A River Divides Them

There’s a store in Davenport, Iowa, a friendly little store on the corner of Pine and 53rd. It’s small, not much to look at, and its parking lot has sure seen better days. Heat has buckled it; speeding cars, screeching in and out, have stained it. Small children have spilled their slushies on its asphalt surface and summer heat has boiled the sugar deep into it, creating cracks and crevices that smell sweet and permeate sugary waves into the air, surrounding the store with the smell and atmosphere of a dirty, sticky carnival. And what a carnival it can be.

Most who swing in and out of the doors at this little store belong here. They live on the other side, down the street, around the corner, or perhaps even next door. The highway is probably five miles away, so the locals built this brick-and-mortar oasis, the place where neighborhood children spend found and earned coins, the place where mothers rush in to buy expensive diapers when they don’t want to go “all the way” to the grocery store. The place where “Johnny” stole his first beer and “Susie” bought her first pack of condoms.

Of course, mothers and fathers don’t like to think about that. They rush into that same store to pay for gas on their way home from work, or to sheepishly purchase a lottery ticket, looking furtively around, not really wanting their neighbors to know they dream of brighter places, better things. They wearily come into the store to buy the margarine they forgot on their grocery trips, or the gallon of milk the kids need for cereal in the morning. Some of them get cigarettes and shove them into their pockets and purses on the way out the door. A few buy their own condoms.

Friday night at The Mart is crazy. Workers who are prone to quit do so on Saturday morning. The carnival atmosphere is rife in twilight air on a Friday night, and the patrons take advantage of it. They whoop and holler coming in and going out, buying cases of beer, tough slabs of beef jerky, large bags of ice, sometimes two or three at a time. Employees can’t keep the freezer stocked on spring and summer nights. Underage teenagers slink around the store, sometimes for fifteen to thirty minutes, fingering the candy, thumbing through a magazine or two, wondering if they can get away with it, sulking out when they discover they can’t. Patrons returning from parties and bars stumble through the doors just before closing. They reach for packs of gum, hoping “spearmint breeze” will befuddle the local police force. They breathe their stench on workers who only hope to get them out before they barf on the just-mopped floor, who sigh with weary relief when the clock strikes midnight and they can lock the doors with a resounding click.

And The Mart hosts a variety of clientele: African Americans, Mexicans, Caucasian. It’s a hodge-podge. Perhaps there was a time when the neighborhood that gave birth to The Mart was of one race or the other, but not anymore. It would be difficult to find a more eclectic gathering of America. Some of the patrons are not too badly off, financially. They rush into the store wearing expensive suits with designer labels. There’s a hill beyond Pine Street where they live. There are sometimes welfare recipients who spend their food stamps on candy and pop, or on milk and margarine. The rest fall somewhere in between, trying to make ends meet, get the mortgage paid, fill their tables with good food, furtively buying a lottery ticket and dreaming.

Fall and winter days at The Mart are a little less chaotic. Sometimes the snow or cold, blowing prairie winds keep folks at home, and then those who work at The Mart get bored. They think wistfully of those spring and summer days when time moves swiftly and the muscles get achy, but it’s a good ache, the kind you get when you know there’s been a good day’s work. Long winter days are for moving the stock around, giving those much-abused floors a really good scrubbing. But then, of course, those who had to brave intense Midwest weather blow in and tromp that very weather through the pristine store. Employees roll their eyes. At least they can mop during the next lull.

School days at The Mart can be interesting or annoying, it depends on your outlook. Small and large children pound into the store after the last bell rings, dumping bicycles and skate boards on the sidewalk in front. Adults brave enough, or dumb enough, to attempt to enter at this time must side-step and tiptoe through the hardware. The children mostly patronize candy aisles, pulling out coins, sometimes combining their coffers, and arguing loudly about various choices. Cashiers must be diligent, count every penny, or they could be stuck with too little or too much. Wide brown, blue, green, hazel eyes poke above the counter. Grubby hands grab for bought candy. Laughter, cries, and loud, childish conversation blend in a cacophony of sound that could easily deafen a grown person.

Around ten o’clock on a weekday morning, summer or winter, there is a gathering of old men who amble into The Mart and sit on benches at the back of the store. They sip from refillable coffee cups and talk about the weather, mostly. The majority of them used to work their family farms, which have either been sold or handed down to the younger generation. But they still discuss the weather as if it’s a very serious issue. Some of the men are retired from John Deere, and they are able to converse quite intelligently with old farmers, sometimes even adding a bit about newer farm technology. Conversations like that always end with the same result, though-older is better.

Not too far from The Mart, probably about five miles in the opposite direction from Highway 80, there is a field. Here, in the middle of Northwest Davenport, is still a sea of corn and oats. They wave in the breeze and attract flies, bees, and other flitting black and brown specks. They stand tall and green or bend in brown misery, pretty much depending on the weather. Another five miles east of that field, there’s a river. Its banks have been shored up, thanks to some tough lessons learned about the forces of nature that will not be halted. That river, so daunting, so immense and powerful, ripples with breezes, birds, and fish. And, of course, the occasional barge that passes by invents its own waves, tossing animals and debris carelessly in its wake. The cargo on those barges, usually corn or oats, slowly makes its way down or up the Mississippi, depending on the destination.

And across the river, maybe another five miles away, stands another Mart, this one in Moline, Illinois. It’s on the corner of 23rd Avenue and 53rd Street, and its patrons are brown, black, white, gray. They are young, old, rich, poor; mostly middles class, fighting to keep their homes and cars. They brave cold weather in the winter and curse the heat in summer. They party, attend school, and cry. They discuss the weather, especially present and past farmers with a sprinkling of John Deere retirees, some of whom gather in that store at about ten o’clock, every weekday morning. And at this Mart, as at the other one across the river, they sell quite a few lottery tickets.