Free Parking

I was working register seventeen at WalMart, which meant that I could see part of the field adjoining it, out by where the rock band parked their motor home, and where a little path leads out toward the highway through a little patch of woods. A lot of police were out there, as apparently they had found a body of a man, and they were roping it off, taking photographs, etc., but I couldn't watch because of the steady stream of customers and the blasted little beeps that threaten to drive me crazy if I don't concentrate on the task at hand. You hear a lot of stuff working there, and I knew eventually I'd hear plenty: who he was, who did it, why they even looked out there in the first place.

By afternoon I'd already heard a few things: a guy in the rock band, I think the organ player, had found him while walking his dog; the victim was homeless and they were trying to figure out who he was; he'd been shot and then dragged out there, or so they thought; and, as far as they knew, it had nothing to do with the property owner's feud with WalMart, or the fact that a wealthy banker had committed suicide up on the highway only three days ago, running his car off the road not too far away from WalMart, or that the leader of the rock band had a shady history involving several ex-wives, all kinds of drugs, and various incidents in countries like the Bahamas and Italy. The rocker could actually be seen from register seventeen, explaining something to the police, perhaps how the organ player was an upright guy, he had nothing to do with this except he walked the dog regularly, which I, at register seventeen, could have verified, by the way. But once again, I was busy, steady stream of customers and all.

It's a small town kind of place, in spite of being a huge store, selling everything from gallons of milk to bicycles, with all kinds of problems, extensive parking lot security and a property line that goes halfway well into the fields and woods in most directions. It's such a small town that pretty soon everyone in the break room was sharing notes and half of the people knew the rocker, his drummer, the organ player, or even the banker who had killed himself, and whose wife said it wasn't like him, he wasn't even depressed, he must have been run off the road up by the highway as he'd denied some loans or something. We kind of wrote her off as a hysterical grieving family member, unable to handle the strain of a suicide in the family, but she became the topic of conversation anyway, since nobody knew anything about this homeless guy. Who was he? How long had he been in town? What did he look like? Nobody had a clue.

We were familiar with the police, though, as several of them had been staking out William the meth man, who kept buying suspicious things from the store, presumably to make his own, and had attracted the attention of local law enforcement agents, many of whom liked to talk. William was a sallow man, dark eyes, hollowed out cheeks, obviously guilty of lots of things, if not making meth, and most of us were ready to help the police if we saw him. But he'd altered his patterns recently and wasn't buying the same stuff at the same place and time. And it's not a crime to come into WalMart at 3 am, and nobody really knew where he lived out in the country, though it was surely a trailer and it was way out there. Was he involved in this? Some people freely speculated with the police. I however seemed to get a lot of traffic at register seventeen and was stuck beeping little clothes tags until closing time, when I was exhausted and went home to bed.

By morning they'd identified the guy as one David Clayton Boone, from a nearby town, but still had very few clues about who he knew, why he was in town, why somebody might shoot him, etc. His marriage was on the rocks, apparently, with a court order to stay away from his wife, but she didn't seem to be the shooting kind, according to one policeman, though they were looking into her boyfriend, a trucker who was supposedly away in Oklahoma at the moment, but was well known in the area, especially in the bars, which he frequented on his days off. So he'd fallen in love with this married woman; her husband turns up dead in a field outside WalMart, and he's off in Oklahoma somewhere. Suspicious. This was the talk in the break room when I got into work.

I got register five this time, over by the grocery, and this time I couldn't see the field, or the rock band, but I heard a lot of people talking by the entrance and some of the places where they meet each other, which are not far from register five. At the grocery you get these huge carts full of all kinds of stuff and it's a little different although the beeping is just as relentless and again it doesn't let up all day, whether you go fast or slow. We of course are trained to go fast, and be polite, and be accurate, and all that stuff, but what do they expect for that pitiful wage, of course we're going to listen to the gossip if someone has any. Turns out the property owner, one Johnson Wales, who I did not know personally, had some connection with the trucker, as well as his long-standing feud with WalMart. You can bet he was out there on the parking lot claiming that this dead guy was WalMart's fault, what are they doing building a new SuperCenter right up against his property anyway, shining their lights and traffic all night long and all that. We'd heard it before, apparently, as had the courts. But apparently the rock band had been the last straw, he didn't like a rock band parked right up against his land in the parking lot, day in and day out, and he had hired the trucker to go get a pole barn or some such structure which he was going to put on his land, right up against the parking lot, block out the light and be a little unsightly. Well, this sounded suspicious, but, such kinds of feuds are common in small towns like this, even if one of the feudees is a major corporation like WalMart. The manager seemed to think this Johnson Wales was an evil guy, but I was more curious about the trucker, since he was the only one I'd heard of so far who had an actual motive, that being that the dead guy was married to his girlfriend. Why else would someone kill an old homeless guy and toss him in the weeds? I didn't figure old Johnson Wales would do it- sure he hated WalMart, but why kill some guy over that? Or the rocker. Maybe a couple of ex-wives had overdosed somewhere in the Bahamas a couple of years back, but if he were to just shoot someone and toss him in the weeds, I figure he'd be long gone by now. And the rocker, named Deth Venice, came through register five a lot. He was always buying milk, or toothpaste, or some such little thing, he wasn't organized enough to buy a whole meal at once. And he didn't even wake up until about 7 at night.

But right when he was arguing with the manager about something, along comes William the meth man, this was about nine in the evening, and William also was buying milk and white bread and balogna, basic supplies, none of this Colemans fuel or Iodine tincture, which you supposedly use for your horses. It's certainly not a crime buying white bread and balogna, though maybe it should be, but I half expected the police to jump him right there at register five, as I knew they'd been watching him for quite some time. I raised my eyebrow a little to show I was surprised that he was just buying milk and food; just to see what would happen I mentioned the body that was found out in the field beyond the rock band's motor home, and the police coming and going all hours of the night, but he looked back at me with the hollowest of eyes, not caring, not knowing a thing that I could tell. He wouldn't have known Deth Venice from the greeter, I figured, and most likely the milk and balogna were for his dog, as he clearly hadn't eaten in months. He did however say that he didn't care at all for these police, and if they were marking up his property the way they were marking up that field out there, it would be them that was out there lying face down in the mud. But he said it with such a dull flatness that I couldn't imagine him killing anyone. He certainly had no grudges that I knew of with anyone, although in the meth business, I'd guess, you'd probably have a grudge with everyone.

But just as he turned to grab his meager groceries and go, he almost ran into Deth Venice, who was still speaking in a raised voice to the manager. The manager was more or less telling old Deth to take a hike, though he'd be permitted to wait at least until after his big show, which was well known to be tomorrow night. Deth was telling the manager that he could take his WalMart SuperCenter and shove it where the sun don't shine, he'll just get his groceries down at the Piggly Wiggly like everyone else from now on, thank you very much. But when old Deth almost ran smack into sallow old William the meth maker, it was almost like he'd seen his own ghost. William, you see, was a lot like Deth, long greasy hair, thin as a rail, except he had no confidence, no stage presence, no love of dressing up and prancing around making noise. He was just a poor guy starving out there in the woods who had according to someone started boiling down this crap to make meth all the time, and they were about to catch him, whatever he was doing he certainly wasn't eating much. He didn't even care for Deth Venice; to him, old Deth was just some dressed up clown who was about to run into his hard-bought white bread and ruin his dinner. I was looking for clues in this- I figured, with Deth parked out there on the edge, surely he'd seen something and knew something, and if homeless people were hanging around the parking lot, maybe meth was as good a reason as any, so I figured maybe one of these clowns knew something they weren't letting on. But there was no sign of the police. Deth, you had to figure, was at least a very public character- they'd already talked to him, I'm sure. As for William, I'm sure the police knew he was there, but must not have had anything on him, or they would have sprung. After all, he was just buying supplies.

