Lion's Tale

Mansfield Slaughter was a Shakespearean actor who had risen to the top of the acting profession by virtue of his impassioned performances of lead characters who raged and vented about God and other subjects. He didn't really believe in God much, though he was an excellent actor, and on this particular stint in London, in which he played a character who harangued God, night after night, it began to wear on him and he found himself almost wondering why he was stuck in this role, at this moment, night after night haranguing God as if he really believed.

But he got a welcome break, and returned to New York where his wife and young son Adam lived, and his elderly mother, who lived way out on the edge of the Bronx, in a neighborhood that was slowly decaying. While visiting his mother he found himself in her local church, accompanying her to a service, where the smell of perfume was strong and the pastor, a woman, was, in Mansfield's mind, treating him as if he were the only person in the audience. In fact there were about thirty people there; they were interested in the sermon, but also interested in the social community that they had and shared; all knew Mansfield's mother quite well, and by extension, knew who he was also. He squirmed in his seat as his palms sweated and he felt as if he were on stage, but with no lines, nothing prepared, not quite knowing what to say, though in fact he didn't have to say much, only smile and be polite.

The sermon, however, was about Abraham taking his young son up to the mountain, to be sacrificed, upon order of God himself, who demanded that Abraham not only obey, but also surrender, entirely, to God. The pastor's first and main point was that these were quite different, and that we, in our daily lives, might think that obeying was enough. But imagine the plight of Abraham, and what he might think, upon being asked to serve up his son as a sacrifice? And where was Sarah, his wife, when he decided to do as God had commanded? Mansfield was also impressed that, as Isaac, his son asked him where was the animal which they were to sacrifice on the mountain, Abraham told him that God himself would provide it; in other words, he lied to Isaac. For a moment Mansfield was lost in thought, comparing idly the suspension of disbelief practiced by this audience of thirty, to that of his vast audiences in London, listening to him and his harangues, his acting performances, so well and carefully rehearsed. Did people expect these stories to be actually true?

Mansfield had to actually contain himself, act as if he were calm and unaffected, when in actuality, he was somewhat angry. What kind of story was this? He knew that it was one of the classic stories of the Bible, yet he could scarcely believe that any group of thirty people, including his mother, could listen and not become angry- that God would demand that someone sacrifice his son? That God would instruct him where to go and how to do it? Silently he harangued God, only this time sincerely: what's up with this? Is this real?

It occurred to him, later, that God never answered him, at least not directly, not in a voice that he could hear or understand. Again this time, he was met with silence, or rather, the usual noises of life around him: the over-friendly pastor, wishing him well and wishing him save travels; his mother, quietly and slowly being led back to her apartment; the subway, past Yankee Stadium and into Manhattan; the welcoming embrace of his own son, and his wife, waiting for him back in the city.

The answer, if he could call it that, if it was even related, came about a week later, and happened quite quickly, though he replayed it in his mind the rest of his life, sometimes many times in a given day. He had taken his young son to the zoo, and was at the lion area, where a lion had actually come quite close to the fence separating the people, being only about twenty feet down some rocks, and about twenty feet back toward a kind of moat area which the lion had somehow crossed. The lion sat, impassively looking at the crowds of people who surely stood at this very fence day after day, watching him. A fierce, regal animal, golden hair surrounding his face, the lion had no expression, no expression at all.

Distracted for a moment, thinking about his own acting again, Mansfield looked back in horror to notice that his young son had slipped through or over the fence, and was now on the rocks on the other side of the fence, and, as he watched, actually tumbled down the rocks, all twenty feet, hitting himself repeatedly, and yelling out. In horror the people around shouted out, and called 911 and the zoo officials. The boy had landed twenty feet down, not mortally injured, but within easy reach of the lion, who still had not moved, hadn't budged an inch, but was still, apparently, watching impassively. In moments Mansfield himself had jumped the fence and was struggling on the rocks, trying to get down to the boy without falling.

But, unfortunately, his own concentration was not up to the task, and he himself slipped and tumbled down to the landing now shared by the boy and the lion. His own momentum was such that just as he landed, he hit the boy, who then fell another ten or fifteen feet, down toward the moat, this time falling not quite as far but injuring himself much worse. Rather than catch or save the boy, or even protect him from the lion, as he had intended, he actually pushed him, accidentally, into more harm. And still, throughout this incident, the lion remained unmoving, impassive, as if it were no concern of his or hers whatever.

