Swords and Arrows

I had no experience robbing bookstores. And that’s all I have to say in my defense.

It was exactly 11:27 p.m. on a Friday when I flung open my car door, slammed it shut, and threw myself headlong through Books-A-Million’s glass front doors. I had to do this before I lost my nerve. In retrospect, it might have been nice if I’d lost my nerve.

I charged past the startled couple sipping their Joe Muggs coffees, past a teen with a Manga comic book. I bet I looked like a scrawny version of the grim reaper in my black cloak and hood.

A tall, gray-haired man looked up from the register. His eyes goggled like an enlarged insect’s. Without further adieu, I pulled my loaded medieval-style crossbow from under my cloak and pointed it in his face. I read his nametag. It looked like Mark the Store Manager was in for a bad night, thanks to me.

Behind me, someone squealed.

“Please—” I started when my voice squeaked up at least an octave too high. I sounded like a little girl. And anyway, what robber says please before he steals? I needed some serious practice.

Mark the Manager cleared his throat.

“There are no concealable weapons allowed in the store, sir,” he said in a mechanical voice. He swallowed and glanced from the end of the bolt notched in the crossbow to my finger on the trigger. I tried to hold my finger steady. The manager didn’t need to know that my heart was probably outpacing his.

I tried again. “Hand over the cash from all these registers, Mark, or I’ll shoot.”

He looked startled. Maybe it was because I’d used his name. I heard feet thumping and someone talking urgently in a loud whisper. Calling the police, no doubt.

I gripped the crossbow. “Now!” I shouted, and it came out sounding harsh and maniacal.

The manager jumped and started punching buttons on the nearest register.

It was harder than I thought it would be—robbing a store. I had to follow him from register to register while he pulled out the tills. I expected to hear sirens any second.

When all the money was together in a shopping bag, I snatched it from him, trying to hold the bag and stabilize the crossbow with one hand while still keeping my finger on the trigger with my other. I turned and dashed wildly from the store.

Out in the parking lot, things got worse. Out of habit I’d locked my car, and finding the keys proved problematic. I had to hold the cash and the crossbow in one hand, and my cloak kept getting in the way of my other hand as it groped for my jeans pocket underneath. The keys came out of their hiding place suddenly, and my shaking fingers let them slip to the asphalt. I bent to pick them up.

The soft crunching of shoes on the pavement nearly sent me into a panic attack. I jerked up suddenly, keys in hand, and my hood fell off. Several feet away, a man was taking pictures of me with his camera phone. Bad. Bad. Very bad.

I jammed my keys into the lock and dove into my car. I fully expected the police to show up at my apartment that night and arrest me. Lying awake all night, I wondered what my sister Courtney would say when she came and visited me in jail. But the cops never came.

Four weeks later, I sat on my bed staring at the latest blackmail note. As usual, it demanded more money than I thought I could pay. As usual, it was a typed letter signed “The Businessman.”

The first note had explained everything completely, professionally, sterilely. The guy with the camera phone—The Businessman—was in the parking lot and saw the whole robbery through the store window and then calmly walked over to take my picture. But he hadn’t gone to the police. He’d looked up my license plate number on the DMV website and found my name, my address, my place of employment. He said he’d release his pictures of me to the newspaper if I didn’t supply him with cash. So much for paying off debt with the money I stole—now I was in deeper debt than when I started this fiasco.

I couldn’t go to jail. Because of my big sister. I couldn’t let her down. I promised her a year ago that I would try to get out of debt, and somehow I don’t think a bookstore robbery was the method Courtney had in mind.

I ran my hands through my shaggy blond hair and had the sudden urge to pull it all out. Yeah, that was going to help with my headache.

I glanced at the sword and bow collection that covered my bedroom walls. For the umpteenth time, I considered selling them.

“It’s your fault anyway,” I told them.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. My debt, and consequently the robbery, was caused by the video games too. And the electronics. And the reenactment troupe. And the mountains of books that covered the floor. But that was beside the point.

I threw the blackmail letter into a drawer along with others of its kind and several eviction threats. I checked my watch. 7:40 a.m. Work.

I dragged myself out the apartment door. 7:40 was much too early after working at Wendy’s till 2:00 a.m.

I slumped into my ’89 Buick Park Avenue and fired up the engine. As I bumped to the end of the parking lot, a familiar brown pickup truck appeared in my rear view mirror. The arrow on my speedometer jumped in sync with my pulse. I slammed the brakes to avoid zipping into the road at the end of the parking lot. I took a closer look in the mirror. I relaxed. Wrong truck.

