The Great Emerald Heist

No boy ever learned the concept of justice right off without the whipping post. Elective goodness seemed too complicated, too many fruits of temptation not to slip into vice and transgression. The trick, it seemed, was to sidestep a whipping or a clout to the head. Taking something that didn’t belong to you—many parents agreed on that sermonette--just wasn’t done. Walking the path of thievery was risky. You never knew if some stout mother lying in wait with a wooden spoon might lay a purple knot on your coconut.

Sin and sanction seemed an abstraction easy enough to understand, but it was the Batman show that kept it clean. He was the one to thwart bad guys and to hand out sound floggings to whoever scoffed at the law. Yet, his little speech to Lydia Limpet that crime did not pay was an upside-down concept to me, all slogan and puffery, an untruth. I was determined to riddle his adage with holes of logic. Crime could pay, and pay well, and I set out one day to paint that highfalutin moon in blood.

It was the Joker and his men stealing from the Ali Baba Jewelry Store that egged me on. I decided to hit the nearest emporium that trafficked in jewels, S.S. Kresge’s Department Store. That afternoon I pushed through the front door alone, meandered about the store, not a penny to my pocket. I wore no mask, no criminal’s costume, just the usual cap, obligatory striped shirt, dungarees and Keds. No adult noticed, no blowhard in a crime-fighting outfit stared me down. I drifted past the teal blue booths of Kresge’s grill and caught whiffs of greasy hamburgers, my mouth watering at the sight of a boy and his sister spooning through 25-cent hot fudge sundaes with whipped topping.  

Touring toys, I was light on my feet, fingering stock at the pegboard wall where hundreds of Hot Wheels hung stickered at the lofty cost of sixty-six cents each. I wanted something better, a talisman of some kind, a gem worn only in risqué social crowds. Loafing my way past the foul smells of overfed pet fish and sickly parakeets, I stopped at a display of coloring books and crayons before wandering to a center-aisle table overspread with women’s necklaces and bracelets. Crowning the mound was a glittering gold necklace chained to a pendant with an egg-shaped emerald. Its dark vision of eternity captivated my hands to pick it up and to give it a mystical rub. The verdant stone was undoubtedly worth millions, I decided. During those precious seconds of hypnosis, some sinister voice whispered to put it in my pocket.

A flashback stirred, opulent images of the Joker’s cask of jewels. I remember him prancing through a museum of rare artifacts. He was a clown with the roar of a lion, a madcap of genius. His ambitious plan worked, and Princess Sandra was out one rare diamond. Why shouldn’t Kresge’s Department Store in Arlington Plaza, too, suffer a loss now and then? After all, Zelda the Great stole the Star of Samarkand, a shivering jawbreaker emerald, and was never once whipped with a switch or beaten with her father's belt.

I spied at a short distance the old woman at the register, the perfect seconds of opportunity ticking. She was busy ringing up a heavyset lady whose cart was loaded down with Turkish towels, boxes of chocolate-covered peanuts, and oversized ladies’ underwear. This five-finger discount required baseball surveillance, a darting glance from under the bill of my cap. The coast was clear, aisles empty, no manager in sight. With the emerald necklace tucked in the palm of my hand, I ducked under the table of jewels. All I could see was a pair of pressed slacks passing by, set to the shuffling sound of soft-soled shoes.

I was out of sight of the saggy-jowled lady, busy poking keys at the register like a song of prosperity. It was time for business. I slid the emerald into my front pocket and popped up. Down the aisles I began to fake browse, hobbled strangely by a limp. The hot beryl stone turned albatross, its fresh guilt greater than all my sinner’s stains. For that reason, I could not shake the peculiar gate with that emerald feeling every bit the size of a plum. The bulge in my pocket gave an awkward sensation of hiding a baseball. Even my leg hurt.

Wandering from aisle to aisle, I was a wounded duck. Every moral sensation to dump the stone was met by the resilience of my inner bandit. I had the jewel and wasn’t about to turn loose of it. Finally, the customer up front had disappeared. No one occupied the space between the chrome divider and the checkout stand. My forehead flushed as I tottered toward the doors emblazoned "EXIT," my chest expanding and deflating like a football. I reached for the door handle when the old woman cried out, “Thank you for shopping Kresge’s!” The alarm of her voice spun me like a spinning top coming off its string. I grinned sheepishly and gave a feeble wave as she stood there snapping her gum, filing her nails absentmindedly.

The immediacy of fresh air swirling into auto exhausts and the shifting smells of cigarettes and Plaza Donuts renewed my soul. I had a new lease on escape. No one raced after me, no one shouted, “Stop that boy!” And certainly not a soul striding along the plaza sidewalks realized I had just stolen the Emerald of the City. I strode under the covered walk, cut across an access drive to a perpendicular sidewalk, and continued past the state liquor store.

