Jack

I ride a bicycle to my job at a computer testing center most days, and arrive at the Wal-Mart next to it drenched with sweat and needing to change into my street clothes. I use the Wal-Mart bathroom because the one at the testing center is way too small, and because I'd like to arrive at work already dressed, to keep up relations with my boss, Mrs. Whitehaven, who wouldn't know a bicycle if she ran over it with her Lincoln.

Wal-Mart is somewhat busy, though, and I always get the impression that there is more than one person watching who goes in and out of that bathroom, probably to prevent shoplifting. I walk straight there with my little pack full of street clothes; I change quickly, and if I get the impression I might bother someone, being undressed in the bathroom and all, I just duck into the large handicapped stall and lock the door. I had done this on Thursday morning, because I had the general impression that the stall was going to be better than the open bathroom floor, when a loud and threatening man, sounding slightly drunk, came into the bathroom and immediately started cursing under his breath.

He wasn't aware that I was in there, the best I could tell, so I lifted my feet up onto the stool so he couldn't see any of me without a lot of effort, and I peered out the cracks between the door and the stall to watch what he was doing; he appeared to be pacing around the room, mumbling to himself. The door at this point was unlocked, but mostly closed, and I didn't want to lock it or move it in any way. The man, tall and disshevelled, was directing his curses at the ceiling, where there apparently was a tiny camera, and he was telling the camera that it wouldn't see jack. "You won't see jack, you muhhhfuh!" he said, several times, in various forms, using various colorful yet unprintable names for whoever was at the other end of the camera. It occurred to me that since my name was Jack, he could be referring to me, but very few people knew me in these parts, certainly not him, and his tone suggested to me otherwise. I was slightly alarmed at the possibility that someone could know my name, but more alarmed that there was a camera up there, working, that had probably been taking pictures of me dressing and undressing for the last month; I had just started this job in May. Grateful for the privacy of the stall, I shifted my feet on the stool so I could sit there a little longer. My pack had a tiny bicycle pump that wouldn't do much as a defensive weapon but was all I had; I held onto it with one hand, held onto the stall with the other, and watched some more. He was climbing up on the sink now, so he could reach the camera, and, balancing on it, trying to unhook its tiny wires, which disappeared into a hole in the wall. Once he stuck his face right in the camera to say, "You ain't gonna see jack, you summbuuhhh!" but he almost lost his balance and fell off the sink; in general, it was hard for him to reach the camera and its wires and he was having a hard time disconnecting it, not so much because of his apparent drunkenness as that it was just a long reach from anywhere on the sink that he could put his feet successfully, without falling.

I had never seen that camera up there, yet I wasn't surprised it was there, on thinking about it, since I knew what a big problem security was in stores like this, and knew that bathrooms were the big place that shoplifters used to hide stuff before leaving the store. In one sense it didn't bother me, since I never shoplifted anything; in fact, I tried to buy something on days that I used Wal-Mart's bathroom, because I thought it was the least I could do, but I always bought something after I used the bathroom, in order to show that I wasn't just walking out of the place nervously, with who-knows-what in the pack. In other words, I knew it was a big security thing for Wal-Mart, but in general I tried to stay out of their radar and not attract attention. But it occurred to me: I didn't even know whether that camera belonged to them, or perhaps had been put there by someone else- maybe they were having a problem with thieves using this bathroom? Maybe a problem with this particular drunk guy? It wasn't clear to me whether this guy was directing his taunts at Wal-Mart security, or at someone else who might have put that camera there; it could have been anyone, for all I knew.

He was well over six feet, and quite heavy, unwashed hair, and dirty clothes; I could smell the alcohol on his breath way over in the stall I was in, though faintly, and he talked in the slurred choppy sentences of a drunk. But he carried a few tools with him, and when he couldn't detach the camera wires, he simply bent the camera over so it faced another part of the ceiling, facing up at an angle now, instead of down at an angle. And now he moved onto another sink, more toward the center of the bathroom, where I couldn't see him quite as well. I moved around a little, trying to get a better view, but I was aware that any slight sound might alert him to my being there, and he would probably be mad, since I'd been so quietly hidden for a couple of minutes already, and I didn't want him to see me at all; I sat perhaps more still than I had ever sat in my life, and tried not to even breathe. I imagined that he was looking for or trying to disable another camera, closer to the center of the room, but out of my view, because I could hear him rearranging his feet on the sink so as not to fall, yet possibly trying to reach something high.

