How it happened was like this: a whole mess of us got runnin’ ’round in the middle of the night and we all decided it was too late to stop but be we ain’ have nowheres to go. We started gwan up the road to see what there was to see up there, and there warn’t nothin’ but the same shit that’s always been on that square that’s been there the whole time I remember, ‘cept for that Yogurt Hut they added last year and that got burnt down in a fire last month anyhow. Still smelt like burnt yogurt round the whole place.
So as it was and what it was is that we needed some sorta transportayshun if’n we were gonna get anywheres. I thought ’bout what we maybe could do and even suggested maybe we could use mah sister’s bike, even though we’d have to ride two at a time to wherever we were goin’ and then have the other one’f'us ride back to get the next one and so forth because that bike’s just barely big enough for one ‘n’ two would be a stretch but it’d'be possible.
Well.
Nobody really liked that idea and we were all a li’l down and tryin’ to thinka how we could move about some when Arnold recommended maybe we could take one a the cars that was in the parkin’ lot ousside a the shoppin’ center.
"You meanin’ we steal a car?"
"Naw, naw, jus’ borra it, until so that we need it and since they parked it, they ain’ need it right then, so we ain’ botherin’ them none anyway, long as we bring it back the way we went off with it and don’t break nothin’."
We all talked about the ethics involved for a spell, and Joe-boy, Big Tom’s li’l brother kep sayin’ it wuz a "victimless crime", but no one listens to him mostly cuz he’s small and don’t take his nose outta books most days and at the county fair in May he spilled his puddin’ sundae all up and down Marie Allowan’s dress and turned red as a turnip (plus’n a lotta people think he gotsuh embarrassed he done made his pants wet too, but evidence to that eeeeffect does not seem to be available). Well, so we argued, and we talked, and Joe-boy talked, and we mostly ignored him, and then we all decided that stealin’ that car might be all right anyway, as long as we brought it back safe and in a timely fashion and committed no sins in it (this was a rider tacked on by Michael the Preacher’s Son who said if you sin in another man’s car or any possesion you go to Hell straightaway without even passin’ Go or any nonsense, and we didn’t believe it mostly, but figgered it was safest just to not do it anyhow).
We picked a real nice little Pontiac that was ousside a the grocery store, and we figgered also that grocery shoppers spend some time in there and wouldn’t even hardly miss a for a few 45 minutes it would take to ride out to the next town and back anyway.
The main probem was, though, in gettin’ in. Arnold said he could easily start’er’up if’n we could get to the steering column and then itd be no problem but it did him no good if he couldn’t get to that. He said when he stole cars mostly it was a two-man operation and he was always the Inside Man and not the Gettin’ Inside Man. We weren’t all completely positive he was up on the level, but there were bigger fish fryin’ because Joey Clark accidentally broke off a side mirror when he was tryin’ to reach in a metal piece to pick the lock. Now we had broken the damn thing and not even got to drive nowhere, which we all agreed was a fine mess.
We were all worrying ’bout what to do when someone thought they heard a siren and screamed out that the poh-lice were comin’, which kicked in everybody’s instinct to just run like hell till they was all home. We all ran like fools down the same road we’d walked up since it’s the only road there anyhow, but we each of us had such fear in us that neither one noticed the ones right beside us, and noticed the ones in front of us only as obstacled to jump over or push out the way.
It was fine anyhow and the siren was the damn ice cream truck but nobody had bothered to check. There were no complaints about the car and we all lived like hitmen layin’ low after a hit, and it was hard to lay lower than a body had to lay as it was in that town. Nothin’ ever came of it, and two days later we noticed that car was still in the same place and a day after that towed off altogether. We all took a pact to never even think about messin’ like that anyway and that God had come down and saved us for no reason at all but ‘cept we were damn fools and meek because of it. "And God keeps out for the meek," Michael said.
Still, for a night there, we were criminals in intent and actions and we felt a little proud and mostly told no one except to girls sometimes to impress ‘em, but only the right girls. And Joe-boy still kept on with his "victimless crime" talk. We was all sure he’d end up a lawyer or in jail or both by the time he was 20. But he didn’t. He worked at the rebuilt Yogurt Hut for three years until he was 19 and then skipped town to become an actor.
Takes all kinds I guess.
