The Heist

 32,000 dollars, that’s how much Mr. Torres, the economics and English teacher made a year. Approximately 2600 a month, when you took out taxes, healthcare, retirement, and fees it was down to $1600. He had studied psychology and minored in kinesiology in college, his mother badgered him to study engineering or maybe become a doctor, doctors made a ton of money and are recession proof, that was her go to line. She would deliver it snidely whenever he asked for gas money. But he wanted to study something that made him happy, anyways, wasn’t education the key to success and the middle class, regardless of its utility? And he wanted to make the world a little better if not a little hopeful.

        Every month he would pay 400 dollars for his student loans, nearly the same amount as two-thirds of his rent, in total a thousand dollars to sleep under a roof and pay for his education he already got. Sometimes, he felt like he was back in college and was only able to save fifty dollars a month. His parents had bad credit, and they never qualified for the loans and didn’t qualify for grants or free money. Ironically, they made too much for him to receive grants but not enough for them to be able to pay for his college. So, he took out loans, reminding himself that education was an investment, and he was worth it. So, with his diminutive fifteen hundred dollars a month, Mr. Torres needed to find an extra revenue source, vis a vis, another job. Living off of negative money was not a possibility. Apartments weren’t cheap in Dallas, and he didn’t want to miss any more student loan payments, he knew how credit worked.

        He found a job at an amusement park, not in the amusement park but in the warehouse. The pay was laughable, but they offered over time and were flexible. He would work the school week and the next day wake up a five in the morning, catching sleep and rest where he found it. Sure, working six or seven days out of the week wasn’t necessarily healthy but people gotta eat, and his car had finally broken down, the little sedan that smelled like Taco Bell and had a broken air conditioner for a couple of years needed a new fuel pump. Also, moving into an apartment was more expensive then he thought, when did cheap furniture become so expensive?

        The warehouse was an assemblage of hot air, flatbeds and somewhat shady characters. About half of the workers were retirement age and the rest were struggling through college or balding and bored. His shifts were monotonous but at least he would be able to listen to his headphones during deliveries, he would listen to podcasts about the economy and food criticism, while loading pallets full of ketchup packets, cooking oil, straws, foil trays, funnel cake mix, and whatever else the food stands needed and lug them into the right place. At the end of the deliveries, he would deliver beer and stare at the kegs and longnecks loving and longingly, worrying that the expired beer would just be thrown down the sink. He was right.

        Johnny was also a teacher, he taught chemistry instead of economics. He had been there for nine years and had three children from two different wives. His first wife had lost her mind and got addicted to oxytocin due to depression and an abundance of pills. He had been wary of pills ever since, even Tylenol. Instead, he would smoke cigarettes like they were oxygen and carried a scent of mildew and smoky sweat. Sometimes his body would hurt like he had been in a severe car accident, he would just grit his teeth or punch a wall when his shoulder buckled. Whenever it was cold, he could feel his clavicle wincing, he had broken it a high school football game, a linebacker and defensive lineman had landed on his shoulder, separating the bone into two pieces like a wishbone. Unfortunately, this school year his deductible for his insurance had gone up, and he hadn’t received a raise in a decade, so going to the doctor was out of the question.

        They would work fifteen-hour shifts, getting in before the sun emerged from the sky and leave when the dark reigned supreme. Mr. Torres hated waking up at five of clock and getting home to cold pizza or a left-over beer, but he needed to save up for a down payment for a new used car. Whenever he fixed something, something else broke. His car was like a person who refused to eat food, it was dying and unwaveringly disobedient. The engine sounded like a disjointed blender and the tread on his tires was nonexistent, he would drive on the highway white knuckled and with a persistent headache.  

        After they finished deliveries around ten or eleven in the morning, they would pull orders onto a pallet. They would put the heaviest things at the bottom, normally boxes of soda called bibs, and then they would put something less heavy in the middle and souvenir bottles or plastic cups on the top, completing their square pyramid of consumption and entertainment. Some of the boxes were cumbersome, and things tended to move around every month, but it wasn’t that bad. At least they didn’t have to work three jobs or beg for their money.

