The Strawberry Thief

TW: PTSD, war violence

Infuriating.  That’s what it is.  Bad enough there are plenty of wild animals to feast upon my garden, but it seems I have a human thief helping him or herself to my strawberries.  Even with my six foot chain link fence, I have a two legged thief who scales it and comes over after midnight to eat some of my strawberries. What can be done?  What can be done to discourage this thief from taking what is clearly not his, but does not heed barriers intended to keep him out of my acre and a half that I have cultivated for my own subsistence.  

What do I expect?  This is not exactly an affluent community known for the transient population that camps out in places down near the river.  There was a time when this community took pride in its pioneer spirit, cutting good farmland from the endless forest.  And as I examine the disruption of my strawberries, I have to resent this intrusion.  

“Herchel, you can’t set traps.” Marshall Stallman tells me down at the Coffee Pit Stop where we meet for coffee on the weekends when he’s off duty.

“Why not?  If I was to shoot him when he’s trespassing on my land, it would be considered justified.” I pour in some sugar into my cup of joe. 

“Even that would require an investigation.” He shakes his head with a dour expression on his face, because investigation translates into paperwork of writing a report and he hates having to write anything beyond a sentence. 

I bought the place a few years ago when the town council wanted to tear it down.  It was an acre and a half, but the house had fallen into disrepair, not having been occupied in over a decade.  My brother and I were contractors so after buying the place for next to nothing, we refurbished the place with electricity and running water just a few yards from the river.  It was the perfect place for a man who became worn out by the rat race of the city and wanted a peaceful retreat.  Over time, I cultivated my acre and a half, growing a variety of vegetables, some I sell to local restaurants and the rest I keep for my own use.  My strawberries became my cash crop with some of the local businesses willing to pay top dollar.  

Now that I have a strawberry thief, my profit margin has been cut.  Ben Oates, owner of the Coffee Pit Stop is one of my best customers.  Sitting with Marshall Stallman and me, he sighs, “I think you need a video camera and catch the guy in the act.” 

“Yeah, that would do it.” Marshall Stallman nodded.

“I’ve got one in this place to make sure I don’t have any unwelcome visitors coming in my place after I lock up.”  He smiled as he got up to greet a customer who just entered his coffee shop.

“Camera.  It’s what a lot of the places are using.” He finished his cinnamon bun. “Going fishing later. Wanna come?” 

“Naw.” I shook my head, “Think I’ll head down to hardware and get me one of those cameras.”

“Fish have been biting.” Tom Stallman shrugged.

“I’d better take care of my little problem.” I put my palms on the table and came to my feet.  I threw enough money next to my empty cup to cover the tab and tip.  I waved to Ben on my way out the door.

Schuckman’s Hardware was a few miles down the crooked River Road, but it had just about everything you could imagine jammed into a very confined area.  Mel Schuckman, the owner, greeted me, “Hey Jerry, what can I do you for?”

“I am looking for a surveillance camera.” I answered.

“Having some problems with a varmint.” He half shrugged. 

“I wish, then I could just set a trap, but this one is human.” I sighed as I followed him down the narrow aisles of his store.

“This oughta do it.” He handed me a box.  On the box was a picture of a video camera and a man and woman smiling contently.  In big yellow letters was “Security Camera, anything worth protecting needs security.” 

“Forty five dollars, huh?” I looked at the price tag.

“One percent satisfaction.” He pushed his blue baseball cap to the back of his bald head. 

“Alright, I’ll take it.” I put it on the counter while he rang it up.

“I’d like to know who has been scaling your fence.” He peered over his glasses at the end of his nose. “We get lots of transients around here since the weather is kinda temperate.” 

“I don’t care.” I replied abruptly, “I just want this guy caught fair and square.” 

“Don’t blame you.” He nodded as I took the box and left his store.

While the directions were written in four languages, I found the one written in English and within the matter of an hour, I had installed the security camera.  There was a remote control that I could use to operate from inside my house.  

