a ceremony and one of the things the spirits said was, “Now is a good time to make friends with a mountain.” When the coast is clear I’ll go outside, try to look inconspicuous, and then offer a little of my coffee to the mountain. A regular customer with her hands full of empty water jugs comes in. “Hello!” I say, smiling. She lifts her arms. “Water time!”

Businesses in our little Oregon town are beginning to shut down, the uneasy reality of this worldwide situation reaching our midst, flowing into our world. Everybody’s talking about shelter-in-place but the governor hasn’t declared it just yet. I meditate every day and think about the fires that happened in the Amazon and Australia, the supreme bullshit of the folks who’re trying to build a telescope on Mauna Kea, and all the things all my friends are doing to contribute to all the situations. My customers are really beginning to talk to me about this virus but I don’t really know much about it. My girlfriend ain’t buying it: “I’m not getting on this fear train. I’m not succumbing to the hype.” A friend I know from a local sweat comes in, an older white lady who also works for the National Park Service, and she’s wearing a mask. She looks at me and a self-conscious embarrassment flashes through her eyes. “I know I’m one of the few who’s wearing one of these but I’m not going to take any chances. This virus is very real. It’s dangerous.” I give her a thumbs up. “Don’t feel the need to have any shame in your game in here,” I say. “Be safe!”

It’s Sunday night and it’s like you can feel the coding in the air, something’s about to turn over, to click; the game’s about to change. It’s downright eerie. We’re closing in about an hour and the customers have thinned out. I’m remembering watching Steven King’s The Stand with my mom on TV when I was a little kid: all those different folks meeting up and walking through the deserted, broken-down bulk of civilization, surrounded by emptiness where once there was the loud, crazy, vibrant busyness of billions. Even before all this happened it would sometimes get almost too quiet during the evenings and there would be a certain ghostiness to everything, a haunted quality. The highway out there is clear and carless; fewer folks out than usual; like some gut-instinct is finally kicking in and just keeping people home. This ballcap-wearing workingman comes up to my lane and we get to talking. “You can feel it, can’t you? Shelter-in-place is coming.” “I think you’re right,” I say, “because today has had a funny feeling to it all day and it’s been dead.” “Just wait,” he says, boxing his groceries. “Tomorrow is going to be a whole different world.”

Shelter-in-place has been declared for the state of Oregon. As expected, we’re slammed: people are panic-buying and coming for their cartloads, all the dried beans, rice, canned goods, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper we’ve got. All of our registers are in use and burning hot, with the line of shoppers ready to check out staying long and steady. All the non-essential businesses have shut down and the endless, infinite, repetitive, stuck-on-repeat talk of the Coronavirus has begun, every customer having just one thing occupying their mind, taking over their house, pressing its face up directly against their face until eyeballs are actually touching eyeballs. Here is the worst part: people panicked equals people triggered and most of these customers, never having learned how to handle the realities of their nervous system, are all emotionally dumping on us cashiers, dumping their bucket of shit on us in a way that quickly becomes one of the main tests of this situation. It’s a blur. The hours flash buy. “This is a horror show,” the long, grey haired, head cashier beside me says. “My son’s in boot camp right now. I don’t have time to listen to all these people and make them feel good. This is truly fucking insanity.”

A woman talks to me three separate times while in the store about how upset she is about us running out of the eggs that are normally on sale. A lot of people are responding to this all by acting offended, like someone did something completely unlawful to them and now the right thing to do is to keep broadcasting aloud their anger and, really, projecting all of that anger onto the people around them, including us grocery store workers. I think I get it. America as a culture does not respect and feed the human soul but actually pretty much is built on a history of doing the opposite and of feeding on the human soul. People are feeling a truth they’ve been conditioned not to look at; offensive shit has been done to them and to everyone, rampantly, systematically, and forever; just ask an Indian, as they say. But I keep most of this to myself. I’ve developed a whole lot of stock sayings. Be the energy that’s needed, is kind of my working approach. “Stay calm. Don’t panic. Be mindful. Take care of yourself. Have a good one.” I say this and variations on this to countless customers who aren’t my regulars and to some who are; relax, stay clear, focus on what you know, we’re in this together. A pair of my friends come through my line, an old musician and his life-coach wife, eyeing the madness, positioning themselves against the mainstream reaction to everything, staying cool and checking up on me. “How are you?” the leather-jacketed wife asks. A line comes to me that is added to my collection. “Who would’ve ever guessed that working at a grocery store would put me on the front lines of a global pandemic?” We all laugh and I keep scanning their groceries.

