Have a good day

I'm a little more intensely focused on the line game than most people. I look at two people, each with a shopping cart full of clothing, or whatever, each in different lines, and I can tell you down to the minute how long each one should take, given the standard cashier, standard method of payment, no calling for price, no special discussion about the cashier's autistic child or the customer needing an explanation for why a $2 flashlight isn't as good as a $3 flashlight. There isn't that much variation in cashiers, really, outside of the one over in aisle one who went on and on about the rash of robberies in town the other day, but on this day, as usual, I had only twenty-one minutes to get checked out and get back to the office, and it's a seven minute drive and a six minute park-and-walk. One minute late, and I'm docked a half-hour's pay, so it's important to me. The five minutes I have to stand there twiddling my thumbs and reading the Star Tabloid is, generally, a maximum figure, unless I get there early, which I didn't on this particular Tuesday. I eyed the people in front of me carefully, and decided whether to bolt for another line, because if I had to, the earlier the better. The high-pitched beeping of the cash registers set the tone; I wanted out of there, and fast.

Sometimes they fool me and something that looked pretty simple turns out to be complex. On this Tuesday an overweight woman, dirty sweater, mussed up hair, with about a half a cart, mostly food, was coming toward the cashier, and I was behind her; it would have been impolite to take my birthday cake and candles around her and get there first. But a shadowy man jumped in ahead of her, and she let him go, since he only had a single thing, maybe batteries. He was wearing a hat and overcoat, so I couldn't see his face, but it didn't seem like that would be more than thirty seconds. I put her cart at about four and a half, but knew I could be wrong and looked over at the next aisle.

In that aisle was an angular, athletic man with a Dartmouth sweater and a cart maybe a quarter full, but I couldn't see what was in it. People were heading toward his aisle, though; I'd have to move fast to get behind him. Too late. Someone was already there. They would line up behind me next, I knew. Opportunity lost. The Star beckoned. Dirty sweater's cell phone rang and she snapped it open and turned away toward the racks, all in one sweep of the hair, so that I couldn't see what she was saying or doing. She was mad at the caller; he needed directions and she was telling him. No, left on Oak, right on Adams, no I saw him here five minutes ago, I'm sure of it. No, RIGHT on Adams.. The man ahead of her cast a glance back and I could see his eyebrow raised. What had she said? Maybe it was her tone. She was trying to keep it down even though it was a small town and everybody knew just about everything. She was clearly mad at whoever she spat mumbling sounds at. I could practically say, oh yeah, over there by the water station, I know where that is. There were some nice houses over there, like Doris Grutter's- I'd just seen her a minute ago.

The man ahead of her, hat and overcoat, and was finishing his transactions as I was thumbing through the Star tracking down Brad and Angelina's most recent adoption scandal, or was it their divorce, or someone's divorce, you can never find what you want but you keep thumbing anyway, to make the cashier go faster and try to get rid of you. But as this guy with the hat was counting out change, maybe he didn't have enough, because he reached back in his pocket and came out with a card, which now the poor cashier had to run through the machine. I'm at four minutes and counting, nowhere to go, people in line behind me now, stuck for whatever his reason. I was fuming, thumbing harder at the Star, pretending to read something but counting, in my head, as we went down past four minutes.

Dirty sweater woman was an interesting show, in spite of my rage, my anger at the whole credit-card swiping transaction ahead of her. Her problem was, she was trying to put her food onto the conveyor with one hand, and talk into the cell with the other. And, she seemed to want to hide the essence of her cell conversation from both overcoat and me, unsuccessfully. She would spit oaths and directions at the poor guy on the other end, and when it appeared as if either of us were looking, she would bend forward, toward the gum, to hide the conversation. Actually I didn't care about the conversation. If she still was on that cell when it came to her turn at the cashier, now that would make me mad, but the cashier could do most of it without her- it would barely cost ten seconds. I would be mad more for the rudeness of it. Here I was, seventeen minutes away from being docked, every minute counted. But people start yapping to the wrong person, that really galls me. Eyes forward, do your business, get out of here.

The people at the next aisle didn't have any trouble with that concept. Dartmouth sweater was long gone, have a good day, a large lady with a full shopping cart was being waited on, and the two people behind her were inching steadily forward as she got herself and her cart moved forward to make room. They all seemed to have that ethic of progress, get out of there, don't tarry, don't even talk about the weather. These cashiers, they get a glaze in their voices and their eyes, but they don't slow down, unless you slow them down; they're trained pretty well. I've got no quarrel with them, as I've said; mine was ok, as was the one next to her; it's not that I picked the wrong one. It's the customers you've got to keep your eyes on, the customers that can turn a five-minute wait into seven slow minutes of hell.

Dirty sweater woman was now being checked out. Overcoat man got his stupid batteries and credit card back, have a good day, and backed out toward the entryway, pulling out and using his own cell-phone. Now it was entirely dirty sweater's show. If it was thirty seconds or so over three and a half minutes, I could probably still make it, out to the car, through the one big light out on Wall, and to the office under the clock. It was her game. She was impatient, and her hand was shaking as put her cell phone away; she had to, in order to get the last thing, a box of diapers, up out of the cart and onto the conveyor. She was minimally polite to the cashier, but she glanced around quickly, at overcoat man, at the greeter in the corner, at Doris Grutter, who was coming around an aisle with a cart full of nice clothes. The cashier was making progress with her food. I was a little behind, not too much. I practically pulled her wallet out of her purse for her myself, I was so eager for her to get going, get it over with, get something in the cashier's hand, have a good day. She did reach for her purse; she pulled it out; she gave the cashier a debit card. All was as it should be. But her hands were shaking.

