Shoplifted
The shoplifter is back again. It
takes a few minutes of waving at Jimmy, lost in some daydream as he's stacking
some soon-expiring tins of Spam on one of the endcaps, before I get his
attention and jerk my head towards aisle one.
Jimmy holds on to one of the
tins like it's a grenade and slinks down the middle aisle, peering over the
scant selection of breakfast cereals until he aligns himself across from the old lady
with a bent spine. She's sliding a loaf of Wonder Bread into a threadbare
shopping bag sewn from old flour sacks.
The Spam arcs over the shelves
and Cheerios, barely missing the liver-spotted hands of the old woman as it
lands in her bag. She starts to waddle in a circle and Jimmy ducks down.
The shoplifter totters off to
the coolers and gets out a quart of milk, placing it in her bag. She reaches in
to get another quart and stops when she realizes there is already one in the bag. Nodding to herself, she returns the second carton and heads back towards
me and the register. I spy Jimmy's arm as he drops some more canned goods in as she walks by him.
She doesn't stop at my station.
Muttering to herself, she waddles past and pushes on the old screen door with enough holes to be
more of an annoyance to the ever-present bottleflies and exits the grocery
store.
Jimmy
appears next to me with a handful of change. I open my purse and between us we
put three dollars and seventeen cents in the till. Without a word Jimmy goes
back to stocking the shelves and I wipe down the conveyer belt with a damp rag.