The boy ended up in a coma, and survived, though injured and permanently impaired. Mansfield's marriage, however, along with his career, did not survive. He was a broken man; he had lost everything. His wife actually forgave him; there were many hours and days at the boy's bedside, waiting, talking to him; but Mansfield could never forgive himself. He also, deeply, bitterly, blamed God: unable to give him orders, to tell him to sacrifice his son, God had merely tricked him, got him to do it himself, without even being told. Was that the trick? Was God actually the lion, watching impassively as he struck his son and pushed him to his fate?

Again, the sounds of the city were the only reply he was to get.

Freshly Doug

People think of Kansas City as a big city, but if you're a street musician, there are really only a few good places in it, and, when I was playing in one, and heard that Freshly Doug, best guitar blues-player I knew, was playing in another, I went to find him immediately. It was mostly because of the music; I'm a fiddler; it's hard and boring to play alone, but I get one good blues player like Freshly Doug, and I can do better, even after I split with him and whoever else is around, than I would in double the time alone. He was one hot blues picker, and it was always fun when we played together- tips went flying into his guitar case, or wherever, and time flew right by. But the other reason was, he owed me a steak dinner, and this came from a wild night we spent together in Key West maybe about a year ago, when we made a bet and parted with that agreement. Kansas City, I thought, good place to collect on a steak dinner. And I set about to do it.

Sure enough, I found him down near the Plaza, not a great place to play, but good enough, and he had a harmonica player with him, and a small crowd around. The harmonica player was a guy, had light, curly hair, kind of feminine-looking, but played a mean harmonica, and was dressed in a print shirt, very classy, light cotton, from someplace abroad. The guy was interesting, and I watched him for a while, then they split the tips roughly so I could join them, which I did. We played a while, the three of us, and this guy, Maxwell, as Freshly called him, was pretty good about letting me have a run once in a while; we had to go back and forth taking the lead. But it worked out pretty well, and after a while, it was late evening, maybe eight o'clock or so, and we split the money, which as I said was considerable for that particular town and situation, and I reminded Freshly of the dinner. Of course, he said, we should go get that now.

Now there was a woman, or at least I was pretty sure she was a woman, who came out from the crowd at about that time, and appeared to be connected to Maxwell, maybe his partner or lover. She had been there, in the crowd, for a while, but quiet; she had short hair and a brooding face, quite inward and dark, not so much in color as in general composure. And when she spoke, she was impatient, and somewhat controlling toward Maxwell. I was sure they were lovers, or else how could she get away with this? But what did I know; I'd never met either of them. As for Freshly, he appeared to know them both, at least casually; he invited them along, as if maybe he owed them a steak dinner too, each. He implied that the whole thing was on him, the only problem was, he had somewhere to be at ten, so he might be leaving a little early, but he would make sure he'd pay for everyone's dinner. I had absolutely no doubt about him, as I'd known him off and on, besides that time in Key West; I'd actually met him out in California. And I'd known he had a few unusual things about him, for example, nobody knew his full name, though we called him Freshly Doug Graves, I'm sure Graves wasn't it. Freshly, we just called him. And we knew he went from place to place, and he had people in Denver, in almost every town, and he was one hot blues player. Like I said, I really looked up to the guy, I couldn't imagine him doing anyone any harm.

We started walking up the street, and came to my car first. That's the best explanation I have, for why we put Maxwell's small day-pack in there. Freshly recognized the car, from Key West days, and pointed out that since he'd be leaving early, we should put Maxwell's day-pack, and my fiddle, and my little bag, all in my car. When we got to his car he'd dress up a little as it was a pretty nice place. Why you'd dress up to eat out in the Midwest, and then dress down to play music on the street, that's another story, but that's what Freshly did. When he got to his car, which was an old van, but one I didn't recognize, he spent some time combing his hair, putting on a fresh shirt, combing his hair. The woman scowled as if he was a big bother and brought up vegetarian entrees as if this restaurant was not likely to have them. Freshly assured her that she could get what she wanted and it would be on him. Meanwhile I noticed another thing: Maxwell, sweet, easy-going and gentle, seemed to have a thing for Freshly. He adored the ground Freshly walked on. Now I don't know if he was gay- could have been, I'm sure, and like I say, I don't know much about Freshly either; it was clear that maybe Freshly had stayed with these people, and had known them for more than one afternoon. But I got a sense there, standing at that van, that there was some ménage-a-trois going on there, like maybe Maxwell had fallen for Freshly, and the woman, who they were calling Naomi, was onto them, and wasn't happy about it at all. It seemed that maybe she saw herself losing Maxwell, whatever he meant to her, and she didn't like it at all. And, as I said, she seemed to be the controlling type. She expected him to jump when she said jump. She didn't like seeing him jump to Freshly's steps.

