Stamp of Disapproval

         Junior philatelist Davy Santos placed his rare, three-cent George Washington special into a windowed display card in the center of his table. Booth after booth, lined up side by side, filled the Sarasota Municipal Auditorium, home to the annual Sarasota National Stamp Exhibition. Some dealers displayed their wares on folding display boards, some on fancy swiveling racks, many in albums, a few in locked, glass-covered collectors’ boxes. Except for the George Washington special, Davy had a modest display of stamps in neat transparent envelopes organized in alphabetical order by country. These he’d collected in plastic shoe boxes he’d bought in a dollar store. His sheets of colorful tropical stamps from Venezuela were arranged all around the boxes to attract the customers.

         When doors opened, a swarm of people flowed in and began circulating up and down the rows of vendors. The buzz of fans talking and joking and bargaining soon filled the auditorium.

         A bald man in a brown leather jacket stopped and asked, “Hey, kid. How much for the George Washington?”

         “Nine hundred,” Davy replied. “Just for today.”

         “Fair price,” said the man, who sauntered away.

          Another guy, older and more hunched over, strolled on by. Davy called out, “No fee for looking. Help a soon-to-be-college student get to college, please?” He held out a business card with his name, email address, and phone number and with a photocopy of his three-cent prized possession glued on the back. 

         An hour or so passed, but no one was buying yet. Davy stood when lookers approached; sat when no one was there. He took sips from his can of Coke hidden at his feet under the table beside his now-empty wheel-around cart.

         “Hey, kid! How much for the butterfly?” It was the same bald guy in the brown coat, who’d stopped before. He pointed to one in Davy’s Venezuelan pile.  

         “Five bucks,” said Davy.

         “Humph,” the man said. “All these flowered jobs? Must be truly old. Nothing like the Simon Bolivars you usually see from there.”

         “They’re from the 1950s. My great-grandfather’s.  I inherited his collection when he died.”

         “Humph,” he said again. “Will you take $4.50, kid?”

         “Okay.” After collecting the money and placing the stamp and its transparent envelope into a paper bag, the boy said, “I’ve got some collectibles from Great Britain and a few from Liechtenstein?”

         “Nah. Thanks.”

         Davy had never told a single person at school that he collected stamps even though it was something he’d obsessed over ever since he’d gotten that first envelope full of them from The Mystic Stamp Company for his sixth birthday. He’d been hooked ever since. But guys at school wouldn’t get it. They’d call him weird or nerd or worse. So, he kept his true hobby a guarded secret and only attended conventions in Melbourne or Kissimmee when he was sure no one he knew would be there. Today he was taking a risk. The convention was in his hometown of Sarasota. Hopefully, no one from his circles would ever be caught dead in here.

         With no other sales in sight, Davy abandoned his booth and headed out for a walk. “Watch my stuff for a sec?” he asked the vendor next to him.

         When the lady nodded affirmatively, Davy took off to explore the other dealers’ tables and maybe spot a rarity or two. Two vendors had shops in nearby Bradenton; some came from as far away as Connecticut, Missouri, and Canada. He decided to take a look at the exhibit sponsored by the ABC Stamp Company, which, a sign said, specialized in 19th century U.S. postal history.

         He was admiring an 1894 one-cent stamp when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and faced a girl. Long ponytail, blinky eyes, his age.

         “Hey.”

         “Back at you.”

         “Someone in your family a dealer?” she asked.

         “Nope. Just me.”

         “I’m here with my dad. Boring.” 

         “Nothing boring about philately. Its geography, topography, currency, sports, famous people, even foreign languages.”

         “I guess.”

         “Bet you don’t know the word Germany in German is Deutschland? I learned that from a stamp. I bet I’m the only guy who knows where the island of Mauritius is.”

         She leaned close to him and said, “So where is it?”

         “It’s an island in the Indian Ocean, off Madagascar.”

         “Oh, I know Madagascar. That’s a movie.”

         “No, it’s a place. Once a British colony.”

         “Well, you sure know a lot.” Blinky-eyed Girl held an extra-large paper boat full of french fries in her left hand.