        Afterwards, they would sit in the breakroom contemplating if they should get lunch at a fast food place or the slimy worker cantina, where the food tasted either like paper, cardboard or a hot lamp. But the food was cheap, and if you poured generous amounts of seasoning on it, you could taste something resembling flavor. The chicken strips had various consistencies and were only three bucks, could you find a better deal? They even included lukewarm fries, at least the ketchup was free.

        They would talk about their week during lunch, asking if they had any classes from hell or if they had any walkthroughs from administrators that week. For the most part, the answers were somewhat optimistic but hyphenated with complaints about old textbooks and desks that squeaked like metal palindromes hitting each other. The students seemed to be getting worse and classes were starting to resemble the DMV when everyone went to renew their licenses, super crowded and restless, they felt like anchovies.

        Mr. Torres’ classes averaged thirty-seven students, even though he only had thirty-five desks including his, he had over two hundred students, even though the human brain could only handle one hundred and fifty social relationships. He would let any extra students sit in his desk and ask his neighbor for a desk almost every day. In his fourth period which had thirty-eight students, he hoped someone would be absent, because if not, the only place to sit was on the floor or on top of a desk. On top of that, he had to teach kids Shakespeare and the differences between a simile, metaphor, analogy and an aphorism, while ensuring that they understood the importance of alliteration.

They didn’t give a fuck and a quarter of the class would feign interest, while another half would try to play on their phone, look at their various feeds or send a Snap, unsurprisingly they didn’t care about the Montagues and Capulets. The remaining students would look at the words intently, trying to grasp their meaning.

         Needless to say, Mr. Torres’s observations had not been going well. He received comments like, students aren’t engaged, teacher is unfamiliar with teaching strategies, unclear objective and standard, pacing is slow. He would read through his observation notes, looking for a positive note and try not to cry. Half of the time his emotions won out, realizing that not only was he broke and in debt, but also one of the teachers he hated in school, except younger and overzealous but ultimately ineffective. His mentor teacher was honest and said she had seen worse, she thought it would be his first and last year of teaching.

        After lunch at the theme park, they unloaded trucks until five or six at night, it was repetitive and not great on the back, but they had the ability to go at their own pace. Mr. Torres would listen to old playlists and wonder about his failed relationships, the girl that got away and the other girl that got away and the girl that said she loved him. Johnny would also listen to music, normally eighties rock and call his wife around seven, asking her if he could stay another hour. He wanted to get as much over-time as possible, they were planning their first family vacation in three years, but his oldest daughter had just gotten braces and his namesake son had gotten appendicitis the same week. He thought his insurance covered the procedure and he was right, all they had to pay was the deductible, which was five grand. Who knew removing a vestigial organ was so expensive?

        After the trucks were unloaded, they sat in the break room, falling asleep and waiting for extra deliveries or as they liked to call them hot shots. After several months of working together, they started opening up about the hardships of teaching and living life. Johnny would tell him about how his youngest daughter, and how his school had cut back on science supplies, he couldn’t remember the last time they had performed an experiment. They had taken out all of the Bunsen burners years ago, and other than showing them safety equipment, graduated cylinders, beakers, microscopes and hot plates, the equipment stayed in the storage closets, imprisoned and waiting. Trying to find some light, like photons in a dark room..

        They repeated this routine for months, then years, then Mr. Torres had reached his three-year anniversary. He finally received a thirty-cent raise, which made him laugh, wondering where did he go wrong, wondering if things would get better. Johnny had a bad couple years too, he didn’t receive a raise, but the insurance premiums had gone up for his health insurance yet again, the state couldn’t afford teacher raises, so he had to work Saturday and Sundays now. On top of that, his second wife had lost her job due to automation and was pregnant, they didn’t need that many cashiers anymore. She was starting to look like a jellybean, an expensive one.

        In comparison, Mr. Torres had a better year, he had started to become a decent teacher. He now understood that teaching was about finding a way to overcome his lack of resources and about passing the standardized tests, everything else was secondary or unnecessary, no one really cared if you taught. Attendance was important but that was an afterthought, the administrators always ended the meetings with their mantra, numbers don’t lie, don’t be a zero, be a hero. Engaging students were important too, but you didn’t get data for engagement, just test scores.

