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My daughter Emilie, who is 8, cannot get out of her head the story of the Wal-Mart worker who was trampled to death by frenzied shoppers in the early hours of Black Friday. The fate of that worker – Jdimytai Damour, a 34-year-old temp who'd been hired by the Valley Stream, N.Y., Wal-Mart for the holidays – is the first thing she asks about when she wakes in the morning. It is the last thing she talks about when she goes to bed at night. It is the thing that runs through her mind as we drive in the car and she considers the landscape around her. "What does Wal-Mart look like?" she asked me on Wednesday, searching for clues in the storefronts of Northwest Washington. "A great big store, with groceries and clothing and auto supplies, and electronics," I said. "So it's like Best Buy," she said, as we drove past Best Buy. "Not quite like Best Buy." "Is it near here?" "There's no Wal-Mart near here," I said. " ...