“Lululemon stands by decision to fire employees who intervened in robbery”

“. . . Cellphone footage from the store shows two men wearing hoodies and face masks rush into the store and grab armloads of merchandise from areas closest to the entrance of the store and then rush out. One female employee is seen near the entrance of the store close to where the men are heard yelling ‘get out’ repeatedly.”

-CNN, 2023

*****

James pulled up in an 87′ Dodge Aries K Sedan. It was a blocky 4-door with some of the paint fading from the roof as if the highway speeds were stripping away the original bland blue. James said he was heading to Greenton, a nearby town about 10 miles away that had the “super” stores. These gigantic buildings, Walmarts, K-Marts, Staples were the first structures that appeared on the horizon as you entered Greenton coming from Ashmore.

The people of both of these small farming towns grumbled about the big stores over weak cups of coffee at dirty-spoon diners:

“Suzie’s Sporting Goods had to shut down when K-Mart set up the store in Greenton.”

“Yep.” another man agreed. “The entire downtown is a graveyard. They are shuttering half the stores in town. Gerry’s gonna lose his family’s TV store. I am glad his father isn’t around to see it.”

Aaron didn’t care much for Susie or Gerry, but he, too, felt these giant companies were the enemy of the good. Faceless and cold like the empty space in the excessively tall buildings. The exposed metal rafters and corrugated ceiling way up above the heads of the shoppers always struck him as industrial, like walking into a warehouse rather than a store.

Residents of Ashmore complained, but they all shopped at the Greenton megastores. Couldn’t afford not to.

Aaron was painting his father’s house when James pulled up in the aging Chrysler. James turned off the engine and yelled to Aaron through the rolled-down driver’s side window.

“How about Greenton today?”

James was tall and lanky with a bowl-cut of black hair and a rebellious attitude that bordered on a personality disorder. That is why Aaron liked him. Aaron appreciated a healthy disrespect for authority, especially the kind of ignorant authority teenage kids had to wade through in small Iowa towns. It was as thick and oppressive as the early August humidity.

James’s parents were gone for the week and left him with the car to get into town from their country house. Aaron’s parents were divorced, and his dad worked long hours. Aaron could rely on him being gone for about 18 hours a day.

“Yes and yes!” Aaron dropped the paintbrush unceremoniously, energized by the prospect of ditching chores for an adventure. “We need some shit for the fort out at MCA’s place. Something to cut the ground cover at the main campsite. Nettles are too thick for the shears. They have stuff like that there, right?”

“They got everything at the Super.”

“Fuck yeah, they do. They got donuts, man. An entire wall of donuts. I got one last time I was there. Grabbed it from that wall with the little plastic doors. I just ate it while I walked around the store. No one noticed, dude. Some old woman looked at me weird, but no employees were paying attention. By the time I was walking out the door, I had eaten one Boston Cream and two regular creams. Those fucks can’t keep track of us. This is gonna be sweet.”

“Good for us.”

Aaron jumped into the passenger seat, leaving his father’s garage wall half-painted and the can of brown paint open on the ground. He didn’t know when he would see his father next, so it didn’t seem to matter that summer afternoon. He searched a book of compact discs. “The Judge?”

“Sure.” James was a quiet kid. Quiet and angry. The kind of angry that wouldn’t lift a finger to put out a fire if it burned the high school gym or courthouse.

It was a 10-minute drive between Ashmore and Greenton, an uninspired stretch of flat state highway. The passing scenery alternated between rows of tall, late-summer corn and shorter soybean fields. Aaron talked about what they needed for the campsite, prattling on about the fort in the woods they would build. James listened while driving.

Suddenly, Aaron stopped his talk of woodland forts and turned up the car radio. A singer in a strained voice screamed,

“The evidence before the court is

incontrovertible

There is no need for the jury to retire . . .”

Aaron began singing at the top of his lungs with a smile on his face that looked more crazed than happy. The windows were down and wind beat into the car at sixty-five miles an hour.

“In all my years of judging

I have never heard before

Of someone more deserving

Of the full penalty of law.”

James’ head was tilted forward as if leaning into the forward movement of the Chrysler, quiet but intent. On the horizon, a towering K-Mart sign was coming into view.

*****

Something was wrong. Aaron was looking over some CDs in the Super K-Mart music aisle when he got a creepy sense in his spine. Maybe this trip was a mistake.

It was the third. Both James and Aaron had lifted merchandise from the store, exited to the parking lot where James had parked, unloaded the goods into the backseat, and re-entered the K-Mart two times already. The second time, James had slid two machetes up his sleeves and had to walk out the main entrance like some stiff-armed weirdo. No one seemed to notice. A third trip would be no different, they agreed.

But it was different. Aaron was looking down at the music as a ruse. His mind was actually crawling over his fellow shoppers, searching for strange behavior that might indicate security was aware of them. Aaron had half a dozen silk boxers tucked into his Umbro soccer shorts with two Led Zepplin discs threatening to fall to the tiled floor. James was nowhere to be seen. They separated to avoid attracting attention from the security cameras that hung like black orbs from the ceiling. It was time to go. Aaron hoped James was out at the car waiting.

The nearest exit was the garden section. The exit opened into a glass greenhouse that then opened into the parking lot. He glanced furtively behind him. He was about forty feet from the parking lot and freedom. No one seemed to be eyeing him, so he turned to look at some shelves filled with spades and gloves, standing next to a man who looked to be in his late 20s with dark brown, curly mullet and glasses that reminded him of David Koresh or Jeffery Dahmer.

“Hey, man,” Aaron asked in a mildly annoyed but dim-witted way, “do you know where the house paint is? Is it in Gardening?” The man glanced at Aaron and said no dismissively before moving on.

