Authors: Chuck Stepanek
“Edna.” She whispered at the checker in lane 4. Edna had just finished checking a $40 order and was placing the curled receipt on the belt. “Thank you for shopping Red Owl.” she chirped to an unseen customer to her left, then snapped a sour look at that irritating Svenson woman.
“Edna, look! Look who’s here!” Barb Svenson motioned with her nose toward the tobacco kiosk.
Edna saw the fish-belly white customer but recognition eluded her. She continued looking, frustrated with herself for having allowed the Svenson woman to drag her into yet another pointless drama. Then strange statements entered her mind. ‘I’ll come in her mouth! And she’ll swallow it! He fucked me up the ass!’ She hissed in a quick breath and steadied herself on the cash register.
As a bailiff, her husband had confided with her many a time about the bizarre happenings in the courthouse, but none quite so bizarre (or frightening!) as the pot smoking sicko. He told her these things with the understanding of course that they were highly confidential and that she should share them with no one. She always honored his request, not telling anyone, except for the people she could trust.
From there the story embellished and spread. “I heard that he dropped his pants and exposed himself.” “He was masturbating like a chimp in the zoo.” “He climbed over the bench and was dry humping the judge.” “He shit on the floor and then ate it.”
He was buying a pack of Kools.
Barb Svenson looked frantically down the row. Hers was the lone open check stand. If the freak was only buying cigarettes he would go directly to her.
So contemplated ducking out of sight; hoping that he would find another lane with the shortest line and wait his turn. But then she landed on opportunity. She could be a local hero. She could tell this kid just what she thought of him and then share the story with her full circle of friends. All three of them.
Whitey plucked the Kools and headed to the open lane. He dropped them on the belt and began digging for change.
“Can I see some identification?” Normally the clerks didn’t bother to ask. If a 13 year old came through buying cigarettes they would even helpfully prompt with a wink and a smile ‘those are for your mom, right?’
Whitey had never been carded for cigarettes. There had never been the need. He had previously bought most of his smokes from a vending machine at the Elmwood Launderette.
“I, uh, I don’t have any.” Which was in fact, the truth. The only identification he had ever carried had been his
driver’s
license. And that had been impounded.
“No ID? Well I know who you are.” The clerk glared at him malevolently. “You are that sex freak.” She lowered her voice darkly. “They locked you in the nuthouse. They should have never let you out.”
Whitey felt the blood, what little of it there was, drain from his face.
“I’m not selling you cigarettes. I’m not selling you nothing.” Barb Svenson crossed her arms to demonstrate that her fingers would not be keying in the price, that she would not be moving the product and definitely that she would not risk touching the hands of a sex fiend during the exchange of money.
Whitey had no response. He looked longingly at the box of Kools. The thought of grabbing them and dashing out the store briefly flirted his mind. A better idea; he would simply go to a different checker. He lifted his head to scan his options and was met eye-to-eye with the clerk in the next aisle. Her gaze did not drop. It pierced him with spikes of loathing.
In resigned confusion, and smokeless, he got the hell out of there. Barb Svenson turned to Edna and nodded victoriously. ‘I took care of him’ her expression radiated.
Outside, Whitey rounded the corner of the Red Owl and slumped to his haunches. Nuthouse? Yes, he had heard it before. Sex freak? What was that? And there had also been the lady with the shopping cart; she had seen him and acted so queer. Had she also said something? ‘Mental case? Dangerous?’
Whitey shook his head, he couldn’t remember. He brought his hands up and rubbed the tops of his legs. His elbows came together on his sides. He could feel his torso and shoulders quivering.
“God I need a smoke.” The plea went to the open air and received an immediate response. A man was striding purposefully toward the entrance of the store. He sucked hard on a grit, getting in the last few puffs, before parking it nose first into a large cylindrical ashtray.
Buttsies. He could smoke a buttsie. For now.
Whitey got back to his feet, scoped out the parking lot, and headed over to the entrance. The ashtray was filled with fine-grain sand, and, some three dozen exposed filters ripe for the picking. He leaned in for a better look.
A shopper exiting the store startled him. He turned away. Here he was, just a guy waiting for a ride or someone who had come out for a breath of fresh air while a friend finished their shopping.
Finally alone again, he risked a glance back at the ashtray and surveyed the pickings. Several of the exposed filters had lipstick. These he dismissed. Woman smoked lighter unsatisfying brands. Some of the filters had dark tar stains, an indication that they had been all but used up and that there was very little buried treasure beneath the sand.
Eventually he settled on two potentials, and when the time was right, plucked them deftly from the tray, palmed them discretely, and then vacated the premises.
4
“Let me be crystal clear. This cannot happen again.” Frank Lister was giving Whitey the once over. Not only had he been gone longer than was allowed, he had not listed all of his destinations on the log book, and, most important, he had missed most of focus group.
“No sir, it will not happen again.” To this Whitey was sincere. He felt like he would never leave the Transition building again.