        Mr. Torres strolled into summer, teaching was actually getting easier, and his scores were actually getting better. He was excited to finally have some time off, maybe travel or do something spontaneous. He would scroll through his phone, seeing his college friends touring through Europe or buying a car with an expensive monthly payment, he thought, must be nice to have rich parents who had money to pay for college. He was working sixty to seventy hours a week at the warehouse, putting his body through a triathlon of time, exhaustion and physical wear and tear. Johnny did the same thing, praying his wife could find a job that paid more than minimum wage. Praying for some winning lottery numbers or a miracle. The next day a miracle drove by, an armored one.

        It was an intensely hot day, and the park was going to be super busy. It would be nonstop work and it was clearing a hundred degrees. The armored security truck had a bold black line running through the perimeter of the car. It came around seven a clock in the morning, an hour before the park opened, and would deliver money to the cash office. They would see it occasionally, driving around the park, wondering how much money it was carrying.

Mr. Torres curiously asked, “How much money do you think it has?” He hesitated but said, “Do you think they carry guns?”

        Johnny jokingly responded, “A million dollars, we should rob it.” He paused, “Why not?” His daughter needed a new pair of glasses and his wife’s insulin had doubled last month. Also, he felt like he had a hernia and his doctor recently told him he had plantar fasciitis, the bottom of his feet had a torn tendon, but he couldn’t afford to stop working or walking. His son wasn’t doing too great either.

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        It wasn’t hard to set up the heist, all it required was synchronization, a plan, and a lot of luck. And Johnny didn’t have much time, he was on the verge of losing his house due to three months of missing payments and Mr. Torres’ used car had stop working all together and needed five thousand dollars for a new engine.

        The plan was to hide near the money truck and wait till it got to the railroad tracks, then right when the truck was approaching the railroad tracks, the lights would loudly flicker red while the boom gate would drop preventing anyone from crossing. The crossbuck, a traffic sign that is an intersection of white and black stripes, would stay still, while it watched the robbery of the century.

        They knew they only had twenty seconds to plant the thermite, watch it go off and hope that their assumption was right. That assumption was since they didn’t carry weapons, the drivers would freak out and run for their lives or stay in their seats. Worst case, if they fought back, they had pepper spray and a stun gun they had found online for fifty bucks. They had gotten free shipping and a coupon for a matching taser. Gun guns were out of the picture and out of their budget.

        Once the thermite went off, they would grab and throw the duffel bags of money over the fence which was ten feet away. They already knew who they’re getaway driver would be, a retiree who had lost his pension due to an accounting ‘irregularity’. Everything else would be easy, but it had to be done soon, the eviction notice wasn’t that far away, and Mr. Torres really couldn’t afford a monthly bus card. Those were fifty dollars he didn’t have, and they didn’t accept credit cards.

        The last part was ingenious, they would scramble back into the park through a side entrance and continue their deliveries, throwing their masks into the closest trash compactor and hang out in the employee break room. They would act shocked once security called a meeting. They didn’t even have to sweat a hundred calories before the robbery was done, and it was a hundred ten degrees that day, everyone was sweating.

        The thermite reached over a thousand degrees and the door blew off like a plastic cap off a soda. Johnny grabbed the duffle bag of money, wondering how many zeros it had, while Mr. Torres menacingly pointed a stun gun at the side mirror, shouting obscenities like they were the only words in the dictionary. He used his gym teacher voice and acted like he was holding a loaded nine-millimeter.

        The passenger doors stayed magically shut, and Johnny ran to the fence, tossing the duffle bag like it was a discus or javelin. The car drove off in the distance, hitting the speed bumps aggressively. Thankfully, the cameras were only on when the park was open, security sometimes said too much, they were trying to save on electricity costs and amusement parks have a lot of overhead.

They couldn’t believe it, they had pulled it off.

        Later they split the money, forty grand divided by three, approximately thirteen grand each, pretty much what they made in a couple of years working in an amusement park.

Johnny saved his house, and Mr. Torres got a sedan that was from the same decade they were residing in, it even had Bluetooth and several unnecessary airbags. The air conditioner felt like a wave of Alaska in the summer, and the gas mileage was great too. It broke down less than a year later and Johnny’s mortgage went up too, he didn’t know what an adjustable rate mortgage meant.