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Bruce: 23 December, 15
[The Bruce stories are a very personal hell. Please don't infer anything about me from them. Then again, don't assume that he does or sees anything that I haven't done or seen either.]
Bruce, 23 December, 15
###
It was bitterly cold outside. My textbooks were locked up in the locker at school, carefully wrapped in two layers of shrinkwrap with a piece of foil-covered cardboard between the slots in the locker door and my academic future. I couldn't leave them at home, they'd 'disappear' again, and I already had several hundred hours of detention lined up.
I still had two miles to walk to get home. About fifty-fifty that I could get in once I got there. I'd stay warm as long as I kept walking. But the neighbor would call the cops again if I didn't get in the front door on the first try, and my ability to find the lockout key depended on which of them had used it last and either put it back or not bothered. I could also sit shivering in the back yard, trying to tame the feral cat again with nothing but a calm voice and a promise of pets that hadn't yet been believed.
The other option was to see what I could do at the mall. Other kids would think about whether they had money. I already knew the answer to that one.
I had an emergency $2 (in individual bills, after what had happened last time at Taco Bell when I'd tried to break my birthday $2 bill to get a bean burrito) tucked into my right sock. Otherwise I was cashless.
There were three basic ways I could make money at the mall. Then there were three ways I wouldn't.
Threadbare black jeans. A light blue T-shirt I'd reluctantly pulled from the trash at the laundromat, snuck home and sanitized. Underpants I tried to keep going longer by always putting a single layer of TP between the business end and the cloth.
But no hat. And it was fucking cold. I could really, really use a hat.
As poor and angry as I was, all the time, I could still hurt inside when people mocked me. So I only wrapped my head with newspaper to keep warm when I was out of public view.
So it was keep moving. And I was going to give the mall a good solid try.
If you're going to pick up recycling, you have to hustle. You've got to pick up a lot. You're going to get dirty. You don't want to be jacked up with a shopping cart, unless you want to pick up a charge. And there were a lot of people doing it, some more desperate than me. I at least had a roof over my head some of the time, and the use of parts of an empty house in between flashbacks. They could be resentful, and some had knives.
Carrying people's stuff out to their cars means that you have to look responsible, and well dressed. It's never enough to be honest, you have to look honest. And that left me out. I'd still picked up a few tips that way, especially helping with big screen TVs.
One guy had given me a $20. Carefully invested, and hidden from the 'rents, that money had fed me for almost three weeks.
It was the memory of the good times that gets you through the bad times.
So the third thing I could do, that was fairly unique to me, was to back up the Loss Prevention agents at the big box store in the mall. This was strictly illegal, I'd been informed, about five different ways. I was underage, I wasn't licensed, I didn't have a work permit, I couldn't testify in court, and last but not least, the store didn't know who I was or have background paper on me.
But I was fast. Good with my hands, quick on my feet. And having a friend could be the margin of safety for a LP team working on a busy shopping day. Friends buy friends food.
(I know you're curious. The three things I won't do: steal, snitch and sell myself. I'd thought about all three. I even knew which I'd do first. But something I'd read in a biography about prison camps stuck with me. The prisoners who bummed half-smoked cigarettes and ate half-eaten scraps tended to get sick and die. Diminishing returns. Kind of like a mountain lion eating rabbits and ground rodents, wearing out its claws until it couldn't kill a deer if one wandered in front of it.)
So I found myself in the parking lot, moving enough to avoid the notice of the otherwise totally useless mall security, watching the flow of people in and out of the big box store.
Snippets. An angry man wrapping gifts in plain brown paper in the trunk of his car, FUCK YOU written all over his face and spine. A child whining about the toy being the wrong color, and the mom limping on her bad foot back into the store to exchange it. An elderly woman bracing herself against a car, on the way from the bus stop to the store toilet, realizing she wouldn't make it, and squatting just in time.
Most of this, no one else noticed. That's my particular hell. I notice things. And most of what I notice is bad.
Bingo. Subject one, shaved head, booster box, box cutter right rear pocket. Subject two, long hair, extensions, baby carriage, no baby.
I trailed behind them into the store. I bumped into the uniform LP agent at the front. He murmured 'Bruce' and looked around for the fun. Targets acquired, with an assist, he discreetly watched them head directly for Infant Care.
I backed off a little, slunk over to the cafe, asked a water cup, got myself some water.
The sight of the abandoned half-eaten meal on the table tempted me. I eliminated the temptation by busing the table and throwing it out.
The subjects kept working their problem, as did the LP team. The uniform went back to post but listened intently to his earpiece. I went outside by the door, right front, holding a cart.