Finally we got organized and headed over to the steak house, which was only about five blocks from Freshly's van. We sat at a nice table, me across from Freshly, Maxwell and Naomi across from each other, and Freshly recounted for us the story of that night in Key West; how we dared each other to live off the land; got some young tourists to watch, and provide the pina coladas; how Freshly took a spear and killed and cooked some goldfish from a decorative pond outside some fancy hotel in the middle of the night, and I went and grabbed some limes, and some vegetables from around, some potatoes from basket outside an old grocery store, and on we went like that until we had a huge feast with pina coladas, drank until the tourists fell asleep on the beach, and entirely drunk, watching the sunrise, we made a huge bet, which I won, because, believe it or not, I knew who was more likely to win the Super Bowl, and it wasn't the Broncos. And I'd waited for this steak dinner for a little over a year, as that would have been late January, and this now was late March of the following year, I know that because I'm on my way to Chicago, coming all the way from the mountains of southeast Oklahoma, but Chicago is a bit cold yet for another week or two, and that's why I want to stall for time, play a bit in Kansas City and see if I can't wait until it at least thaws a little out on the lake up there.

So Freshly orders a bottle of wine, but really, Maxwell and I were the heaviest drinkers, me because it's not often I run into Freshly, once in a blue moon maybe, and Maxwell, because, as I said, I think he had joy in his heart, deep inside, he was both overjoyed, and a little desperate, knowing that a guy like Freshly could be here today, gone tomorrow. And then, what would happen- he'd be stuck with this Naomi, a thin wisp, with an attitude, unpleasant, couldn't even relax and enjoy a guy like Freshly. I looked around the table, and my eyes began to fog over a little- I was drunk already, it must have been the hunger, the smell of steak in the air, the slight edge everyone brought to the table. Only Freshly, well-dressed, calm, was totally in control.

I saw, in a brief second, that Naomi, who was handling her wine glass more than she was actually drinking out of it, was also wearing long sleeves, and that, in fact, she had a scar or two on her wrist. A cutter, I thought. A shiver went up my spine, remembering people I'd known. She was brooding, kind of glaring at Maxwell occasionally. She was onto him. Right around then, when the steaks were about to arrive, three steaks and one vegetarian entrée, anyway, there was a lightning-quick incident, when Maxwell reached over and touched Freshly on the arm. I'm not sure what the meaning was, wasn't even sure he intended it; don't know how Freshly felt about it either. But I did notice that Naomi saw it, and just about choked on the spot, and I did notice that Freshly saw that. It may have been nothing to Maxwell, he was just talking, laughing, relating something that had happened when they were playing music, just a day or two ago. He, I think, was kind of drunk, like me. But I saw this look, just that second, and I didn't like it. I remember thinking, something is not right here. But the steaks arrived, and that kind of changed the atmosphere.

I dug into mine, starving, a big appetite, fiddling does that to me, and also I'd been living out of a peanut butter jar for a few days. I had about half my steak down when I noticed that Freshly had barely touched his, and had just backed off, mentally, and was watching Maxwell and Naomi, on either side of him, as they started in and began eating. Freshly was a really sensitive guy, a complete musician, and there were times when it seemed he was more interested in the sound of knife on fork, the clinking glasses, the little chiming sounds, than anything else. But when the waiter came back, he complained about his steak. It wasn't done enough, he said. The waiter offered to take it back, have the cook do it just a little more. That wouldn't be the same, Freshly said. Well, we'll make you another, said the waiter; in my mind, the waiter was being perfectly polite, he was in a tough position, of course, but he was at least offering to make amends. No, I'd like to talk to the manager, said Freshly, as if something the waiter had said, had irritated him, or led him to feel like going over this waiter's head. Now the waiter was flustered, and a little angry. But Freshly wasn't backing down. He wanted to see the manager. Immediately.

Well, pretty soon the manager was out there, and the waiter, and they were both trying to calm Freshly down, and Freshly, without raising his voice or betraying any kind of strong feeling, was just insisting that he'd been wronged, as if they'd told him one thing and brought him another, and he refused to be pacified, in any way, he wasn't going to settle for just another steak. And eventually they decided to give him the entire meal, all four people and all our steaks, and the vegetarian entrée, for free. Wine too. When that happened, he was quiet for a second; he stopped. And then, there was nothing left but for him to leave. I accept, he said, but no thanks, I don't want another steak. Maxwell, J.B., Naomi, I bid you farewell, I'll see you anon. With a slight bow, and a flourish, he walked out of the restaurant.