So before turning out my light for the evening, I set the security camera. 

Living on the river, you are treated to some very scenic sunsets and tonight was one of the better ones as I sat on my front porch in my porch swing feeling confident that I was going to catch that rascal who was pilfering my strawberries. 

As I sat there admiring the beauty of the melting orange sky, I reflected on my own life.  It has not always been an easy journey.  I have had to cross some pretty rough terrain, but don’t let no one tell you that Jerry Mantooth is a quitter even though I spent the first few years of my life learning lessons the hard way after my parents were killed in a car accident on the Los Angeles Freeway when I was four years old.  Someone told me once, I had an older brother, but as you travel through the system, things like that don’t seem to matter as much.  I’m sure if I had a brother, he'd probably be dead by now.  

When I was fifteen, I held up a liquor store for some strawberry wine.  What an idiot I was.  I went to juvenile hall and got out when I was seventeen.  They placed me in a home for bad kids, but I did not learn my lesson in that sinkhole.  No, it took an army recruiter to sell me straight.  They taught me to jump out of planes and through all of the other lessons, I became a man.  Ten years I wore the uniform until an IED put me in the hospital.  That disability check does come in handy, though. 

Out here, I don’t have to hear some officer shouting at me or telling me I have to jump out of an airplane. Yeah, but as peacefully quiet these nights are out here near the river, I wake up when I hear that device going off in our Humvee that killed three of my crew.  I can hear them screaming, but the medic got there too late for them.  

My nightmare is always the same.  I wake up, but by the time I stumble out into my garden, the strawberry thief has already struck.  He or she always leaves a mess.  Maybe that’s what makes me mad.  I am known as a meticulous man.  

Next morning, I wake up.  After completing my morning ritual, I run into the garden.  The strawberry thief has been there.  Snatching up the camera,  I can’t wait to see what it will show me. I can download it to my computer.  It amazes me how much the world depends on technology, but that doesn’t matter, all I care about is catching my strawberry thief.

I download the video to my computer and hit “play.”  Most of the tape is just a still life of my garden and I fast forward past it until I see a shadow.  I press play and watch as someone is sitting in my garden, eating my strawberries, but the image is not clear enough for me to see who it is.  I will let Marshall Stallman have a look, maybe it’s someone he’ll be able to identify. 

The nightmare always starts the same.  Our crew was picked for escort duty on a supply run to Kandahar from our base in Kabul.  Using the desert pass was about as dangerous as things got, but we had run that route a dozen times with no incidents.  It was early in the morning when we started out on our run.  In an empty section of the road, the driver saw something that he could not identify and our radio guy got confirmation that it was just a piece of some vehicle left abandoned in the road.  It wasn’t.  As soon as our front tires went over it there was an explosion.  The driver and radio man were killed instantly, but the gunner had his insides blown open and did not die until the chopper got him to the field hospital.  Meanwhile I was next to the rear gunner and neither one of us could hear a thing, not the chopper rotors beating hard against the air or the gunner screaming as the medic tried to keep his insides from sliding out.  There was nothing he could do.  Too much blood.  The ground crew had to hose the chopper out of not just blood, but some of the gunner’s innards as well.  You can’t get something like that out of your head.  The guy at the VA told me in due time, I’d get over it.  He was full of crap, you know.  

“I don’t know who the heck it is, Jerry.” Marshall Stallman shook his head as he watched the video for the fourth time.  

“I wonder who this freak is.” I muttered. 

“Hmpt, I don’t know what we can do.  I just don’t have the manpower at this time to catch your thief.” He shook his head.

“Then maybe it’s time I took the law into my own hands.” I sighed.

“You know bad things can happen.” Marshall Stallman reminded me, “But I can’t tell you not to defend your own property.”

“I ain’t aiming to kill this fella.  He is a fella, right?” I asked him, keeping one eye open. 