I looked both ways and pulled out onto the road, my hands shaking on the wheel. I checked the rear view mirror again. The brown truck had turned the other way. It wasn’t even from the same manufacturer, but at a glance it had looked too much like the truck that had periodically followed me for the last month. I’d seen it parked in front of my apartment early in the morning when I left for my day job. I’d seen it idling in the parking lot of Wendy’s at 2:00 a.m. Clearly The Businessman didn’t have a life. Maybe that’s why he needed money.

Swinging into the parking lot of Albert’s Swords and More, I pulled into a space and put the car in park. I listened to the engine hum and dug through my glove compartment in an unsuccessful search for Advil. I glanced at the pile of books sprawled across the passenger seat and the floor. Frodo looked back at me from the top of the stack, and Harry Potter peaked around the corner of Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy.

“Is this how you felt when the Black Riders were chasing you?” I asked Frodo.

He didn’t answer. I imagine he felt nobler than me. After all, he was trying to save the world. I was just trying to save my skin.

Frodo wasn’t in a talkative mood, so I climbed out of the car and slouched into the sword shop.

“Good morning, Justin,” said Albert, my boss, in his booming voice that just didn’t jive with early mornings and sleep deprivation. Albert was dusting some falchion swords—beautifully curved with a single, sharp blade—that were hanging up high on the opposite wall. Height had been overly generous to Albert, and he didn’t even need the step ladder to reach the swords. Albert’s grown daughter Liz sat at a computer pretending to e-mail a supplier, but she was really playing solitaire.

“Morning,” I said, none too cheerily.

Moving mechanically through my morning duties—un-boxing some new deliveries, pricing the merchandise, making sure a customer’s special order was being processed—I kept a nervous eye on the parking lot, hoping no more brown trucks would appear. So far The Businessman had done nothing but follow me. So far.

The bell over the door jingled. A cop walked in, and my blood pressure skyrocketed before I recognized Kurt, Liz’s fiancé.

I nodded to him, determined not to look at him directly. I wondered what would happen if I walked over to him and said, “Hey, man. Would you like to solve the crossbow robbery case? Bet you would. Pick me, pick me! I’m your criminal!”

I stuffed the thought into the recycling bin of my brain before I could act on it.

I pulled up the step ladder and started dusting the longbows. It was the crossbows that really needed cleaning, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch them—the kind I’d used for the robbery.

All I’d wanted was money to keep me in the apartment and pay off one of my credit cards. And maybe, just maybe, buy a new katana—a curved Japanese sword. Courtney would call that “an unnecessary expense,” I suppose. I started spending a little recklessly as soon as I got my first job at the age of fifteen. That was shortly after our mom died and Courtney became my legal guardian, even though she was only eighteen.

After my eighteenth birthday I moved out, and in the two years since then I’d managed to rack up quite an impressive amount of debt. Right before I robbed the Books-A-Million, my landlord had slipped an eviction threat under my door—the last one before the real thing, he claimed, even though he still hadn’t kicked me out. I wondered where homeless people slept.

Liz giggled shrilly, and the sound hurled daggers into my aching head.

The bell jingled again. I glanced over and saw my sister walking through the door.

“Oh, hey, Court,” I said. “Just give me a second. I gotta go take care of something in the back.”

“Justin—”

I don’t know what else she said. I hurried to the back room, breathing hard. I hadn’t seen her since the robbery. Before then, we got together at least twice a week. Now she called me on the phone, constantly concerned, begging me to come over and hang out— to tell her what was wrong.

I knew I shouldn’t talk to her face to face. Courtney had a way of getting the truth out of me when she turned serious and planted her sharp green eyes on me. I didn’t want the truth pried from me. Not today.

I sauntered back into the shop. Courtney was leaning her elbows on the counter, staring into space. As I reentered the room, she smiled and tried to hug me, but I put my hands on her shoulders before she had the chance.

“So what’s up, Court?” I said casually. “Why aren’t you at work?”

“It’s Saturday,” she said. “Justin, are you okay?”

My pulse spiked. “Yeah, why?”

“Well,” she exhaled. “You’ve turned me down for dinner five times and I haven’t seen you in a month and your home phone line is disconnected and you haven’t been at church and I don’t know.” She ran breathlessly to a close and then sized me up. “And you look awful,” she added.

“Thanks. Way to boost my self-esteem,” I said.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

I faked a short laugh. “I’m fine,” I said. “You worry way too much. What was it this time? Did you dream again that Sasquatch ate me?” If you could bottle imitation joviality like imitation vanilla, I could have filled a lot of bottles.

Courtney’s mouth twitched. She was trying not to smile. “That was a long time ago,” she said, regaining a straight face. “I’m talking about real life.”

She tried to catch my eyes with hers, but I wouldn’t meet them.

“Relax,” I said. “I’m just really busy. I got a second job at Wendy’s.” I lowered my voice. “The sword shop just isn’t paying enough.”