The door to the bathroom opened suddenly and another guy rushed in, locked the door behind him, and headed straight for the guy standing on the sink, and pummeled him with something. There were sounds of a big fight, of weapons or fists hitting bodies, people falling to the ground, a mirror falling near them and crashing on the floor. This was bad; I considered making a run for the door, but the two large guys were blocking the path, and both were clearly violent sociopaths. The drunk guy was clearly getting the worst of it; he was on the bottom, and I could see his arm; I could also see and hear that he was taking a beating at the hands of the attacker; the attacker meant business, said very little, and gave the foul-mouthed drunk a furious beating, just outside my view.

The first thing that occurred to me was that the foul-mouthed drunk had insulted Wal-Mart security, or perhaps the police, and they had sent this bouncer in to restore the camera and teach the guy a lesson. But the attacker, professional as he was in his ruthless violence, had a chilling, illegal aura about him. He didn't act like an official representative of anyone. He didn't say much, so I had nothing there to judge by, but something about the chilling way he beat his adversary made me more afraid than ever, clutching the toilet seat and the little pump, which I knew would do me very little good against a guy like this. My hands were shaking so badly that I knew I'd never get the door unlocked, even if I had a ten-minute jump on him and a huge pile of big guy was laid out between him and the door.

But it was over fairly quickly, and I heard rustling, as if he were pulling a wallet out of the drunk's pants. The victor put away whatever he had taken, washed his hands and used the mirror, and left. The drunk moaned on the floor, not dead, but clearly worse off for the beating.

At this point I came out of the stall, noticing that I was still not dressed, and was probably becoming late for work, if I didn't move quickly. But, with a near-dead drunken victim at my feet, I would probably be wise to report him, find him medical help, tell someone what I had seen. God knows the security camera missed it. The problem was, I had missed getting a good view of the second attacker; he had been only a blur. I couldn't recall a height, a complexion, anything, and that would seem somewhat suspicious, I'm sure. One option would be to simply go to work as if nothing had happened; this option appealed to me, and I prepared by finishing getting dressed, though my hands were shaking.

The guy on the ground, writhing slowly, had a badly bruised eye, already swelling, and was bleeding from the nose; he was clutching his hand, as if he'd broken it, and he was groaning and rocking slowly on the ground, almost knocked out but not quite. He was clearly in bad shape, in need of medical attention. I was trying to decide whether to risk missing work in order to get it for him. I knew that if people saw what shape he was in, they'd call the police right away, and I'd be in for a half-hour's questioning, which would blow my whole morning, even if they believed me. Just walking out, though, was clearly risky, even if no one saw me. My hands were shaking as I tried to button my buttons; I finally buttoned my shirt, but unevenly; I had to start again. As I looked at the poor wretch on the floor, though, all I could think was, "You won't see Jack!" He could just as easily have been talking about himself.

But once again, the door flung open, this time as I was tucking in my shirt, and I saw a small, bespectacled man, about my age, young and healthy, but with small glasses hanging precariously on his nose, whose jaw dropped wide open at the sight of me, and the drunk sprawled out, bloody, on the floor behind me. Did I mention the glass? There was glass all around him, from the mirror, perhaps responsible for some of the blood on his flannel shirt.

"Jack!" he shouted out, then quickly became embarrassed at the realization that he perhaps had no business knowing my name.

"How did you know my name?" I asked quickly. Now I was really offended. They were watching me dress, and they knew my name. Was this everyone, or just this guy, and the drunk?

"Everyone knows your name," he said nervously. Ms. Whitehaven told us. You come in here quite regularly.

"You were watching me?" I asked. I was dumbfounded.

"Until today, we watched you; we knew what you were up to. Someone's been robbing us; we knew that. Don't worry, we knew it wasn't you. But what's this? Colby?" With his feet, he gingerly kicked at Colby, who was still awake, and mumbling.

