Creamy Bullets by Kevin Sampsell

There was a bunch of brown kids and a white guy standing in the middle. I guess I must’ve been the white guy.”
    Libby was working too. She was standing over by the listening stations, restocking CDs. There was some crazy rock-rap remix playing through the store’s sound system but she could still hear some of what we were talking about. She was young and idealistic. Her tight pink dreadlocks sprang wildly around her face as she bobbed her head to the beat. Whenever she smiled, her freckles lit up like stars against the smooth cocoa of her face.
    “I have a good idea,” she said. “We can raise 250 dollars and buy a water buffalo.”
    I watched her face to see if she’d explain but she seemed to think we knew the value of a water buffalo. Instead of saying Great idea! or Okay! I said, “Why?”
    “A needy third-world family can benefit greatly from having a water buffalo,” she said. It was like she worked for some kind of Water Buffalo Company or something. I thought she might pull out a pamphlet at any second. Shane actually turned the music down a little to make sure he was hearing her.
    “They can produce milk for a family to drink or sell and they’re good for pulling farm equipment and eventually having calves too,” she said.
    “What do you mean by calves?” Shane asked.
    “Baby buffalo,” she explained. “Sometimes another family will have a buffalo of the opposite sex and they can breed with them and share or sell the calves. If we get ten people to donate $25, we can really make a difference,” she said.
    I almost laughed when she said we could make a difference. It just seemed like a weird concept. She was always saying shit like that though.
    Shane pulled out his wallet and I, swayed suddenly by the mood of good will, started writing a game plan.
    A week later, we’d racked up $150. Libby had printed up a big color photo of a water buffalo and propped it up by a makeshift donation jar by the registers. I got the feeling people thought it was a joke. They probably thought we split it up at the end of each day. Our manager, a guy named Rod who wore those tinted prescription glasses and silk shirts, didn’t seem to mind. Or at least he wasn’t going to say anything to Libby, who he often thought about as he masturbated in his office.
    “Nice buffalo display,” he told her. He stared at it for a long time, in deep thought. Shane and I watched him with interest. We thought he might finally donate. “Is there any way we can utilize this to promote a CD?”
    Shane and I cringed a little.
    “What’s that?” asked Libby.
    Shane and I tensed up more, fearing an anti-capitalism tirade about to happen.
    “Maybe if people bought the new U2 album we could donate a couple dollars to the bucket,” said Rod. It was evident that he was trying to sound like he’d thought about it long and hard. “They have a song about a water buffalo, don’t they?”
    “What are you talking about?” grimaced Libby. “We’re not doing this to sell units.” She said units like it was the root of all evil. “The best thing you can do to help with this, is give some money,” she told him.
    Rod got a little defensive. “These units , Libby, are what make your paycheck possible. And if you asked me more nicely, I probably would donate something.”
    I can’t remember what we had playing on the sound system while this was happening, but whatever it was ended and the store didn’t so much as fill with flat silence, as suffocate in it.
    Shane and I went out that night and drank some beer at the Black Bear. It was the kind of place filled with picnic tables and benches instead of regular tables and chairs. They had a hundred beers on tap and a clientele consisting mostly of bike messengers. I’d been a regular customer for ten years, ever since I got a fake ID at eighteen. When I turned 21 I started using my real ID and the bartenders just laughed about being duped for so long.
    Shane had invited Libby to join us