         “No food or drink in the exhibit area. You know that, right?”

         “I know, but fries taste awful when they get cold so I better eat ‘em up.” She swirled a fry in a glob of ketchup then stuck the whole thing in her mouth.

         Just then something on the ABC man’s table caught Davy’s eye. “A twenty-four-cent inverted Jenny?” he exclaimed. “You’re kidding me! It’s a fake, isn’t it?”

         “That’s no album weed, kid!” the vendor said. “It’s the real deal.”

         “You mean a reissue?” the girl asked.

         “Nope. Cost me $510,000 to be exact. The asking price is $600k.”

         “Not a forgery?” Davy said. “Aren’t you afraid of losing it?”

         “It’s insured. Wanna hold it, kid?”

         “Yeah.” Half a million dollars in the palm of his hand and Davy’s knees trembled. “Big yikes!” He felt like he was in the company of royalty. In a way, he was. “You actually gonna sell this thing? Why don’t you hold on to it?” He handed it back to the vendor, who placed it on the table in front of him.

         “Got some bills to pay and at my age, if I don’t travel the world soon, I’ll never make it. Here’s my business card.”

         Davy read, “Sam Houston, ABC Stamp Company, Cleveland, Ohio.”  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the girl was flipping through an ABC catalog.

         “Attention dealers, collectors, and visitors. Attention, please.” Davy and Sam turned their heads toward the front doors, where the loudspeakers were located.

          “Our noon auction will be starting shortly in the theater area at the entrance of the convention hall. Don’t miss it!” The announcement was repeated twice.

         Davy shrugged. He never entered into any auction. He was too afraid his stamp would be undersold. He turned on his heel about to head back to his booth when a hand grabbed his shoulder.

         “You little thief. Nice try. Hand it over.”

         “What?”

         “You know what?”

         “I don’t.” Davy winced from the squeeze on his shoulder bone.

         “The inverted Jenny. My inverted Jenny. Give it. Right now.”

         “I don’t have it. I gave it to you.”

         “You took it. During the announcement.”

         “No, I’d never. I didn’t, I swear.”

         “Hand it over. This second, you little punk.” Now Sam was shaking Davy, who heard his teeth rattle in his head.       

         Someone walking by said, “They teach them young to steal!”

         “I didn’t steal anything!”

         His shouting and Sam’s fury attracted a throng gathering around the booth. The crowd parted to let a man come on through. It was the bald guy in the brown leather jacket.

         “What’s going on, Sam?”

         “This here punk stole the Jenny. The Jenny!” Sam yelled.

         “Let him go, Sam. He’s just a kid. Wouldn’t know value if it bit him.”

         “Oh yeah? He stole it, clear as day.”

         Davy wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and took a couple of deep breaths. His knees wobbled and his stomach wanted to heave. “I didn’t, no!”

         The bald guy said, “Better get back to your table, kid.”

         Davy’s legs moved but he lost his bearings and traipsed up and down the rows hopelessly before he found his way to his meager wares. A few minutes later Sam, accompanied by a six-foot-tall, paunchy security guard, showed up.

         “Search him, Hal.”

         Davy felt the tears well up.

         “Empty your pockets. The other one. Now the shirt pocket. Take off your belt. Remove your shoes.”

         Davy did as he was told, moving through this bad dream as if he’d been cast in a movie of his deepest fears. Except he was the accused instead of the accuser, and the stolen item was an inverted Jenny instead of a George Washington.         

         Sam stepped behind Davy’s table and rifled through his cart. The guard whipped envelopes out of the shoeboxes and tossed them on the floor. One by one every aerogram and piece of postal stationery lay haphazardly on the floor. 

         “I don’t have it. I told you.”

         “We’ll find it,” the guard said. “I know how.” Sam and the guard disappeared down a row of tables. The lady vendor who had watched Davy’s items during his absence stared.