I told him the story, briefly. He appeared to be a manager of some kind, from the way he said "us" and "we;" he seemed to make no effort to hide his association with Wal-Mart or with the detested camera. But he also seemed to know Colby, the drunk, and even seemed to care what happened to him.

Better still, he had his wits about him, unlike me, and immediately did several things that were sensible. First, he arranged to have Ms. Whitehaven called, and told that I would be late, as I'd been involved in an altercation, as he put it, in Wal-Mart; I was sensitive that he not imply that I was a party in it, but he used his rank as Wal-Mart manager, and apparent friend of Ms. Whitehaven, to make sure she knew that they needed my witness, even though I had apparently done nothing wrong. Second, he arranged to have Colby taken to emergency, which he obviously needed, in spite of anything else that happened. And finally, he called the police, and poured me a large cup of bad coffee, which allowed me to sit a moment, collect myself, and wait for them.

Little by little I pulled the story together, though I didn't figure it all out until well after the policeman, a young officer named Lee, had left. The manager, who I came to know as Clancy, claimed that Colby was an acquaintance who was familiar with a series of robberies they'd had at that Wal-Mart, and had planted the cameras himself, without Wal-Mart's permission, but more or less with Clancy's knowledge. The way Clancy fudged, I knew he might be in trouble with his superiors if they knew he'd allowed it. Yet he needed to catch the guy who was doing it, and thought maybe Colby could help him. Colby and Clancy had had a falling out, though, over the fact that basically they were seeing all kinds of things, such as me dressing, that made Clancy uncomfortable, though Colby clearly didn't have a problem with it. Getting the culprit was the point, he'd say. You gotta leave the camera up there, at least until you get the culprit.

Lee the policeman verified the general fact that there had been a string of robberies; this was the fourth in the Wal-Mart bathroom alone, but there had been two in the Target, and two also in a local McDonalds. They referred to the guy as the bathroom bandit, and had had a view of him from several security cameras besides whatever Colby and Clancy could provide them here. They were pretty sure the culprit was an ex-con named Moriarty, who had a mean streak in him and for some reason preferred to do his robberies in public bathrooms, as opposed to, say, park sidewalks. As we talked, Clancy now was bringing out the cinnamon rolls and refilling my coffee; I kind of liked him, in spite of everything, and could see that it had hurt him personally, when the three other customers had been robbed, and hurt him also now. And I realized, suddenly, that it could have been me that had been robbed here this morning, had it not been for Colby himself, standing up there on the sink, being an easier target. Moriarty probably would have robbed anyone he had found, it seemed, and found only Colby, and, from what we could tell, had robbed him. Colby probably had no money, though, according to Clancy; he was notoriously always on the edge, always broke.

Just as we were discussing it, though, Lee's radio began crackling; another report came from across town, this one from a Hardee's. Another robbery in a bathroom. I didn't wait to hear how it turned out, but I found out by watching the local news later that evening. Sure enough, it was Moriarty; this time he'd been unlucky enough to rob an off-duty policeman, a very strong one, who pushed him backward into a urinal and killed him when his head hit against the handle. In my easy chair, there in front of the television, I began shaking again, remembering the brutal violence in the bathroom that I'd been witness to, in a sense, only this morning. The television showed very little of the scene of the crime, but I didn't need it; these bathrooms were all the same, really. I could picture the whole thing perfectly well, in my mind.

As it turned out, I never met nor saw Colby again; he never returned to Wal-Mart, that I know of. According to Clancy, he was quite good at security camera technology, and would do very well if he could sober up and play by the rules; however, he never shared whatever tapes his cameras had made that morning, at least not with Clancy. Clancy himself, I saw often; he offered me a better place to change in the mornings, and always offered me coffee, if he thought I had time. He treated me somewhat like an associate, as if I'd helped him with the crime, which I guess, in a way, I had. I think he was worried I would sue him, but, after all, I hadn't lost anything, at least not anything I could put a monetary value on, and I actually enjoyed my stops there, after that, now that I knew a few people.