It was an unusual case of nerves, for just buying diapers, food supplies, a gallon of milk. Her eyes still darted around; overcoat was gone; the greeter went on with his mindless task of saying hello, and pushing shopping carts around. It seemed like a normal day to me; dirty sweater woman was actually going faster than usual, and I was making up the time I'd lost with overcoat-man. She could have all the nerves she wanted, as long as she got her debit card numbers punched in, got her card put away and got out of there, which she did. I was next. My cake and candles were going through, when I got set back, big time, by a price check. The candles, for whatever reason, weren't ringing through properly, and the cashier had to call for help, which arrived soon enough; they were $2.74, which was then added on to the bell. This particular call-and-wait cost me maybe forty-five seconds; I was now about thirty seconds late, and would have to hustle out the door. Dirty sweater woman was glancing back and hurrying out the door herself; I was back in line just finishing up, typing my own debit numbers into the machine, pushing for my have a good day. In line, various people waited behind me, with various shopping carts full of merchandise. The high-pitched beeping of various cash registers was relentless.

Late, I rushed out to my car, without saying goodbye to the cashier or the greeter, glancing back only once, to see Doris Grutter, I remember, and several other people I knew, waiting impatiently in line. I make it sound like forever, but really, it wasn't that bad; I'd gotten through in slightly over my five minutes, which was pretty good, all things considered. I just had to run a little out to the car, and hope the light at Wall was going my way. In fact, the car started right up; the light at Wall was green; things were going well. Down one side street, though, it was Adams, I'm sure of it, way down past the water station, I could see police cars with their lights flashing. I found out later, they'd caught a burglar. It was at Doris Grutter's house, too. It turned out, they coordinated; they'd wait until they knew people were out of their houses; they made sure they stayed that way for a while. How did the police catch them? Overcoat man, I figured. He just happened to hear the conversation. He just happened to hear the right thing, something that caught his ear. I would have heard it myself, but I was actually reading the Star, I guess.
4-07.

Road Atlas

Roy Maxwell, a 57-year-old banker in a small town in Indiana, went to Wal-Mart one day and disappeared, completely, with no trace; I was part of the investigation of the case, which eventually came to consume me. He had a leading role in the local bank; he was wealthy, and probably had some enemies, due to duties of his position, such as foreclosures, loan rejections, and the like. But there was no sign of foul play; nobody had seen anything suspicious in the parking lot, or anywhere else; he had simply vanished.

His wife Virginia, a housewife heavily involved in local civic affairs, pointed out that he had fallen from a ladder earlier that day, and had not gone to the hospital, because he had received only minor cuts. It was possible, however, that he had internal bleeding, which could have caused amnesia. He had gone to Wal-Mart to get some supplies for a cabinet he was fixing, and if he had forgotten who he was or where he was, he had at least found his way to Wal-Mart. His car was found in the parking lot, empty, unlocked, untouched, no sign of foul play.

Virginia also mentioned two grown daughters, both living in the area, one still in college. Now that both had moved out of the house, it was pretty lonely, but their marriage was fine, she said; he was his usual self, with no reason to hide, run away, or kill himself. Yes, he had enemies at the bank, but that had always been true; why would they get him now? What would they want?

Assuming it was a kidnapping, and that she would receive a ransom note or a call from kidnappers, she had police come to the house, tap the phone, and in general keep her company. But no call was forthcoming. The hours, then days ticked by. We were short of solid leads.

I took his picture around and showed it to Wal-Mart employees. Most recognized him at least vaguely, but nobody had seen him in particular on the Saturday in question, a Saturday in early May. One cashier thought she remembered him talking to someone near the rack with the road maps and atlases, which would have been aisle seven, but many said that the place was full of people who looked like Roy Maxwell, and he could have been everywhere and anywhere, and what would they know? The parking lot guards said that there had been a Winnebago in the lot that day, and several stepvans; nothing suspicious, no fights, no struggles, no obvious use of force. Some Hare Krishna had come by and the manager had run them out, more or less in front of everyone, and they left in a big old Buick. Nobody else that even looked unusual. I told them to save all the old videotape, don't keep recording over it, and I'd look at it after I checked a few things.

At the bank they mentioned a couple of foreclosures that perked up my ears. One was for a farm that had been in the Harris family for many years; the Harrises were an unreliable, some would say volatile, family. I made a mental note of wanting to know where all those Harrises were on the Saturday in question. But if they had killed him, what had they done with him? How was it possible that nobody had seen anything?

Another was for a bar on the edge of town that had been doing badly for years. It was mismanaged, and the owner/manager, one Albert Poodle, was an alcoholic; all this was well-known around town. Foreclosure was certainly the ruin of Albert Poodle, but would he stoop so low as to kill a banker? Or hold him hostage in a smelly bar, without bothering to send a ransom note?

The daughters were interesting, but also provided very little in the way of leads. The older one, Lydia, characterized her parents' marriage as cold, and that woke my ears up a little. She seemed to think that her father had a secret life waiting to get out, possibly a desire to do something besides foreclose on old farms and bars. She bought the amnesia theory, too, though. It was just like him, she said, to fall while working on a cabinet.

