The sign espoused political beliefs, and it stretched down over seventy planks of the fence on which it was hung.
Jared, Jared said he wanted that sign.
He turned to me one day, as we were driving past, and he said, “Mickey. I want that.”
I stared at it.
“That?”
He nodded, but didn’t say a word. In the back of my car were a series of signs, all stolen from yards of houses, churches, stores, from the windows of the bakery, the deli, the hospital, from the backs of cars, trucks, SUVS, from the keychains of pedestrians. They would all find something amiss, but not really know what.
Because what did it matter?
In the coming days, it would be forgotten. Time would pass. No one would remember the signs. It was all transient.
Except the 35 foot sign.
The eyesore that hung on that fence like a remora. The tacky slogan spray-painted on, the cloth held up with little more than toggle bolts and string.
It promised that the politician would weather the storms that the sign had.
Thousands of people saw it, every day, on the way in to work.
If it was stolen, well...
It’d be noticed.
-
I called up Don. Don, my inside man.
“Don, I’ve got a job. Round up the guys.”
He went ahead and called Pitt. Pitt didn’t want me to have his number. Pitt called Chris, called Mattie, called El.
The five guys and me.
Full house, is what we’d call ourselves before we found El.
Fuller house, that’s what we go by.
And it’s not major crime we’re into. We’ve never robbed a bank, held up a convenience store, rustled cattle, stolen priceless artifacts. We were the sane grifters. The con-men that would come in to your home and steal a magnet. A sock. Ouija board oracle. A bottle of sparkling water. The removable thumb from an oven mit.
When I explained this to Jill, she didn’t seem so amused at first.
“What you’re doing is worse than robbing banks.”
I shrugged. “How so.”
“You’re not taking money. You’re stealing piece of mind.”
I thought about it. I shrugged again.
“Look, we’re invited in. We never break in. And we only take stuff that won’t matter – or things that we think won’t matter. I stole a stuffed dog one time, turns out it was the girl’s childhood keepsake.”
Jill blinked. “What did you do with it?”
“Same thing we do with all the other stuff.”
“You are... so strange.”
I nodded.
Pitt, he caught me stealing out of his house. I was invited by Don, who was already in the midst of stealing a coaster. Instead of kicking me out, Pitt was amused, because like me, Pitt had been running the same game for years. Finding someone else... It was like providence to him.
Like finding out someone else likes toon porn or something. The realization that you’re not quite so alone makes it a little better. Made it easier for Pitt to forgive me. He still didn’t want my number. If I need him, I go through Don.
Don, who I went to school with. On a dare, I socked him in the jaw. After, I picked him up, dusted him off, and introduced myself properly.
Attached at the hip ever since.
Don ran with Chris and Mattie, both of whom had shoplifting convictions and were banned from the local WaWa and Sheetz. When I started big-talking about lifting small items from houses, they were quick to take interest. Less loss.
I told them what Jill told me.
They were enamored, not with the theft of the objects, but the confusion it would cause. Stealing a candy bar wasn’t enough for them – the gig prior to getting caught, they had taken an entire shelf.
People thought it disappeared. Started talking religion. Science. Invisible apertures willing to swallow sections of gas-station.
Chris was busted for stealing a pencil. Mattie followed suit out of duty.
And they met El in the tank. Jawed his old ball and chain.
The funny thing about El is that he’s younger than all of us. He’s only eighteen. I round out the group at 25. Mattie and Chris, they’re both 22, Don is 23 and Pitt is 21. But El, El was spending the night in prison for punching his wife.
El. He dives head first.
Yeah, it’s no surprise he ended up shot.
-
We sat around a table for a while. I didn’t say anything. This was the biggest thing we’d ever attempted to lift, and we were taking the Mattie-Chris approach to it. Just make it vanish. An act of the unexplainable. Any trace would not be tolerated.
Since the fence ran the length of the road it was set up beside, it would be tricky. It was a high traffic road, leading both in and out of the city.
“So,” Don said, “Traffic records show motors are down at around 2. An hour after last call, people need to sober up, check points set up a mile up the road, and a mile into the city. Virtual blackout.”
“Except the street light,” Pitt said, “That shines down on that thing. Mattie, you up for taking it out?”
“Of course.”
“And you up for replacing the bulb?”
“Naturally.”
El raised his hand from the back. “Why replace the bulb?”
“No trace. We want people to know it’s gone, but we want to be ghosts in this,” I said. “If people know it’s theft, it makes the thieving political. If people think it’s theft, but don’t know, well, that makes it something else. Take what doesn’t matter, and make them realize it doesn’t.”
El sighed. “Okay, but it would just be easier to take it, right? Why mess with the lights?”
“Cover of darkness.”
“You’re making this more complicated than it has to be.”
I nodded. “I know. But it’s not about stealing the item. It’s about the message it leaves behind. Not, ‘These guys, they’re left-wing-anti-abortion-radical-right so and so’s.’ Because that’s what it’ll be chalked up to, you know. But, ‘Where the hell’d it go.’ And you can walk from this, El, if you want. But you won’t.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
El stood, and stared at me for a second. Then he smiled. “Yeah.”