I was quicksilver, a peasant boy looking to vamoose. A sensation came over me that no big cheese could stop me now. No feather was as light as my shoes breezing over the walk. J.C. Penney’s mannequins, normally a source of idle fascination, now blurred with hurry. I ignored, too, several half-smoked cigarettes discarded on the dirty walk, the Beacon Journal news box, and a payphone, where I customarily snapped the coin return in hopes of a ten-cent windfall.

Escape was suddenly no pipedream, the end of the walk marked freedom. I threw a nervous glance over my shoulder and cleared the corner of Western Auto. I found myself behind the plaza facade. My breathing relaxed. A commercial dumpster met me there, anchoring the crest of a slow ramp that gave way to a sloping parking lot. The place was empty, just me and the brick walls. The Arlington Plaza was a coin, and I was free as a jailbird on her tails side, all barricade and brickwork. What an abrupt change from the store fronts, the heads side polished glass and inviting imagery.

I dawdled there, eying the distant woods should I need to flee. I went to my pocket and studied the angular cuts of the emerald. I did not want the necklace. The links offered a trail back to pilferage, an unnecessary golden rope as evidence. I broke the chain from the pendant and lobbed it over the wall of the trash receptacle. What a burden to lose, nothing short of tossing a lady finger firecracker and getting away. The deed was done, as dirty as they come. I was lambing it now, a fugitive from the justice system of the Greater American Retailers of America.

With the naked emerald in hand, I trotted off. For kicks I imagined police in pursuit. I built up my speed until my lungs were puffing to irregular rhythm. Slowing where the sewer creek gurgled under Virginia Avenue, I held up the booty against the sun’s rays and admired the stone. Solitude knew no greater measure than me standing there on a dirt bank shivering and shaking with forbidden excitement. I was free, a boy clutching the Emerald of the World.

By the time I reached home, I had slipped the gem into my back pocket. On the porch I snapped the front door handle, slipped through the kitchen, and sealed up my bedroom door behind me with the airy sound of one’s face coming to rest on a pillow. With no door lock, I eased my baseball bat between the wall of the alcove and the door.

There was no time to waste, one false move and I might wind up another failed swindler jigging to the leather strap. Batman would have bragging rights over what paid and what did not. I stashed the gem in a place no one would think of—inside my pillowcase. The escapade over, I laid back and rested easy, flipping through the latest copy of Highlights. Days went by before the delinquent’s ego got the better of me, however. I was bursting to share news of the heist. The caper was too big for me. I just had to spill. 

Inside our wobbly tree fort, all present raised hands and swore to secrecy. This was no small potato. Should just one nincompoop blab, authorities would chase me down like a hound dog, blindfold me, and line me up to face a firing squad. Among my coterie, Dean, the Birdman, and Chad, we had no snitches. I explained how I had pulled it off and even boasted that I would make a better Joker than the rube on Batman because my emerald had been hidden for days without even a whisper of suspicion. I was the man.

This seemed a reasonable posture until the fateful afternoon of my mother’s discovery. I was riding my Tonka dump truck in the sandlot minding my own business when the maternal siren went up through the neighborhood. “Stevie! You get in here—right this instant!” I knew that unmistakable intonation of hysteria and anger. Its riveting truth shook me to the bone.

I froze a second as the work zone went on around me, boys dozing tufts of grass, erecting new cities, blubbering out the sounds of gritty diesel engines. I ground dirt under my fingernails, dug my knee into the bed of the truck. “I’m coming,” I shouted and abandoned the truck along, my feet dragging through the neighbor’s yard for home. I practiced my surprised face, deciding to dress up disbelief as an ally. After all, I had done nothing wrong just now but play with pals.

When I touched the handle to the front door, electricity ran through it. My mother was seated at the table. Her shoulders were slouched, eyes blank with inner thought, the emerald on display before her, a torn popsicle wrapper the only other item on the kitchen table. I plopped down. My mind spun with explanations like someone spitting out fifty-two playing cards. I settled on the Jack of Diamonds. That was the card, my warrant by which I would swear grimacing truths.

“Where did you get this?” She tilted it beneath the yellowed kitchen bulb.

I opened by pausing for time and offering questions of delay. “Uh—where? Where did I get it? Where did I get that?”

“Yes, where did you get it—and don’t lie to me.”

“Oh, no. I—I got it down by the slide. It was laying there . . .by the parking lot. And nobody wanted it. You can ask anybody.” I heard my voice chirp falsetto. 

She furrowed her brow, eyes piercing. “So, just laying there on the ground, huh? By the slide in the parking lot, is that what you’re telling me?” I nodded. She rose and padded into the other room.

I found my moment of truth plagued by difficulty swallowing before calling after her. “Uh, yeah. Can I have some water?”

