Without a Ladder

I can admit, I haven’t been a perfect person. I’ve made mistakes and poor choices. Could my parents have raised me better? Sure. But Poppa was a player, and he decided he’d rather pork his secretary than my mother, so I had to deal with an emotional wreck of a mother and an absentee father. In my honest opinion, I never stood a chance at being a productive member of society. My acting out started in high school with me skipping class and smoking pot. No big deal, not in the grand scheme of things. At least I didn’t think so, but I decided I didn’t like school. I also decided that I didn’t want to work for a living. I tried selling drugs for a while, prescription pills, blow, chronic… but after my connection got busted by the DEA, I decided that route was too dangerous. That would’ve been a wake-up call for most people that they needed to hone a skill so they could make legitimate money. I had friends that started down the same path as I did only to become electricians, plumbers, and computer programmers. But I had to be the oddball. I had to break the mold and become… well, you’ll find out in a minute.

There is an art to robbing homes in this era of mass surveillance, where every wealthy family has a state-of-the-art home security system, and the rest have a camera for a doorbell. There are still dumbbells who trust their home security to Fido. I’m not talking about some vicious German Shepard, or Pit bull either, I’m talking about Lassie, a golden retriever who’ll lick you to death, a springer spaniel that doesn’t care if you’re a stranger, they just want their belly rubbed. Yeah, people put their faith in Fido all the time, imagine how devastated they are when they come home to find their house void of all its valuables, and their guard dog laying comatose on the couch, satisfied and sleeping off the giant steak I fed him.

I like to choose my targets based on certain criteria. For instance, are the neighbors nosy Nellies, or do they mind their fucking business? What’s their schedule like? Are there hours at night where they’re not home? I avoid confrontation at all costs, for a litany of reasons. If there is a confrontation, I have a chance of being hurt or killed, or I may hurt or kill someone while trying to escape. A grand larceny charge carries with it a heavy enough jail sentence, but murder is a whole other level of problems. Problems I don’t need. And though I don’t give a ton of fucks about strangers, I’m not a psychopath. The burden of murder on my mind would wear me down to a nub.

I’ve been at this game for three years now, and I haven’t had a close call yet. It’s just me and my partner, Jolly Joe, who is the getaway driver because he’s too damn much of a slob to do anything else. It’s all good, though. The transportation is worth the mere ten percent I make from the scores.

I learned early on that it was too much trouble to mess with things like TV’s and computers. My market is jewelry, drugs, guns, cash. Small valuables, easily concealed, and easy to move on the black market. I know fences who can move all of it for me. So, all I do is hit a lick and hand the merch over to them. They pay me ⅔’s the going rate for the merch and then I go out and do it all over again.  

Now that you know a little about my operation, I’ll tell you the story of the one time I ignored the signs and got careless. I had worked this middle-class neighborhood before, but never this house. It had been a few months since I’d hit the neighborhood, so I decided the time was ripe to go back. I knew from prior surveillance that the people who live here went out of town a lot, so I waited until midnight when the last nearby neighbor turned off their television, and then I went to work. The house had a small deck outside of one of the upstairs rooms with a sliding glass door. There was a ladder conveniently left along the back side of the house, so I used that to climb up to the deck, and sure enough, they left the door unlocked for me.  

I found the place to be an absolute dud of a score — a treasure trove of video games and dvds, children’s toys, knickknacks, all cheap dollar store stuff. The only valuables were some relics of antique furniture, an old China cabinet, a cedar chest, and a set of crystal wine glasses. I dug for an hour, rummaging through every drawer in the house, figuring they had to have something I could sell, to not make tonight a total loss. But, alas, I came up empty. I considered taking a change jar filled to the brim with mostly pennies and nickels, but I didn’t want to carry the damn thing. I left the house a tossed mess and go back to the deck to leave out the way I came, but when I get there, I realize the ladder’s gone. It’s strikes me as strange, but I assume that a gust of wind blew it off the railing.

“Glad I wasn’t on it when it decided to fall over,” I mutter as I make my way through the house to the side door, which is one of those heavy glass sliding types. I flick the lock and use both hands to slide it open, then I slide it closed and hear a whisper.

“You picked the wrong house.”

The figure sprints out of the shadows and latches onto my back, wrapping its legs around my waist and its arms around my neck. She’s small, but the little bundle of fast-twitch muscle squeezes until we become one. My scrawny legs hold up under her weight, but she has her arm under my chin. I can’t breathe, so out of desperation I fall to my back, hoping the impact of her smashing the pavement will be enough to loosen her death-grip on my throat. It ends up having the opposite effect. The choke sinks in deeper, and I am helpless to do anything about it.

I wake up on the couch unrestrained, not knowing how much time has passed. That’s the thing about falling out of consciousness; what was a few seconds can feel like hours, or hours can feel like a few seconds. But as I regain my bearings, I see that little bundle of muscle that rendered me unconscious sitting across from me wearing a disgusted scowl. Pacing beside her is a man wearing a loose-fitting dress shirt and coke-bottle eyeglasses.

