I did my mother’s grocery shopping last Saturday. She’s 88 years old and uses a walker, so most “outside” jobs are mine now. Heading home after I put the groceries way, I thought I’d stop for ice cream.
I parked in front of a corner store with a sign in the window reading, “Cigarettes Sold At Legal Minimum,” went in and selected a chocolate-covered ice cream bar from the freezer. I went over to the counter to pay, holding the ice cream bar in my right hand and two $1 bills in my left hand.
“Any kind you want,” said the guy in front of me at the counter.
“This kind?” said the heavy set Indian man behind the counter, holding up a blue pack of cigarettes.
“Any kind,” the man in front of me said. “My name is Mikey, and I don’t give a f—-.”
There’s a high-rise apartment building across from the store. Red brick and very tall, it houses elderly people, some drug addicts and a number of people whose problems are more difficult to define. Mikey had a jittery look in his eyes that is not uncommon in the neighborhood.
The clerk handed over the cigarettes and Mikey handed over some money. We were the only three people in the store.
“The devil is after me,” Mike said.
The store owner silently handed over the change.
“And if some Hare Krishna kills me, you see what happens,” Mikey said.
The guy behind the counter said nothing.
Mikey left, mumbling. I put my ice cream bar down on a mat decorated with words in praise of chewing tobacco.
“Lots of crazy people in this city,” the store owner said, taking my money.
When the government builds housing for people who are being chased by the devil, they do not build it in the suburbs. People in the cities are told this is because we have the “services” needed by those who are one step ahead of Satan. People in the suburbs require no explanation.
“I learn one thing,” the store owner said to me. “If you don’t talk to them, they talk anyway, but if you talk to them, they talk more.
“I don’t talk to them,” he said.
He gave me my change.
“Come back again,” he said.
“I will,” I said.
I got in my truck, unwrapped the ice cream and ate it on the short drive home.
About two blocks from the store, I caught up with Mikey. He was walking down the sidewalk, screaming. Every so often, he stopped, took a clear plastic bottle from his pocket and poured a clear fluid onto the sidewalk. Maybe it was holy water. Other than members of the clergy, the Mikeys of the world are the people most likely to be carrying holy water.
I drove slowly when I drove past Mikey. People screaming on the sidewalk are more likely to run out into traffic than almost any other group of people
It was a Saturday. The societal safety net relaxes on Saturday. There’s a good chance that the store owner provided the only “services” Mikey got that Saturday.
Unless he went to a gun store.