“Justin, is this about your debt again?”

I turned red and glanced around to make sure no one had heard that.

“Really? Do we have to talk about this right now?” I asked, slightly irritated.

“Fine.” Courtney crossed her arms, but didn’t volunteer to leave.

I turned, climbed the step ladder, and started dusting the longbows again.

“Justin, I was thinking,” Courtney said.

“You were thinking?” I interrupted. “That’s fun. When did this hobby start?” Ah, yes, a chance to act normal. This was the sort of teasing Courtney expected and probably secretly liked.

But she ignored me. “I was thinking. Are you doing anything tonight? You want to come over for supper? Please?”

I sighed. “Listen. You’ve fulfilled your big-sister obligation. You’ve pestered me to no end on the phone, and now you’ve come in person. I’m sure Mom would be proud. If your wayward brother disgraces the whole family, that’s his fault, not yours.”

Whoa. Slow down.

I turned around and kept dusting before she could see the panicked look on my face.

Courtney’s voice was gentler when she answered. “I didn’t accuse you of disgracing anyone.” She paused. “Dinner tonight?”

“Maybe,” I said, my head still turned away from her. I wasn’t planning on going, but I wanted to appease her.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said.

I didn’t get off work till six that night. My landlord was knocking on my door when I got back to the apartment. He handed me a yellow piece of paper.

“You have 48 hours to clear out,” he said. “You’re three and a half months behind in your rent.”

I stared at the paper in my hand and nodded. I’d expected it any day, of course, but just seeing the eviction notice in physical form meant this was now reality. I opened my door and wandered into the bedroom. Collapsing onto my bed, I stared at the walls hung with stray pieces of weaponry like dead branches on a tree. I glanced at the stacks of books on the floor. Where was I going to put all this stuff when they forced me to leave in two days? For that matter, where was I going to put me in two days?

There was always Courtney’s place. She would probably take me in temporarily, but there was no way I could keep a secret like mine while we shared a roof. There was always jail. Was that such a bad place? I heard they got free healthcare.

I should probably at least tell Courtney about the eviction.

I got up and opened my closet, looking for a set of clothes to change into. My black cloak stared back at me. I slammed the door and looked around my room.

I thought about numbing my mind with a little World of Warcraft role play. I opened my laptop and gazed at the background—a desert scene that looked remarkably like Tatooine from Star Wars.

They were staring at me. All my swords were staring at me.

“Just stop! Would you just stop?” I said.

Standing abruptly, I jerked open the drawer full of blackmail and eviction threats and ripped them all.

“You don’t own me,” I told my landlord and The Businessman, even though they weren’t there to hear it. It sounded like they must own some part of me, the way my voice brimmed with frustration and helplessness.

I scattered the confetti, marched out the door, climbed into my car, and headed toward Courtney’s apartment. The traffic zipped by in a colorful blur. I kept my eyes glued on the road in front of me.

“What do you think?” I asked no one in particular. “How much do I tell her?”

I couldn’t tell her the whole truth. Of course not. That would put her in a moral dilemma: turn her brother in to the police or inadvertently be his accomplice. Courtney didn’t deserve that. No, this time I would successfully hide my thoughts from my sister—for her sake.

But what if The Businessman told on me? He would soon. There was no way I could keep up with his demands, and he knew it. I was going down, and he knew it. And when I was arrested, I wouldn’t have the chance to tell Courtney the truth myself.

I almost missed the turn into her apartment complex, but I jerked the wheel just in time. Pulling into a parking space in front of building C, I let the engine idle while I unproductively banged my head against the steering wheel.

That act of penance done, I dragged myself from the car, climbed up the flight of stairs, and knocked on Courtney’s door.

The door swung in.

“Justin!” Courtney’s face split in half with a grin. “So you decided you had time for your big sister after all?”

I stood there feeling like a little boy, helpless, in trouble, wanting someone else to fix it. Courtney hesitated and then attacked me with a hug. I didn’t try to stop her this time. Instead, I let her squeeze me while I stood limp like a wet spaghetti noodle.

After she had squashed me to her satisfaction, Courtney grabbed my arm and dragged me into the kitchen. Intriguing Italian smells wafted from the oven. Cracking the door, I peered in at a homemade pizza.

“Please tell me you weren’t planning on eating that whole thing yourself,” I teased, wondering if that comment sounded natural or forced.

Courtney shoved a plate into my hands. “I was hoping you’d show up,” she said with a grin and filled two glasses with water.

I sat down at the table and sighed, leaning back in the chair. Courtney’s apartment always made me think of the duplex our mom raised us in. Maybe it was because Courtney had kept so many of Mom’s old things: like the wall hanging that said, “Love makes a house a home” or the plaque of her favorite Bible verse, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” In the warmth and safety of the kitchen, my muscles started to relax for the first time in a month.