He sat back down.
“So, Mattie goes up there, takes out the light, waits for us to get away. Pitt, you’re going to be covering our tracks, right?”
“Broom if it’s dry, shovel if it’s wet. No problem. No foot prints.”
“Don, you’re going to be with me, Chris, and El. Chris, I need you at the far end, taking out the toggle bolts. El, in the middle, working on the twine. Don, once I get the bolts off my end, you start folding it. Same goes for you, Chris.”
“And the sign, where does it go?”
“The trunk.”
“Bingo-Bango-Bongo,” Mattie said, smiling.
-
I ended up in prison. Mattie, Mattie’s dead. El is in intensive care.
We got there. Not a soul on the road. Mattie shimmied up the light post, unscrewed the bulb, acting watch-man.
El went to the middle, Chris went to the other side, and Pitt stood, with a broom.
Mattie cried out, “I see a car. I see a car!” The plan was to just hop the fence and wait for them to pass, but Mattie, Mattie slipped.
Fell twenty feet. The lightbulb popped, went in to his back.
He just laid there, writhing, a small pool of blood forming. Every time he contorted, the shards forced their way in farther. And the car, the car saw.
Turned on its blue and reds.
Chris, he ran over to Mattie, screaming, just crying out, and Mattie, he had broken his spine in the fall, in about eight places. His neck was bent off to one side. Every breath he took came through a grater.
Chris decked the first officer, screaming out. Get an ambulance. Get an ambulance.
I just stood, numb.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
El, he tried to make a run for it, but the rookie that was on the standard ride-along into the city, he shot him square in the back. Fell down an incline, bashing his head into a rock. They don’t know if he’s going to wake up.
Don went quietly. Pitt, Pitt managed to get away.
The damndest thing is, as I sit in my cell, staring across the way at other men of ill repute, is that they don’t get it.
Guerilla tactics, they called it.
Now, I did see on the news that the sign had been stolen. And from a phone call, I knew it was Pitt and Jared. But the jig was up. They said it was one of my accomplices.
Jill has been by to visit. She just smiled and laughed at me. I laughed, too. It was just a sign. And they would never find it. It's the in that same place as that dog, or the Ouija oracle, or the countless other signs. Buried in a park, under a dying log. Never to see the light of day, until a new addition comes along.
And now, there’s one dead and another on his way. Something that was supposed to be transient has been immortalized. But not as chaos.
The bitch of it is, they told me in court, they said –
This is politically motivated.
And this is what happens when you get caught.
Jared, Jared said he wanted that sign.
He turned to me one day, as we were driving past, and he said, “Mickey. I want that.”
I stared at it.
“That?”
He nodded, but didn’t say a word. In the back of my car were a series of signs, all stolen from yards of houses, churches, stores, from the windows of the bakery, the deli, the hospital, from the backs of cars, trucks, SUVS, from the keychains of pedestrians. They would all find something amiss, but not really know what.
Because what did it matter?
In the coming days, it would be forgotten. Time would pass. No one would remember the signs. It was all transient.
Except the 35 foot sign.
The eyesore that hung on that fence like a remora. The tacky slogan spray-painted on, the cloth held up with little more than toggle bolts and string.
It promised that the politician would weather the storms that the sign had.
Thousands of people saw it, every day, on the way in to work.
If it was stolen, well...
It’d be noticed.
-
I called up Don. Don, my inside man.
“Don, I’ve got a job. Round up the guys.”
He went ahead and called Pitt. Pitt didn’t want me to have his number. Pitt called Chris, called Mattie, called El.
The five guys and me.
Full house, is what we’d call ourselves before we found El.
Fuller house, that’s what we go by.
And it’s not major crime we’re into. We’ve never robbed a bank, held up a convenience store, rustled cattle, stolen priceless artifacts. We were the sane grifters. The con-men that would come in to your home and steal a magnet. A sock. Ouija board oracle. A bottle of sparkling water. The removable thumb from an oven mit.
When I explained this to Jill, she didn’t seem so amused at first.
“What you’re doing is worse than robbing banks.”
I shrugged. “How so.”
“You’re not taking money. You’re stealing piece of mind.”
I thought about it. I shrugged again.
“Look, we’re invited in. We never break in. And we only take stuff that won’t matter – or things that we think won’t matter. I stole a stuffed dog one time, turns out it was the girl’s childhood keepsake.”
Jill blinked. “What did you do with it?”
“Same thing we do with all the other stuff.”
“You are... so strange.”
I nodded.
Pitt, he caught me stealing out of his house. I was invited by Don, who was already in the midst of stealing a coaster. Instead of kicking me out, Pitt was amused, because like me, Pitt had been running the same game for years. Finding someone else... It was like providence to him.
Like finding out someone else likes toon porn or something. The realization that you’re not quite so alone makes it a little better. Made it easier for Pitt to forgive me. He still didn’t want my number. If I need him, I go through Don.
