"Lifted" by Brian Greene

I stole a lot of things when I was 13 and 14. My family lived in Virginia Beach then. My father, who’d been an enlisted man in the U.S. Navy since he was 17, retired from the military while in Virginia, and went into sales. Our family moved off the naval base and into a working-class neighborhood about eight miles from the oceanfront. I never would have dared to steal while we lived on base, not with all the military police always lurking around. 

With Craig, a friend I’d made in the new neighborhood, I stole records from the Farm Fresh grocery store close to our houses. Farm Fresh kept a small collection of records – a combination of current hit albums and back catalogue titles that were reliable sellers. Craig and I would pool together enough money from our paper routes for one album, and we’d go into Farm Fresh and buy the record. They always bagged the records in those big paper sacks normally used for groceries. Then we’d go right back to the music section and stuff another album or two in our bag, then walk out. I remember us buying The Cars’ first album from the grocery store a couple months after it came out; then we went back in and ripped off a copy of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti.

With Ricky and Grant, two guys I knew from when we still lived on base and who came to hang out with me sometimes, I stole odds and ends from Roses department store. New locks for our bikes, candy, cigarettes, lighters, and other odds and ends. We’d lift packs of More cigarettes from Roses, then ride to the woods behind my family’s house and smoke out there. 

My new friend Dean and I had a thieving routine worked out, involving a bowling alley a couple miles from where our families lived. We’d ride our bikes out to the bowling alley, then hang around across the street, in the parking lot of Tom’s Tiki Tavern. We’d watch for when people drove up to the alley. Once they were out of their cars and had gone in to bowl, we’d ride over and see if they left their car doors open. And if they did, we’d root around the seats, floorboard, and glove compartment, checking for booty. We got coins this way, along with cigarettes, cassette tapes, etc. When we got coins, we’d go into the bowling alley and use them to play the pinball machines.

I did some of my best thieving in the early morning. Craig, some other guys I knew, and I were all morning paper boys. We had to have our papers delivered by 6:00 a.m., meaning we were out and tooling around on our bikes when most people were still sleeping. As we each completed our respective routes, we’d take note of any worthy goods sitting around on people’s lawns or porches. Then, when we were all done slinging papers, we’d ride back through the neighborhoods and steal stuff. Our favorite item to take was bikes. If we saw a decent bike left outside and unlocked, one guy would leave his bike chained up somewhere and ride to that house on someone else’s handlebars. Once at the crime scene, that guy would jump off, grab the loose bike, and we’d haul ass out to the woods. There, we’d strip the stolen bike for its best parts, divvy them up, and toss the unwanted pieces of the bike into a creek.

The first time I got caught stealing was at Farm Fresh. I was in there alone, just before Little League baseball practice. I wasn’t out to steal records, just a pack of grape Bubble Yum gum to chew on the way to, and during, practice. I had a couple dollars in my pocket, but who wants to pay for gum? I grabbed a pack of Bubbleyum off the shelf, then went into the store’s bathroom, where I shoved the gum into a pocket before I peed at a stall. When I was just about done with my business in the bathroom, I looked into the mirror in front of me and saw that a store employee, wearing a Farm Fresh smock, was standing in front of the bathroom doorway, his arms folded across his chest. When I tried to walk past him, he grabbed my arm and led me out into the store.

“Is this him?” he said, to a nosy-looking woman who was standing outside the bathrooms.

“Yes. I saw him take the pack of bubble gum off the shelf. He was looking around while he did it, like he was making sure nobody was watching. Then he took the gum into the bathroom. I’m sure he was trying to steal the gum.”

My nerves were going pretty good. But I told myself to stay calm.

“You mean this gum?” I asked, looking at both of them and brandishing the pack of Bubbleyum.

“Yes,” the woman said.

“I bought this gum from 7-11 across the street before coming over here. Do you wanna walk over there with me and we can ask the guy I bought it off?”

The woman looked skeptical. But she said, “Maybe I was wrong. I thought I saw you take it off the shelf here.”

“I had it when I came in. I was just in here killing time before baseball practice. I took it out of my pocket, because I was thinking about opening a piece in here. Then I realized I needed to use the bathroom.”

The woman still didn’t seem totally sold. But she told the clerk, “I could have made a mistake.”

I said, “You did,” and walked away from them. Then I rode my bike to practice, popping purple bubbles.

The second time I got caught stealing was at a novelty store that opened in our neighborhood. Craig and I decided we wanted a whoopee cushion from there. We couldn’t wait to start playing pranks on our family and friends with the cushion. We had no intention of paying for it. We doubled to the store on Craig’s bike, in case we saw a good bike around that we wanted to steal. We lingered around the novelty store for just a couple minutes before Craig grabbed a whoopee cushion and we hurried out. As we opened the door to leave, we heard, “Wait! Damnit!”

We got on Craig’s bike quickly, with me on the handlebars and holding the whoopee cushion, and started riding away. I looked back and saw the store clerk chasing us on foot. When we were about two blocks from the store, Craig’s bike chain popped off and we crashed. The store clerk snatched the whoopee cushion out of my hands and told us he’d have us arrested if he ever saw us in the store again.

The next time I was caught stealing was when Dean and I did our thing at the bowling alley parking lot. After breaking into three or four cars there, we rode away on our bikes, trying to think of what else to do. We had some pot I’d gotten from my sister Marie’s boyfriend. We were thinking we’d go out to the woods and get high. But as we pedaled, a K-9 police truck suddenly appeared, its lights flashing, and came to a skidding halt just in front of us.

“Park your bikes,” the policeman said as he got his dog out of the truck. He held on to the dog as it growled at us. The cop walked right up to me.

“I saw you break into that van at the bowling alley. Don’t bother lying to me, because I watched you do it.”

I didn’t understand why he was only berating me, and not Dean. But I wasn’t about to argue, not with that dog looking mean and showing me its teeth.

“What you did is called breaking and entering. It’s a crime. I could probably get you put away in a boys’ detention home for that. You think you’d like it there?”

I had no idea what life at a detention home would be like. But I figured it wasn’t fun. For some reason, at that moment, I thought of my uncles Joe and Johnny, from Massachusetts. That’s where I was born. We had a big extended family there, on my mind’s side. My grandparents came over from Portugal on the boat. When the navy transferred my dad to Virginia and we moved, my mom was the first of her parents’ 10 children to ever leave Massachusetts. My uncles would be so ashamed of me. They both raised their families while working in factories. I was sure their kids - my cousins - never stole. I never did, either, before we left New England and were isolated from the family.

“No, sir. I wouldn’t like it there.”

“Then you better not ever let me see you anywhere within a mile of that bowling alley again. Or anywhere else where you’re thinking about stealing from decent people.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get outta my face, then, before I change my mind and take you to the station.”

I don’t know if I applied the three strikes and you’re out rule from baseball, or of it was just the memory of how I felt with that police dog glaring at me; but I stopped stealing after the K-9 cop incident. Anyway, I had better things to do, like going out with a pretty blonde girl named Jill.

Brian Greene writes short fiction, as well as journalism features on books, music, film, and fine arts. His work has appeared in approximately 50 print and online publications.