As I got off work that night I peered off at the path that goes off across Johnson Wales' land, where the body was, up a wooded hill and over toward the highway out of town, where that banker went over the edge. It was not clear to me that anyone in that rock band could have seen anything on that path, anyone coming and going, judging from the way they were parked, though if I were going to drag a body somewhere, I probably wouldn't start in a WalMart parking lot. The band had a number of shady characters; the drummer was a kind of local guy, who had gone to jail for assault at one point but seemed to be ok once he took up with Deth and started getting a steady income from playing the clubs and the concerts in the area. I'd have suspected him, but none of these guys were dumb enough to just throw a dead guy not more than a mile from where their motor home was parked. And I think the police knew that.

But finally it hit me, and I think the police figured this out before I did, because they were still poking around the following day when I got back to work. The murderer didn't drag the body from the parking lot, or they would have found more tracks. They dragged it from the other way, from the highway. As it turned out, the banker's wife was right- the banker had been run off the road, up on the highway, though there were no tracks from another car. He'd been run off the road by none other than Johnson Wales himself, presumably for denying him a loan, or perhaps for giving WalMart theirs; Wales had, in a fit of temper, killed the guy, and the homeless guy was unlucky enough to see it, accidentally, as he was probably just hanging around out there in the woods on the edge of town. So he had to be killed also, or he'd surely tell eventually- and that's when they dragged him back in, toward the WalMart, before dropping him. Johnson Wales had apparently dropped him on his own land, then went out and pretended that he was absolutely furious that someone would kill somebody at WalMart and come onto his property to drop the body.

And that was all there was. The trucker apparently had nothing to do with it, though when he heard about all the fuss back home, he stayed in Oklahoma, never returned the money or brought the pole barn or anything. Deth and his band played their show, but the wind had been taken out of his sails, he sounded like a ghost, a guy who'd spent one night too many in the WalMart parking lot. I heard this from a friend who, rather than working Saturday nights, actually went places like concerts. Right then I tried to picture Deth in front of a crowd, trying to get up a good scream, but being drowned out by thousands of little WalMart beeps of things being bought, and finally giving up and going home. William, I never saw again, maybe he fell off the face of the earth, or just decided that there were better WalMarts than ones that were swarming with police and gossips and rockers, not to mention people so big they had to use those carts to drive around in. And all of this is second hand, by the way, don't quote me on it, you can read about it in the papers, if Johnson Wales ever goes to trial, and find out what really happened.

1-07-07

Apple of her mother's eye

Mary Anne and her older brother Paul grew up in one of those steel towns with brick streets, where all the shops are within a block of the bar, and you can see the mill, the river, and mountains up the hill behind the bar, all from the front stoop of the bar. Their father, who had been hurt in an accident in the mill, some say deliberately, spent his evenings at that bar, drinking and gambling with off-duty mill-workers; Mary Anne was more angry with her mother, though, for tolerating it, while at the same time trying to instill virtue in her as a young Catholic girl. She started out very close to her mother, helping her at the dress shop she ran, and that they lived on top of, but by the time she started kindergarten, her father was already down at the bar most afternoons, and it seemed like good times were already over. She and Paul got in trouble practically from the start, stealing and drinking communion wine together, breaking into the bar in the middle of the night together, and later stealing an enormous statue from the school and dumping it in the river, and getting caught, eventually.

Both got in serious trouble in high school; Paul stole a car and had to be bailed out by Mary Anne; Mary Anne actually dropped out of high school and started living with a drug dealer named Joseph, who had a trailer out on the edge of town. Joseph's father was the pharmacist; his business was on the same street as the bar, a few doors down from the dress shop, but he was a drunk too, and mean to boot, so Joseph had no intention of staying by his side, or going to school, long enough to learn the family business. Times are changing, Mary Anne's mother would say. This shop won't stay open forever; neither will his father's. Neither will the mill, for that matter, you know how things are going. Mary Anne, Paul and Joseph were all in that generation where it didn't seem clear where a person could fit in, if they didn't want to work in the mill. People would look at Mary Anne when she was little, and remind her- she was the baby of the family, the apple of her mother's eye. But she'd got hardened, tough, and angry, especially at her mother. And to the question of why a woman would stick with a man, if he cussed and drank and gambled, and spent what little money she had, her mother would only say, in my generation we didn't toss out husbands like shoes that didn't fit just right anymore.

Mary Anne stayed out at that trailer for a few months, but her being there actually attracted unwanted attention to Joseph, and endangered his business. Joseph was serious about making some money and getting out of this town, going somewhere where there was a future, but he was serious about Mary Anne too. At one point there was a bad drug deal with her brother Paul; Paul claimed that Joseph had overcharged him; Joseph told Paul to get lost, and made it clear he never wanted to lay eyes on him again. Even then he had some thugs that were working with him, guys like Rico Soto, guys from mill families who were born with huge muscles and metal things stuffed in their waists, guys you didn't want to mess with. But Paul couldn't get lost; he had nowhere to go.

Joseph was passionately in love with Mary Anne, but he could see, right then, that in some ways she would always be closer to her brother, and in fact took her brother's side in the argument. It didn't matter to her the details, the fact that Paul had been lying and stealing for years now, that he would do anything for Mary Anne's attention, that he was blindly jealous of Joseph. To Joseph it all seemed like Paul was the problem; he'd been in the way from the beginning. But Joseph was determined in many ways. He moved further out into the country and set up his dealing business so that he could expand it, keep it secret, and hide out for a while. He made less of a paper trail out to his farm, so fewer and fewer people even knew where he was or what he was doing; at the same time, he expanded his contacts in the cities, where the money was. And he kept his eye on Mary Anne and her family.

Paul was in and out of jail, mostly for little stuff, but finally he got into big trouble. Mac Cobb, a cement man and a friend of their father's, had befriended Paul as a kid and offered him work pouring cement at frequent jobs around the county. Paul was completely unreliable in those days, as he was always being arrested for drinking and disorderly-type crimes, and drugs, while he was still getting along with Joseph. But one evening Rico Soto came after old Mac Cobb as he was closing his place, and demanded payment on a gambling debt. He knocked out Mac Cobb with a single punch, when Paul came upon him, rustling through the papers in the back office. Paul told him to get out of there; he didn't. They started a fight that very well could have ended in Paul's death, but, just by chance, Mary Anne arrived at the old cement yard just then, to pick up Paul in their old Pontiac. Mary Anne picked up an old shovel and gave Rico Soto a whack in the head, right as they were fighting on the floor. This was enough to give Paul a minute to get out from under Soto's grip, enough to give him time to get to his feet, grab the shovel, and give Soto another whack. This time, Soto, was killed; Mary Anne was breathless, horrified at the sight.

