Collin Beck

In Texas I was taken to a grocery store called H-E-B. I asked what the letters stand for. My friend said, "Howard Edward Butt." I waited for the rest of the name. There was no rest. The man built an empire on his actual name, and the empire did not flinch. Inside, a woman in a red apron said, "Welcome! Finding everything okay?" I had been inside for eleven seconds. I had found nothing. I had not begun to look. "...I have only just arrived." "Well, let me know if you need anything, sweetheart." Sweetheart. From a stranger with a price gun. I held the cart handle with both hands and tried to proceed as a man who had not just been loved at the produce section. The store was clean in a way that suggested someone cared about it the way my grandmother cared about her kitchen floor. Not for the guests. For the floor. A man named Dale in the meat department was cutting brisket behind glass. I watched him work. He held the knife the way a calligrapher holds a brush. Each cut landed in the same place twice. I bowed slightly. I could not help it. Dale looked up. "You want a sample, boss?" "...I was paying respects to your blade work." He paused. Then he cut a piece, put it on a toothpick, and handed it over the counter. "Well, that's a first. Most folks just ask if I got any ribs left." I ate it. It was perfect. I told him it was perfect. "Appreciate that. Twenty-six years behind this counter." Twenty-six years. The same counter. The same knife. In my country we would call this man a living national treasure and put him on television. Here he wore a red apron and asked if I wanted it wrapped. Then the storm came. I do not mean this as a metaphor. A hurricane was approaching the coast, and I learned something about this grocery store that I did not believe until I saw it with my own eyes. H-E-B has mobile kitchens. Disaster relief trucks. A full-time Director of Emergency Preparedness. Over a hundred and fifty thousand employees they call Partners, and when the wind starts to build, the Partners do not go home. They drive toward it. During Hurricane Harvey, this grocery store fed thousands. They sent trucks into flooded towns before the government arrived. Before the Red Cross set up. Before anyone asked. A grocery store. With a meat counter and a bakery and a sign that says HERE EVERYTHING'S BETTER. Texans have a name for H-E-B during hurricanes. They call it the FEMA of Texas. I have confirmed this. Multiple Texans said it to me without smiling, the way you state the name of a general who does not lose. I asked Dale if he had worked during Harvey. He stopped cutting. He set the knife down, which I had not seen him do. "Drove in at four in the morning. Water was up to my truck doors. Store was the only thing open for nine miles. We made sandwiches till we ran out of bread. Then corporate sent more bread. Then we ran out again." "...How long?" "Sixteen days." I stood there holding a package of brisket in both hands and tried to find the word. "...You are not a butcher, Dale." He picked up his knife. "Sure I am." In my country, a man who feeds his village through a disaster is honored for the rest of his life. In Texas, he is called a butcher, and he goes back to the counter on Monday, and he does not mention it unless you ask, and even then he picks up his knife before he finishes the story, because the brisket is not going to cut itself. The store was founded in 1905 by a woman named Florence Butt, who put sixty dollars' worth of groceries on a shelf on the ground floor of her family's home in a town called Kerrville. That was the whole store. One shelf. One room. Sixty dollars. A hundred and twenty years later, the family still owns it. I walked out with four bags. A boy in a red apron carried two of them to my car. I told him I could carry my own bags. He said, "I know you can. But I'm already here, so." I did not tip him. He would not let me. I drove home past the highway where the flood line was still visible on the guardrail, three feet up, and I thought about Dale, and the bread, and the knife, and the name Howard Edward Butt, who was not embarrassed by it, because the name is not the point. The shelf is the point. Florence Butt put sixty dollars on a shelf in 1905. A hundred and twenty years later, when the water rose and the power died, the shelf was still standing, and there was bread on it. A store is not its name. A store is whether the bread is there when you need it. The bread was there.