The younger one, Alicia, was a little hostile to me, as if I were intruding on her, or poking my nose where it didn't belong. She didn't know how any information she had could be of any use to me whatsoever. I didn't tell her, but in fact she didn't have much that was of any use. Her hostility made me suspicious, but there was little around her that would lead me to believe she was involved in any way; why would she want anything to do with something like this? She seemed to be well-situated for money, not suffering in any way, no sign of worthless drug addicts in the shadows behind her back porch.

Another day slogged by; I had no choice but to go over the old videotapes that the store makes of the cash registers, the aisles and the parking lot. On the aisle seven tape, which I started with, I saw a man looking like Roy Maxwell talking to another man, right in front of the road atlas shelf, as had been mentioned by the sharp-eyed cashier in the interviews several days earlier. The other man could be characterized as tall, gangly, awkward, but friendly. Their conversation seemed normal to me. They eventually went through the register next to each other, and from what I could gather, left the store together, road atlas apparently in the hands of the other man. There was clearly no force involved, but then, I could not prove with certainty that the one man was actually Roy Maxwell, either. It seemed, from what I could gather, though, that he had made it to Wal-Mart, bought what he wanted, and left the store with an unidentified man. An acquaintance, maybe, but not a kidnapper.

The remaining tapes seemed to fall into a pattern of being useless, just an endless line of strangers and bad video, so I started in on the parking lot tapes. And once again, in the middle of one tape, I thought I spotted Roy Maxwell, with a tall, thin man, walking out toward the center of the lot, and standing by a Winnebago-like motor home. Once again, clearly no force in the picture. They were just talking. What happened to either of them was eventually obscured by the Winnebago itself; if they had entered it, I couldn't see it. If the Winnebago had left the lot, I couldn't see that either, as that particular tape ended and wasn't replaced with another in the same position.

In disgust I reviewed my leads, knowing I had very little to report back to Virginia, let alone my superiors; almost nothing to show for several days' work. He had simply vanished into the Wal-Mart parking lot. Four days had gone by; and nobody had heard anything, although there was a national bulletin, and the police had ringed the area several times. I told some clerks to review the Wal-Mart videos: did any others have a picture of the Winnebago? Of the two men entering it? Of the two men leaving the store? I did research on the Harris clan, and Albert Poodle, the alcoholic bar-owner. I prepared to visit the Harrises the following day. Police continued to search the area.

Nerves were frayed, particularly those of Virginia, who felt humiliated, and Alicia, who burst in on me once demanding more action immediately. Various members of the Harris clan had a rap sheet, and many complaints about them; but nothing suggesting they were kidnappers or brazen murderers. Nevertheless, I prepared to visit them, to see what I could find.
By noon, however, a strange message came over the line. $8,000 in traveler's checks had been cashed at a bank in Phoenix, Arizona, by a man claiming to be Roy Maxwell; his signature had matched; unbelievable as it may seem, there was no hold on his account or reason to question its authenticity, so they had given the man the money. This threw the investigation into a frantic mode, as Phoenix police were alerted and sent pictures of the two men. We wanted video from the bank, if they had it; we wanted to know where he had gone with the money. Virginia seemed relieved at the news, not at all worried about the money, as if she knew he carried that much around with him as a matter of course. Police sprung into action nationwide.

One Wal-Mart parking lot video did reveal a license plate, which, when run through the system, brought out the name of a Marvin Planter, address in Mesa, Arizona, near Phoenix. Police rushed over to this man's house, to find a large Winnebago in the driveway which revealed no further clues; it had been cleaned out. This did, from the pictures, appear to be the same Winnebago. Mr. Planter had hired a handyman to drive it from Baltimore to Phoenix. The handyman, one John Buck, had responded to an ad in a Baltimore newspaper and had been hired with good references, but sight unseen; going from Baltimore through Indiana, he would have been only a little off of his path when he had stopped in at the small-town Wal-Mart. He had delivered the Winnebago in good condition, Mr. Planter said. No, he was alone at the time. But here was the kicker: when shown pictures of Roy Maxwell and John Buck together in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Indiana, Planter clearly and unambiguously picked out Roy Maxwell as the man who delivered the Winnebago.

I prepared to fly to Phoenix, putting the Harris investigation in the charge of underlings. Word came from across town that Albert Poodle had committed suicide. I was disturbed by this, but could find out nothing that led the trail to him. There was no note, no mention of a banker, nothing that would lead anyone to believe he was involved in the disappearance. He had no place to go, no relatives, and was despondent. I put underlings in charge of that, also.

In Phoenix the sun glared; cacti I had never seen burst flowers in a public park as I squinted to look around at the bright day. The trail, however, went cold. The bank video did appear to show Roy Maxwell collecting the money- nothing else. He looked healthy. There was nobody at his side with gun in hand. There was no trail of spent money around Phoenix, no Roy Maxwells flying out of Sky Harbor airport, no rental cars heading south for the border. Police everywhere were scouring the area for leads, but had found nothing.

On John Buck, there were a few more leads, but there were at least half a dozen John Bucks spread around Phoenix, and most had been there for some time. John Buck, also, was not a fugitive; he wasn't missing; nobody had reported needing him, missing him or expecting him to come home. It was harder to get police excited about tracking him down, and, I wasn't getting very far myself.