Paul feared for his life, sure that Soto's friends, and Joseph, would come after him and kill him. Impulsively, Mary Anne said that she'd done it, and they stuck with their story. It seemed like the only thing they could do to save Paul's life; Mary Anne felt she had nothing to lose. It was a big deal in that town, a murder, however justified or not, and it tended to shine the light on their father, the drunken gambler, and the rough life Mary Anne and her brothers and sisters had suffered. Her mother, of course, suspected the truth, and was furious with both of them, but Mary Anne was angry too, angry at her mother for putting her in this world, with no choices, a world with gambling and alcohol and drugs, and ugly thugs like Rico Soto menacing everyone. To the judge she played an innocent, drawn into a murder scene, striking out in self-defense, and got off with a stern probation. She was living at home at the time, but deeply unhappy, fighting with her mother every day. She was aware that Joseph, with his dirty drug money, was watching her, from out in the country, probably waiting for opportunity. Finally she got the chance to move to Ireland, through a woman her mother knew from church, and she took it. She'd wanted out of this mill town, this brick-street, hard-drinking coke-furnace jerkwater town, from the beginning, and now she got her chance, and moved.

In Ireland she got married almost immediately, to a guy named Sean, a raffish character, easygoing and handsome like her father, but who always had lots of drugs, and many friends, but almost no prospects. Sean went away for weeks at a time, and when he came back to Dublin he had plenty of cash, much like her father when he'd win a big pot at the local bar, and treat everyone to big steak dinners. She loved it both when they were together, on a roll, living the high life in Dublin, and then again when she was alone, and she'd be quieter, and sometimes remember the hard life she'd left behind in Pennsylvania. She missed her mother, whose greatest fear was that she'd have a baby and they'd be unable to meet; this, however, wouldn't happen, and more often she'd make short calls home and just tell her mother that she was ok. She heard reports: that Paul had gone to jail for a short time again, this time for his part in a drunken brawl, but also probably for suspicion of guilt in the Rico Soto case; that her older brother died in a mill accident; that an older sister had married a mill worker who had beat her and put her in the hospital. The dress shop was selling wedding stuff now but was slowly but surely going out of business; so was the pharmacy down the street. Only the bar was still doing a lively business, and the mill was hanging on, against most predictions.

One day she got a telegram from Sean, who was in jail on the Moldova-Romania border for smuggling drugs, and needed her help getting him out of jail. In a panic she grabbed some clothes and went to the train station. But at the train station, who should she see but Joseph, from Pennsylvania, blocking her path and not letting her get to the ticket booth.

"You need to forget this guy," Joseph said. "He's trouble. He's too stupid to stay out of jail". She was appalled that he even knew who Sean was.

"What, and go back to the states with you?" she asked bitterly. Somehow she figured she would have the same fate with him someday; didn't all drug dealers end up in jail? Or dead?

"Listen, I have money now, I don't need to keep doing that. I can take care of you, keep you in the lifestyle you want, wherever you want to live. Here, Pennsylvania, wherever you want. You don't have to chase this worthless guy to the end of the earth"

"I don't want to live with you," she said. "I tried that, remember? Go home, Joseph, and leave me alone!" She shook him off, left him there outside the train station, bought her ticket, and settled in for a long ride to eastern Europe, where, after some months of haggling, finding Sean's parents, and translating with local authorities, she got her husband out of jail, brought him back to Ireland, and told him never to do that again.

But things were not as happy or carefree as they had been. For one thing, she got the impression that Joseph was still tailing her. She felt her apartment had been broken into in her absence, and had an uncanny feeling that Joseph knew everything about her, how she'd keep a key under a garbage can, when she'd come and go, where she went when Sean was gone. She even thought she'd seen Joseph a few times, disappearing around corners, after watching her perhaps, in various parts of Dublin as she went around, getting her groceries or whatever. It was an unsettling feeling, and worst of all, she couldn't shake off what he'd said.

Her marriage with Sean also wasn't going well; he didn't amount to much, and she couldn't really change him. He continued to love her and adore her, and bring her money and good times whenever he had it, but it always seemed like less money, and hollow good times, much like her father's steaks, enjoyed on the back of some loser's pain. She wanted to leave him; she wanted out, but she thought of her mother's remark about shoes, and that stopped her; also, it was Joseph she was really worried about.

For many months, she thought about that strange encounter at the train station with Joseph. Strange, that as far as the law was concerned, she had killed his right-hand man, and got away with it, yet he either didn't believe it, or it meant little to him, since he didn't even mention it, and continued to want her with a passion she knew was only getting stronger. He seemed out of control; he would stop at nothing.

When her father died, she packed her bags quickly to fly back to Pennsylvania for the funeral. Sean even then looked at her, suspecting it was over, doing nothing. She threw a few extra things into the suitcase; still he did nothing. There was a moment, when an entire marriage came to that point; he could have gone along to Pennsylvania, but didn't; he could have changed his ways, but maybe couldn't have; he was what he was.

In Pennsylvania, the family, as it was, was together again; Paul had now gotten out of jail, and was taking over Cobb's cement business. He seemed upright now, quiet, steady, determined to make it in spite of his own bad reputation and all that had happened. Their mother was falling apart, though; the last few years had been rough, with no money, and their father in bad health, the other brothers and sisters gone, or unable to help much in any case.

Late at night, Mary Anne found herself talking again to Paul, at the kitchen table in the old apartment above the dress shop, telling him about Joseph giving her the chills at the Dublin train station, and again with the various signs of his tailing her.

"He won't be bothering you again," said Paul.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he's been around here, too. Dad got into some gambling debts before he died. Joseph came around and offered to pay them off, but I wouldn't let him. Mom almost took it though, she thought he was a gentleman, and a nice rich one at that. I knew what he was after, though, and I told him, if he ever came hanging around here again, I'd kill him.

"Then, it turns out, Dad lost the shop and the apartment, too; he'd used it as collateral for a loan, and lost that. And it turns out that it all was about to be bought up by some shadow company called "Consolidated", and Mom had made a deal to make payments with them somehow. I looked into this company, and it was completely hidden, the trail died, and I got in the way of that too. I knew Joseph was behind it. And I knew he didn't like me snooping around. It was just like high school, when I almost got him busted, because he was doing his sneaky business.

"He came out to find me, and threaten me, to get the deed to the place, with his money and his lease and his slimy Consolidated whatever it was. But I was out at the new Wal-Mart site; they've been pouring and building 24 hours, they're in a hurry, and half the time I'm out there, in the middle of the night, whenever it's convenient for them. I'm making plenty of money, and I'm pouring plenty of concrete, and I work at my own pace, I work around the electricians and plumbers and all.

"Well, he brought his gun, but he left his thugs behind, because of the personal nature of what he was doing, and that was his mistake. Let's just say, those thugs will never find him. He's not coming back to the surface.

"You…?" She was dumbfounded.

"He has no trail. He has no name; he disappeared from the face of the earth. His people are not going to go to the police looking for him. They came looking for me, but I was at the bar; I made sure that those big guys were standing right behind me, when I told them, I don't know anything about it, and if you know what's good for you, you'll get lost. They took his car, and they're out of here; I think maybe they were glad to see him go. And he had no legitimate business around here, none. His dad and the pharmacy are long gone, they don't have little pharmacies like that anymore, maybe the old man went to Florida or something. Joseph, if he'd a kept running drugs up and down the east coast, I'd a' had no problem with him. Listen, sis…"

He didn't want to say any more; he didn't have to. "My lips are sealed," she said. The only man that had ever really loved her, the only guy she'd be true to, her brother, and he was a murderer, not once, but twice. This time, he'd done it for her, and for their mother.

"I got a job waiting for you at the cement place; I need someone to take calls and manage the bills."

"It would help if someone stayed in the house, took care of mom, helped her keep stuff in order," he said. "The store is finished, I guess, though I got the building back, with a promise of some money; I'd never let go of the deed, and Consolidated basically disappeared. It's more mom I'm worried about; I don't want her going making deals with guys like that again."