         The boy began picking up loose stamps that had fallen out of their protective coverings. Some had come off of their paper hinges. One sheet of Venezuelan tropicals was torn down the middle. His fist pounded the tablecloth. Those wonders that had belonged to Great-grandpa Jake could never be replaced. He took another sip of Coke to steady his nerves, he hoped.

         Suddenly, a stern voice rang through the hall. “You’re under arrest!” It was a cop. A female. With a nightstick in hand and a holstered gun. Sam was by her side.

          What? Why? I didn’t do anything. “I don’t have it.”

         “You had it. Where’d you stash it? You little hoodlum!” Sam grabbed Davy’s shirt in his fists and yanked him forward. “I want my stamp. Now!”

         “I’ll handle this,” the policewoman said. “Hands behind your back.” 

         As she read him his rights, Davy’s mind was a blur. All of it was a blur—where they exited, how he got to the patrol car, how he got seated in its back seat cage. “What about my things? My money box? My credit card reader?”

         “You should have thought of that before you stole a million-dollar stamp.”

         “Half a million,” Davy corrected.

         Officer Hastings adjusted the mirror then shoved her ponytail into her cap.

         Ponytail! “Wait! I know who took it. I can get it back.”

         “Too late.” She inserted the key into the ignition; the engine roared to life.

         “But I know who has it. Listen to me. Take me back inside. I promise I won’t try anything. I’ll get the stamp back. That’s all anybody wants, right? Please, give me a chance. I know who has it. I know.”

         “Try anything and I’ll Tase you.”

         It took all of Davy’s courage not to bawl in front of the other vendors as the female officer led him, handcuffed, up one row and down another. Finally, he spotted the cute girl with the blinky eyes and ponytail. He recognized her orange T-shirt and her skin-tight skinny jeans. “Her!” Davy said as he pointed. “Look in her basket of fries.”

         “What? I will not.”

         “Look in it. She was right beside me. She walked around with that basket of fries like it was filet mignon and I only saw her take a single bite.”

         “Excuse me, but I need to see your fries?” Officer Hastings’ face turned a crimson red.

         “The food court is over there.” Blinky-eyed Girl hugged the paper basket to her chest like her life depended on it.

         “Milly, what’s going on?” A blinky eyed man with her identical features pushed his display aside and spilled her fries onto his tablecloth.

         “Nothing, Daddy.”

         But there, among the greasy mess, was the inverted Jenny, still in its acrylic protective case. “Milly? Where did you get this?”

         “I don’t know.”

         “What do you mean, you don’t know? It just jumped into your food? Do you have any idea how much prison time you could get for something like this?”

         The girl’s faced paled, and her chin began to quiver. “I don’t know, Daddy. I don’t.”

         “Sir, don’t worry. It’s just a cheap forgery,” Davy lied. “So she isn’t in any trouble. But this officer is gonna return it to its rightful owner, just so it doesn’t get mistaken for the real thing.”

         When Davy slipped by the girl, she taunted, “Don’t need your help, you little turd!”

         The female officer paraded a handcuffed Davy back to Sam’s table, where she handed over the priceless beauty.

         “That’s my Jenny. My Jenny! Officer, you’re a lifesaver! Wait, why are you removing the handcuffs? This kid is a thug. He stole a stamp worth thousands of dollars then took us on a wild goose--”

         “--No, sir, he didn’t. And he saved the reputation of the girl who did.”

         Davy rubbed one wrist then the other. Head down, he trudged along the rows of vendors till he reached his booth. Bending down, he scooped up the loose stamps, the empty shoe boxes, the broken lids.

         Soon a voice at his side said, “Need a hand, kid?”

         Davy looked up into the eyes of Sam Houston, who was handing him a brand-new Tupperware container in one hand, his three-cent George Washington in the other.  

         “I do. I do need a hand. Just don’t call me kid.”

         Davy accepted the man’s apology. Glad the convention was winding down, glad a female cop had believed him, glad he hadn’t had to call his mom from a police station for the very first time in his life. Happy to be just a weird, stamp- collecting kid. But still, it might help if he didn’t look the part. Thus, he made a pledge: Tomorrow he’d stop shaving and start growing a beard and hopefully some respect. 

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