A plexiglass sneeze-guard has been installed on the front of my register, creating a shield that spans about a third of the space between my customers and me; it’s better than nothing. We’re all wearing gloves now. New protocol comes down from the home office almost daily. I came in yesterday and the grief and overwhelm and stress was so thick and stuffed into my tense coworkers that I found myself almost involuntarily tearing up, like in the sweat when someone is praying for a relative who’s recently passed and you feel all that they’re feeling, because it’s so potent and so fresh. My boss tells me, “It looks like everyone in the company, and I didn’t think it would include me as the store manager but it did, everyone got a dollar raise, permanently.” The gesture is actually touching. A little extra money always helps. Our hours have been changed also; now we close down an hour and a half earlier so that we can do a comprehensive cleaning of the store, all the way down to the staplers and tape dispensers in my register’s drawer. We’ve also hired a handful of new temporary workers to beef up our modest crew. The good news: one of these new coworkers is actually a Native guy, a Cree who grew up in Seattle but who now lives here. I teach him how to check and it comes out that he’s a serious Bigfoot enthusiast, so we click right away. When he leaves for the day I raise my fist and say, “Reddish brown power!” He laughs and lifts his fist too.

After about two weeks people burn out, have no energy left for the panic state, have bought all the extra food they feel they need to, and are realizing that this isn’t something that’s going to wrap up in a couple days so they better prepare for some version of the long-haul. About half my coworker’s are wearing masks. Our grocery manager tells me that she changes into fresh clothes in her car at night when she gets off of work, goes in through the back door, and immediately showers, as her partner is among the vulnerable; she’s my go-to for information; she’s a musician and her partner owns an apothecary in Joshua Tree; they moved here the same time my girlfriend and I did. The company has informed us that they’re giving us an additional dollar raise on top the dollar they just gave us, although this second one is temporary (“Come on, what the fuck?!” all my coworkers say); ‘hero pay,’ they’re calling it. We have a huddle in the back room and the head cashier starts crying and swearing, telling a story about customers coming from Portland because they wanted to get out of the city. “I wanted to punch them in the throat!” she says, all of us standing back, staying silent. “I can’t take this. I am over this. If this really is as contagious as they say then we are screwed. We’re touching their bags, their money, everything. If the company really cared about our safety, they’d close and let us all go on unemployment. This is bullshit.” I look out the open back bay door at the road and trees and traces of the Columbia River. Some nights I’ve just collapsed when I’ve gotten home too. “Mother Nature keeps us sane,” I tell my customers. “I just watch the birds and contemplate Saddle Mountain as much as I can.”