"Consider it done," she said, looking around at the familiar mess. In fact it was a couple of days before she'd settled on the idea, but then, it was days before she could have a rational conversation with her mother, too. And by then, she'd got word from Europe that Sean was in some other jail, far from home, needing to be bailed out. One's past is never far behind, she thought, as she was walking with Paul one night, but, as they passed by the church, they came to a little cement patch of the walkway, where they'd each put their hand print, as children. They stopped for a moment, trying to remember the priest who had made that possible, but he too was long gone, like so much else; they couldn't even remember his name.

With Dad not around, it would probably be simpler. It would be different, anyway, a new chapter, a new start. The sun was rising behind the rusty smoke of the mills; the first of the cars clattered along the bricks by the church, on their way to work. Paul picked up a piece of slag, a small rocky remains of the steelmaking process, and pinged it against the window of the church, not breaking it this time. Mary Anne needed some sleep, and turned back toward the apartment, and then to her old room, in the back corner of it. The old apartment building, the downtown alley out the window, and the old wooden floors, settled around and beneath her, not ready yet for the new day.

10-07

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.

Inventory

Ryan Pressley, 18, was on his way to Harvard in the fall, and was a legend in his own strange way, in his small North Carolina town, where he happened to go to WalMart on a day that a number of various criminals happened to converge on the place. He was actually somewhat of a criminal himself, in that he was a hacker in his free time; he had broken into a number of stores' computer systems; changed their ordering patterns; wreaked havoc with their inventories. At one local retail chain he'd ordered three cases of condoms, then went into the store, and asked the manager with a smirk if he had any condoms around. He was addicted to that feeling, of knowing more than even the manager about the inventory of a store. He considered WalMart the king of the inventory control business; he'd hacked all the way through its system, from the national headquarters right into his local store, but got trapped there; he had a way of sneaking through passwords, but he couldn't get into the local store's inventory system. In frustration he decided to go to WalMart in person on this particular day. He didn't count on running into a young woman, Anna-Marie, who looked at him with a deep kind of look. All of a sudden he felt like he'd have to explain why he needed a condom, and of course, he couldn't. With unusual luck, though, she promised she'd check the store's inventory. He'd have to follow her, though, while she went into the back to find a computer, and maybe somebody who knew what they were doing. As she turned around he got a lump in his throat and thought maybe he'd follow her just about anywhere. There goes Harvard, he thought. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

In the back room, Ivan and Sergei Petrov were running one of their usual scams. Sergei had the thermostat taken apart; he had wires coming out of the wall at different angles, with tools spread out on the floor, including one of those electrical meters that tells you if any juice is coming through a wire. He was wearing a uniform, but it was kind of ill-fitting, and it didn't say Sergei on it, it said Roger. He had to remind himself to answer to the name Roger, in case anyone read the label on his uniform. His brother Ivan was on the phone, calling one of those toll numbers; they would charge WalMart, when the month was over, but WalMart would just pay it, being a large company, and not knowing what the charge was for, and he and his scamming cousins would collect some of the money, and be richer for the experience, if only now they could play their parts well, act like the call was necessary, and had something to do with a broken thermostat. The good thing about the thermostat was, whenever you said that there was a broken one, people tended to believe you, since nobody is ever happy with the temperature in a room, especially in North Carolina. The bad thing about it was, not every room had one, so sometimes, they would get all dressed up, try to run their scam, and not find a room that had both a phone and a thermostat, or maybe, not find a thermostat at all. So that, if they had to give their story to the manager before they were able to borrow the phone, sometimes they got sidetracked.

On this day their scam was working quite well; in fact, it was working so well that they were tempted to drag it out a little, and that might have been their undoing. Ivan was yapping away, in Russian, about Putin, to his cousin, except that every time he needed to say "Putin," he'd say the Russian word for "thermostat," which sounded a lot like the English "thermostat" anyway, and made the whole conversation sound like it was about a thermostat-fixing emergency. But even this was only when there were other people around, in the employees' room of the WalMart; the rest of the time he went on and on about sexual exploits that Sergei knew for a fact weren't true. Half the time everything he said was merely for Sergei's entertainment, as Sergei sat there, near him, and pulled out thermostat wires in such a configuration that it looked like the thermostat was undergoing serious internal surgery. Sergei would chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all. If only his cousins back in Russia could see him now!

They became quite serious when the manager came in; Ivan's discussion became focused on an actual thermostat, as if there actually was one broken, although still probably only Sergei, and the cousin on the other end of the line, actually knew what he was saying. Sergei focused carefully on the bent wires in front of him. The manager, Albert Bond, was a nervous kind of guy, didn't really believe the two Russian guys, even though probably the main office did send them over to fix the thermostat; it was a believable enough story, he thought, but something about it wasn't right. What was bothering Albert Bond, though, was that he really needed to use the phone to call his bookie, because he had a gambling deal going, and was intently interested in how it worked out, whether the Tar Heels had won or lost. Gambling was still illegal in North Carolina, so he tried to make these calls in private, but this was sometimes difficult, and impossible today with these yahoos around; he wished he had brought his cell phone, but he'd left it with his daughter.

In an agitated huff he set about pretending to read the newspaper on the employees' room table, but he kept an eye on the two Russian guys, one taking apart the thermostat, and the other one talking away, in Russian, on the phone. Their uniforms bothered him. He, Albert Bond, had actually worked for a uniform supply outfit for a while, one of those places that just couldn't compete with big-time operators like WalMart, but the result of that experience was that he knew, somehow, that if these guys really worked for the heating supply people, their uniforms would fit better. A close study of this Roger guy, for example, convinced him that his name was probably not Roger, and he very likely wasn't even a heating supply guy. He became convinced, correctly as it turned out, that this was some kind of scam, and he slowly came to a boil, thinking he was being taken for a fool.

But Anna-Marie and Ryan Pressley approached him, and asked him an inventory question regarding the next supply truck with ribbed condoms on it. For some reason it was necessary for the customer, Pressley, to find out when this truck would arrive, and how many of these condom packages would be on it. He looked at the customer, Pressley, and wondered what on earth this young man would do with a whole box of condoms; he looked like he'd spent the last three months next to a computer. As it happened, Albert Bond was dead right about that, also. It was an awkward exchange, because the man was obviously attracted to Anna Marie, but was very inept socially; at the same time, Anna Marie was very flirtatious, in her shy, kind of demure way; she obviously liked the guy, yet the conversation was about these condoms. And the Russians kind of backed off; the one on the phone was quieter, as if he were listening more, to the guy on the other end; he kept saying "seriose-na, seriose-na," which had to be Russian for "You're serious!" or "Seriously!"

Albert Bond, while he wanted to take the phone and smash the Russian guy over the head with it, set about to help Anna-Marie with the inventory question. He would have to call up the item on the store inventory database, but this wouldn't be difficult, if they walked over to a station where it could be accessed. Because he was boiling over about the guys with the ill-fitting uniforms, he considered finding a way to call the police, or dealing with that in some way, but he remembered the store rule: customers first. It would be good to get this geeky, Adam's appled kid out of here before he did that.