My mother returned to the table, placing her well-worn leather edition of the King James Bible next to me. She shook her head to the request for a drink and leaned in. “Now, you put your hand on the Lord’s word,” she said, the tenor of her words offering a slight crackle. “And you look me in the eye and tell me here and now: Did you steal this? Yes, or no?” The sorrow of the moment could not have been greater, save for my father being present. This was the ultimate gauntlet of truth, the spiritual lair by which many a crook had succumbed to the absolute by which all others were weighed and found wanting. One liar’s hand there and you may as well write out your last will and testament. I swear I thought frostbite would set in as I placed a grubby hand on the Good Book.

My lower lip began to shake, I sensed disaster would follow. My high-handed plans for an empire of jewels toppled right then. She had me cold, and I was done. Determining a just form of punishment remained the lone question. I nodded and studied the tiles of the kitchen floor, skipping one to the next while thinking, always thinking. I murmured something incoherently, uncertain myself what the string of words meant in English.

“Why is it shiny then, like it just came from the store?”

My toe tapped the floor like a woodpecker. My hand slipped from the Bible. I was falling apart. I pictured police detectives examining the crime scene, my picture tacked up in post offices across Ohio. “I don’t know. It just is.”

“Stevie,” she continued. “Don’t put your chin down. You look me in the eye this time and tell me you didn’t take this from the Plaza.” I left the patterns of gold linoleum and glanced up. Her green eyes surely saw my heart harboring naked despair. I wished at that moment I were wearing the slitted mask of Batman. Were his words true, this entire misdeed an unbelievable prophecy? Crime does not pay.

“Tell me!”

“I don’t know if I did, Mom. I don’t think I did.”

“Well, that's it. You are in for the day. No more playing outside,” she said resolutely.

I nodded eagerly, acquiescing to the relatively light sentence, which nearly amounted to a governor’s reprieve.

“That’s okay, Mom,” I said brightly. “I understand.”

Perhaps my cheerfulness was too soon forthcoming because she wrinkled her brow for a second and added, “And your dad’s going to hear about this. So, go get your truck and get back here on the double.”

That evening she revealed the scandal to my shiny-faced sisters as well, once we had gathered for dinner. They seemed uncharacteristically judicious but pleased upon hearing how I was the scoundrel and they were above the law, safe as stones buried in a mountain. Everyone else managed to enjoy supper. In the center of the table, Hamburger Helper ladled onto egg buns mounded over a serving dish, though I could barely chew, wadded bread left in my mouth with nowhere in particular to go. I stopped and concentrated on swallowing.

I was to return the pendant and to pay for what I had stolen. I pictured myself blubbering at the counter while nearby adults were certain to sneer at the dishonest youth destined to become a sneak thief. My sentence also came with the spiritual mandate that I ask Jesus in private to forgive me because, apparently, there was little room in heaven for lowdown skunks who swipe costume jewelry from Kresge’s and then lie to the woman who brought them into the world.

Lying there on my bunk bed that night, I ran my fingertips over the springs of the bed above me and hummed a bar of “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” not because I had forgotten the words to "How Great Thou Art" or any hymn but because the radio belonging to Oscar the Drunk down the sidewalk had been playing Otis Redding when we were last moving dirt with the trucks. It was in my head while my heart teetered somewhere over a dirty lake.

I tried mostly that night to conjure up what my mother meant by looking for “inner peace with the Lord.” A spiritual awakening never did overtake me. Instead, I drifted off mumbling "If I should die before I wake." The remainder of my transfiguration was paid mystically in Monopoly scrip and hard truths: Crime did pay in emeralds—despite the epigram of Batman—but in heaven, golden harps.

Punishment for my crime began with isolation, a spirit buster for any wayward kid. Being sentenced to the bedroom with a monastic indulgence of being allowed out for meals only felt cruel and unusual, sans any appellate process. During each meal, I noticed my sisters making little eye contact with the boy rogue, my jokes returned by faces of indifference, the clatter of silverware, and deadpanned calls to pass this or pass that.

Grounded for days and staring through my bedroom window, I studied the tops of trees on bluebird days and noticed how those same trees roared with movement whenever a storm rushed up. Doing time was no joke. The slow turning between fair and foul weather led to a reverie of the good old days. Memories got the better of me: How I had once been free to ride a bike, to work a yo-yo for hours, to triumph at marbles.

Eventually, I was released on probation for good behavior and wandered off to the woods. The new mood replaced my normal sense of genuine hope with institutional cynicism. I needed to do better. That was that. My rehabilitation began at the edge of the woods where a king maple stood fifty feet high and change, as great as the stars on clear nights. Scott Johnson had scaled the tree and looped two ropes over a sky branch, the rope’s ends dangling to the ground. I came upon him threading one end through the punched-out hole of a swing seat, four corners of a rectangular piece of scrap wood.