“Unless it’s a woman dressed like a man.” He nodded.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of confusion over things these days.” I chuckled as I left his office.  I got into my jeep and drove home.  

A cool breeze blew in from the river and the sun painted the sky in the brilliant colors no artist could ever have conceived.  I was slowly drinking a beer, letting the hypnotic effect of the early evening do its magic.  Tonight I was going to catch that strawberry thief one way or another.  I set the video camera and got comfortable in my porch swing.  

I had nodded off for an hour or so when I heard a noise that made me sit up. Footsteps, no doubt.  Slowly, I eased off my porch swing and picked up my baseball bat as I headed for the strawberry patch. I was wearing moccasins so my own footsteps would not be heard. It was well past sunset, but I knew the grounds well enough to make my way through the dark.

When I got to the strawberries, he was sitting there eating my strawberries without a care in the world.  Without a care, that is until he saw me standing there holding my baseball bat.

“Who are you?” I asked, waving the bat menacingly over his head. 

“Don’t hit me, mister.” He dropped the fruit and held up his hands.

“Why are you trespassing in my garden?” I asked, losing some of my anger and hatred as he stared up at me with his blue eyes without any hint of malice in his face.  

“I like strawberries.” He swallowed what was in his mouth. 

“So do I.” I insisted.

“My name is Troy Mantooth.” He stood up.  He was a few inches taller than I was, but he was spindly and thin with strawberries smeared all over his face.

“So is mine.” I took a step back and looked at him closely.  There was something quite familiar about him.  He wore his hair about shoulder length, but his blue eyes were a stark contrast to his darker complexion. It took Jerry several seconds to register that he felt like he was looking in a mirror.

He did not know the name of his older brother, all he could remember was when the lady from the state came in to take them away.

“Where are your parents, Troy?” He asked, his words came out of his mouth very slowly.

“My parents are dead.” He answered.

“Did you have a younger brother?” Jerry could not take his eyes off Troy.

“Yes, but he is dead, too.  My caseworker said so when I was seven.” He answered.

“Your caseworker lied.” Jerry spat on the ground. “I am your younger brother.”

Troy Mantooth stood there like a statue, his eyes fixed on Jerry.

“All these years.” His words were strained. “They told me you were dead.”

“No, they lied.” Jerry fought back his tears. 

“Why would they do a thing like that?” Troy just kept shaking his head as Jerry embraced his long lost brother.

“They couldn’t keep us together.” Jerry said into his brother’s ear, “And it’s easier to lie than to tell the truth to a seven year old.”

Jerry led his brother inside his house and made him some coffee. Troy told Jerry of his story of one foster parent after another, each of them telling the caseworker that Troy was much too difficult to handle as he kept running away.

“I believed that if I ran hard and fast enough, I would catch up to you all.” He said while sipping the coffee, “Dad once told me that when people die they go to a special place.  I figured I would one day find that place.” 

They both laughed when he said this.

“Caseworkers weren’t so understanding.” He stopped laughing and stared at his hands for a moment, “I like strawberries.  When I was at one of my foster placements, they played “Strawberry Fields Forever” by the Beatles.  And I figured if I could find that strawberry field, I could live there forever and maybe I’d find all the people that were taken from me. So, let me take you down, cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields forever, nothing to get hung about.” 

Jerry Mantooth had stopped believing in miracles when he turned ten years old and decided marajuana could easily take the place of miracles, but now sitting here was a miracle he had not counted on.

“I just kept running...looking for those strawberry fields forever.” Troy looked into his brother’s dark brown eyes. “I had these blue eyes.  I guess I got them from mom.  I knew yours were dark brown.  I knew one day I would find you if I just kept looking hard enough.”

“I don’t know how, but we found each other, didn’t we?” Jerry took hold of his brother’s hand.

“We sure did.”  He nodded.

Jerry would drive into town with Troy and stop to see Marshal Stallman to tell him, instead of finding a strawberry thief, he ended up finding his long lost brother.