Around this time Aaron Howard came into the store. Howard was a small-time crook; a shoplifter, pickpocket, credit-card fraud kind of guy, operated out of his van, and often slept in it, but had a fence in Atlanta who would buy whatever he could steal, and he often started off his days lifting just about anything he could get his hands on. Actually he considered WalMart as the ultimate challenge, as they were harder to steal from, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of their goods were small things, like tomatoes and toothpaste. They had detectives in almost every aisle, cameras everywhere, and, as good as Aaron Howard was at finding the cameras and hiding his hands from them, he was never quite sure that he'd seen every camera, or that any given person in front of him wasn't a store detective. He was up to the challenge though; he steeled himself. He wasn't coming out of this store empty-handed. The first thing he passed was a rack full of the new Harry Potter book; these sold at about twenty dollars a piece; one was dangling off of a lower shelf, and he grabbed that one and opened it up. He didn't really notice this, but a small piece of paper fell out of it, and into his hand; he folded it up a little as he thumbed through the pages, but held onto it. He wanted the book; he needed an escape, a fantasy. But it was a large book, too difficult to slip into his pants or his shirt, even if nobody was looking. He palmed it, thumbed through it a little, but eventually put it back down on the shelf, this time in better order, right up with the other books. He had to use the bathroom, and he was in luck; on the way there, there was a small crowd of people near the entrance to the employee's area, and he bumped up against someone in an ill-fitting uniform, maybe an electrician or something, in the crowd of people. It was all very natural, the guy didn't suspect a thing, and he lifted his wallet, and found a valid credit card in it, as he used the bathroom. One never knew about this stuff, but he figured, he had to use it quickly, before it was noticed; he made a plan, and walked out purposely.

Back at the Harry Potter rack a man looked furiously for the book with the note in it; by arrangement, it was to be one on a certain lower shelf, dangling off the edge. There was no book that fit that description. He was part of a drug ring; a pilot had flown in from the Caribbean, low, beneath the radar, and into the interior of North Carolina, where drugs could be dropped, about thirty miles from this store, in the woods, by a lookout where the ranger had been bought off and had lots of acreage of mountain woods as leeway. The drugs had been picked up according to schedule; the note pertained to where they were to be exchanged from there. This WalMart, and the Harry Potter rack in particular, played an important role in this exchange, but the details of what happened on this day didn't become clear until much later, and Aaron Howard, who had the note in his hand, imploring the reader to use the back end of the McDonald's parking lot this time, didn't quite know what to make of it, when he finally read it. The shipment of drugs never made it to its intended destination, but that was due to a number of other factors besides the interruption of Aaron Howard, and the palming of the note that gave directions to the smugglers.

Back at the inventory station, Albert Bond became suspicious of the geeky Ryan Pressley, and young Anna-Marie, who had now spent so much time away from her post, and he pretended to need a minute while he went to a phone and called the police on the two Russians, who he could still see lingering in the doorway near the bathroom and the employees' room. He could see that Pressley became nervous because of his phone call, but Pressley was nervous anyway; Bond had missed calling his bookie, and when he did call, he found that he had lost a couple of thousand on the Tar Heels, and this made him quite agitated and angry.

Pressley, however, was not worried about the police. He was innocent, after all; he had not gotten what he had wanted, which was the password to the inventory system, but then, he had not committed a crime either. He was entirely taken with the young girl, and now knew that her name was Anna-Marie. He had pretty much given up on the condoms, and on the scam itself, as it was an enormous waste of time, given the fact that he was going to Harvard anyway, on scholarship, in the fall, and didn't want to risk any of that. Anna-Marie, however, was a different story. He felt that if he walked away, he'd never return; he'd never see her again, and he couldn't bear that. He proposed to her, right on the spot. She accepted. They were in the hardware aisle, looking into each other's eyes, when the police walked in; they didn't even notice. Albert Bond stopped worrying about Anna-Marie, and watched how the police handled the two Russian guys, one of whom, Sergei, didn't have an ID. As it turned out, Aaron Howard had used Sergei's credit card to buy a stereo and a Harry Potter book, and it caused Sergei all manner of trouble, because both brothers spent the weekend in jail, unable to call or cancel the credit cards, unable to straighten out the mess, or explain why they'd spent so long on the phone, calling a toll number for no reason except to make money. After that experience they both pleaded humility and repentance, and vowed to go straight, never pulling scams again, but only Sergei actually did; Ivan was caught doing a similar scam less than two months later in a larger city, not too far away.

The town was scandalized by the major drug bust, in the back of McDonald's parking lot, but that happened, really, because of another coincidence which is not part of this story. The wedding of Ryan Pressley and Anna-Marie, later in the summer, was a big event also, and even Albert Bond was invited, and attended, saying proudly that he was there when they met, and in fact when they were engaged. He treated Anna-Marie like a niece, showered her with gifts, was gracious when it came time for her to leave her job. No problem, he said, things happen, and you have to do what your heart tells you.

August 15, 2007

The Juggler

I'd broken up with a woman back in Rhode Island; given away my truck, my canoe and a stereo, grabbed my guitar and went out the door, and onto the road down the east coast. I really missed her son, though, who would have been my stepson, I guess you could say; I knew it wasn't working out with the kid's mom, but that wasn't the kid's fault. It was like I'd lost my friendship with him, for no good reason at all, and I took it hard. Outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, it was foggy, and it was early morning, and a van stopped to give me a ride. Inside was a man driving, a woman, and another young boy. This little fellow was about five, big eyes, kind of sad, but playful at the same time. He wanted to play my guitar. Not in the van, his father said from the driver's seat. There was a strong tension between the man and the woman, who was in the front passenger seat. She was pulling away from him, emotionally, it seemed to me. She kept looking out the window. She didn't relate much to the boy; it was as if she wasn't his mother, I thought. And, as it turned out, I was right about that, it seemed. She was quite beautiful; I could see why the man had fallen for her. She was also close to the boy, I could tell; they were good friends, although I could see, she was sick inside, kind of like how I felt, when I realized I had to leave my little buddy, back in Providence. It wasn't his fault I had to go, it's just the way things were.

At a roadside rest area I played my guitar and watched them; I let the boy play too. At one point the man told the boy to get his balls; the boy ran to the van, and fetched five brightly-colored, but differently-colored, balls, which the man proceeded to juggle. He was really excellent at it. The balls flew, left and right, around his head, across, in front, behind. He was a master. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the woman. She'd seen it before, many times. She held the boy close to her. The fog lifted from the grasses beside the road; other travelers came and went. She watched the man a little, but in general, she had a hard time being around him. I got the feeling he wanted something from her, and she couldn't give it. I was right again, as it turned out. They were from Virginia; she was going out to LA; it was her van; and he and the boy were going to Vegas. The boy was his. His mother had died a year ago of cancer; how sad. That's some juggling skill, I said to the guy. He was a gentle guy, but hard in some ways too. The problem with it, he said, was that he was impulsive. He'd be in Wal-Mart or someplace, and have some stress, be unable to pick what fruit to buy or something, and he'd just start juggling. Five apples. Or five oranges. He'd been arrested for it, actually, when he didn't have the money to pay for the fruit. More often he'd bring home more than he could eat, a couple of them bruised.

I reconsidered my original plan, which was to stop in on a friend in Memphis; I figured, if I got a good ride way out West, nice folks, drive all night, I could be through the Plains in a day or two; they'd get me out by the Grand Canyon no problem. I'd have to give up Memphis though. I got up to walk around the rest area before we got back into the van; a broken shoelace was bugging me and making it difficult just to walk around. I cursed the shoelace; maybe I'd needed part of it, to hold my pants up, or hold my pack together. But it was making my life hell now. I needed a Wal-Mart, buy some more shoelaces. That way I could at least go for a walk.

