The Corner Store Hit

The corner store looks like an easy hit, and I’ve been meaning to rob the place for weeks. Whenever I duck inside for gum or a snack, I weigh how difficult it would be. Good location, tranquil neighbourhood – should be a breeze.

It’s a hot, lazy, summer afternoon, and it feels right. Today is the day. It’s quiet. They’ll never see me coming. Plus my desperation is bad enough. I need the money.

With my knife in my pocket, I walk in. A little bell on the door jingles above my head. It’s around lunch time, and I’m ready to make threats and run off with probably forty bucks or so. Not much, but enough for my immediate needs.

But everything comes to a grinding halt. I see the boy behind the cash – he’s maybe 14 years old. What the hell?

The store belongs to a Pakistani family. They each take turns running the place – usually a mother, father, and a grandfather. They have an apartment, above the store, and they all live there together. But I’d never seen this kid before. He never registered. Maybe he was always there, in the background, reading a comic book, but I just never took him in.

The way he’s sitting there, behind the counter, uncomfortable and proud, it’s clear he hasn’t done this much. He has this half smile, fading in and out, on his face. He’s a big boy, doing a big boy’s job. Right now he’s selling cat food to some crazy old bitch. You can see the dome of the woman’s head through a thin cloud of white hair. She’s paying with nickels and dimes – must have fished them out of a change jar at home. The coins spill down on the counter, falling out of her big, fat, trembling fingers.

All of this gives me time to think, to look around. My first thought: I can’t do this. I can’t rob a kid. I was ready to intimidate an old man, or one of the parents. This kid stuff is bullshit.

I’m mad, because they’ve put me in this situation. What kind of parents put a kid behind the cash, on his own? Don’t they know there are dangerous people out there? Don’t they give a shit? In a way, they brought this on themselves. This isn’t my fault. It’s theirs. I didn’t do anything wrong, here. Fuck them. It’s their own fault if this kid gets traumatized.

“How much is that?” bald cat food lady simpers. “How much more? Is that good?”

It’s like the two of them are doing calculus.

The store is old, and is never cleaned all that well. The corners always look a little grungy. On the wall behind the cash is a collection of ancient junk for sale: rubber bands, thumb tacks, nail files – the stuff no one ever buys. But what catches my eye is a hairnet. Judging by the faded colour of the packaging, the hairnet has been hanging there for decades. There’s a plastic bubble, the hairnet inside. The cardboard package shows a woman from the 60s proudly wearing the hairnet in public. Christ, how long has this thing been waiting for a buyer?

Cat food lady leaves. We have the store to ourselves – me and the kid. I step up to the cash. I take out my knife, open it, and show it to him. Before I can even speak, he’s begging me:

“No mister, no. Please mister. Don’t do this. My parents made me work today. It’s my first weekend on the job and I wanted them to see I could handle it. They went out for the afternoon. They made me work. Mister, don’t do this, please. My parents will kill me!”

Partly it’s the way he begs. Partly it’s the look on his face – so close to tears. I give up on robbing the place. My heart isn’t in it. He’s just a kid, after all. Without really knowing why or understanding it, I fold the knife and put it away.

“Forget it,” I say, a little embarrassed. “Forget the whole thing.”

“I will, mister. I will. I won’t call the police or anything.”

“Good.”

Instead of leaving, I just stand there. I don’t know why. I just stand here and look at the kid. And he looks at me. There’s still an uncomfortable tension in the air. I’m desperate to break it for some reason. I don’t understand my own thoughts and feelings.

“Look, I was going to rob the place,” I say, teasing. “I don’t want to leave empty handed. You’ve got to give me something.”

“What do you want, mister? You can take anything.” Then he quickly corrects himself. “Or, one thing. One of anything.”

“One of anything?” I say.

“Right, right.”

“Well, gee,” I say. “Anything, huh?” And I make a big show of looking all around the store, as though weighing my options. “Chips, maybe? A chocolate bar? Some milk? Hmmm. So many choices…”

But I know exactly what I’m going to ask for.

“Give me the hairnet,” I say, pointing at it.

The kid looks at the hairnet hanging on the wall, as if seeing it for the first time. Then he looks at me like I’m crazy. Or I’m pulling a mean joke.

“Come on,” I say, and I can’t help but smile. “You said I could have one thing.”

The kid stands on a stool to reach for the hairnet. He takes it off the wall, gets down, and hands it to me. He’s such a short, innocent little kid. Looking at him makes me hurt inside, makes me feel like shit. Was I ever so small?

I take the hairnet package, rip it open, and put the hairnet on.

“What do you think?” I ask, posing like the belle of the ball. I put my hands up under my chin. I flutter my eyelashes.

The kid bursts out laughing. It’s exaggerated, nervous. But I can’t blame him. A few minutes ago he thought I was going to stab him.

“That bad?” I say, smiling.