We were stunned. And, on top of it, I was now at the table with these two people, who I barely knew, and they started snipping at each other. Naomi insisted on paying for at least her share. Her entree was fine, she said, and she didn't need Freshly paying for it in the first place. No, said Maxwell, the dinner was on Freshly, and they gave him the dinner. On and on it went. I was done with mine though; I was ready to go. And I did; it was getting uncomfortable in there. It was only later, at a camping place outside of town, that I realized that I still had Maxwell's day-pack.
Even then, I didn't open it, though.

The police caught up with me in the morning, and went straight for the day-pack. Maxwell, they said, was dead, died of an overdose, took sedatives and alcohol, apparently, but they weren't saying much more than that. They'd seen us playing out on the corner; they wanted to know all about Freshly; but, the more they talked, the more I realized they thought I'd done it, that I was somehow involved. The day-pack, I'm sure, played a role in this; I had to admit it was in my possession. They were quite curious about the stuff in the day-pack, and asked me all kinds of questions, but here my pure ignorance worked in my favor. I knew absolutely nothing about the day-pack or what was in it. I hadn't even opened it. They held me a while, and questioned me, over and over, but I couldn't help them much. Given what I knew, and I told them almost all of it, except how Kansas City was a good place to play music; I left out some details about Freshly's van, too, as I really didn't see much point in letting them track him down. In my mind, suicide was probably the best explanation, though she could have pushed the pills on him, I could see that also. But they weren't interested in my explanation, and knew nothing of the woman, who she was, or where they could find her. They acted like I was making up the part about the woman; something led them to believe a man was involved, and at first anyway, they were pretty sure that was me. And occasionally I made them mad, like when I said that I knew Freshly well enough to know he wouldn't have done it, or when I said I thought maybe Maxwell had a kind of thing for Freshly. You don't know a thing, they said. And maybe they're right. But I knew what I saw; Freshly was somewhere down the road already, and he didn't owe me a steak dinner anymore.

-May 2008

Big macs and fries

When Bailey was a young child, his parents often took him to McDonald's for lunch, and what seemed like an eternity of bliss in the playground that was attached to the restaurant; often this was when they were traveling, and it would be in some distant town. It was in one of these McDonald's that he had one of his earliest memories: seeing a policeman, and being terrified that he would be arrested for not wearing socks as the law required. At the time, his mother reassured him that he would not go to jail, but the memory stuck in his mind and haunted him for virtually a lifetime.

In high school the McDonald's was only four blocks away from the school cafeteria, and once he found a way to sneak out of that cafeteria and go there four or five times a week for almost an entire term. He'd sit by the statue of the clown, looking at the playground, and remember the simpler days of his childhood when he could actually fit in the playground equipment. A small fear of being caught in his truancy gnawed at him, as policemen frequented this McDonald's, on a prominent corner near the center of his small town, but he never got caught; he'd slide into the red and yellow booth, and make himself invisible while they'd eat sometimes, and they weren't especially interested in hauling in refugees from the high-school cafeteria. The big macs and fries would sit and curdle at the bottom of his stomach when he went back for his afternoon classes, but he didn't mind; high school was full of stress anyway, and he had all kinds of general anxiety over classes, exams, gym and girl relationships there; his twenty minutes with the clown, near the indoor playground, sometimes seemed like the only peace and quiet he had all day, and certainly was a good break in his routine.

When he got his first job, he also got his first car, and he went on another McDonald's binge, this time using the drive-through, and eating in the front seat as he parked in a spot under a huge tree not far away. This job didn't actually last too long, and shortly after it ended, he was pulled over by the police, while driving just outside of town. When the patrolman approached his window, he rolled it down slowly, and said, as the policeman looked down at him, "a big mac and some fries, please," which didn't go over too well with the officer. He wasn't really punished too severely on that occasion, but in a later incident he sensed that he now had a reputation with the police, maybe for his insolence at that first occasion, and it seemed like they had it out for him for many years afterward. Perhaps this was just an illusion, he thought, but then, sometimes when you're paranoid, it's probably because everyone really is out to get you.