Back with the little family, there was tension you could cut with a knife. Something had been said. It wasn't my business. I played with the boy; I could relate to him. We had some room in the back of the van and got a card game going. Central Tennessee, then Nashville, flew by, outside the van windows. His name was Ricky. He had an active fantasy life with his action figures, his toys and a few things scattered around the van. He was looking forward to school in the fall, kindergarten. He called his dad, the juggler, Scott. Scott was driving, a scowl on his face. Deb, the woman, stared out the window but both of them occasionally joined our conversation.

The hot morning sun was high over this town in western Tennessee when we got off the road and pulled into a Wal-Mart. I needed shoelaces, but that's not why we stopped; I forget what they said they wanted. Ricky was bugging them for an action toy but Scott said no, not now. Deb bit her tongue. I could practically hear her say to herself, why not, just one. Sure, times are tough when you're traveling. You never know how long the money will last; where the next work will be; how much it will cost to settle in at some new place. Sure, some of these people have trust funds, maybe they don't have to worry about it, but I could relate to Scott. He was trying to be responsible, hang onto his money, take care of his kids' primary needs. Maybe he was weighing the possibility of the bus or the train. Their time as a threesome was clearly limited. I could tell by the look on Deb's face.

At the Wal-Mart Deb left her purse in the van; the four of us walked toward the entrance, the boy asking repeatedly for an action figure. I almost went my own way, got my shoelaces, left them to their own devices, but I didn't, and that was a fateful move. At the entrance of the WalMart, a veteran selling poppies; he had them on a card table, in a loose pile, and he was doing a brisk business. They were fake, but had pins in them and a small back, so they had some substance, and they were to be pinned on you, in remembrance of the veterans. I had no problem with the veterans, but didn't have much in the way of money; I said hello to the guy anyway, and we kind of lingered near him as Deb and Scott decided what to do. Deb couldn't take it any more, wanted to buy little Ricky an action figure, was going to go back to the van to get her purse, while we decided we'd stand there a minute or two and wait. A fateful minute or two. Scott the juggler, and I, standing a little behind him, off to the side, the big blue WalMart sign behind us, people coming and going, the hot Tennessee sun blazing down on us.

The veteran, Ron Whitehall, was a disaster waiting to happen. Court testimony later showed it. He'd gone off to Vietnam; had come back damaged, anti-social; did his part for the veterans, selling his poppies, but was clearly disaffected by the people, wealthy, middle-class, even poor, the long lines of people coming and going, carrying everything- groceries, fishing poles, stereos and cd's, new pants, you name it. He was nice to people who bought poppies; inside he was a volcano waiting to blow. I could see it coming. It was like a movie, unfolding in slow motion, in front of my eyes.

The guy that lit the fuse was Mark Morris, a Texan, silk shirt open halfway down his chest, million dollar hair and some jewelry that caught the sun every time he turned around. Some heavy-set Mexican guy was walking with him, slipping back in the shadows, maybe a bodyguard or something. Talking right across Ron Whitehall, the veteran, he asked Scott if there was a Starbucks somewhere in town. Scott, a juggler, a traveler from Virginia, had no idea.

Whitehall, the veteran, probably knew exactly where one was, but they hadn't asked him. He grumbled beneath his breath. Something about the situation attracted Morris; he came closer to us; he glanced at the poppies. Buy a poppy? asked Whitehall. Gave at the office, said Morris, snidely. It came out in court, later, that he also had been in Vietnam. My guess is, he was gay. He liked Scott; he was flirting with Scott; they talked about Starbucks, good coffee, small southern towns. Whitehall held his rage; wanted to kill Morris, no doubt, but both were in pretty good shape; I had no idea how that would turn out. Morris, anyway, had two things going on. First, he was flirting with Scott, I could see, and Scott let that happen, paralyzed, waiting there at the WalMart. Second, he knew he was getting under Whitehall's skin. Had unfinished business with a guy like Whitehall.
He got more and more reckless, daring, flamboyant. It's like he was saying, I fought for my country, I'll do what I want, I'll say what I want, outside of WalMart at ten in the morning.

Another guy on the scene: Johnson Brooks, age 16, just got his driver's license, on his way to get his first hunting license; maybe he was driving too fast. He was coming down the aisle in an old Buick, one of those cars that obstruct your vision just by virtue of being so huge, but then, its hugeness turned out to be a virtue in the end. He was going too fast, but then, in the WalMart parking lot, even 15 or twenty was too fast. He was coming toward us, but turning around the center place where they had lots of shopping carts, to find a parking spot maybe in the next aisle, when his attention was distracted by juggling- Scott was juggling five poppies.

Over by us, Morris had made a comment about the town; Whitehall had taken offense; they were clearly ready to fight, for no reason at all, really. Whitehall was on his feet; the veins in his neck were about to pop; he measured Morris, who, as I've said, was also in pretty good shape; Whitehall was boiling over, was ready to strike. But he turned around at the last minute, and saw Scott, juggling poppies. That did it; that snapped him. He lunged at Scott, gave him a huge push, over toward a lawn swing, a two-person construction with metal poles, canvas seats and bricks around it, holding it up. It all happened very quickly; I saw it, as I said, in slow motion. Scott had actually paid for the poppies, put money on the table, court records showed; there was no way Whitehall could have known it, though. Scott, the poppies, the lawn chairs, the bricks, all smashed up against that cerrated wall with the big blue W sign on it, a huge pile of mess.

Johnson Brooks had seen the juggling, just like I did; the five poppies, up, around, over Scott's head, sailing with the lightness of a feather, yet fast, bright red, and dazzling. Then, instantly, he saw Whitehall push Scott back into the swing. But with his car he hit the boy, Ricky. Ricky had been coming back toward WalMart with Deb, was a little ahead of her, and ran right out into the little roadway, that area with the white stripes on it, right in front of the entrance, at just the wrong time. If he saw his dad at all, he didn't see much. The Buick hit him and in a second he was under the car; he was only five; he didn't' have a chance. Deb, across the crosswalk, by the shopping carts, turned white as a sheet. She hadn't been prepared for the boy to get out of her grasp and run out like that; she just hadn't foreseen it. She also had perhaps been distracted by the juggling or the commotion. She yelled out, and Johnson Brooks stopped; too late. The boy, run over by the car, yelled out, trapped beneath it. He ended up in the hospital for three weeks, but he lived through it. Resilient little fellow; had no idea what was going on around him, though.

His father didn't live through it. Scott was thrown so hard against the lawn chair that he tumbled down with it as it fell and into the bricks, which hit him in just the wrong way, and killed him instantly. With people screaming about the boy beneath the car, and Whitehall and Morris, not believing what had happened; even sirens, within a couple minutes, but the silence over there, under the fallen lawn swing, was deafening. Morris also had turned white as a sheet, watching the violence of Whitehall explode in front of us, but not directed at him. He knew he'd provoked it; he knew he had some responsibility in the matter. This was not how it was supposed to turn out at all.

There was an involuntary manslaughter trial, and Whitehall did pay a price. He was mentally not well; there was no apologizing for him; he had killed a man. That trial was a couple of years later, though, the first time after that day that I actually got to face him in court, and also, by the way, the first time I'd see Morris again.

About three in the morning, after a very long day and long night, I was at the boy's side in the hospital. They were having trouble finding next of kin for Scott; the boy seemed to be all there was. The boy was recovering; drugged up, but clearly going to live and recover. I was glued to the spot; I couldn't move; I was sticking by the boy. They determined that I was not his immediate relative, and they tried to get me out of there, but they let me visit him regularly; watching me every minute; in the end, after all, he had no one else that they could find. Finally Deb showed up; she'd clearly been crying, up all night. She loved the boy dearly. She'd also loved Scott, in her own way. She had no idea about his next of kin; she didn't know him that well. She really had no idea what would happen to the boy now.