Smoking the two buttsies had not satisfied his craving for nicotine, it had increased it. He had left the Red Owl and embarked across town to the Launderette. He used side streets, effectively avoiding any additional sightings, and was nearly out of breath by the time he tugged open the filmy glass door of the Elm’s only coin-op cleaner.
He dropped into one of the Formica chairs that ran the interior of the building. The experience at the Red Owl ran again through his mind. ‘Dangerous?’ ‘Sex freak?’ He still couldn’t justify it. But what he could do was plunk the right combination of coins into the machine, yank a lever, and have a fresh pack of Kools delivered into the catch tray below.
As he rose to un-pocket his change a little rug rat raced by pushing an empty laundry cart. From across the bank of washers a young woman screamed: ‘
Brandon
, I told you to stop that! Now get over here with your sister and sit still!’
The rug rat led the way and Whitey followed. The vending machines were in the back corner and that appeared to be the destination for both.
“
Brandon
, stop it! Now do what I told you!”
Brandon
stopped it by crashing the cart full speed into the Pepsi machine. “I want pop!” He cried.
‘And I want cigarettes’ Whitey thought. He thumbed through his coins, found three quarters and one dime and dropped them into the slot. They clicked their way into the mechanism and took hold. He tugged the handle and experienced the satisfying plop as the machine spit out the product.
“He’s getting some so I should get some too!”
Brandon
was now racing towards his mother; his hand pointing blindly backwards at the vending machine patron.
Brandon’s mother was in front of an open dryer door, busily folding a pillowcase that was only marginally dry. She made a ‘tsk’ sound as her boy came charging at her. She lifted her eyes tiredly to see the object of her sons pouting.
A young man at the end of the building was pulling the little cellophane zip strip off a pack of smokes. He offered her a small smile and then focused his attention on the exposed top, carefully tearing off a corner exposing only two or three smokes.
The woman dropped: the pillowcase, her jaw, her voice.
“Kids” She corralled
Brandon
in a neck lock and gathered in a small girl who was fiddling with a one-armed Barbie doll. “Don’t you dare leave my side.”
“Ouch! Mommy, you’re hurting me!” The little girl twisted to free herself from her mother
’
s vise
-
grip.
This time, Whitey’s moment of confusion was briefer; his recognition, far more harsh.
The woman was looking at him in fear. ‘Please don’t hurt me, don’t hurt my kids.’ He didn’t need to hear the words, he could see them. They were spoken by her eyes, her body language, her death-grip of maternal protection.
“I…” The words he so wanted to share would not come out. He wanted to tell the woman that he was not dangerous, was not a sex freak, that if he had the money he would buy Brandon and his sister a pop, a candy bar, unfiltered Camels, a box of Tide, whatever they wanted.
But there were no words. He silently slithered away and out of the Launderette.
“Yes, Mister Lister, I’m sorry it took so long but I didn’t want to be seen anymore.”
Now that he had the full story, Mr. Lister offered some empathy. “Each one of us who is here, myself included, have had to deal with stigma. I realize it hurts now, but there will come a day, and a place where the stigma is all behind you. With…” he emphasized. “…one exception. Up here.” He pointed to his temple. “We can’t forget everything, but we can work to live beyond it.”
Whitey nodded but it was a false gesture. ‘Forget’ Mr. Lister had said. ‘We can’t forget everything.’ Bullshit. There was a way to forget.
Pot, it makes you forget.
What he wouldn’t give for a fat sack of Columbian Gold.
5
It was an act of sheer will. Whitey made his new pack of smokes last 3 days.
Then he was screwed.
He appealed to each of his fellow residents. He had enough money, if they could just go to the store and buy them for him, he would be grateful, even offering two cigarettes for their trouble.
But rules were rules. The intent of the Transitions program was to reintegrate people into society, not hide them from it. If Whitey wanted smokes, HE would have to get them himself.
He tried bumming, but that too was forbidden. “You need to learn to stand up for yer-self Whitey.” Slim had offered sagely. “Now don’t be thinkin’ I’m running ya roughshod, I’m just doing some straight shootin’.”
‘Fuck you.’ Whitey thought. “Thank you Slim” he had said. The stupid sheep-fucker had started to wear on his nerves.
The issue remained unresolved. Then one evening while Whitey was moping in the courtyard a voice caught him by surprise.
“I know where you can get smokes.”
It was the voice of ‘Spigot,’ another member in the program. Spigot had earned his nickname for his inability to go more than 20 minutes without taking a piss. Rumor had it that he had once been a passenger with a couple of buddies on a road trip. When they tired of his constant pit stops, they decided to refuse his pleas and kept motoring. Spigot responded by pissing out the back window, and most of the urine splashed back inside. For the rest of the trip, if he asked, they stopped.
Whitey came to life. “Smokes! Where?”
Spigot walked up close. They were alone in the courtyard. “Now I ain’t got nothing to gain by this and a hell of a lot to lose. Do you understand?”
Whitey assured that he understood.
Spigot seemed satisfied and continued. “There’s a guy I know who lives near here. He makes pretty good bank buying cigarettes from an Indian reservation in
South Dakota
and then selling them here cheap. He also sells a lot of other things that ain’t quite on the legal side.”