A middle aged yuppie woman took it literally out of my hands and went inside with it.
Ten seconds later, the baby carriage - the same baby carriage - came flying out the door with the woman starting to run.
I couldn't cart block it, so I body blocked it.
Ouch.
It fell over on its side, someone shrieked, and a bystander shouted at me, "Fuck you, asshole!" Suspect fell to the ground. A hundred dollars or so of infant formula in cardboard cans fell sideways out of the 'baby' carriage. No baby. I'd made very sure.
It's hard enough being born to tweakers without a life altering head injury to go with it.
LP team swarmed in, woman waited too long to get up, they went hands on, arm bar and cuff, she was done.
The man had gone another way. Sigh.
I righted the baby carriage, took the empty cart from the same bystander who'd given me personal advice (he stared blankly in shock) and put the store product in the cart. I then slunk off, stage left.
Suspect was taken inside, to be cuffed to a hard bench in the LP office. Police arrived eventually, parking in the red zone as cops always do. Suspect was perp walked out and taken away. Yay for warrants.
Someone abandoned a bag of recycling by the trash can. I thought about it. No, stick to the plan.
I waited through two more arrests. Neither required my assist, although I was very observant just in case.
Then the LP team left for the day. One met my eyes, the other didn't.
"Fuck off and stop hanging around," the one who met my eyes said.
Asshole.
His partner obviously won't be buying me food today. So double cock block.
And someone had taken the recycling bag.
A middle aged man, carefully dressed with too much cologne, pulled up in a late model luxury car with tint windows and leather seats. He cracked his window down a little.
"Hey kid," the short eyes said.
The cameras kept me from smashing out all the windows of the car.
Or worse, taking him up on it.
I briefly shook my head. But as it slow rolled away, took note of the plate.
My memory is funny like that. I'd remember if I saw it again. And maybe there wouldn't be cameras.
Three girls were shouting at each other about boys and bitches.
Not my problem.
A low rider pumped and throbbed past, followed closely by the mall security truck. He'd get jacked by police shortly. And if I kept hanging out here, pants down enough that I'd been solicited, so would I.
That's when I saw it.
A purse, abandoned in the baby rack of a shopping cart.
No one around it. Clearly forgotten.
I sidled over towards it.
Someone else saw me on the move and our eyes met.
Bring it on. Let's do this. I will fuck your shit.
The heavily tattooed gangbanger considered it. He had about fifty pounds, all muscle, and a good four inches of reach on me. These things matter in a fight.
But I was in a mood to go to jail. Or prison. Or hospital. Or all three. And sending was totally on, too.
He disengaged smoothly. Not his gig anyway.
I put my hands on the cart, I rolled it directly into the big box store. Directly to the uniform LP, who had stayed at his store while the district team moved on.
"Someone left this in the lot," I said. He sighed and called for a supervisor, who called for a manager, who likely called for an officer but I was long gone by then.
Christmas shopping with a purse. That could have been hundreds. I'd known what I'd done with a twenty. That was six months of eating I'd passed on.
But it wasn't mine.
Surrounded by thieves, and living with them, I had to keep the difference between me and them. Somehow.
I walked through the mall interior to try to warm up. Looked a little at shelves full of shit I couldn't afford, safely from the outside of each store.
It was starting to get darker outside. I needed to pack this up, I needed to walk home, and roll that fifty fifty. At least I could warm up if I made it inside. Try to look at the pantry and move the cans around, looking for one that might not be missed. And blink to discover than an hour had passed, more likely.
As I walked out of the mall, the mall security flagged me down.
"Hey Bruce!"
I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes.
"Go talk to LP, he's got something for you."
So I did. And he did.
A five.
"Greedy bitch counted the wallet twice, as much accused us of writing down her card numbers, she must have had a G in there. And gave me this, 'for my honesty.'" He looked around. "Stuck up cunt."
A five was a five. And with cash in my pocket and the cashier keying me with an employee discount, as they usually did, I rummaged through the clearance section.
It was last year's sports team. And it had a tassel. But it was a cap and it was marked down to $4.29, and shortly thereafter it was mine. If I could hang on to it, of course.
It was the hat that nearly got me killed, of course. I'd been so delighted that I'd missed the obvious point that it was a distinctive tell, a red flag to the bull I'd snorted and pawed at earlier.
It was far too late when the beat up old Buick pulled in front of me on a quiet industrial street and three gang members piled out. One of them I'd run across earlier.
"Cut us in, Bruce," one demanded.
There was no point to telling the truth. They wouldn't believe me anyway. So it was on like Donkey Kong.
