This is a Stickup

So here I was at the Quik-Mart on the border of Markham and Oak Forest, a busy little filling station with video slots, food, and several long aisles of liquor. Just what you’d want in a gas station, right? Jack Daniels, Cobra Malt Liquor, 25 different beers, and bags of ice. So, anyway, I was ready for this, having scoped the place out for a few days since my last one. They do lots of business and should have plenty of cash on hand. I even got in line and waited; I was so nervous. I put my hand in my coat pocket and got ready. And there’s a guy in front of me buying Lotto tickets! This always happens to me. He looks like a real lowlife—cut-off jeans, sandals, and stubble on his face that needed a visit from a razor. He’s a white guy, like me. See? Already, I don’t like him, but he’s not Black. I just basically dislike people, especially people who are holding me up buying some stupid Lotto ticket they will never win at. And between me and him is an overweight Black gal who looks like she’s ready to splurge on Lotto tickets as well. I’m starting to get jumpy. On paper, these things look easy, but out here in real life, when you’re broke and desperate, it’s not as easy as it looks. Finally, the trailer trash jamoke gets his lousy tickets and departs. Now it’s the colored gal’s turn. And she’s not alone. Right by my side is a little kid about five years old. He’s got a bag of chips, a couple donuts, and some candy. His mama’s gonna tell him it’s breakfast, I suppose. He got back to Mama after running through the aisles and handing her his snacks. Then he looked up at me. I sort of felt bad for what was about to happen with him around.

“Hi,” I said.

He looked up and smiled. He had those dreadlock things that reggae singers have, a Darth Vader tee-shirt, and a funny way of looking at me and then spinning away and then turning back at me. He probably watched lots of basketball.

“We’re shopping,” he said.

“I can see that. You have a lot of stuff.”

“What do you have in your pocket?” He smiled.

He was a precocious little brat. He twisted away and then looked up at me again.

“My hand?” I answered.

“You got something else. You got a gun?”

His mother turned around then to look at me. She gave me the once-over, barely looking at the hand in my coat pocket. The fact that it was still summer and I had a coat on didn’t seem to bother her at all. She pulled out a credit card from her wallet and got ready to pay for her Lotto tickets and the kid’s breakfast. That’s when I started paying attention to the kid’s Darth Vader tee shirt.

The shirt had six Darth Vader images. They were all the same, of course, because you don’t get to see his face when he’s wearing his mask. Under each identical image was a caption describing his ‘look.’ They were ‘Angry,’ ‘Happy, ’ ‘Sad,’ ‘Confused, ’ ‘Epic,’ and ‘Frustrated.’ I found it pretty funny. And there was some hidden humor in there as well. This is pretty much how we see Black people, isn’t it? Take a Black person. Whatever his mood is, he’s Black, and that’s it. We don’t really distinguish. His main characteristic is his blackness.

Anyway, Mama distracted the kid, who stopped bothering me. I started thinking. I would hate for anything to happen to him when I pulled out my gun and demanded cash. Did the wimpy-looking guy at the cash register have a gun, too? What if shots were fired? What if suddenly bullets went through his Darth Vader tee shirt, hitting him in the heart, and blood shot out of it, all over the Quik-Mart, over his Cheetos, and onto the door to the room where the video poker games were? What if he stopped spinning around like Michael Jordan and fell flat on the linoleum floor with that cancelled look in his eyes? What if his father had to identify him at the morgue, and the first thing he saw was the Darth Vader shirt and he remembered buying it on-line for his son or at the Mega Mall down in Harvey and he thought of how happy it would make his kid and now the only memory of it would be that his son got shot mistakenly by some unemployed white guy malingering in his neighborhood?

That’s what I thought.

So I kept my hand in my pocket, and when I got to the cashier, I said, “A Quick-Pick ticket for tonight’s game.” Then I paid for it and walked out the door. It was Wednesday.

The kid took his mama’s hand, and they walked to their car, a beater parked at Pump #12. I was still desperate for cash, though. As luck would have it, the trailer trash lowlife was at his car at Pump #11, checking his tickets. So I pulled out my gun and went up to him.

“This is a stickup,” I said, holding my gun in front of me, out of his reach.

“I’m broke,” he said, throwing up his hands, his face showing me despair, frustration, and wretchedness.

“Empty your pockets.”

“They’re already empty.” He turned his pants pockets inside out, and sure enough, they had nothing in them.

“Gimme those Lotto tickets then,” I said.

“Oh, man,” he said, “They’re all I got. Please. I got nothing, man. These are for Saturday’s game. I can at least hope for the next few days.”

I jiggled my gun at his gut the way I’d seen Butch Cavendish do it on TV once when he got the drop on the Lone Ranger. He glumly handed over the four tickets. That’s when the little Darth Vader apprentice reappeared at Pump #12.

“You did have a gun. I knew it.” He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was not a Negro boy without a name. “My dad had a gun. Then they shot him.”

“Get away, get away,” Mom said, dragging him back inside the Quik-Mart. “Hurry up, Laquan, take my hand!” Some Black dudes filling up at Pump #1 looked our way and then ignored us. They probably didn’t give a shit as long as I was robbing another white guy.

I looked again at the down-and-outer I’d just robbed. He was medium height with an oatmeal-colored face that had never seen cream or sugar or a silver spoon to eat it with. Gloom was written all over it. He knew he wasn’t going to win the Lotto. But with a ticket, he could have hope. That would keep him going through Saturday. I reluctantly took two of the tickets and handed the other two back, our fingers touching briefly, my gun still pointed at him just in case. A wan smile flickered for an instant. Then his face collapsed into its normal, dreary state.

I went to my Ford Falcon and got in. I put the Lotto tickets in the glovebox and slammed shut the door. I high-tailed it down 159th Street to Interstate 57. No one would find me. Those tickets would stay hid in my car a long time. As long as I didn’t look at them, there was a chance I won.