I tried to piece together what I had. Roy Maxwell and John Buck, getting in a Winnebago and driving it cross-country together. Maxwell both delivering the Winnebago, and cashing travelers checks that appeared to be his. Buck and Maxwell both disappearing, presumably with the money. No apparent motive. What about his family, his job? What I wanted to know about amnesia was, how much did you forget? Your wife and daughters? Your job? The fact that you had traveler's checks? Or was memory selective?

I got my answers only in pieces. I was finally removed from the case; hotels in Phoenix were too expensive, and I was getting nowhere. When they finally found Maxwell, it was almost two years later, working at a warehouse in an industrial area of Phoenix, under the name John Buck. I went back to talk to him, as I'd been frustrated about the case during that entire intervening time. He freely admitted driving the Winnebago out west with his friend; he had given Buck part of the money, to buy a sailboat which Buck would then use to sail the Pacific, a lifelong dream. In return, he received Buck's identity, which he used because, frankly, he hadn't wanted to be found, didn't want to go back.

It wasn't that he didn't love his family. He had fallen, he said, and did have amnesia. At first he couldn't remember them at all. But when he did, he didn't have a pressing urge to go back. In fact, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Using his traveler's checks to start over seemed like the best option.

As for Buck, Maxwell described him as a nice guy, equally lost, equally willing to forget everything and start over. He had no particular criminal record, nothing he was escaping back in Baltimore or anywhere else. He had simply befriended Maxwell and given him a ride to Phoenix. Maxwell recounted one episode, a picnic out on the plains of Kansas, where the two of them felt like holding onto the Winnebago, to keep from blowing away in the strong winds. As they stood there, watching various debris fly by and get caught up in a barbed-wire fence, they decided that life was a fleeting thing, a temporary thing, too short to waste spinning one's wheels. I asked him if the warehouse was the answer to his quest, and he said, that's not the point. The point is, going back to where I was, definitely was not the answer. When he heard the names of the Harrises and Albert Poodle, he recognized them vaguely, and said he wasn't sure, but that sounded like exactly what he didn't want anymore. I could tell that, to him, Indiana seemed like a gray and distant past, whereas here, every morning was a clean slate, a new wild cactus sprouting up from the cracks in the warehouse driveway.

4-07

Wee Hours

One Saturday night in late April I was driving an old U-Haul down the highway in western Missouri thinking about the years I had spent in a small town down there, before Micky and our band made it big and moved up to Kansas City. Those were rough times, down in that town, and we played on the road a lot, played in Jimmy's Tap, where the Rogue Warriors motorcycle gang spent a lot of time, and in general we relied on the good graces of small-town folk to get us through the lean times. The people I was closest to, though, were Micky and the band, and we had all moved together, left a whole house of furniture in a storage unit, and it was my job, my turn, to come and get it. It was a rare weekend when a gig had cancelled out; my original plan was to get someone to help me, especially with the couch and the table, and get someone to stay with overnight in the town, but it was so hard getting the truck and getting out of there, that I was beginning to think more of plan B. Plan B was to simply load it myself, into the wee hours of the night, then take a little nap in the truck before heading back north with the furniture.

The old truck had a well-worn feel to it, an old radio with a familiar station on, but it was hard to maneuver around. I couldn't drop in at Jimmy's Tap, for example, because the streets in town were narrow and it would be difficult to park. I could probably park a few blocks away and walk, but then, that would leave me a little tipsy when I loaded the furniture, so I canned that idea too. As I drove through the town, I noticed that it hadn't changed much: same old brick buildings, run-down neighborhoods, quiet streets. I rolled into the U-Store-It storage alleys, with their rows of little boxed units, got out of the truck, found the key to our unit, number 71, and opened it; all the stuff was there waiting for me, upturned couch, boxes of old music charts and books, stuff that various band members wanted to keep but couldn't move to Kansas City right away. I rested on the back edge of the opened truck for a minute, planning out how to load the stuff, and eyeing the couch. It was the biggest thing, but it should probably go in there first. I set to it, but just as I started, a motorcyclist came by, shot a nasty look at me, circled around the U-Store-It alleys, and left. I recognized the insignia of the Rogue Warriors on the guy's leather jacket, but didn't recognize the guy himself; after all, it had been a couple of years since I'd even seen any of them. It was a nasty look, though; it kind of unsettled me.

The leader of that gang, Turk Gray, was one mean and ugly guy. He'd been charged with murder while I lived there; it seemed he might have murdered a mild-mannered disk jockey, killed him with a blunt object, possibly over a woman, Marie Towson. I'd taught Marie's son Joe guitar lessons, so I knew her vaguely, but didn't know the disk jockey, who was probably the boy's father, and only knew what I'd heard: that Turk had his gang intimidate the jurors and the witnesses, so that, when the trial was over, there wasn't enough evidence to convict him. I'd also heard that it wasn't the first time it had happened, either, though what did I know? I was from Chicago and was in Chicago when I met Micky; I'd only moved to this town about seven years back, so I'd only lived there for about five when we finally moved to Kansas City. And half of that time, we'd been on the road. I didn't know the place as well as some folks, who knew not only everyone who lived there, but also their parents and grandparents, and the history of why they acted the way they did, and who had ever wronged who, and what they'd done about it. You could go to the convenience store or the local well-known retail outlet with the big blue sign out front, run into one of these people, and hear great stories for hours, if you had the time, which I sometimes did when I was unemployed. But there were some things about this gang, the Rogue Warriors, that I really didn't want to know.

