Besides that, Fayetteville is only about 20 minutes south of the city in after-midnight traffic, and I was looking forward to this because I figured it was an opportunity to breeze through the place with the aisles to myself. Looking back I have to laugh. I say as we pull into the parking lot. Inside, Wal-Mart is bustling as if it were 12 noon instead of 12 midnight. Whole families are migrating through the aisles with shopping carts.
Cash registers print out receipts with the constant clatter of a casino.
Hall is an airport employee whose shift ends at 9 p.m., and the place is packed with people like him. It turns out Wal-Mart is the epicenter of an entire nocturnal society in this city, a reverse world that most of us who sleep at night and get up for work in the morning never see. And I'm not talking about the bar crawlers and post wedding-reception revelers who occasionally stay up until 4 a.m. to soak their heads in the odd trough of booze now and again. These people are accomplishing tasks, they're shopping with all the seriousness of a politician's wife picking out menu items for a fund-raiser. It's midnight, and people are getting things done .