Three twenty-somethings versus one fifteen year old me. This was not going to go well.
The one thing going for me, remember, is a whole lot of quick.
I had to get the vehicle out of the equation. It was a weapon. It carried weapons.
So I circled and whined. Unfairness, no money, what is this, the usual ratshit I'd learned that could sometimes distract the 'rents enough to make it to a door or in front of a witness.
I saw my opening and went for it. Into the car, across the front seat, snag the keys.
Shit, flanked. Me in the center of a triangle of angry.
The storm drain was my salvation.
One saw my intent.
"Hey…"
Fuck you, I thought without saying, and tossed the keys in the drain.
"SHIT!" the driver screamed, and with that distraction, I ran past him, put on the coal and kept running.
I found out later that one had gone to the glove box and another had grabbed his shoulder.
What I heard was the gunshot.
I put on an even faster burst of speed and …
lost
the
hat.
What a shitshow.
I ran an evasion route next. Pre-planned to get me away from anyone in a vehicle. Over hedges, over fences, through creeks, using the suburban landscape as an obstacle course, taking different paths to confuse a follower. Wouldn't want to try it against a police air unit. But good enough for this.
Don't ever say you can't learn anything from Animal Planet. Including how to put up with the 'rents.
I was nice and warm, if dog tired and very hungry, when I saw the marked police unit parked in front of the house.
I sighed and walked forward, hands out.
Searchable probation. Means the juvenile court judge makes you every cop's bitch.
"So, where's the money, Bruce?"
"What money?"
"Don't play stupid. The manager ran the cameras back. There was at least two grand in the purse. What did you do with it?"
"Take me to jail."
"What?"
"You're not going to believe me anyway. No one ever does. So fucking arrest me already."
I was just done. I turned around and put my hands on the hood preparatory to search. Not that it wasn't obvious that my pockets were fucking empty, except for 34 cents change from that fucking hat.
"Go home," the officer said tiredly.
The front door opened and the male 'rent stuck his head out.
"Jail?" I said hopefully. "Peanut butter or bologna today?"
"Go," he said, this time all business.
I walked up to the door for my daily ritual screamed-at greeting.
Officer drove off before he had to officially notice.
One more shopping day until Christmas.
Maybe better luck tomorrow, the other side of town.
Bus fare, $2.25
And the small chance of being able to sneak back and find my hat.
I'd had worse days. I'll take it.
Bruce, 23 December, 15
###
It was bitterly cold outside. My textbooks were locked up in the locker at school, carefully wrapped in two layers of shrinkwrap with a piece of foil-covered cardboard between the slots in the locker door and my academic future. I couldn't leave them at home, they'd 'disappear' again, and I already had several hundred hours of detention lined up.
I still had two miles to walk to get home. About fifty-fifty that I could get in once I got there. I'd stay warm as long as I kept walking. But the neighbor would call the cops again if I didn't get in the front door on the first try, and my ability to find the lockout key depended on which of them had used it last and either put it back or not bothered. I could also sit shivering in the back yard, trying to tame the feral cat again with nothing but a calm voice and a promise of pets that hadn't yet been believed.
The other option was to see what I could do at the mall. Other kids would think about whether they had money. I already knew the answer to that one.
I had an emergency $2 (in individual bills, after what had happened last time at Taco Bell when I'd tried to break my birthday $2 bill to get a bean burrito) tucked into my right sock. Otherwise I was cashless.
There were three basic ways I could make money at the mall. Then there were three ways I wouldn't.
Threadbare black jeans. A light blue T-shirt I'd reluctantly pulled from the trash at the laundromat, snuck home and sanitized. Underpants I tried to keep going longer by always putting a single layer of TP between the business end and the cloth.
But no hat. And it was fucking cold. I could really, really use a hat.
As poor and angry as I was, all the time, I could still hurt inside when people mocked me. So I only wrapped my head with newspaper to keep warm when I was out of public view.
So it was keep moving. And I was going to give the mall a good solid try.
If you're going to pick up recycling, you have to hustle. You've got to pick up a lot. You're going to get dirty. You don't want to be jacked up with a shopping cart, unless you want to pick up a charge. And there were a lot of people doing it, some more desperate than me. I at least had a roof over my head some of the time, and the use of parts of an empty house in between flashbacks. They could be resentful, and some had knives.
Carrying people's stuff out to their cars means that you have to look responsible, and well dressed. It's never enough to be honest, you have to look honest. And that left me out. I'd still picked up a few tips that way, especially helping with big screen TVs.
One guy had given me a $20. Carefully invested, and hidden from the 'rents, that money had fed me for almost three weeks.