A couple coworkers decide they’re not going to come in for the rest of April and we are back down to about our normal crew-size. A number of coworkers take their breaks (now extended from two 10 minute breaks to two 15 minute breaks) and lunch out in their cars, away from the swarming store and small break room where we’re all breathing each other’s air and beyond the possibility of social distancing. Business has slowed down. Occasionally, there are even zero customers in the store. My new Cree buddy has some ups and downs, getting wound up by our assistant manager who is blazing uncontrollably at all times whether we’re busy or dead, like something’s broke in him and he is now seeing everything as a fire to put out, a customer to reassure, an employee to basically boss around; he sings part of a Coast Salish song for two of us in the breakroom, demonstrating something he’s talking about, and then he takes a drink of his umpteenth cup of coffee of the day; as we walk out of the breakroom, he says, “You should never just sing part of a song. It’s not right. I shouldn't have done that.” I think about making a sign and putting it up on the plexiglass of my register: “WILL TALK ABOUT ANYTHING BUT THE CORONAVIRUS. SERIOUSLY.” Hundreds of people a day, God bless them, all with their take, process, research, biases, traumas, axes to grind, fears, experiences, online journeys, friends in DC/the military/the hospital, airing, speculating, worrying, disclosing, preaching, confiding, ranting, chatting, sharing; you feel like you’ve been through every configuration of the conversation, heard it all, and the only way to remain yourself is to just keep it all in perspective, be all right with waiting to see how it all plays out before you come together with your own understanding of it. My Sundancer brother comes through my line and we get to talking. “It feels like a ceremony to me. People are always talking about a paradigm-shift and I think if anything can create the conditions for the tectonic plates of the paradigm to shift, it’s this, with all the world finally getting a rest from the endless busyness and consumerist madness. And if this is a ceremony, then it’s important to remember that the spirits don’t just fuck around in ceremony. They have intended, targeted outcomes. What the intended, targeted outcome of this all is, I have no idea. But I guess we’re going to find out.” He’s about 20 years older than me, is a playwright, and works at the Co-op one town over. I nod my head, feeling him and what he’s saying. “Sounds good to me.”

Masks become mandatory for all of us workers. Our assistant manager’s mom has made about 20 masks and mailed them up from New Mexico. My Cree buddy and a younger coworker wear these weird, versatile buffs over their whole heads and faces, leaving only a space for their eyes, making them look like corny ninjas. Two other coworkers adamantly refuse to wear them and then only comply when the home office doubles down and says that any employee not wearing a mask will have to go home for the time the policy is in effect, on unpaid leave. When I put mine on, standing in front of my locker in the break room, I jokingly/not jokingly say, “Time to put my face-prison back on.” But what is there to do when we are all collectively walking down this tunnel of the unknown, unable to see what lies ahead, the world trembling, some of your neighbors defiantly trying to hug you while others are digging themselves down into a hole of fear in their psyches deeper than they’ve ever been? The death toll on the Navajo reservation is beyond 'concerning', somehow unacceptable, unbelievable, let alone the rest of the world. I stray from the front of the store to return items that people changed their minds on last minute to their proper place and regular customers intersect with me and we get into 10 minute conversations about home schooling, the ongoing influx of tourists, aborted plans, their fragile health, elderly parents, ancient memories, what they’re doing since they lost their job; people are all cooped up and need someone to talk to, need to connect with someone in person and go over the incomprehensibility of it all, I guess?; it’s the least I can do. My young black coworker suggests we all learn to do a flash-mob together to Bill Withers’ Lean On Me to lift people’s spirits. Our Vitamins and Supplements manager repots the avocado tree she’s growing that I try to talk to every day. My Cree buddy excels, saying, “I’ve got it figured out. You're the house Native and I’m the field Native. Haha.” I say back, “You know what they called me back in Nebraska? Cliff, ‘the perfect blend,’ Taylor. Haha.” “That sounds like a cup of coffee to me.” We pound our green aproned chests like true O.G.s and then he disappears to go drink some more coffee quick on the sly. A woman with an accent comes through my line and I can tell she wants to talk, so I start talking to her and she says, “My dad just got out of the ICU in Edinburg. He’s 75. He was on the verge of passing several times but somehow he pulled through. We have it so good out here. We’re lucky. They’re surrounded by death back home. We have to count our blessings.” Sometimes I don’t know what to say so I just listen. When she leaves with her groceries I wave goodbye to her and say, “Thank you for sharing! Be safe!” And then I just disappear into the silence for awhile until the next customer shows up.