“It’s not that bad,” he says, trying to control his nervous giggles.

Now that I’ve decided not to rob the place, I feel protective of this kid. Who else is out there, casing this place for a robbery? I look out the window at the hot summer afternoon.

“So, why are you working by yourself? You’re just a kid. You shouldn’t be doing this, you should be out playing or something. It’s crazy.”

“My parents want me to be responsible,” the kid says, shrugging. “They want me to know how to work hard. It’s all they talk about.”

I shake my head in disgust. “You’re just a kid. There’s plenty of time for all that bullshit later in life. Hell, look at me! Do I look responsible? I’m 32 years old, and I don’t have a job. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. The state gives me a nice check once a month. I’m on welfare. And I get that money just for being alive! Get it? They owe me. I don’t owe them anything. I didn’t ask to be born. And who says you have to work hard? I see people, in suits, struggling and running around like crazy, and for what? To buy shit they don’t need? To look important? What for? It’s all so phony and stupid.”

The kid is looking at me, wide-eyed, like he’s never thought of any of these things before. He’s eating it up. Obviously his parents have stuffed his head with a load of crap. And it’s the same crap my parents fed me. Be responsible. Work hard. Do your best. All that bullshit that doesn’t get you anywhere.

And I get this feeling like, I can help this kid. I can teach this kid. I can show him the life I know – real life. Not the life parents impose on us. Life as it really is.

We talk for an hour. I do most of the talking – more like lecturing. Mostly I talk about my life, my adventures, my sexual exploits. I keep it rated PG, but all the same the kid gobbles it all up. He asks questions. He’s interested.

Nobody ever listens to me. Nobody takes me seriously. But this kid does. And I feel this sense of responsibility and pride.

That’s how it starts, our friendship. I walk by the store, and if he’s in there, working, I duck in and we talk. We never mention that bit of unpleasantness – me pulling a knife when we first met. A misunderstanding between friends. And now that we are friends, I keep hoping some punk comes in and tries to pull what I was going to pull. Because I still carry my knife, and I’ll defend Charles to the death.

That’s his name – Charles. He’s a good kid, but dumb the way most kids are. He doesn’t know anything. Charles thinks his teachers tell the truth. He thinks school is about learning, and not about being programmed. Until he met me, he was a good little robot, without an original thought in his head. I open up his mind. I put him on the right path.

For starters, Charles doesn’t know how to swear. He doesn’t even know the words. This is the stuff he should be learning in the schoolyard, but he goes to some kind of sissy school where they all talk nice.

I teach him “fuck” and “shit” and “motherfucker” and “cocksucker”. All the good stuff. I teach him how to reach inside, for the worst word combination you can think of, and spit it out with all the force you can muster.

“Ass shit fucker fuck!” Charles blurts out.

And I laugh, and muss his hair. He gets it.

I give him books to read – Kurt Vonnegut, William S. Burroughs. I give him ripped CDs of the Dead Kennedys and other classic punk bands. Everything a rebellious young man needs to know about life.

Then, it happens. One day, I go into the store, and something is wrong. Charles has a black eye.

And I say, “How did you get that? Did you get into a fight at school?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, grumpy in that way kids sometimes get. It’s cute and sad at the same time.



“Come on. You can tell me. I’m your friend. I want to look out for you.”

There’s this long silence. Charles is struggling with telling me. I wait, sitting down on a milk crate near the cash.

“My dad hit me,” he says, the words flying out of him. “I swore, I said a bad word, and he just punched me in the face.”

I’m horrified. I’m on my feet in an instant. “What? Parents can’t do that. It’s not acceptable. There are laws. Fuck, man.”

“I hate him so much,” Charles growls, sounding like an angry puppy. “He’s so stupid. And he always makes me work in this motherfucking shit store.”

“Of course you hate him,” I say. “Why wouldn’t you? The man is a tyrant, a monster. He’s stealing your childhood from you. He’s draining the life out of you. He’s a fucking dickhead.”

And I’m so angry, I’m shaking. Charles is just a kid. You can’t hit kids. You can’t hurt kids. He’s my friend. It’s not right.

“Has he hit you before, your dad?” I ask.

Charles just nods dumbly.

“That is bullshit,” I say. “That is complete fucking bullshit.”

Charles is looking at me with awe, fear, worry. For a second I can’t figure out why, and then I look at my hands, clenched into fists, trembling and white-knuckled. I’m flying off the handle. If I stay in the store, I’ll start trashing the place. I’ll put my fist through the window and rip up my arm, bleed to death right there.

“I have to go,” I say, and I rush out into the street, and I run all the way home.

It stays with me, in my apartment – all afternoon and into the night. I keep thinking the rage will go away, but it doesn’t. It builds and it builds. The fury is like a hurricane in my body, moving around, swirling in my stomach, in my head, in my throat. I pace the floor. Maybe if I distract myself, I think, and I try to watch TV. It doesn’t help.