It was the memory of the good times that gets you through the bad times.
So the third thing I could do, that was fairly unique to me, was to back up the Loss Prevention agents at the big box store in the mall. This was strictly illegal, I'd been informed, about five different ways. I was underage, I wasn't licensed, I didn't have a work permit, I couldn't testify in court, and last but not least, the store didn't know who I was or have background paper on me.
But I was fast. Good with my hands, quick on my feet. And having a friend could be the margin of safety for a LP team working on a busy shopping day. Friends buy friends food.
(I know you're curious. The three things I won't do: steal, snitch and sell myself. I'd thought about all three. I even knew which I'd do first. But something I'd read in a biography about prison camps stuck with me. The prisoners who bummed half-smoked cigarettes and ate half-eaten scraps tended to get sick and die. Diminishing returns. Kind of like a mountain lion eating rabbits and ground rodents, wearing out its claws until it couldn't kill a deer if one wandered in front of it.)
So I found myself in the parking lot, moving enough to avoid the notice of the otherwise totally useless mall security, watching the flow of people in and out of the big box store.
Snippets. An angry man wrapping gifts in plain brown paper in the trunk of his car, FUCK YOU written all over his face and spine. A child whining about the toy being the wrong color, and the mom limping on her bad foot back into the store to exchange it. An elderly woman bracing herself against a car, on the way from the bus stop to the store toilet, realizing she wouldn't make it, and squatting just in time.
Most of this, no one else noticed. That's my particular hell. I notice things. And most of what I notice is bad.
Bingo. Subject one, shaved head, booster box, box cutter right rear pocket. Subject two, long hair, extensions, baby carriage, no baby.
I trailed behind them into the store. I bumped into the uniform LP agent at the front. He murmured 'Bruce' and looked around for the fun. Targets acquired, with an assist, he discreetly watched them head directly for Infant Care.
I backed off a little, slunk over to the cafe, asked a water cup, got myself some water.
The sight of the abandoned half-eaten meal on the table tempted me. I eliminated the temptation by busing the table and throwing it out.
The subjects kept working their problem, as did the LP team. The uniform went back to post but listened intently to his earpiece. I went outside by the door, right front, holding a cart.
A middle aged yuppie woman took it literally out of my hands and went inside with it.
Ten seconds later, the baby carriage - the same baby carriage - came flying out the door with the woman starting to run.
I couldn't cart block it, so I body blocked it.
Ouch.
It fell over on its side, someone shrieked, and a bystander shouted at me, "Fuck you, asshole!" Suspect fell to the ground. A hundred dollars or so of infant formula in cardboard cans fell sideways out of the 'baby' carriage. No baby. I'd made very sure.
It's hard enough being born to tweakers without a life altering head injury to go with it.
LP team swarmed in, woman waited too long to get up, they went hands on, arm bar and cuff, she was done.
The man had gone another way. Sigh.
I righted the baby carriage, took the empty cart from the same bystander who'd given me personal advice (he stared blankly in shock) and put the store product in the cart. I then slunk off, stage left.
Suspect was taken inside, to be cuffed to a hard bench in the LP office. Police arrived eventually, parking in the red zone as cops always do. Suspect was perp walked out and taken away. Yay for warrants.
Someone abandoned a bag of recycling by the trash can. I thought about it. No, stick to the plan.
I waited through two more arrests. Neither required my assist, although I was very observant just in case.
Then the LP team left for the day. One met my eyes, the other didn't.
"Fuck off and stop hanging around," the one who met my eyes said.
Asshole.
His partner obviously won't be buying me food today. So double cock block.
And someone had taken the recycling bag.
A middle aged man, carefully dressed with too much cologne, pulled up in a late model luxury car with tint windows and leather seats. He cracked his window down a little.
"Hey kid," the short eyes said.
The cameras kept me from smashing out all the windows of the car.
Or worse, taking him up on it.
I briefly shook my head. But as it slow rolled away, took note of the plate.
My memory is funny like that. I'd remember if I saw it again. And maybe there wouldn't be cameras.
Three girls were shouting at each other about boys and bitches.
Not my problem.
A low rider pumped and throbbed past, followed closely by the mall security truck. He'd get jacked by police shortly. And if I kept hanging out here, pants down enough that I'd been solicited, so would I.
That's when I saw it.
A purse, abandoned in the baby rack of a shopping cart.
No one around it. Clearly forgotten.
I sidled over towards it.
Someone else saw me on the move and our eyes met.
Bring it on. Let's do this. I will fuck your shit.