The boy, Joe, worked at that local retail outlet for years after the murder, and was one of the few people around that I cared about, if only because it seemed like a terrible thing, having your father murdered by local gang leader with a blunt object, and being unable to do anything about it. He would be about nineteen now, I figured, barely out of high school, but of course I hadn't heard from him, and didn't even know if he was still around. For the guitar lessons we'd meet in the soundproofed back room of a local music store, with guitars and instruments hanging from the ceiling of the front room, and a comfortable feel to the place, since it was owned by a friend of Micky's- it was the one place I really liked in this town, but then, I was kind of a loner, outside of the church crowds and the other social scenes. I guess in that respect, Joe and I were kind of similar, because I think his mother Marie was hoping that he'd find something in the guitar that he could relate to, that he could use to find his way through those lonely years of high school. The kid must have a rage inside him for Turk, though, I figured, especially if he knew he was guilty, but I never asked- didn't know, didn't find out, didn't really catch any clues. I just taught him guitar, and he was fairly good at it, too.

I took a break from loading, about halfway through, when I got to the table, and sat on the open back bumper of the U-Haul again while I smoked a cigarette. Stars were out; it was cool, but nice out. One could hear noises from the downtown area, about six blocks away; I'm sure I could have walked there, left my truck at the U-Store-It for a while. But, the more I thought about the town, the less I felt like talking about it with anyone, reliving those years, catching up on what few people I knew, telling about the band and our success in the city. Half the time we lived in this town, we'd play at Jimmy's Tap, and Micky would invite the entire bar over to our house at closing time, and then we'd have these crowds of drunken people, putting out their cigarettes in our plants, spilling beer on the carpet, finally leaving at about eight in the morning or later, leaving beer cans in the yard or knocking over the mailbox on their way out. Micky did the necessary fence-mending with the neighbors and the police, but I think we were all grateful to be able to move off to a big city, where you get a little more privacy and folks aren't always talking about all the noise somebody made last Saturday night. The problem is, as I've said, these towns are so small, nobody forgets anything, nobody has anything better to do than hang around talking about it and holding it against you.

Which is why, minutes later, when another Rogue Warrior came driving by, giving me a dirty look, he actually circled around, stopped his cycle, and came over to shoot the breeze for a little while. I vaguely knew this guy, Jessie something-or-other, from those nights at Jimmy's, and he was not a bad guy, a little on the outside of the law, as they all were, but not the kind of guy I was afraid of, like Turk Gray. We sat there and smoked a couple more cigarettes, and he filled me in a little. Turk, apparently, was missing; he was last seen going to this very storage alley the previous night. This made certain members of the gang very nervous for reasons Jessie was not forthcoming about. It was clear that everyone was afraid of Turk and uncertain how to do business when he was missing- it wouldn't be good to just assume he was dead, yet it wasn't like him to just disappear, either. They halfway suspected he was locked up in one of these units, but what could they do but come down here every once in a while, looking around? As he talked, Jessie looked around nervously, eyeing the other units, looking for clues.

Turk had come down here, he said, to do a favor for Marie, who he, Turk, was still involved with. That made my blood boil, a little, but I kept my mouth shut. If Turk and Marie were seeing each other, was that because she liked him, or was it because she was afraid of him, like everyone else? In any case, I asked about Joe, while he was on the subject. Joe had joined the Army, he said, about a week and a half ago, moved off to Fort Leonard Wood, or some such place. It was something to do with that, maybe, that Marie had rented a place here at the U-Store-It, he figured. This town was too small for Joe, Jessie said, and I can sure understand. It's what a lot of these kids did, join the Army in order to get out of a place like this.

Jessie spit on the ground behind the truck as he told of life in the town since we'd left- it seemed to them like endless harassment by the police, who were convinced, apparently, that Turk had been guilty, and had begun to focus on running the whole gang out of town. Cigarette ash got stuck in his long beard, and the off-color street lamps caught his leather jacket in a sickly way; I realized how unhealthy it was, hanging around Jimmy's Tap drinking and making surly threats, and trying to make sure the police didn't catch you pulling out of the parking lot drunk. He was jealous of my stories of Kansas City- guys like Jessie often just want a way out, some kind of choice. He said he thought we had a lot of talent; he and Micky went way back; he, unlike Micky, was stuck here in a dead-end job and not much else, except maybe that Harley, which shone bright and polished over on the other side of the truck. And, after a few more words, he left, asking me to keep my eye on the storage alley for him, let him know if I saw anything, a lot of people were wondering. With the roar only a motorcycle can make, he kicked up and shot out into the night, gravel from the alley kicking up and bouncing off the doors of some other units.

