Baggy Shirts
There are three kinds of thieves that you can find at any point, at any place that sells anything, since pretty much the beginning of times. And when the world ends and there's nothing but cockroaches and three-eyed fishes in the sea, thieves will still exist and they will still fit in to one of those groups.
There's the professional thief, with his carefully detailed plans, gadgets and high goals, which ok, granted, have better and bigger fish to fry than simple grocery stores like mine.
You have the occasion thief, the one that carpe diems its way through stealing, thinking that, just because you have a couple of white hairs on your head and a pair of glasses on your face, you're both old and blind and it's seize the day time. Those... those I get a lot. Some I catch, some I don't. Either way, they usually don't really take much, just your pack of bubblegum here, your small chocolate there or even the odd package of condoms that, for some idiotic reason or another, they're too embarrassed to bring to the counter actually pay.
You have the desperate thief, which I can tell you -from three different and equally shitting-your-pants occasions- are the most dangerous of them all, because they are sloppy professionals wanna-bes. They go for the big things, like the cash-register at the end of the day, or the safety-vault on pay-day but, unlike the professional thief, they don't plan squat and usually just rely on adrenaline and sheer violence to get what they need. The knife that desperate-thief number two stuck in my arm still gives me trouble on cold nights, I can tell you that.
So, that's your basic type of common thieves: Professional, Occasion and Desperate.
And then, on occasion, there's the thief that you can't really fit in any of those. Like the kid in the blue, baggy shirt.
I never really got his name, but he came to my store a number of times, and, except for the first time, he would always wear that blue shirt that looked two sizes too big for him.
My store isn't all that big, more of a 'darn! forgot the tomato sauce' than a 'fill the pantry for the whole month' big places, like that Carrs place outside of town.
My place is small enough for me to have my regulars and know them all by name so, when an outsider comes in, it tends to stand out. The size and dangerous air of the man the kid was with that first time they came in, only made them stand out even more. Like a cactus in a rose bush.
In fact, the man was so scary looking that I was already reaching for the phone (the wife had been completely betrayed by my scared ass and her number on speed dial 1 had been shamelessly replaced by the Serif's office direct number) when he came near the counter, shopping basket bursting at the seems with all sorts of groceries.
And then I saw the baby. Well, the kid looked about three or four, hard to tell in those ages, but he was certainly tiny, engulfed as he was by the man's arms. I had never met a decoy-thief, so I figured the man was ok enough for me to drop the phone and actually treat him like a paying customer.
The man never showed up again, but I saw the kids a couple of times more, one week later.
I thought it was kind of odd, because seriously, the older boy didn't looked a day over seven ('I'm eight and three and a half months', he proudly said, stuffing his chest out to make up for the embarrassment of needing help to reach the spaghettiOs up in the third shelf) but I figured that the man from the first day (their dad?) was probably waiting outside in the car.
Second shelf, under the boxes of canned peaches, in the middle of the strawberry pop tarts, I found a green marble that day.
Two days later he was back, same baggy shirt, same little brother hanging from his tiny hand, same two kids alone in my shop. I followed them with my eyes until they disappear from view in the bread and toasts corridor. There a whiff of raised voices from the cereals' isle some time later, a loud 'shush, Sammy', a theatrically loud sniff and the kids come in to view, hurriedly making their way to the cash register, setting a box of Lucky Charms and a bottle of milk on the counter.
The older one looked anxiously at the green numbers on the register and counted the coins in his hand before handing me the exact amount. The little one's eyes were fixed on the strawberry lollipops during the entire short time of the exchange and in his tiny face, those big hazel eyes looked like two giant lollipops of their own. Me, who have always been a sucker for little kids, ended up offering one to each of them.
That day, I find two blue marbles by the sliced bread shelf and a baseball card near the peanut butter bottles. A troubling pattern started to form in my head.
Two days later, they're back. I'm one step away from calling social services, because it has become apparent that the father is not waiting for them in the car and that the reason why the kid's blue shirt is that baggy it's because it's serving as an extra shopping bag.
I collect the marbles and the baseball card (it's a crappy one, some Chuck Cary guy whom I don't even know) and plan on confronting them. Some peoples lives are just complicated and messed up and I don't want to screw these kids more than what they seem to already be, not without making sure things really are as I'm seeing them before I take action.
The older kid's eyes are red, the skin puffy underneath them, when they reach the counter to pay for an apple and an orange.
There's a crunchy sound coming from under his clothes every time the kid moves his arms, but his gaze is strangely steady on my eyes, defying me to call his bluff and expose his game as he asks me 'how much?'
I'm two seconds away from opening my mouth and put an end to this, when the big, scary man from day one makes a reappearance. Both kids eyes' light up when a gruffy 'Boys!' reaches us all the way from the door and the kids take off at a run to jump in to the man's arms. Hum... arm.
The guy's nose looks like he lost a battle with a concrete wall and his left arm is on sling hanging from his neck, but the smile that splits his face in two is big enough to take at least ten years from him and maybe some twenty points on the scary-scale. Broken and bruise, he manages to look more like a dad now than he ever did before.
The apple and the orange are left forgotten on my counter and the three don't even look back as they leave my store and get in to a big, shiny black car. Well, the man and the toddler don't look back, by I catch the boy in the baggy shirt eyes as he gazes longingly in to the candy isle on last time before grabbing his little brother's hand on one side and his dad's big hand on the other and follow them out.
The three marbles and the baseball card are burning like hot coals in my pant's pocket as I make my way towards the candy isle as soon as they are out of sight.
I find another baseball under the packs of gummy bears.
Fred Lynn, this time around, a 1975 card that's worth a lot more than pop tarts, and bread and peanut butter or even gummy bears. I suspect that, for an eight year old, they were all equally priceless.
I keep them all religiously under the counter, waiting for the day the kid in baggy shirt comes back, but they never show up again. And even though the kid was sneaking stuff out of my store all that time, I burn in shame every time I look at the gifts he left me back. I feel like I robbed something from him instead, something important that I need to given him back.
But he never returns. So I never do.
The end