Six rungs on a rail

The rolling ladder travels the length of the paint aisle on four wheels, hung from a steel rail bolted to the shelving eleven feet up, each wheel fitted with a rubber-lined groove that keeps it from jumping the track even when pushed with more enthusiasm than the job requires. It carries a clerk, occasionally two, up past the gallon cans nobody buys and toward the specialty stains kept out of easy reach on principle rather than popularity. A hook latch locks the wheels in place at any point along the rail, engaged by foot, and its absence of engagement has produced at least one documented incident per store per year of a ladder drifting several feet mid-climb, a slow horizontal slide that alarms the climber considerably more than it endangers them. The rungs are worn pale in a narrow band at their centers, exactly the width of a boot, while the outer edges keep their factory finish, a wear pattern that maps precisely onto where feet actually land rather than where a rung offers room. Children are drawn to it with a specific, focused longing that store policy does not accommodate, and a hand-lettered sign near its base, present in most locations though never issued by any corporate office, asks that it be left for staff use. The ladder does not enforce this. It simply rolls, for whoever has the nerve and the reach, to wherever the rail permits.

Beatrice Womack