All this made me nervous, and I was motivated to finish my moving and get out of that U-Store-It. There wasn't another sound anywhere in the storage place; it was now past one in the morning. After a little more loading I could hear the bars let out uptown, and figured maybe I'd see one more Warrior cruising by, but I didn't. Shortly after two thirty I got the last of the furniture, closed the back of the truck, and latched it; I dropped the key to unit 71 in the little box at the manager's place, glad to be rid of it. I started up the truck, and planned my next move. I was wide awake, covered with sweat, but it was the middle of the night, a bad time to drive around; out in the middle of western Missouri, surely I'd fall asleep and run the whole truck off into the ditch if I tried. No, it was better to park in the vast parking lot of the retail chain, out on the edge of town, where you could see trucks and motor homes occasionally. Unlike some of these retail stores, this particular place was actually closed in the wee hours of the night, a sign of how small this town actually was, but it was the kind of place with such a big parking lot that nobody would be surprised if a person parked a truck there in the night, and snoozed a little. And that's what I did. I pulled the U-Haul out to the edge of the parking lot, out there beyond the edge of the building, where I could see a little bit around back, but mostly I was facing an old field and some trees, and the farmland beyond the town's edge. I moved around in the truck, fitting into its soft old seats, turned off the radio, smoked my last cigarette, until I was comfortable, and laid down to snooze a little, before the sun came up and I had to drive back north. I'm a musician, I thought; these are our hours, when we're finally free, when we're done working, and the rest of the world sleeps. But I myself, exhausted, was asleep in a matter of minutes.

In the middle of the night I heard some clanging noises, and peeked over the driver's window, back toward the dumpster, where I saw a guy lifting a big dark lump, like a body, over the edge of the dumpster and into it. Although it was very dark outside, and the guy was dressed in dark clothes, with gloves and hat covering every inch, I could clearly see that it was Joe. He was two years older than when I'd seen him last, but I knew him well enough to know that it was him. A little car was nearby; somebody else was driving it, but I couldn't see who it was. When he was finished, he got back in the car and it drove off; the night became eerily silent again. Now I was spooked again, but I was so tired, I fell back into the seat and fell asleep again. In my drowsy haze, I didn't really think that much about it, until about nine, when a policeman's flashlight pounded on my window.

The policeman wanted a look at my ID, and then my furniture, which I gave him, and when he heard that I'd been at the very same U-Store-It that was the subject of his investigation, he was very interested, and wanted to know if I'd seen anything suspicious. I told him that I had seen absolutely nothing at the storage place except an old friend. Well, a body's been found here in the dumpster, he said, and it's Turk Gray; he was killed with a blunt object, and it looks like he was just put there recently. I saw nothing, I said again, and I was very vague about the time I had actually gotten there, and what I remembered. And that much was true: I was in a kind of haze, and didn't remember much, didn't remember clearly; it was the middle of the night, I didn't want to drive because I was too tired. The officer, who had been in this town all his life, knew the band, knew Micky, and even knew me a little, and finally let me go, telling me to say hello to Micky when I got back up there. I went inside the store to get a large cup of bad coffee for the long ride north. A lot of cops, forensic guys, the media, were hanging around the dumpster when I got back to the truck. Good riddance, I said to myself, as I started the truck, backed out of my space, and got out of the lot, going toward the highway.

4-07

Lord of the Ringers

I was passing through central Illinois one winter and got a chance to stay in a small town with a well-known retail store out on the edge of it, around Christmastime. And sure enough, I got a job as a bell-ringer for the Salvation Army, standing there outside of that store, with its enormous parking lot, as it snowed repeatedly, and the people kept pouring in to do their Christmas shopping and whatever else, red-sweater people, the true believers, and other ordinary people, all shapes and sizes, all hours of the day. At first, I didn't know a soul, but I was glad to have a job, and stop traveling, if even for a few weeks. I worked the night shift- got there at three in the afternoon, watched the sun set over the parking lot, and finally packed up around midnight, almost every night.

Pretty soon I got to know some people, and I have to admit, I first judged strangers by whether they dropped a dollar in the little bucket, or looked away as they walked by. It makes a difference, when you're standing there, freezing, when they at least recognize your existence. Worse, I noticed that some drove close enough to me, and fast enough, to hit the bottom of my leg with the slush and snow and water that shot up under their tires as they drove by in front of me, and I began to believe they did this on purpose, though they could have just been in a hurry to get out of there. But as I stood there, and came in occasionally for breaks, lots of people, coming and going, in and around the store, became acquaintances and even friends fairly quickly, especially people who worked there or around the parking lot.

Roger the security man, slightly overweight and puffed up with self-importance, came by one day and intimated that there was trouble afoot, and sure enough, some policemen came around asking questions right around sunset. They didn't even stop to talk to me; they walked right by, so I took advantage of the fuss they caused to step inside to warm up my hands. I rang my bell right outside the front doors, but stepped inside occasionally for a break, and from there, right inside the door, I could see old Parker the greeter, with his line of shopping carts, and all the way back to the back door, where the stock men kept coming and going with boxes of all sizes. About halfway down that center aisle was a woman in the lingerie section that I was interested in; I called her the lingerie vixen; but I was taken at the moment, and that's a different story anyway. I went back out, started ringing the bell again, and watched some old truck throw its slush up on me for the second time. This truck was occupied by a man with a permanent sneer, ugly, dangerous, and the woman with him looked scared to death. When they walked in together, five minutes later, I could see that she was pregnant- now that was even scarier. Mr. Sneer got worse, and of course, didn't put a penny in the bucket.

It was snowing again, and snowing hard, and more cars actually splashed the slush up on me every time they went a little too fast. Finally Matt, a cashier and perhaps one of my better friends, came to offer his version of what was happening inside. Apparently a kid had been caught with some meth, a terrible kind of drug out in these country towns, and the kid had told the police that the people he got it from were getting some of their materials right here at this very store. These were bad people, but the police couldn't seem to get a handle on them, where they were, how they did it, anything. The manager said, yes, some supplies had been missing, especially last week and the week before, and he was unable to track them down; he suspected they were being stolen; but he had put a camera on the proper aisles, and found nothing. Matt said we were all supposed to keep our eyes open for suspicious characters. I said, what "we," I don't work for this store, but in fact I have no sympathy for meth dealers either, or thieves, whether they're hanging around retail chains, or wherever, and, being somewhat bored, I was willing to watch anybody. Actually I was grateful for the excitement; it gave me something to keep my mind off my frozen fingers, while I was ringing my bell into the snow and thanking the few random people who stopped to drop something in the bucket.