Don, who I went to school with. On a dare, I socked him in the jaw. After, I picked him up, dusted him off, and introduced myself properly.
Attached at the hip ever since.
Don ran with Chris and Mattie, both of whom had shoplifting convictions and were banned from the local WaWa and Sheetz. When I started big-talking about lifting small items from houses, they were quick to take interest. Less loss.
I told them what Jill told me.
They were enamored, not with the theft of the objects, but the confusion it would cause. Stealing a candy bar wasn’t enough for them – the gig prior to getting caught, they had taken an entire shelf.
People thought it disappeared. Started talking religion. Science. Invisible apertures willing to swallow sections of gas-station.
Chris was busted for stealing a pencil. Mattie followed suit out of duty.
And they met El in the tank. Jawed his old ball and chain.
The funny thing about El is that he’s younger than all of us. He’s only eighteen. I round out the group at 25. Mattie and Chris, they’re both 22, Don is 23 and Pitt is 21. But El, El was spending the night in prison for punching his wife.
El. He dives head first.
Yeah, it’s no surprise he ended up shot.
-
We sat around a table for a while. I didn’t say anything. This was the biggest thing we’d ever attempted to lift, and we were taking the Mattie-Chris approach to it. Just make it vanish. An act of the unexplainable. Any trace would not be tolerated.
Since the fence ran the length of the road it was set up beside, it would be tricky. It was a high traffic road, leading both in and out of the city.
“So,” Don said, “Traffic records show motors are down at around 2. An hour after last call, people need to sober up, check points set up a mile up the road, and a mile into the city. Virtual blackout.”
“Except the street light,” Pitt said, “That shines down on that thing. Mattie, you up for taking it out?”
“Of course.”
“And you up for replacing the bulb?”
“Naturally.”
El raised his hand from the back. “Why replace the bulb?”
“No trace. We want people to know it’s gone, but we want to be ghosts in this,” I said. “If people know it’s theft, it makes the thieving political. If people think it’s theft, but don’t know, well, that makes it something else. Take what doesn’t matter, and make them realize it doesn’t.”
El sighed. “Okay, but it would just be easier to take it, right? Why mess with the lights?”
“Cover of darkness.”
“You’re making this more complicated than it has to be.”
I nodded. “I know. But it’s not about stealing the item. It’s about the message it leaves behind. Not, ‘These guys, they’re left-wing-anti-abortion-radical-right so and so’s.’ Because that’s what it’ll be chalked up to, you know. But, ‘Where the hell’d it go.’ And you can walk from this, El, if you want. But you won’t.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
El stood, and stared at me for a second. Then he smiled. “Yeah.”
He sat back down.
“So, Mattie goes up there, takes out the light, waits for us to get away. Pitt, you’re going to be covering our tracks, right?”
“Broom if it’s dry, shovel if it’s wet. No problem. No foot prints.”
“Don, you’re going to be with me, Chris, and El. Chris, I need you at the far end, taking out the toggle bolts. El, in the middle, working on the twine. Don, once I get the bolts off my end, you start folding it. Same goes for you, Chris.”
“And the sign, where does it go?”
“The trunk.”
“Bingo-Bango-Bongo,” Mattie said, smiling.
-
I ended up in prison. Mattie, Mattie’s dead. El is in intensive care.
We got there. Not a soul on the road. Mattie shimmied up the light post, unscrewed the bulb, acting watch-man.
El went to the middle, Chris went to the other side, and Pitt stood, with a broom.
Mattie cried out, “I see a car. I see a car!” The plan was to just hop the fence and wait for them to pass, but Mattie, Mattie slipped.
Fell twenty feet. The lightbulb popped, went in to his back.
He just laid there, writhing, a small pool of blood forming. Every time he contorted, the shards forced their way in farther. And the car, the car saw.
Turned on its blue and reds.
Chris, he ran over to Mattie, screaming, just crying out, and Mattie, he had broken his spine in the fall, in about eight places. His neck was bent off to one side. Every breath he took came through a grater.
Chris decked the first officer, screaming out. Get an ambulance. Get an ambulance.
I just stood, numb.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
El, he tried to make a run for it, but the rookie that was on the standard ride-along into the city, he shot him square in the back. Fell down an incline, bashing his head into a rock. They don’t know if he’s going to wake up.
Don went quietly. Pitt, Pitt managed to get away.
The damndest thing is, as I sit in my cell, staring across the way at other men of ill repute, is that they don’t get it.
Guerilla tactics, they called it.
Now, I did see on the news that the sign had been stolen. And from a phone call, I knew it was Pitt and Jared. But the jig was up. They said it was one of my accomplices.
Jill has been by to visit. She just smiled and laughed at me. I laughed, too. It was just a sign. And they would never find it. It's the in that same place as that dog, or the Ouija oracle, or the countless other signs. Buried in a park, under a dying log. Never to see the light of day, until a new addition comes along.
And now, there’s one dead and another on his way. Something that was supposed to be transient has been immortalized. But not as chaos.
The bitch of it is, they told me in court, they said –
This is politically motivated.
And this is what happens when you get caught.
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