I eye the front door, and try to time my escape. I figure that if I can make it out the door, I’ll be home-free. The girl has stumpy legs that would struggle to match my long stride, and the man looks like a computer programmer, so I’m not too worried about him.

The girl catches my eye and says, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Now it’s time to plead for sympathy. It’s worth giving up anything to keep my freedom.
“Look you guys, I fell on hard times. I’ve got a sick kid at home, and I got laid off from my job during the pandemic. It wasn’t anything personal. In fact, if you cut me a break, I promise I’ll pay for any damages. And I’ll never… ever… do this again.”

The man stops pacing and sits down on the love seat next to the girl, and then he drills a hole through my skull with his glare. When he speaks, his voice is high-pitched and nonthreatening, making me think that his woman has more balls than he does.

“We’ve had a lot of break-ins in this neighborhood in the last few months. Were those you?”

“No, I have no idea… I just… like I said, I fell on hard times, noticed nobody was home, and had a look around to see if I could find some cash. I’m not a bad person, I just fell on hard times.”

The man bites his lower lip as if struggling hard with a decision. Then he says, “I heard you the first two times, not sure I believe you.”

I work up some courage. The little woman only took me down because she got the drop on me, and this four-eyed geek couldn’t stand up to a stuffed animal. Time for misdirection.

“I don’t know how to prove it to you,” I say.

I drop my head to my chest and count silently to three, then make my move toward the door, which only has a door lock, no deadbolt, no chain. I pull the door open and press on the handle of the screen door, and cut through the wind like a rocket. My quads are screaming at me, the lactic acid building, burning, but I’m free! Once I cut through a few yards, they won’t find me.

And then, without so much as a warning, my face meets the pavement. Sharp bits of gravel burrow into my cheeks as the weight on my back presses me down. I scramble to get back to my feet, but as soon as I stand, my feet are swept from under me and the back of my head slams to the pavement. Vision fades. I’m still conscious, but I’m no longer present. The yard that was my destination, my safe space, moves away from me one step at a time, as the man I underestimated carries me back toward the house.              

Part 2

They call me Jolly Joe. I’m a driver for hire, you know those ride share services; I take on the biggest jobs, the best tippers, and all that. As a side job, I do a little work with my lil buddy. He wouldn’t want me to use his real name, so I’ll call him Skinflint for the sake of simplification.

So here I am about a month ago, driving around a residential area, cruising the subdivisions somewhere in the Midwest U.S. of A, waiting on lil Skinflint to text me to let me know he’s all finished with his latest B & E job. I remember daydreaming about cotton candy that night. I don’t know why, but I had a serious hankering for some, and lil Skinflint was taking longer than usual, so I took a brief detour outside of the neighborhood and stopped by the local corner convenience store.

I always thought it was a strange name, convenience store. There ain’t much convenient about waiting in line for fifteen minutes behind the scratch ticket folks just to pay for an overpriced package of cotton candy and a pack of Marlboros, but whatever. Lotta things don’t make sense in this world. You drive on a parkway and you park in a driveway. I mean, who the hell did they put in charge of this language? Somebody stupid, or somebody with a twisted sense of humor. I have sympathy for anyone trying to learn English as their second language, cause if you didn’t grow up with it, it doesn’t always make a lot of logical sense. Anyway, I’ve gone on a bit of a tangent. Let me get back to the story.

So I get my sugar fix, and get back in the car, surprised and a little worried that I haven’t heard from my lil buddy, so I shoot him a message and ask him if he’s ready. By the time I’ve devoured my sweet treat and burned a couple cancer sticks, I still haven’t heard a word from lil Skinflint, so I use my phone to track his location. I find out that he’s off the grid. His last known location was a good stretch from the subdivision. I check out the area on my map’s feature and zoom in to find that it’s a cotton picking corn field.

Fearing the worst, I haul ass in my sedan towards that location. When I arrive, I pull over on the side of the road behind another car, which is parked all catty wampus. The car’s empty, but I see trampled stalks of corn that cut through the field, so I follow the ethanol paved road. The trek is longer than any walk ever should be, and as I huff and puff along, I wish I’d just driven my car. I consider turning around to get it, but then I hear voices.

I approach with caution, wishing I’d brought along my Louisville slugger, which I keep in my trunk in case I ever gotta bash a fool. But it’s too late for all that now. As I make it to the clearing, I see a shirtless man standing across from lil Skinflint, who’s slumped in the most pathetic form I’ve ever seen, reminding me of that lil Smeegle goblin from that King of the Rings movie. I see a girl there too. She’s a short little stocky thing, and she looks about as sweet as a mouthful of cinnamon. They see me approach, but they don’t pay me much mind, just a glance in my direction and a shrug. I reckon they don’t see me as much of a threat. I reckon I wouldn’t see me as much of a threat, neither, not unless we’re in an enclosed space, and I had my baseball bat.

