Distinguishing Features Part 5/8

You see, Johnny made good donuts. His shop was a block away, and our heroes had to get there to do whatever before he showed up at 4 am. Johnny was a good man who gave back to his community. One way he had done that was send his old donuts off to a food pantry. That is, until Brucey got ahold of him. That was back when Bruce was about to choose a pre-law major. He would hang out on the small customer floor of the shop, and, among other things, would tell Johnny that if there was any trouble with the three day old donuts, it wouldn’t be the food pantry they would sue. It was non-profit, you see.

            After those encounters, Johnny would then go back to the kitchen and talk to Jack, who had the job of donut fryer partially due to his nocturnal lifestyle. Jack would then offer the opposition response (correct). Bruce never got to the point where they let him declare a major, but he always had the loudest voice, which impressed Johnny.

            So Johnny implemented a policy change. He put a padlock on the dumpster and rotated the three day old donuts there, after Jack got his cut. But at that time, for some reason, Jack had become tired of donuts. Jack told Austin how Johnny would absentmindedly turn to the bubbling donut vat with just a flyswatter in his hand to scoop up the floating fritters. Then he’d catch himself, grab the proper utensil, retrieve the pastries, then scratch his back with the spatula. Jack loved Johnny, but he quit because he couldn’t see how the place made money. More importantly, Jack informed Austin, Johnny insisted that Jack carry a dumpster key with him and Jack had forgotten to turn it in when he quit.

            Jack and Austin didn’t push their luck. They dove in that dumpster only once a month, early Wednesday mornings. Trash pick-up was later that day.

           Austin waited for his two partners at the entrance of a weirdly east/west contrary alley. He waved Jack over, and Jack complied, holding his arms up as Austin patted him down thoroughly. He gestured with a plastic bag he held. Matt took it and Jack explained.

            “Checking that I didn’t bring a knife. See? There are no leaders here.”

            “You’re the leader. Don’t shirk your duties now…” Austin muttered, and then he glanced up and back at Matt.

            “If I don’t search him, that’ll be the time he brings one.”

Jack then explained the details of the mission to Matt. As he did, Austin’s nimble fingers produced a joint from a tiny side pocket of Jack’s pants. He uncrouched up with the goods.

            “You holdin’ out on me?”

            “I was saving that for later.”

            Austin reminded Jack to turn off his girlfriend ring and things were returned to places where they had been secured previously. Jack, not being the leader, said that he would work around a small furniture store and approach Johnny’s from the south. Austin would work east, then cut back down the alley to the rendezvous point. Matt’s job was to simply loop around the church back to the spot where they were standing, walking off possible suspicion, then join the others at the agreed-upon dumpster-diving location. All would reconnoiter and issue reports or warnings if needed. If any were delayed or missing, they would still get their share, since all were in the game. And Jack had first dibs on the best fully intact chocolate cake donut –not because he was the leader in any sense- but because he had the dumpster key.

            The pat-down completed, Jack kept his feet widespread and stood straight-backed, looking up at the street light that wasn’t working. Austin looked down and gave his head a shake. Jack took an indicated deep breath.

            “Gentlemen. Let’s bake.”

They split off into the darkness. I imagine that on their respective solitary jaunts there was the chirping of crickets, the hooting of owls and the sound of machines in the distance draining batteries in an effort to share sounds with the uninitiated in this small city of 50,000 with less to do.

            Matt finished walking his pattern, then stopped awhile; laughing at himself. There had been no surprises. But Jack had never told him on which side of the building the dumpster was. There should have been even more planning, he thought to himself and chuckled, but not loudly. The dumpster was easy to find, though. It was just along the alley side of the building and evident by a soft glow from inside, revealing Jack’s foot hooked over the edge for leverage as he dug.

            “Bag!” Austin hissed. “Need your bag.” Matt handed him one.

            “Motherlode!” Jack declared in a corrugated muffle. “I’m grabbin’ quality at this point. Plenty of quantity.” He peered sideways over the edge to them. “All in boxes.” Then down with the noise of tunneling. “…it’s like he set it up for me…” He handed a bag over to Matt and scrabbled out with a clump. “That’s mostly trash, but you’ll get variety in the split.”

            He closed and locked the dumpster and the three stood; quietly facing different points of the compass, scouting their getaway. At this point, a universal needs to be considered, namely: Plastic bags in all their capricity. You understand plastic bags, these three young men understood them, plastic bags have served and failed since time began. I’d even be willing to guess that during the Battle of Waterloo an aide-de-camp rushed into the besieged headquarters with the information that, on top of everything else, the plastic bags were lacking in quality.