The heavily tattooed gangbanger considered it. He had about fifty pounds, all muscle, and a good four inches of reach on me. These things matter in a fight.
But I was in a mood to go to jail. Or prison. Or hospital. Or all three. And sending was totally on, too.
He disengaged smoothly. Not his gig anyway.
I put my hands on the cart, I rolled it directly into the big box store. Directly to the uniform LP, who had stayed at his store while the district team moved on.
"Someone left this in the lot," I said. He sighed and called for a supervisor, who called for a manager, who likely called for an officer but I was long gone by then.
Christmas shopping with a purse. That could have been hundreds. I'd known what I'd done with a twenty. That was six months of eating I'd passed on.
But it wasn't mine.
Surrounded by thieves, and living with them, I had to keep the difference between me and them. Somehow.
I walked through the mall interior to try to warm up. Looked a little at shelves full of shit I couldn't afford, safely from the outside of each store.
It was starting to get darker outside. I needed to pack this up, I needed to walk home, and roll that fifty fifty. At least I could warm up if I made it inside. Try to look at the pantry and move the cans around, looking for one that might not be missed. And blink to discover than an hour had passed, more likely.
As I walked out of the mall, the mall security flagged me down.
"Hey Bruce!"
I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes.
"Go talk to LP, he's got something for you."
So I did. And he did.
A five.
"Greedy bitch counted the wallet twice, as much accused us of writing down her card numbers, she must have had a G in there. And gave me this, 'for my honesty.'" He looked around. "Stuck up cunt."
A five was a five. And with cash in my pocket and the cashier keying me with an employee discount, as they usually did, I rummaged through the clearance section.
It was last year's sports team. And it had a tassel. But it was a cap and it was marked down to $4.29, and shortly thereafter it was mine. If I could hang on to it, of course.
It was the hat that nearly got me killed, of course. I'd been so delighted that I'd missed the obvious point that it was a distinctive tell, a red flag to the bull I'd snorted and pawed at earlier.
It was far too late when the beat up old Buick pulled in front of me on a quiet industrial street and three gang members piled out. One of them I'd run across earlier.
"Cut us in, Bruce," one demanded.
There was no point to telling the truth. They wouldn't believe me anyway. So it was on like Donkey Kong.
Three twenty-somethings versus one fifteen year old me. This was not going to go well.
The one thing going for me, remember, is a whole lot of quick.
I had to get the vehicle out of the equation. It was a weapon. It carried weapons.
So I circled and whined. Unfairness, no money, what is this, the usual ratshit I'd learned that could sometimes distract the 'rents enough to make it to a door or in front of a witness.
I saw my opening and went for it. Into the car, across the front seat, snag the keys.
Shit, flanked. Me in the center of a triangle of angry.
The storm drain was my salvation.
One saw my intent.
"Hey…"
Fuck you, I thought without saying, and tossed the keys in the drain.
"SHIT!" the driver screamed, and with that distraction, I ran past him, put on the coal and kept running.
I found out later that one had gone to the glove box and another had grabbed his shoulder.
What I heard was the gunshot.
I put on an even faster burst of speed and …
lost
the
hat.
What a shitshow.
I ran an evasion route next. Pre-planned to get me away from anyone in a vehicle. Over hedges, over fences, through creeks, using the suburban landscape as an obstacle course, taking different paths to confuse a follower. Wouldn't want to try it against a police air unit. But good enough for this.
Don't ever say you can't learn anything from Animal Planet. Including how to put up with the 'rents.
I was nice and warm, if dog tired and very hungry, when I saw the marked police unit parked in front of the house.
I sighed and walked forward, hands out.
Searchable probation. Means the juvenile court judge makes you every cop's bitch.
"So, where's the money, Bruce?"
"What money?"
"Don't play stupid. The manager ran the cameras back. There was at least two grand in the purse. What did you do with it?"
"Take me to jail."
"What?"
"You're not going to believe me anyway. No one ever does. So fucking arrest me already."
I was just done. I turned around and put my hands on the hood preparatory to search. Not that it wasn't obvious that my pockets were fucking empty, except for 34 cents change from that fucking hat.
"Go home," the officer said tiredly.
The front door opened and the male 'rent stuck his head out.
"Jail?" I said hopefully. "Peanut butter or bologna today?"
"Go," he said, this time all business.
I walked up to the door for my daily ritual screamed-at greeting.
Officer drove off before he had to officially notice.
One more shopping day until Christmas.
Maybe better luck tomorrow, the other side of town.
Bus fare, $2.25
And the small chance of being able to sneak back and find my hat.
I'd had worse days. I'll take it.