His life, in fact, was going downhill, and eventually, out of work, not going anywhere, he went to that same McDonald's, near the center of town, and got work. This was not the most pleasant month of his life, but he learned a lot, working there, in a short time. He was especially upset that he was often hungry, even as he mopped and cleaned the grease pits, and was forced to pay for his own food, which he couldn't do; yet the very policemen who despised him would stroll into the place, like kings, and be given a free meal, big macs, large fries, whatever they wanted. This may have had more to do with the owner, and his prominent role in the community, than with any particular McDonald's policy, but nevertheless, Bailey's hunger now gnawed at his insides, and the food that he did eat churned inside him with the anxiety of his position and the general disrespect that customers, some of whom he'd known all his life, would show him, as a lowly worker in a silly uniform, sitting near the clown, if they saw him anywhere besides working or mopping. He struck up a friendship with a co-worker, Archer Longwood, an old black guy who had been there forever but who he'd barely spoken to in his first twenty years, when he actually had some break time to sit around and get to know him. Old Archer had worked the mop buckets and the grease filters for years, until they finally promoted him to cash register, maybe because they were desperate, or because he'd just worn them out, and they couldn't argue that he was anything but pleasant, hard-working, trustworthy and next in line. Bailey, of course, never had that chance; he was only there for a month. The owner and manager, Freemont, was active in town politics and gone a lot, but Bailey did notice that the place ran itself better when he was gone, and actually had its moments of calm and peace, often moments when they were about to close, or when he was talking with Archer, at the back doorway.

Upon leaving, and getting a better job at a computer lab, Bailey resolved to clean up his diet and learn to cook, which he did; now he walked by the McDonald's every day without needing the French fries, not even stopping to say hello to Archer or Freemont, though he'd occasionally see them in the parking lot or in passing, and wave. Years passed by, and it seemed like things were going better for him; his memories of the place now spanned his entire life, and included both the times when he worked there, full of stress, and the carefree years of childhood shrieking at the top of the playground, sliding down the plastic slides and into the colored balls. His walking route took him close enough to the front window to see his own reflection, but he couldn't see inside the place unless it was late night and the lights were on, and even then he couldn't see much; he didn't even worry about it much, but generally kept on walking right by.

But one Halloween night, he was pressured to go to a party, and didn't have a costume; his friend, however, had a policeman's uniform, pressed and hanging in his closet, which Bailey was able and even encouraged to borrow. He shaved completely, in such a way that he was virtually unrecognizable to his friends, as he'd had a pretty complete beard before that night, and he found a pair of very shiny black shoes that fit. It took him a long time to get the costume just right, but he did, and even had a fine black stick to top it all off. But when he arrived at the party, down in the middle of the student neighborhood, it was in full swing, and people were alarmed to see a policeman arrive at it. The resident and the host of the party came out to argue that the party was under control, and became angry when he found out that the person he was talking to was merely Bailey, and not a real policeman. The costume, in other words, was too well made. Drugs had apparently been flushed down the toilet, back in the house, as they spoke out in front of the house. And the host of the party was so angry he was close to hitting Bailey, who had begun to wonder if he was going to need his stick or not.

Things got worse on the way home, although he was walking, as usual. One person was glad to see him and tried to report a crime; unfortunately, Bailey was in no mood to hear this, and could barely tell them to go find the real police. This person also became quite angry. A couple of blocks later were more people alarmed to see a policeman walking on their street; those people hurled verbal abuse at him from the shadows of their house, challenging him to find an excuse to enter.

Exasperated, he was glad to get back toward the center of town, and finally, at the corner with the McDonald's. Late at night, in the cold and crisp fall air, the place looked welcoming, and he stepped in. Only Archer was there, about ready to close, besides a couple dressed like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, sitting over by the clown. Archer sat Bailey down by the front window and immediately brought him food. He had an impulse to tell Archer what had happened, but Archer wasn't talking much, wasn't inclined to hear the story. He seemed to know, anyway, how foolish it was, just in general, to dress up in a costume like that. Some mayonnaise spilled on the uniform, but Bailey left it there, hoping it would give away the fact that he wasn't a real policeman; he still had four or five blocks to go, but they were short blocks. The night was, for all intents and purposes, over. It occurred to him that he hadn't paid for his big macs and fries, and he offered, but Archer refused; policemen, he said, eat for free. He waved him on his way, and he stumbled out into the starry night, wishing he were just about anywhere else, in any other costume. Was it his imagination, he thought, or was that clown, back in the corner by the playground, actually winking at him? His stomach churned, and he stumbled home.
1-31-08

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