Courtney was chattering—about something funny that happened at her choir practice, I think. She pulled the pizza from the oven and placed it, steaming, on the hot pad in the middle of the table. She prayed, and we dug in.

For a few minutes, we chewed in contented silence. In between her second and third pizza slices, Courtney looked up at me. Her green eyes had that perceptive big-sister look in them. Like the time I shoplifted a Star Wars novel at the age of eleven, and Courtney made me return it and apologize—all without ever telling our mom.

I tried to avoid her eyes, but they kept finding mine. I looked down and fiddled with a coaster, flicking it and watching it twirl.

“Justin.”

I looked up automatically and instantly regretted it. I ducked my head and devoted my rapt attention to the coaster.

“Justin,” she said again. “What’s going on?”

“You don’t want to know,” I muttered.

The coaster spun in mesmerizing circles.

“Yes, I do. And I won’t leave you alone until you tell me what’s wrong with you.”

My mouth was as dry as the pages of an ancient manuscript. I had to tell her something, but if I wasn’t careful it would all spill out. I chose my words carefully.

“Remember that time I borrowed money from Matt down the street so I could buy the new Mario Brothers, and then I ran out of money and didn’t pay him back, and he beat me up? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. Sort of.”

Courtney’s eyebrows drew together as she analyzed my cryptic analogy. “So you’re in debt and someone…Justin, please just tell me.”

“Okay, fine. I’m getting evicted.”

I looked away so I wouldn’t have to see her face.

“What was it this time?” she asked quietly. “A thousand dollar sword that you just had to have?”

“No.”

“A new set of armor for the reenactment?”

“No.” I felt unjustly attacked. It wasn’t over something petty. Well, maybe the original debt was over something petty, but not this blackmail debt. “I just…made some bad choices,” I said vaguely, hoping it would pacify her. Quite the contrary.

“What did you do?” Courtney’s face turned pale, but her voice was level and controlled. She’d played a motherly role in my life long enough to know how to act like a mother when the situation demanded it. And her eyes were begging me. Just tell.

I could feel my resolve melting. “Courtney, stop,” I said. “Just stop.”

I scraped back my chair and blundered into her tiny living room. As I sank into the couch, she knelt by my feet and looked up at me. So much for avoiding those eyes.

“Listen to me,” she said in her most firm, authoritative voice. “This has gone on long enough. What. Did. You. Do?”

I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t want to see the look on her face. She had given up her life to finish raising me. She’d given up college, her traveling choir, even her boyfriend when he wouldn’t take me in the marriage bargain. And I had betrayed her—her and Mom. I was a coward and couldn’t tell her what I’d done.

“Justin?” I looked toward the door, but I was out of places to run. Well, except one. And to think I had been spending thousands of dollars to stay out of jail. I could have just saved everyone the trouble to start with.

I looked back at my sister. She was waiting, anticipating, expecting me to tell her the truth. Because I always had before.

I got up and headed for the door. Courtney was right on my heels.

“Don’t you dare walk out that door,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Court,” I said and meant it. “I’m really, really sorry.”

I reached over and abruptly wrapped one arm around her shoulder. She hesitated and then squeezed back. I didn’t deserve a hug from her.

Courtney’s face was full of confusion. “Justin…”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated and slipped outside.

I shut the door carefully behind me and slowly descended the stairs. Opening the passenger car door, I pulled out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I tore out a blank page from the back of the book, found a pen in my glove compartment, and scribbled a note to Courtney that I slid into her mailbox. I was a genuine coward.

Going around to the driver’s side, I collapsed into the seat and cranked the engine. I looked up at the yellow light coming out of Courtney’s window. To the right a familiar brown truck sat idling. What did he think he was accomplishing, sitting there? I smiled grimly.

“You don’t own me,” I said.

I rolled down the windows and let the evening air into the car.

It was getting dark outside when I pulled onto the road. I drove slowly, letting all the other cars whiz by and get on with their busy lives. The brown truck stayed behind a few car lengths back. I didn’t care.

After a few turns, I saw what I was looking for. I pulled into the police station’s parking lot and slowly climbed out of my car. I bet Mr. Businessman wasn’t expecting this. The truck hesitated in the road in front of the police station, then drove on by. I guess he didn’t think a police station was the best place for him tonight.

I smiled a sort of tight-lipped smile as I crossed the parking lot. Beneath a security light over the door, I paused.

“You don’t own me,” I said and opened the door.

First published in 2011 in The Ivy Leaves Journal of Literature and Art, vol. 85, p. 22-26.