The Man Who Shot the President
checks out at my register. I scan his groceries. Lettuce. Bread. No razors. No duct tape. No supersized garbage bags perfect for holding a body. No reason to call the cops.
Still he gives me the creeps, acting like a normal customer who’d never even consider assassinating a world leader. I watch him rolling his cart toward the bakery section, watch till he turns down aisle 2, out of sight, watch till he rounds 3 where he picks up peanut butter, pickles, too much mayonnaise. Too much mayonnaise is unhealthy. Normal people don’t need that much mayonnaise.
The man lives with his father who’s old and probably glad to have his son back. I guess 30 years without your son is hard.
Still a son who shoots at the President, maybe shouldn’t be giving an old man medicine, cooking his food, opening his mail whenever his pension check comes. Maybe a son who tries to murder the President shouldn’t be walking an old man’s beagle down a normal street even if he does carry bags for scooping poop.
When he shot the President, I wasn’t born yet, but I know what happened. How he broke through bodyguards. How he shot twice hitting the President’s leg. How the other bullet killed a normal woman minding her own business. How they put him in a hospital, not a prison. I’ve read everything about it.
He’s free now, and he’s at my register buying normal groceries. He probably thinks I don’t know what it’s like to hear voices urging them to eliminate someone before taking a girlfriend out to a movie like any normal person would do on any normal Friday. But I do.
Maybe one day I’ll talk to him. A normal conversation. Just him and me.
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