Old Parker the greeter was getting kind of surly, like he had some problem having these policemen hanging around, but he was still giving the big smile to everyone that wanted a cart, doing his kind of small talk. Stepping inside the store I would get away from the bitter cold, the snow and the slush, and the constant clanging of the bell in my ears, but the inside of the store was chaos in its own kind of way, too, with every register beeping away, a constant flow of shoppers, impatient, vast rows of fluorescent lights above, an occasional bird caught up in the warehouse rafters while people furiously wheeled carts below, through the toy aisles in particular. Old Parker clearly didn't let it get to him, was nice enough to me, but wouldn't say much about what was going on. In fact he, like me, seemed to be looking down that center aisle quite a bit. The manager, a red-faced, portly man named McAllister, came by to ask me if I needed anything; he was friendly enough, but my sense was that nobody really trusted anybody, and he would just as soon I stood outside where he didn't have to have someone watch me.

I tried to remember that I represented the Salvation Army out there, and I put on my game face, rang that bell solid for several more hours. Earned my keep. The cars kept rolling in, but slowed down a little late at night, when my hands started to freeze off even under my gloves. Fortunately Matt came around at the end of the shift, and offered to take me to his house for a beer, an offer I accepted without hesitation. I needed to thaw out my fingers before I made another move, anyway. He said that they really had very few leads, but that it was mighty unusual that with a camera planted at each of the aisles that were scenes of the crimes, they had seen nothing, not picked up on any thievery. This was unusual for this store- they were pretty good at this, in his experience. Someone was pulling a fast one on them, and they didn't like it. I could tell by Matt's description of Wilson, the indoor store detective who I knew by sight, a man who looked like a rat, but who had never so much as said hello to me. This Wilson guy brought in shoplifters regularly, about one an hour, and took pride in the fact that people didn't get by him. But someone was making him look bad under his very nose. And some local kid was suffering for it. I asked Matt who he thought was doing it, and he said he thought it was an inside job, but he really didn't have any idea. He said any one of those people could be meth fiends, for all he knew. I thought of Mr. Sneer right away, perhaps hiding meth supplies under his wife's coat.

Returning to work the following evening, I looked around at the usual suspects. McAllister the blowhard manager was imploring some worker to keep his eyes open. Parker the greeter was his usual self but as usual looking down the aisle where my beautiful vixen was sorting lingerie. Beyond that, the stockboys, Jared, Pete and Sammy, kept up the endless march outside and back in with the boxes, empty and full, all sizes. Jared was an ex-con, but Sammy was actually scarier, having a kind of dark, permanent scowl. Roger the outdoor security guy came walking by looking serious and talking into some little cell phone. Two cashiers, Pieta and Candace, always gave me a suspicious look when I stepped inside the store, to warm my icy fingers and exchange the ringing in my ears from the bell, along with the cold, for the sound of a hundred cash registers beeping at once. I didn't know what their problem was, except that they noticed everything- and didn't seem to have any particular warmth for anyone. I didn't trust any of these people, let alone know them. Most would at least say hello to me; my sense was that they didn't trust me much either.

Back outside, I looked that the steady stream of customers coming in from the lot, through the snow, and also coming steadily back out of the store, with entire boxes of goods. I saw mostly grandmothers, arms full of bags of toys and other things, housewives with a hurried look on their faces, and red sweater people, with Christmas bears and green reindeer on their sweaters, the true believers, though I must say, some of these I came to like, as they sometimes parted with their dollars if only for a moment. I saw young guys buying food, motorcycle gangs, sometimes young sorority girls, in packs or gaggles or whatever. I did see a couple of older guys who had that hollowed-out meth look, speedy, thin, not eating well, not going out in the sun- but they were buying such small stuff, they couldn't be the ones, I figured. One had a Cadillac, but had bought only a package of bacon, as if he were taunting the security, or maybe hiding something in his big old boot. But even with him, I saw Roger spring into action and use his cell phone; the indoor store guards surrounded him; surely he couldn't have taken anything without them knowing or catching it on camera. He, however, took that low-slung Cadillac and sprayed slush right up on me on his way out the parking lot, as if to say, here's something for you to think about.

Upon hearing that supplies were walking away, and nobody getting caught, Roger was certainly agitated; he wasn't going to let any thief get by him this time. Whenever he saw anyone, he called McAllister; called Wilson or the other store guards; called McAllister again; and paced around looking important. He clearly felt it was his moment; his reputation was at stake.

