A Tale of Mundane Macabre

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JoBeth knelt in her son’s room beside the bottom bunk. Whatever souvenirs Jared had collected would be hidden in a shoebox. It was as good a diary. She felt a tinge of guilt but dismissed it with a memory of holding her son, bathing and feeding him less than a decade ago. The last time she peeked, the box had been lodged against the far wall, behind his glove and uniform. She had to stand and look for the bat that had been buried in the closet. This time it was under the bed. She grabbed the handle, sweeping the box and clearing the box spring just before the front door slammed. She stood and listened for the metal knee brace to click.

New additions to the box were toy cars─, eight of them. Where did he get money for these? Christmas is still a few weeks away. She slid her finger down the hood of a miniature Corvette and then set the four tires in her palm. Her thumb rubbed the under casing like a worry stone. The up and down rhythm seduced her wonderings for distractions on the other side of the window. The legs on the swing set looked as if they could walk to a neighbor’s yard to find children. It doesn’t make sense. Last Christmas Jared had asked for a rifle. For his birthday, he wanted a knife. I thought he’d out-grown children’s toys.

“Get out of my room!” Jared yelled.

He swung his backpack toward his mother. The corner of a book hit the top of her shoulder. He palmed the box, easily sliding it from her grip.

“I don’t want you. I want dad! When is dad coming home?”

JoBeth lifted her weight enough to kneel before her son. She turned his body around and then whispered near his ear. “At the end of his tour. He’ll come home just like I came home.”

No one was watching the man in the Santa suit. The Yo-mart management team was busy with the other shoplifter. JoBeth pointed to surveillance monitor number two.

“There’s our favorite suspect. She’s back at the scene of the crime. Damn─, she’s wearin’ the same clothes she wore in court today.” JoBeth said.

“Once again, our favorite judge didn’t see justice,” Holly, the store manager, said. She stood behind JoBeth so that she could see all eight monitors. “You could have saved her the bus fare. Brought her with you after court.”

“Sgt Armstrong had her in cuffs.” JoBeth walked over to her desk and pounded it with her fist. “Someone must have had a Polaroid of the District Attorney with a goat.”

JoBeth’s desk was in need of much repair. An aimless customer with a cell phone had rammed a shopping cart into the frontside. A dent in the laminate was the size of a softball, and a substitute leg caused it to lean. She found it behind the store, while patrolling the premises, and she startled a seasonal employee who had been on break between dumpsters. He hauled the desk into the security office and then he turned in his nametag.

“Careful,” Holly said. “Who knows how long you’ll have to wait for a guy who can’t use a cell phone and drive a shopping cart.” The store manager yanked her polyester uniform that had been cinching up and making her feel caged.

“You’re right,” Jo-Beth said. “I should be more grateful for mindless customers who can’t even—.” She stood and pointed at security monitor number four. “Can you believe she’s wearing the same damn clothes?” The metal brace at her right knee clicked into alignment underneath her uniform.

“Leave it. What she’s wearing has nothing to do with nothing.” Holly said. “That criminal could steal in the birthday suit that God give her!”

Holly found the second pair of running shoes in her locker. She tried to tie the two broken laces together. JoBeth took a seat at her desk and opened her pocketknife. She tossed it in the air, creating a full rotation before she caught the handle.

“Do you have to do that with the blade open?” Holly asked.

JoBeth set the knife on the desk and then pointed to the control board. “Right now, our best and brightest customer is picking out a new purse in Women’s Accessories. She’ll head to the bathroom when she finds one that matches her shoes.”

“Bunny, line one,” Holly said. She cinched up her pants and saw the broken laces on the substitute pair of shoes. “Bunny, we’ve got a carpet bagger heading to the depot.”

Bunny loved a good throw-down. She was five-feet-nothing but built like a German Panzer. Standing under an exit sign near the fire door, she waved at the current suspect. “Go on, now. Bathroom is closed.” Bunny motioned toward the cash registers. “Pipes are tapped full. No bathroom today.”

JoBeth and Holly slapped a high-five when the suspect turned without incident. On the way to the front exit, the suspect dropped the purse at a display for men’s underwear. Bunny followed. She lifted the merchandise toward the camera and offered a thumbs up.

Holly tugged on the top button of her polyesters before she took a seat. Half-way through any shift, the pants were loose, hanging from her hip bones. She lifted her right hand into the air. “All we can do is catch ‘em. The judge has to use the good sense God give to lock-up the criminals.”

