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stop to grab the shoes on the way out of the store. In forty years of
shoplifting, Vicki Jean had never been busted for boosting. What had landed her
in prison was assault and battery on her cheating boyfriend. She’d tied him to
his bed while he was drunk and super-glued his magic wand to his stomach. This
had earned her a three-year prison term, but Vicki Jean said it was worth it.
Sure, she was in the slammer, doing time with a bunch of criminals, but her
ex-boyfriend had to pee toward his belly button.
    Now, how did I
get out of the garage without paying for the goods? Time for another Academy
Award performance. Heart slamming against my ribs, I casually sauntered toward
the door. “Back in a sec,” I chirped. “Left my purse in my car.”
    Nobody stopped
me. The garage sale women were dickering with a customer over the price
stickered on a Fry Daddy. As soon as I was out of sight of the garage I broke
into a trot. Ms. Suburbia goes jogging. It was nine thirty on a Saturday and
people were out in their yards, mowing their lawns or cleaning up storm damage.
A sweating, red-faced man was washing his car in his driveway, listening to the
boom box he’d set out on his lawn. The radio was tuned to a news station.
                “ . . . believed to be in the Fond du Lac area,” the radio announced. “Maguire , serving a life term at Taycheedah for the murder of her husband, is the
object of a massive manhunt. She is described as being five feet three inches
tall, brown-haired and blue-eyed, with no known scars or tattoos   . . .”
                A
whapping noise made me look up. A helicopter was approaching, flying low and
lazy across the sky. Either the governor, taking a gander at the tornado
damage, or a spy chopper, hunting the escaped felon. I voted for the spy
chopper. I could feel someone up there, scanning the ground with binoculars
powerful enough to pick out individual wads of chewing gum on the sidewalk.
Were they looking for a woman in a skateboarder sweatshirt? Would the cap brim
conceal my face?
                Maybe
jogging looked too much like running away. Slowing to a walk, I detoured onto
the lawn of the nearest house, picked a downed tree branch off the grass, and
hauled it to the curb. Just another homeowner, devastated at the loss of her
prize gingko. The chopper made two more passes, then whump-whump-whumped off
south and began flying a grid pattern over another section of town. I ambled
along for a few more blocks, stopping here and there to haul tree branches off
the sidewalk. Little Miss Civic Pride.
                Before
long I could see the interstate just a few blocks away, the traffic already
audible. On the other side of the highway, the city petered out into scruffy
subdivisions and beyond that, into farm fields where I’d stick out like the
prize in a box of Cracker Jack.
                I
spotted it then, just a block away: the enormous gray box, the acres of
asphalt, the neon letters large as semi-trailers. The bag of marbles I’d been
hunting for.  
                Walmart.
                Angling
between parked cars, I scuttled through the parking lot, heading for the
store’s entrance. A maroon van suddenly shot out of the traffic lane, zipped
across my path and screeched to a halt, its frame rocking on its shocks. The
driver’s door flew open, nearly knocking me down, and a woman heaved herself
out of the van.
                Not
even a muttered Sorry. No, that would have required her to take time
away from her cellphone conversation. Without looking at me or ungluing her
phone from her ear, she wrenched open the van’s rear door. Three kids tumbled
out—two little girls and a toddler boy. Still yapping on her cell, the
woman yanked the little boy by his arm and swatted the girls ahead,
interrupting her phone conversation only long enough to scream at them. “You
don’t behave this time, we ain’t