She was engaged to someone else, it turned out, a man was waiting for her in LA. She'd been engaged all along. Yes, she'd had second thoughts. Yes, she was attracted to Scott; they were old friends. But no, she had a life waiting for her in LA, a boyfriend, a wedding, an extended family. She had to get out there and live that life eventually. You keep the van, she said to me, you can have it for a couple of weeks; I'll fly to LA and come back and get it later. You keep the van; stay near this boy, don't let anything else bad happen to him. I'll wire you some money, later, if you need it, and if I can get some.

She was true to her word. She came back for the van; she gave me some money; she made sure the boy got out of the hospital, and it did work out. I fell in love with a local woman after a while, and then didn't mind hanging around such a town; I worked as Wal-Mart parking lot security, of all things, for a couple of years, until I got on my feet.

Ricky lived with a foster family for a while; it took more years still for the state of Tennessee to give in and decide that I would be an acceptable family him, but they did, eventually, and I adopted him; by then I was married though, and much more stable. All those years I'd kept my eye on him; it seemed like I saw him as recovering from trauma, as still needing a lot of care, much longer than he actually was; he turned out to be very resilient, as I said. Nurses and other local people came around and took care of him for years; he had a kind of family, and belonged here, much sooner than I did.

We had another real close friend in those days, and that was Johnson Brooks. He was only sixteen on the day that he'd hit the boy, but as it turned out, they had a kind of bond; they got along really well, and after a while we'd spend whole weekends out at his place, outdoors, tromping around, doing all kinds of things together, mostly on weekends. He, Johnson, turned out all right too; he grew up, got a job, got a family. He always felt bad for what he'd done, but, he also made up for it, in a lot of ways.

The trial of Whitehall brought out all kinds of emotions, but there wasn't much to say about it. Whitehall was guilty. Morris came up from Texas and pointed that out too. Morris was as wealthy as he looked; on that day he had been on his way to Nashville, where he was underwriting a musician, until the guy made it big in Nashville. In court, he was a little different from the way he'd been on that morning, though the Mexican guy was still there, silent, in the background. Both guys, Morris and Whitehall, had been in Vietnam; though people asked both of them about it, neither gave details about what had happened. Morris, the best I could figure, had served bravely. He'd given at the office, as he'd said that day; he'd come back, and he'd gotten over it. Whitehall, on the other hand, was a much murkier story. At some point some guy came up to me, drunk, and told me that Whitehall had told the draft board he was gay, trying to get out of the service, and it hadn't worked. Worse yet, word got out, and he was harassed while he was there; who knows what happened. I never found out if this story was actually true. It didn't matter. He was a sick man, he was the guy that killed Ricky's father; in court, he seemed withered, almost dead, but he broke down, and he apologized; Ricky forgave him, I think. By then Ricky was about seven, but I remember watching him and realizing, when you're five, you think you're the center of the world, and it just naturally follows: he had assumed that the whole thing was his fault, as he had also, probably, with his mother. And he was relieved now, I think, to find out that it really wasn't.

July 2007

Drop Off

I own my own rig, and do Wal-Mart runs in this area of Oklahoma regularly. When I come through Arrowhead, I get here early, early enough to unload and spend some time in the break room with some of the workers on the morning shift. Queen of the break room is Gladys, with her scowl and protective instinct for the other workers, especially the young girls, like Mary Beth, who get hit on regularly by a stock man named Vic. Now Vic unloads the truck, and also stocks the shelves, and has been around this Arrowhead store for quite some time, so I guess I know him as well as anyone. And I know that, yes, he's hit on most of the women working there at that store, except maybe Gladys herself, who's married, and he's been successful with quite a few of them, and he never gave up on Mary Beth herself, always trying to charm her, often right in front of me and anyone else, shamelessly, relentlessly. It was no secret that he was after her.

Mary Beth, young, shy, pretty, turned pink easily, and was the object of a lot of attention around Arrowhead, I'm sure, although she grew up in the country outside of there and not everyone knew her. But one time I was up front, buying something, and some young local guy had come in, just to talk to her, and it was uncomfortable at her register, because he was stammering, wanted to ask her out, and whatever he was buying was long ago rung up and in its bag. I remember being a little amused because they were both so young, so uncomfortable; I'd kind of had my eyes on her myself, but I'm a little older, not in the area, and all that, so I didn't worry too much about it. Anyway, I figured there were lots of guys like this one, but everyone kind of wondered who Mary Beth would fall for, and Gladys, for one, was trying to make sure it wasn't Vic.

There were some other characters around, Leroy, the huge Indian guy who helped unload; Ferris, the manager, a kind of go-getter guy who wanted to make it in the business world, and was concerned about the image of his store; and one dairy man, Maxwell, who I remember because he'd be there like clockwork, no matter what else happened; he was always putting the milk on the shelves, stopping in the small room to read the paper or grab a cup of coffee before his next drop-off. I had more in common with him, since we were both drop-by visitors, but he knew the town better, since he was from around there, whereas I did five or six towns before the run was over, and never went anywhere in Arrowhead besides this particular Wal-Mart.

The roads outside Arrowhead are deserted; the woods come right up to them, and the hilly country flattens out, I'm sure, to the west, but is pretty wild right there, and foggy in the mornings when I come through. So one morning I see this car dangling off the edge of the road, about four or five miles before I get to Arrowhead, early in the morning, front tires on the road, facing the center of the road, but back tires just hanging in the air over the side of the road, not sitting on anything. I thought, if a person jumped on the hood of the back trunk, that car would go rolling down into the ditch, about twenty feet down, and be hard to get back up off the road. I stopped my truck, which is no small accomplishment, set blinkers going, and walked back to inspect it, see if there was anyone asleep in the seat, or unconscious. Nobody around, not a sound; there were skid marks on the road, but mostly only crickets was all I heard, the sounds of the woods moving in on me. I got back in the truck, and used a cell and a cb to let everyone know what was going on. I'm pretty well connected to the police, the road crews, just about anyone who has anything to do with stuff like this, so it's a big day when I get to really use any of that equipment.

So when I got into town, and unloaded, I really wanted to know what they'd found out, but I almost never skipped my morning break back with the workers, Gladys the queen bee ruling the roost, Maxwell popping in with his creamer and fresh donuts, and old Leroy downing coffees like he was hooked up to a machine. There were several other people there: Ferris kept trying to get someone to clean up a mess up in the front corner of the store, but I also remember Magdalena, Emily, Dorothy, and LeeAnn. I remember this partly because I mentioned the car, a two-toned boat, a Buick or something, and several of these women got a strange look, and Gladys scowled and, I'm sure, intimidated them into silence. What could they know? I was curious to be by my radios and find out the details, but I also wanted my coffee. I didn't want anyone to think anything was unusual.