“I have to do something,” I say out loud. “I can fix this. I’m an adult. I’m responsible. I’m not just a kid. I can fix this. I can help Charles. I can save him.”

And next thing I know, I’m back on the street, going to the store. I’ve got my knife, in my pocket. Am I going to use it? What am I going to do? The store is closed by now. It’s late, almost 11. What am I going to do?

In my head, I see flashes of me stabbing the father, cutting his throat. I see myself screaming, “This is for Charles!” and plunging the knife into the man’s eye. “This is what you get for hitting kids!” And I see myself stabbing the guy, killing him dead, then lighting a cigarette and walking away. As cool and collected as a mafia hit man. Later, the police pick me up and I go to jail for a long time. But it’s worth it. It’s so worth it. To save that kid.

The whole story spills out in my mind like a movie on fast-forward. Is that what I’m going to do?

My rage has the controls. My body is not my own. I’m not in charge. I’m possessed by my own emotions, by my own past. My childhood, my helplessness, when I was a kid. Maybe this isn’t even about Charles at all. No, it is. It’s about him. But it isn’t. And… fuck.

I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to think about me. I just want to do something. Fix it. Act.

I’m at the apartment door. I’m banging on it with my fist. I keep banging. The door opens, and there he is – the father. He has a big black moustache, and is wearing jeans and a plaid shirt. He’s shorter than me, stocky. And he’s looking at me, shocked, concerned.

“Yes?” he asks, a little timidly.

“You have to be nice to Charles,” I say. It was supposed to come out as a scream of rage, but half-way through, it breaks. It turns into something else.

“You have to be nice to him,” I repeat, and I’m crying. Tears are running down my face. What was supposed to be a violent fury has turned into helpless pleading. My voice is wracked with sobs. “You can’t hit your kids. You just can’t. You have to be nice to your kids. You have to be nice to Charles. You have to be nice to him. You have to.”

The father just stares at me, his face blank, his eyes wide. He has no idea who I am or what’s going on. I think I’m going to faint. I grab the edge of the doorway, and I sort of stumble. The father catches me as I fall forward. He’s holding me up, supporting me around the chest. I wrap my arms around him, and I really lose it. I sob, and I hold on to him, and it just pours out of me – misery, loneliness, grief, mourning. I feel gutted. Like I am vomiting feeling out of my eyes.

“You have… to be nice… to me,” I choke out. “You have… to listen… to me. Be nice to Charles. Don’t… hit him.”

I don’t know how long we’re like that. I don’t know why he puts up with it. Maybe he’s frightened. But at some point it dawns on me that this is the saddest fucking thing in the world – me bawling my eyes out on some man I don’t even know. And like that, I pull myself together. I stand up straight, and the father lets go of me. He’s looking at me with concern and nervousness, like he doesn’t know what I’m capable of. He thinks I’m crazy.

So I just run off. I leave. I run off to my sad little apartment. I collapse in bed. I sob, and then I sleep.

I decide not to go back to the store again. I won’t see Charles anymore. Because what if he saw me? What if he saw me, clutching his father, and sobbing? What if he realizes I’m no tough guy, after all? What if he realizes I’m just another scared little kid, like him? I can’t deal with that. I was his hero, his tough guy. What am I now? Who am I, really?

But after a week, I can’t help myself. I worry about Charles. I worry about his parents, and him working that store. What if no one is looking out for him? What if I’m not there for him?


So I go back.


The little bell over the door jingles. Charles is at the cash. He’s wearing a Dead Kennedys T-shirt. The sight of it fills me with pride.

“Cool shirt,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says, smiling shyly.

“Your eye looks better,” I say as I sit down on the milk crate. “Your parents don’t mind the shirt? They don’t find it offensive?”

“My dad bought it for me,” Charles says. “We went to this shop, downtown? They have all kinds of shirts with band names on them. I didn’t recognize any of the bands. And then I saw the Dead Kennedys shirt, and I told my dad I wanted that one. And he bought it for me! I couldn’t believe it. The guy at the store thought it was funny that somebody my age even knows who the Dead Kennedys are. It was funny. Anyway, my dad has been real nice to me, you know, since… Since the night you came, and talked to him.”

“Oh?” I say, and I can feel my face turning red.

“Yeah,” Charles says.

We don’t talk for a bit. At first the silence is awkward and hot, but then something happens – the silence flips upside down, opens up, and feels warm and nice. It’s like the warm, comfortable embrace of stepping into a greenhouse full of beautiful exotic flowers. I look Charles in the eye and he’s smiling, and I smile back. And everything seems to be okay.

“You ever heard of the band Bauhaus?” I ask, and take a ripped CD out of my coat pocket.

“No, what are they like?”

“More artsy than the Dead Kennedys,” I say, “but I know you’re going to love them.”