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Daddy snores on the couch with his mouth open. Sammy hadn’t woken up when he got in last night, but Dean must have. There are bruises on Daddy’s knuckles and a short, neat line of Dean’s tidy stitching across his cheek. Daddy was always tired when he came home like that. Sammy thinks being a traveling salesman must be hard. Sometimes people just really didn’t want to buy things.
They need groceries; cereal, milk and sandwich fixings. Dean teases Daddy’s wallet out of his pocket, so careful and quite that Daddy doesn’t wake up at all. There’s a whole five dollars inside and Dean’s face goes all funny and tight when he sees it. He fishes it out and leaves the open wallet on the table next to Daddy’s gun like a note.
Dean goes to get his coat out of the closet except it’s Sammy’s coat now. He misses his old one. It was blue and the bestest coat ever, but then one day it’s sleeves ended at his elbows and it was too tight to button. Dean’s old coat, Sammy’s new one, is red and plaid and ugly. It’s so big the tips of his fingers barely reach past the ends of the sleeves and Dean always has to help him with the buttons. Daddy says he’ll grow into it, but Sammy isn’t sure he wants too. The blue coat was better.
Dean doesn’t have a coat to grow into, he mostly just wears lots of layers, but Daddy’s asleep so Dean shrugs his big, leather jacket on. He flips the collar up in back like Daddy or Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. On them it looks cool, but on Dean it looks like the coat is trying to sneak up behind him and eat his head. Daddy’s jacket swallows Dean and Sammy giggles at the image. Then he hears the zipper laugh as it gobbles his big brother down and it’s not funny anymore.
“Hey, earth to Sammy. You coming?” Dean offers his hand and Sammy takes it. Their too-long sleeves get in the way.
The store is empty except for the nice, old cashier-lady who smiles when they come in and the younger, less-nice cashier-lady who just chews her gum and goes back to reading her magazine. Dean gets one of the red baskets and they head to the sandwich isle. He puts a loaf of Wonder Bread in the basket and tucks a jar of peanut butter, the crunchy kind, into the empty space in Sammy’s too-big coat.
“No,” Sammy says sharply as Dean reaches for the strawberry jelly. “I want marmalade.”
Dean looks at him like Sammy just asked for a Barbie for Christmas. “Marmalade?”
“Marmalade,” Sammy repeats. He likes the word. Much better than strawberry. Marmalade, marmalade, marmalade. It’s so much fun to say it must taste good.
Dean holds out the jar like a question. Sammy can see the little bits of orange peel inside. Are you sure?, they ask. Sammy nods and Dean slips the jar into Sammy’s coat, on opposite side from the peanut butter so the weight balances out. Sammy wonders how they’ll taste together.
They get milk next. A half-gallon of 1% because 2% always tastes warm and skim tastes like nothing. In the cereal isle Dean picks out a box of store brand flakes and Sammy feels a pout coming on. Daddy says big boys don’t pout or whine or cry, but what’s a big boy supposed to do when their brother gets the wrong cereal? “Deeeeean,” Sammy complains. “I don’t like that kind. It tastes icky.” He uses his best big boy voice, no whine at all, but the box stays in the basket. “Deeeean.”
Dean drops the basket with a huff. The milk falls over but doesn’t spill. There’s a 12-pack of individual-sized boxes of real cereal, Fruit Loops and Apple Jacks and Corn Pops, on the lowest shelf and Dean goes after it like it ate the last Kit Kat in his secret candy stash. He yanks it to the floor and slices through the plastic wrap with his butterfly knife. Dean squirrels four of the little boxes away in the hollow places in Sammy’s coat and the rest in his own. He jams the packaging in the far back of the shelf and pulls up another of the 12-packs to fill the hole.
They get in the check-out lane with the nice, older lady with the crinkly grey hair and rosy cheeks instead of the girl with the magazine. “You boys find everything alright?” she asks.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sammy says as Dean hefts the basket with the milk and bread and icky cereal onto the belt. He’s got marmalade in his coat and Daddy can eat the stupid flakes.
The lady rings everything up and even double-bags it for them. “That’ll be $4.90.” Dean hands her the five from Daddy’s wallet and she hands him back a dime.
“Can I get this in nickels, please?” Dean asks, gesturing to the giant gum ball machine by the door.
She turns to see what he’s pointing to and when she looks back her eyes have gone all soft and she’s wearing the smile waitresses get right before they give free pie. “Here you go, sweety,” she says, trading his one coin for four.
At the gum ball machine, Dean lets Sammy go first. He puts his nickel in the slot and twists the nob. His gum ball is red. It tastes like cherries and Sammy still has a nickel to spare.