            While Jack, Austin and Matt paused to make sure that the way was clear, the faintest event occurred which led to thunderous results. And it was –nearly entirely- Jack’s fault. No matter how closely one inspects a plastic bag for a tear, it still may wind up having a slit in it later. And the one Jack held did. He’d given Matt all the cinnamon twists, stinting him in case he wanted to forget the split and do what. Leave the country? Jack had taken all of the jam and cream-filled pastries for himself. To ‘carry’. To transport.

            They saw that there was just one clump of spirits back down the street. Jack thought that one of them might be Esmeralda again, but he cared less, due to the application of the hierarchy of needs plus distance. Five pounds of rare wheaten product and as much ill-gotten jam outweighed the apple of his eye. Meanwhile, a glop of filling fell out from the bottom of his bag. A raspberry jam-filled donut had halved and all that goo had departed from its pastry shell. The filling fractalled down throughout the bag. (Not a problem for scroungers, though. For example, accidental fruit plus chocolate can combine with such a result as to cause recipes to be rewritten.) But, a large jam clump had made its way to the bottom of the bag and slipped out like a sweet loogie to the asphalt below. Jack stepped forward onto it- a signal to the others that the way had been determined clear. Then they all saw a faint glow beside them.

            The glow was blue, and the officials bathed within it were blue in a sense. Jack could see the light hitting motes and midges in the air as it shone around the corner of the building and he watched the beam as it steered, narrowing with flicker-intent to turn 90° their way.

            “Every man for himself,” he whispered, and pushed off with his jam-foot. We can send missions to Mars, but we’ve never found an efficient way to eliminate the seeds from raspberry jam. Some enjoy the texture, but the seeds are a hazard to both denture and diverticula. And do you think those little bastards were willing to grant Jack the least bit of traction as he trod on that jammy glop, already plotting a path home? Dream on. Jack stood nearly two meters tall, and as the police discovered our trio he was already going down like a caber tossed by an amateur.

            Although it is now more than a century after this sad little event occurred -and Jack more than survived it- there may be some concern on the part of the reader. But worry not. In this account, he will be placed upon the ground in a most gentle manner.

            .05 sec.: Jack realized that his mass had as much purchase as one of our astronauts has when brushing a gloved hand against one of our lovely orbital stations during a spacewalk. He commanded his left foot down.

            .10 sec.: One can only step down so fast, so Jack initiated emergency procedures. He set free the bag he had been carrying. The bag hung there awhile, seeming not to know what to do. The patrol, now gathered at the corner of the building, had him trapped in their lights.

            .20 sec.: The other two donut divers forgot themselves and also featured their friend with their torches, bringing his embarrassment to light even further. Jack could be as quick as a panther, but neither have wings. He swung his arms forward. A policeman of the group encountering, thinking that Jack was a victim of intentional violence, issued a general order:

            .30 sec.: “Stopppp…” Jack’s ass was now just the other side of his teakettle. The cop continued. “…riiight…”

            .45 sec.: As Jack continued to describe his forward spin, Austin and Matt held him in their LED sights with a degree of precision found only in experienced follow-spot operators. Meanwhile, Jack was initiating a slap-the-ground technique which he told everyone he’d learned during a short stay in Japan. And who among us who has been to The Land of the Rising Sun doesn’t look for any pretence, however small, to mention that? Granted, what Jack was doing was only through simple instinct, but let it be noted here: The Japanese had found a way to do it better. And now look. Lowering Jack to the ground has become such a prose-gush that this has begun to read like an epilogue to a travel memoir.

            .50 sec.: Austin and Matt hadn’t moved a muscle, fixing Jack in a bright puddle of light with identical boo-boo looks on their faces. The cop completed his command as Jack’s left arm found the tarmac.

            “…therrre.”

            .55 sec.: Our victim obeyed. But as irresistible Jack met immovable pavement, his fisted right hand wedged between his face and the rest of the world, spreading the impact between itself and Jack’s cheekbone, rendering the resulting concussion quite mild.

            .60 sec.: The bag of pastries, not levered down by Jack’s attempt to arrest the fall, not being relative to that effort or subject to civil discipline (re the policeman’s order), and thus, subject only to the law of gravity, landed next to him with a donuty ‘thop’.