A customer tells me about hiking down to a secluded beach about 25 minutes away on her birthday, because everything else was closed and there wasn’t much else to do. Another customer, smiling in a kind of truly looney way, like she was in shock and total denial, tells me that her favorite local restaurant announced that it is permanently closing its doors, and it seems like that’s not even the half of it for her. Coworkers are dropping like flies, working half of their shift and then deciding to just go home, teary with a headache or smiling like who gives an eff. We don’t seem to be cleaning as assiduously or as extensively as we were in those first few weeks and I’m not sure what to say about that other than we’re on week 6 or 7 and people are redefining this all as the new normal and giving it about the same amount of halfass, so-so attention they gave to the regular, old, pre-Coronavirus normal. A man who looks like a mutant hick beast bear in overalls with hair sticking out all over starts bellowing and ranting louder than any customer I’ve ever heard in the store, about China and what he knows and conspiracy stuff and doom and terror and the machinations of the government and he’s asked to leave, hurried along by our tightly-wound, zinging assistant manager. And then a hipster teacher comes through my line with a mother-load of groceries and she puts up a bunch of non-potato chips, crackers, and chocolate covered pretzels on the register and says, “These are for you.” “What?” “These are for you guys, for your breakroom, so you have snacks.” “You mean you’re buying these for us?” “Yes. They’re for you.” “Wow. Nobody’s ever done that before.” “You mean nobody’s bought you all anything before?” “No, you’re the first.” “That’s not right. I used to work at a New Seasons in Portland. I’ve kept in touch with my old coworkers. You all are handling some serious hell, doing a huge part in preventing society from crumbling and the public from descending into total, all-out rioting. I wish I could do more. Thank you so much.” I feel like a dummy, a kid somehow. This is the first time since this has all started that a customer did something more than just say thanks; I’m learning/remembering how much gestures mean, how touching and spirit-feeding they are. I take the haul back to the break room and tell my assistant manager, who’s in there, about it. “Here,” he says, pulling out his phone, “let me take a picture and send it to the regional manager. She’ll love this. Just hold it all up. Perfect. Great. Say cheesy bananas!” I hold everything up and grin. “Cheesy bananas!!!”