“What in tarnation is going on?” I holler, hoping I can diffuse whatever this is with my words.

The shirtless man lets out a primal scream, then turns to me and says, “This is a gladiator’s arena! This man has broken the contract of human trust. And now, we must fight… to the death!”

I continue walking closer. As the man’s face comes into focus, I recognize his high cheekbones and sandy colored hair, his ears deformed from countless years of wrestling, escaping neck cranks, and chokes. His name is Rex Temple. He’s fought for every Mixed Martial Arts organization that ever existed and kicked out of every one of em. I remember the last time I saw him fight. They pitted him up against this greenhorn, a fresh faced up-and-comer who was an undefeated kickboxer. Old Rex catches one of his kicks and slams him onto his back, maintaining his hold on the fighter’s leg. Then he drops to his back and cranks on the man’s knee. Knowing he was in trouble, the kid tapped-out immediately, and the ref was on the spot, stepping in and waving off the fight. But the old veteran Rex held on to that leg, despite the referee’s attempts to push him off, and he wrenches it until there’s a popping sound that’s heard throughout the arena. During all of this, Rex Temple is smiling. Even after, while the crowd boos him, he’s got this crazed look in his eyes and this satisfied smirk on his face. He never fought for another organization after that. No promoter would soil the sport by employing such a sadistic madman. After that incident, he fell off the world’s radar, until now.

I step into the arena, putting my mountainous girth between the fearless warrior and the quivering lil Skinflint. I ask Rex Temple what his problem is with my boy.

“I found him in my house. He trashed the place. This is the fairest way I know how to settle this. So you can either get out of the way, or you can go down with him.”

My belly is all kindsa shades of red, but it’s never been yellow. So I step to the ex-pro, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, the world-class wrestler, and tell him, “We’re leaving before this situation gets outta hand. How much for the damages?”  

I pull my wallet from my back pocket and start rifling through the bills, but he does a spinning heel kick that knocks the billfold out of my hand, causing my bills and change to rain on the grass. I rush him, aiming my shoulder at him, hoping my extra weight will be enough to counter my lack of athleticism and force him to the ground, but he sidesteps my advance and drives a well-timed knee into the bridge of my nose. As my dick hits the dirt, I hear the cinnamon girl holler, “He’s getting away!”

I get to my knees and look around. My vision is a bit of a blur, but I can see well enough to know that I’m alone. I can’t believe it. Here I am, trying to protect this little runt, and he uses me as a diversion, an opportunity to high-tail it to the car. He knows I keep a spare key under my wheel-well. He’s prepared to leave me here to die in his stead.

I get to my feet, and start back the way I came, motivated by the rage of a man stabbed in the back by his best friend. I see red as I run, whether it’s actual blood from my nose that gets in my eyes, or anger, I couldn’t tell ya, but I can tell you I’ve never run so fast. Not in my fifty-five years on this earth have I moved like that. When I make it through the cornfield, I see that I’m too late. My sedan’s gone. But waiting there is Rex Temple and his cinnamon girl. I don’t wait to see what they’re going to do before I act, and they don’t see me until I’m right up on em. I grab the unsuspecting Rex by the back of his neck and shift all of my body weight into slamming his head onto the hood of their car and I continue this process until I feel a little monkey on my back wrapping her stubby arms around my throat. The little thing grips on for dear life, but my neck is so thick that she isn’t able to restrict my breathing. I’m not interested in beating the snot out of a woman… don’t believe in it, but I need to get her off me, so I whip my body around full force so that she slams into the windshield of the car. The force does the trick, and she slides off of me onto the car hood. I glare at her, daring her to try me again, but the fight in her eyes is gone. She’s a wounded puppy dog now, and she limps over to pick up the pieces of her boyfriend.

Lil Skinflint escaped death that day. I’m sure that old boy Rex would’ve broken every bone in his body if not for my interference. But I didn’t take kindly to being left in the lurch. And that incident got me thinking about who my friends are. The day after the incident, I went by lil Skinflint’s home to pick my up my sedan and make amends. I told him all was forgiven, and that I understood why he did what he did. Then, I left him with a promise that we’d try to hit another house in about a week and I headed home. On my way, I stopped by the post office so I could mail a quickly penned letter. Then I went on about my life as if the incident never happened.  

Two days later, I’m watching the local news, when a picture of lil Skinflint pops up on the screen. The news anchor said they found his body in a cornfield on the outskirts of town. Every bone in his body broken at the joints. Somebody had taken their sweet time working over lil Skinflint. I reckon he didn’t deserve to go out like that, but it was gonna be either him or me, so I made sure it was him. Rex Temple is a madman, who lives by a code, as twisted as it may be it’s his law — his way of maintaining order in the world. Somebody had to pay for crossing him, and it damn sure wasn’t going to be me.