Aaron was relieved. The hostile indifference meant the man was not tailing him. He was just getting jittery. The rumor was that those cameras were just for show. If you felt like you were being watched, you would behave. No need to hire a bunch of hicks to stare at screens all day. Let the illusion keep the thieves in check.

He was only twenty-five feet from the garden center exit into the parking lot. Aaron wanted to see if James was around and did his best to appear like an annoyed customer looking for his family. James was still out of sight. “Maybe he is back at the car,” he said allowed to anyone listening, and turned to the exit. Then he heard it from directly behind him.

“HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! K-MART SECURITY.”

The exit was eight feet away and, as soon as the first word hit him from behind, Aaron dashed into the parking lot. He felt a hand swipe down his back as if the Superstore guard had reached for his t-shirt collar and missed. As soon as his legs shot him out of the store, the CDs fell to the pavement like rocket boosters falling away from a spaceship during liftoff.

He could hear the mullet-man curse and pick up speed behind him, but Aaron had hit his full stride weaving between parked cars baking in the Iowa summer sun. James’s car was on the other side of the building. Besides, if he ran to the car they would just take the license plate and cops would track them down later. He had to disappear into the wild. He glanced back to see two men. Mullet man and a heavy-set older man trying to keep up.

He glimpsed James, too, who was about half a football field away, unloading whatnot into his car. No one was pursuing him, so Aaron tried not to look at him too much and raise suspicions they were together, but James turned and began running too.

Aaron was easily outpacing the men chasing him , but he was also running without a destination. He slowed to a jog so James could catch up with him, and started to scan the horizon for a place to hide. James caught up and didn’t say a word. James wore flip-flops, slowing his pace.

Straight ahead, the parking lot ended in a ditch that dipped then rose to the highway, and sparse but high-speed cars whipped by. On the other side of the five-lane highway was Blas-Knox, a dying factory with a largely empty parking lot. If he could get behind the building, he could break the line of vision the two men had on them and change direction, even sprinting for the cornfields beyond the factory.

He looked back to see the two men gaining on him a bit. They yelled, “Stay there, you little sonofabitch!”

Aaron had heard this tone before. Every bully in high school. Every tough guy starts a fight because someone looked at their girlfriend too long. He could hear the violence. Adrenaline hit his bloodstream and he smiled just before running full speed. A semi-truck horn blared at him before speeding by. A grassy patch separated the lanes of traffic and dipped again into a road drainage ditch. Aaron’s legs faltered a bit as he sped down and up into the next phalanx of cars heading from Ashmore into Greenton. More horns and some people yelling out their windows at him, but he made it to the other side, sliding into the ditch that fronted the Blas-Knox building. Laying low, he peeked back to see the two men chasing him. Mullet man was pointing through the traffic in his general direction as the older man caught up to him and bent over in labored breathing. James laid low beside him.

“Well, what now?”

“Let’s lose them behind the Blas-Knox building then b-line it for the old country road. Hide in the corn.”

Aaron stood up and booked to the rear of the factory building. James and Aaron both discarded the contraband. Aaron threw the silk boxers under a parked car. One CD hadn’t fallen out, and he pulled it from his waistband and tossed it on the roof of the factory.

They continued to run toward the old country road, listening to curses and threats coming from behind them. Security had gained on them a bit, and James, a heavy smoker, was audibly wheezing and now struggling to keep up. His sandals were nearly slipping off his feet.

“I can’t keep going.”

“Why the fuck are you wearing those. Fuck fuck fuck!”

“Why are you getting caught, dick?”

“Ok. Let me think.” Aaron pointed to a range of uncut prairie grass. It was three feet tall and thick. The factory owners no longer tended the property. “Let’s take cover in the field. They won’t be able to see us, so stay down.”

Aaron felt supercharged and could have run the ten miles back to Ashmore, but he did not want to abandon James. The two separated a distance and crouched into the swaying, yellow grass. In minutes, the security detail made it behind the factory and began yelling threats into the field.

“We know you are out here, you little fuckers.”

The older man joined in. “We are going to get the dogs. They will take care of you!”

Aaron lay still as a field mouse. He wanted to shift his weight but feared calling attention to his position by making the grasses shift.

“You are in for an ass- an ass-whooping. Ass whoopin.” The older man was still catching his breath.

There were three now. One looked like a customer who just wanted to join the search to get his knuckles into some lawless punks. He seemed to be friends with Mullet man.

“I’ll just pull the Ford around. We can go mudding back here and find the bodies afterward.” His tone was almost jovial.

“Aha! C’mere you little shit. Now you done it!”

Aaron raised his head slightly to see one of the men jerk James up from the grass and wrestle his arms behind him as if planning to cuff him. Aaron sunk back down as another man approached his position – the older man. Aaron closed his eyes and prayed for invisibility. He imagined himself so motionless that he became the prairie grass. When he opened them, the old man, four steps away was looking directly into his eyes. Then he wasn’t. The man’s gaze just drifted over him as he continued the search, pushing the weeds aside.

The two others had James and called to the old man who rejoined them. Mullet man yelled out to Aaron. We will find you. Be back with the truck and the cops. You don’t know what an ass-whooping is, boy!”

Aaron waited 10 minutes for them to clear out and then ran full speed past the old country road and into the six-foot-tall corn. He found a wide row between the corn stalks and slowed his run to a long-distance pace.

Thick corn leaves interlaced at head-level before him, cutting his face as he jogged. He held his forearms up to push aside the foliage as he pushed forward. Small red lines appeared on his arms. They itched like made. He fantasized briefly about having those machetes then glanced out between two corn stalks to see a county deputy car drive by, suspiciously slow.  Retreating back into the rows of corn, he could smell the corn and pesticides, and his eyes began to swell. His nose drained snot like a faucet. There was no way he could run back to Ashmore.