My neighbor, who is a nurse, comes in and tells me that she’s been working for the last 7 days straight, without a weekend, as our little coastal town has finally gotten its first verified cases of the virus; previously our county had 7 cases but there were none in our town as of yet. “The two people were workers at the fishery, which has now been closed down. We’re going to have to see how it all plays out over the next two weeks. If everyone follows the safety protocols, we should be okay, probably. If people keep getting more lax about it all, as they have been, then I don’t know. You can get the updates on your phone. You should. Be safe, Cliff. Okay?” I go out and collect the carts in the parking lot, take a long time because it’s such an incredibly beautiful sunny day out, look at all the trees and their stillness, the vibrations in the open blue sky where the murmurations of ducks were writing their poetry earlier, the helicopter from the nearby military base shooting off with a big load tied to its belly to who knows where. It’s Spring and my Cree buddy has a small farm that he’s taking care of with his cool old dad, growing lots of Indigenous plants and foods and medicines, very proudly, very passionately, a live wire slowing down at the sight of truth, hands in the dirt, ancestors whispering guidance at his back. He misses almost a week, was puking his guts out he says. Our head cashier’s son made it through bootcamp and is now a Marine; she’s taking off the next three weeks. My girlfriend and I have been doing mostly pretty good but we have had our dust-ups, our arguments; I am around people all day and then go home and she has been by herself all day and so when I get home she is hungry for what I am overstuffed with, human contact; but we’re managing; making offerings, walking along the river, watching movies, Zooming with friends, receiving a ton of unexpected physical mail and gifts in our mailbox, working on our creative projects, going to the sauna at the wellness center she used to work at every week, which is now also closed down. I tell my Cree buddy, “I’ve been planning on going back to Nebraska for over a year now, to spend a week with my family and then to go Sundance. Now that’s all only a month away and I still haven’t bought our plane tickets. If our Sundance doesn’t happen and I don’t get back to Nebraska like I’ve been looking forward to, then, then this Coronavirus is really going to be hitting me right where it hurts.” On my birthday I dream of planting the heirloom Ponca corn I have in our little front yard, digging holes and pushing in the seeds, making my prayers and feeling happy to be growing my people’s corn. It feels like a little sacred mission in the middle of all this craziness. I miss all the stories my customers would surprise me with, like little sparkling colorful fish jumping out of the waters of their soul to swim around in the space of my checkstand for awhile, stories about all sorts of deep, beautiful human stuff that made me really love all of the truly special and spiritual and meaningful and sweet moments that I got to have throughout my eight hour shift; when all of this passes, however it all does, I’ll be ready for the return of all my customer’s stories, to see all those unique and wonderful and one-of-a-kind fish again. I’ll be ready for a good sweat again, to crawl in there and pray with my friends (my Sundancer friend: “My elders said we have to discontinue the sweats for this time and that really breaks my heart, brother. But if you want to go in there by yourself, I’ll fire it up and bring in the rocks and be the door man for you.”). I answer the phone and old people ask about something and then wind up talking to me for a couple minutes until either a customer comes up or I tell them that I have to go, looking at my coworkers with my eyebrows raised and a screwy look on my face that they immediately get. I remain the positive dude my mom raised me to be. This old vegetarian guy comes through my lane and we get to talking about all the silver linings, the unexpected good things, the outpouring of super rich online content, the hoped-for permanent changes that could really come from all of this. “Whenever something gets to rest, it usually reemerges better, refreshed, shining again. The whole world, whether we like it or not, is getting a rest and maybe somehow we’ll all be better for it, letting our gratitude for everything that we get back guide us in how we want to live differently, in the changes we want to see and make. Until then, this is all a chance to strengthen and build up our unity and togetherness muscles, our ability to act together as a whole for the greater good.” “Togetherness muscles,” he says, holding his big produce box of groceries. “I like that. I’ll have to tell my wife about that.” “Later, man,” I say, as he leaves, like I’ve told a million people by now. “Enjoy your week and keep on keeping on!!!”

After a year of looking at Saddle Mountain, one day, while staring at its misty outline from my checkstand, I had a thought, “I wonder what the Indians think about that mountain. They had to think something about it.” I don’t know why it took me so long to have that thought; then again, I bet the majority of people around here will maybe go their whole lifetime without having that thought, so. I Googled it and found a beautiful Creation story about that mountain, read it aloud to my girlfriend, made an Instagram post about it, told my Cree buddy about it (you too, reader, should Google it, then Google what the Indians say about the land wherever you are; do it!), and committed it to my memory. When I open the store I used to sip my coffee over like a four hour period but now with the mandatory mask, I rebelliously allow myself 10 minutes to go maskless and guzzle down my coffee, getting that mandatory good medicine in come hell or highwater or even global pandemic, I guess. My boss gives me a look but doesn’t say anything, as he understands. A customer comes in and I say hello and they smile and nod back and I hold my steaming cup of gas station coffee and look out onto the mostly empty parking lot and the wild field and Saddle Mountain beyond that. I think the mountain is reminding me of things that will always be true, standing still and standing strong when the festive local farmer’s market is really swinging for its fortieth some year straight and then when it ain’t because of this world-shaking Coronavirus situation. My mask is on a paper towel, hidden in my register, ridiculously attempting to stay germ free before it clamps onto my face like one of those face-hugger things from the Alien movies (right?!). I drink my coffee, see my Cree buddy hurrying in late, and silently, secretly, start making my morning prayer to Saddle Mountain.

By Cliff Taylor

Cliff Taylor is a writer, a poet, a speaker, and an enrolled member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. He has written a non-fiction book about the little people and recently completed a memoir, Special Dogs, about coming-of-age in Nebraska. Contact Cliff @ tayloc00@hotmail.com