Now there were several conflicts going on at that time, and one was between Ferris and me; a dead dog had been found in a piece of furniture, a return, that I had picked up at this very Arrowhead store, and Ferris was all over me, trying to figure out how it had gotten there. I don't touch this stuff, I told him; it was their responsibility, not mine. He wanted to know where I stopped after Arrowhead; what happened when I was in these break rooms; could anyone theoretically get at this piece of furniture and slip a dead dog in there if they wanted to, and all that. It's not my problem, I told him, I'm just a driver. You load and unload. Ask these guys, I said, pointing at Leroy, and Rodney too; who was another stockman, a shy, mousy guy who occasionally loaded and unloaded. I noticed at that moment that Vic wasn't around; he usually popped in, eying the women, but he could be anywhere, for all I knew. All three could be guilty, if you asked me, I had no love lost for any of them, though why I assumed it was a guy, I don't know, maybe just because they had the best access, back there where the loading happened, and the women had different routes, to and from their cash registers and all.

So I'd almost forgotten about the Buick when I got back in the truck, but my radios immediately reminded me. I'd barely gotten out of Arrowhead when I heard the details: it was a Buick, registered to one Dale Byrum, who had worked the night shift at the factory, had denied using the car, and had passed all sobriety tests. Usually they're looking for a drunk in cases like this; some guy like Dale Byrum runs off the road, realizes he's in trouble for being drunk, gets out and walks home the dark way, hoping to sober up before they come after him. Not Mr. Byrum- he appeared to be at the factory the whole time. So they were running around town, trying to figure out who could have gotten the car, taken it for a joy ride, and run off the road in the middle of the night, leaving it dangling there for me to find. But they still hadn't found out, when my radio went out of reach to their police scanner, and I hit my next drop off.

To tell the truth, I was still stinging at Ferris' accusation that I was somehow responsible for the dead dog, negligent in the way I handled my truck at the drop offs, or somehow letting someone get in and put a dog in his returned furniture. I retraced my steps, through all the drop offs, starting at Arrowhead, and tried to figure out where someone could get into the back of the truck and put a dog there, but I really couldn't come up with anything. I went through my day like I usually do, more or less helping people with the loading, but not doing much of the really heavy lifting, and this time I stayed more aloof from it than usual; the merchandise was soiling me, ruining my name, and I didn't have to touch it, it said so right in my contract. I had a bad taste in my mouth from Ferris' questioning and the lingering feeling that he'd thought maybe I'd put that dog in there. I figured, that dog could have got in there himself, for all you're paying attention. He should be watching the people in his own store, and not be worrying about what I do on my route. Now I knew that the big boys would be down, asking questions and all, but it was only a dog- how much attention did that merit? Did anyone even miss it yet?

When I got home, there was a message on my answering machine, and when I called it back, it was a detective. This was now in the evening. By now there had been some developments in the Buick case, though the detective was not exactly forthcoming. They had towed the Buick to a police lot that morning, but later in the afternoon another car was backed into it, and they heard a yell come from the trunk. At that point they had opened the trunk and found a man, bound and gagged, stuffed in the trunk, still alive but pretty stiff from sitting in there a long time. I told them the same thing I'd told them earlier; I hadn't heard a thing. I thought of that big old Buick trunk dangling over the edge of that road, though, and wondered if that guy was even awake then, or, if maybe he was put in there later, or what. I remember thinking, one bad move and this car goes down that twenty-foot drop off.

The detective was nice enough, but he didn't get much out of me; I didn't know much. They already knew how the car had skidded; how it had ended up where it was; how the driver had just walked away, apparently. If they'd found the driver, they didn't tell. Wasn't Dale Byrum, he said; we know that. And it didn't look like his wife, either; she, Gladys Byrum, was working at that same Wal-Mart that you deliver to.

Gladys, I thought; she'd been there at the break room that morning, I knew it. If she'd put some guy in the trunk and left the car there in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, she sure did a good job of getting to work and making everything look like normal, her scowl in place, her apron in order. This is what I was thinking as I rolled past that lonely spot on the road, about four or five miles outside of Arrowhead, where I'd seen the Buick. I slowed down, looked at the skid marks, looked at the drop off, looked at the woods on either side. In my mind's eye I could still see that Buick, dangling there.

When I got to Arrowhead, I got the rest of the story, or at least, I got most of the pieces, as time went on. It was Vic who had been tied up and stuffed into the trunk; it was Mary Beth who had not only been missing that day, but had been missing since that time. She was hiding out there somewhere, and not coming to work, apparently. And it was her dog that had been killed, too. She'd been close to that dog, but the dog got in the way between her and Vic, and Vic had done it in, maybe, it was unclear exactly what had happened. Vic had stuck that dog in the furniture. But Leroy, it seems, had caught him, and told everyone. Getting Vic tied up and stuffed in the trunk was a cooperative effort, apparently; there were lots of people willing to help. They were grateful, though, that Vic hadn't been killed; that would have been a burden to carry, if that had happened. But Vic was grateful too; he woke up at just the right time; he lived through it; he came out better than the dog, and he didn't press charges against anyone. I don't think anyone really believed his story of the dog attacking him, him doing in the dog out of self-defense, but, they kind of grudgingly let him work there again, and he unloaded lots more trucks, even after the big boys were finished talking to him. I guess he must have been a dependable worker, or a smooth talker, or both, because he didn't lose his job over the incident, and in some ways, he went on like nothing had happened.

I always kept my distance from him, after that, though. He'd used my truck in his plotting, and that crossed my line. And besides that, I never saw Mary Beth again, and that was too bad; it seemed to me like she should have stayed there at the Wal-Mart, and he should have run off and hid somewhere. But who knows? I'll probably never know the whole story, like where exactly she was going to put him, because, after all, I don't even live there, and I only hear what they feel like telling me, and, because, maybe they didn't even know. Besides, they're the ones who have to keep living with each other, long after the big boys, and the dairy man, and I, have rolled on down the road.

6-07

just passing through- true stories from out there

autobiography and travel stories

I'm working on organizing this: this is what I have so far:

the early years: cleveland and toledo, ohio-1954-1965
canadian rockies train
growing up- pittsburgh- 1965-1970
comm ave, boston
high school - tonawanda new york- 1970-1972
desert train, nevada to utah
west campus, boston university 1972
walking to leverett
in the heart of the university- 700 comm ave, boston
atlanta/clinch mountain
mud season wins another- middlebury, vt, june '73
the farm & new orleans
summer in the hill country - pennsylvania & wv, summer of 1973
rattler's welcome, northern mexico
hearing the music- symphony road, boston, fall 1973
winnipeg in july
on the road- 1974 & 5
drifting south
under the citgo sign- boston, katahdin & back, fall of 74?
guatemala
u of i, stone soup- iowa city, 1975-1977
culture rudder- mexico to florida
wellman & the bakery, iowa 1977-78
al-can highway, yukon territory
turbulent times, iowa city, late seventies
layover: ft. nelson, b.c.
what the hill- cornell college, mt. vernon iowa, 1980-1982
salmon boat, ninilchik, alaska
just off the lincoln highway- linn & jones counties, early eighties
long beach trail, vancouver island
just off local road- scattergood school, west branch ia, 1982-1984
je me souviens, quebec
in the shadow of old cap: first teaching, iowa city, ia, ~1983
not far from normal- illinois
heart in seoul, seoul korea 1986-1988
weekend on the cape
in the shadow of memorial stadium, ashland, ohio, 1988
cold day in new york
little balkans, pittsburg kansas, 1988-1994
one day in amish country, english river valley
sunrise on i-80
eyes on the road- solon road, iowa
trappist monastery, near dubuque
the night i met tom petty, ohio turnpike
the day i met sylvester stallone- dubuque, iowa
welcome to iowa (earlier version of same story)
iowa city and the actualists, iowa city 1975-1978


there is more to come...and i'm not sure about the general order. hang in there- and eventually you'll see a publication!