“I like it just like that—one crook at a time. They come in, we take them out of society,” JoBeth said. She hit her knuckles on her right leg as if knocking on good luck. She picked up her pocketknife and tossed it in the air, instinctively catching it by the handle while focusing on monitor eight. “Son-of-a-biscuit! Santa just dropped somethin’ in his drawers.”

“Where?” Holly leaned in, squinting to see the monitor.

“Look! He’s kicking the package under the rack.”

“Shazaam!”

“Bunny. Line one.” This time, JoBeth sent the alert. “Santa Claus is packing his stocking.”

Officer Armstrong pulled on the synthetic beard before she cuffed the scruffy-faced man. She pushed hard on his shoulder, forcing him onto a metal chair. JoBeth, Holly, and Bunny secured their walkie talkies into their hip holsters and stared at the perpetrator with calculated disgust. This rehearsed intimidation wasn’t official Yo-mart training, but JoBeth had explained that a nervous suspect was more likely to talk. Sometimes their ritual worked in Officer Armstrong’s favor; sometimes it made things worse.

“Sir. Can you tell me why you put Yo-Mart goods in your pants?” Officer Armstrong asked.

Holly and Bunny stared, and then JoBeth kicked the man’s chair with her left toecap. “Answer the nice officer. She dressed in her finest blues to come all this way and meet you.”

“You know this is wrong.” Officer Armstrong leaned back against the door while resting both of her thumbs between her shirt and gun belt. “Do you know right from wrong?”

The metal brace on JoBeth’s knee clicked and shifted the force in this investigation. She took a seat and Santa watched her kick to straighten the leg. She set the pocketknife into rotation and winked. Holly pushed past Officer Armstrong to square-off with the perp.

“I don’t care if you know this is wrong or not. You need to get some help. You’re a nut case,” Holly said.

The man looked at the space between his shoes. JoBeth wondered if he was searching for a means to escape into one of the black specks in the tile.

“I’m sick,” he whispered.

“What?” they asked.

“Sir. May I point out that you are close to fifty years old.” Officer Armstrong said. She stepped around Holly and faced the Santa imposter. “You’re nearly fifty years old, yes?”

Holly reached around and pointed. “I’ll have you know I worked in the psy-chi-at-tric ward of Alabama’s State Penitentiary. I taught inmates about nurturing tomatoes to a tender fruition.”

The imposter looked up and offered open palms that rested on the tops of his thighs. “Are y’all Christian?”

“Any idea how I taught those hardened criminals?” Holly asked, ignoring his interruption. “Let’s just say that amidst annual budget cuts─, we always had fertilizer for the flower beds.”

Officer Armstrong raised an eyebrow and let out a cough. She half-sat and half-stood on the edge of JoBeth’s desk, arranging toy cars in a line-up as if they might race and soar off the edge. “What could be so damn important that you’d risk County lock up?”

The man shifted his feet, “I think I’m sick. Will you pray with me?”

“None of that.” Officer Armstrong made hand gestures below her hips while she stepped forward. “Does this make you high? This thievin’ that you do─, does it get you off?”

The imposter pulled his shoulders up as if no answer relinquish liability.

“Does it make you—you know—high?” Holly grabbed the flat rim of her crotch to mock his manhood.

JoBeth came forward. She tossed her pocketknife into rotation in the air and the tip landed on her palm. She pressed her left thumb on the puncture. Then, all four women faced the Santa Claus imposter.

“Well, what have you got to say for your grown self” Holly asked.

“I’m sick,” he said.

Santa’s palms were open on his thighs. Officer Armstrong waved, beckoning his full attention. She needed for him to produce the stolen goods, but she didn’t want to search for them. She approached, and he seemed to know what would come next. He stood.

“Will you pray with me?” he asked.

Officer Armstrong reached for her firearm and bit on her chewing gum. “You’re gonna need to empty your pockets and get whatever isn’t supposed to be in your trousers. I’m not going in there.” She pointed below his belly and then pulled a blue plastic glove over her right hand.

The man stretched the waistband of his Santa suit. He reached in and came out three times, offering the toys he had packed away. Officer Armstrong flicked red lint from the corner of a pack of baseball cards. She turned toward Holly and JoBeth with the confiscated merchandise.

“Have you ever seen such a thing? What kind of grown man gets off with toy cars and baseball cards?”

JoBeth noted the stolen goods. Her right hand stretched toward the toys that Officer Armstrong had placed on her desk. The metal in her knee clicked while she grabbed the open pocketknife. “You are sick,” she said while she lunged toward him with the open blade.

By Lisa Michel

From: United States

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