Now an old guy with an "I" cap walked up, and he seemed to set everyone's alarm on standby. The "I" of course would be Illinois, but who knows what kind of cap a real meth maker would wear; how would I know? Anyway Roger had his cell phone going, and I followed him into the store again, noticing that I had no feeling in my fingers and the ringing in my ears had spread down to my jaw and the fillings in my teeth. Inside, I was just in time to watch Wilson the gruff rat store detective bump into the lingerie vixen, about halfway down the aisle; this started an uncomfortable round of apologies as he danced around trying to maneuver to where he could follow the "I" cap man, who had headed straight back toward sporting goods. Pieta made a cruel remark under her breath, directed at the vixen, as if she resented running a register on a day like this, when she could be back folding underwear, in the warmer center of the store. I don't need to get in the center of this, I thought, blowing into my hands and trying to follow the movement of people back towards sporting goods. Pieta, I guess, had a sharp eye on all the customers, trusting none of them, especially the men, who, in her experience, were all louts and thieves.

Though Wilson the rat and McAllister both had made it back toward sporting goods, nothing seemed to come of this I-man incident, except that the lingerie vixen had come forward to lodge a complaint against Wilson, perhaps having no idea that he was a detective, and Pieta had given her a sharp reply telling her to get back to her lingerie and shut up. Pieta used the fact that she was older, had some authority, and I turned away to go back outside rather than stand by and watch, as old Parker the greeter was content to do. I could see people like the lingerie vixen stealing meth supplies just in order to get back at Pieta, McAllister, and the whole setup, which forced her to stand at a table for hours on end and be bumped by dirty rats like Wilson. But she didn't do it, I was pretty sure. It had to be someone who had better access to that back aisle.

Back outside, Mr. Sneer and his wife came in for the second night in a row, and this time, the sneer was worse; the wife looked like death warmed over. This was not a happy household. I felt like he was ready to knock me over, just for watching, but I was still mad at him for soaking my heels; I kept track of that stuff. I wondered if Roger was on him, and if Wilson would catch on and at least follow the wife, who was less likely to be watched but had more reason and more ability to steal and get away with it, I figured. I was ready to throw the guy in jail just for soaking my heels, but driving fast through a puddle isn't exactly a crime in central Illinois. Socking an old Sally bell-ringer is a crime, but I wasn't sure he'd do it, even if I baited him. He walked with purpose, as if he had greater goals in mind. That's what bothered me.

On break I pumped Matt for more information about the store people; he didn't respond to my description of Mr. Sneer, I-man or the Cadillac-bacon man, all of my customer-suspects, since he didn't know any of them or keep track of the customers very well. He did confirm Wilson as a pretty low guy, a rat, a thoroughly untrustworthy operator who could very easily be working with the true thief. McAllister, the portly drunk, probably not, he had a wife and two kids, and had just left to give them a ride to some Christmas pageant. Didn't sound like a meth fiend to me. Could be Pieta, he said; she cussed all the men but kept falling in with sleazier and sleazier specimens. Candace was even worse; she'd had ex-cons like Jared for boyfriends, and even got Jared his job as stockboy at one point. And the way the two of them stood at their registers, right near the door, eying the people who entered, that was suspicious.

It was at that moment, our break about over, and I almost heading back out the door toward the blizzard and the sleet, when I-man came rolling back in, Roger behind him breathlessly. I-man really set off their buzzers, really got people started; he just looked bad, or maybe they knew him, and knew he was bad. In any case the store changed when he arrived, a subtle shift involving Wilson and whoever was working with him, all shifting their attention toward I-man and wherever he was going. He looked just as guilty as he had the night before; same hat, only dirtier. But now, with I-man headed toward sporting goods again (going for the camp stove fuel?), and people in the store presumably heading back in that direction, another surprising thing happened. Cadillac-bacon man returned, alone this time, snow on his cap and evil look in his eye; he stopped to talk to Parker the greeter, and in an instant, I saw Parker's eye connect with that of scary Sammy the stockboy, way down the aisle, way beyond the lingerie vixen- and then, even stranger, Cadillac man turned on his heels and left the store, abruptly What could Parker have told him? I had the sense I was watching something important, even as I headed back outside to the cold, got my gloves back on, started ringing.

Cadillac man got me again with the slush and the snow, soaking my heels to the bone, making me miserable for the rest of the night, and I decided to just tip off Roger the security man, who would at least make his life miserable, if not catch him in the act. And, as it turned out, I was right. They caught him two days later, driving around back, where Sammy the stockboy had snuck meth supplies out and laid them beside the dumpster, for him to just grab as he went by. Parker the greeter was complicit in it; he organized the whole thing. He was arrested and hauled out one day in front of everyone; Pieta and Candace were crowing for days. Immediately afterward I got a little full of myself, Mr. Catch-a-thief, and decided to try to put Mr. Sneer away, that slimy jerk who sprayed me yet again with another huge splash from a puddle that he clearly must have aimed for intentionally. But no, Roger stepped in on his behalf, said he was not a great guy, guilty of attitude and all, but his wife was depending on him, and, most likely he was just in a hurry to get out of there, just not aware of the kind of splash an old truck could make on a frozen bell-ringer, in the corner by the doorway. Roger really kind of went to bat for him, and I had to drop it, being a newcomer and all; I had to admit that perhaps I was delusional, thinking he hated me more than anyone; It was a busy season, after all, and everyone had other stuff on their minds. The I-man turned out to be a reasonable guy; I helped him once with some jumper cables and an old broken-down Buick; but the lingerie vixen turned out to be trouble; Matt actually went out with her, but she'd broken his heart before New Year even rolled around. I could have got on there at the store, maybe, after I closed out at the Salvation Army, but I was already tired of the place; my ears were still ringing, and I needed some peace and quiet. I decided to try someplace warmer, and didn't even look back.

4-2007