The Grifter
Every May since the 1940s the Kiwanis Club hosted a week-long carnival in Livingston, New Jersey. It took place in a clearing on Northfield Road, about 6 long blocks from our house – on the weekend, people from neighboring towns would park up and down our side street and occasionally block part of our driveway. Starting in fourth grade I was allowed to go unescorted, if my friends and I promised our parents we would stay together. By the time seventh grade rolled around, pretty much all the boundaries and conditions condensed into a simple, “Be home by 11:00pm.” For most boys, if you didn’t get held back in school and minded curfew on weekends, there was a lot of freedom. Making good grades was down the list behind being helpful around the house and not being driven home by the police.
In 1977 I was playing the grooves out of some of my favorite albums from the prior year. Frampton Comes Alive, Boston, and ELO’s A New World Record were on such frequent rotation that my brothers and I didn’t return them to the rack – we leaned them upright next to the turntable. I brushed my longish hair and walked to the carnival to meet my friends. “Meet up by the Snow Cone truck at 7:00pm,” agreed over lunch at school, was sufficient for any number of friends to connect before cellular and GPS took all the adventure out of it. I joined a long line at the booth to buy tickets. The currency for every ride, every game of skill or chance, was the classic red ticket stub. Taking a spin on the Roundup would cost two tickets each, and there was no additional fee for the barf residue on the pad from a prior passenger. A guy approached me, having sized me up as his mark – a random seventh grader wearing OP corduroy shorts and a Ron Jon surf shirt. "Hey kid, I'll sell you 20 tickets for five bucks – that's double what the booth will give you."
Something wasn't right; this guy was shady. In my memory he looked like the Thomas Jane character Todd in Boogie Nights, which is to say, he looked like trouble. He wore faded bell bottoms, a tight Allman Brothers concert T-shirt and had greasier hair than the greasiest kids I knew. 'Why aren't you using them?" I fired back skeptically.
"I bought too many last night and I'm leaving right now. That's why I'm giving you a deal. They won’t let me return them; I already tried." That's when the sting came full circle, catching me with a second player. Someone behind me chimed in and said he'd take the deal, and I jumped out of line and made the swap. I didn’t find my crew right away, but I ran into some other friends and before I could brag about my ticket coup, the manchild running the Tilt-A-Whirl had his filthy hand on my chest, stopping me on the sheet metal gangway. He wore a ribbed wife-beater tank and had oddly pronounced forearm muscles.
"Say. Where'd you get these tickets, boy?"
"I bought them right over there,” I said, trying to be cool but feeling my stomach turn even before pulling any g-forces on the ride.
"Them's counterfeit," and like a heron skewering bait fish he snatched the remaining strip of tickets from my hand and called out, “Hey, officer, over here!” A Livingston policeman was down the way but didn’t seem to hear. The guy grabbed my shirt on the shoulder, but I turned and sprinted so quickly he had no chance of holding me, even with those Popeye arms. I felt the snap of the shirt against my neck when he lost his grasp, cotton fibers straining and popping, and I disappeared into the crowd. Once I was certain nobody was after me, I scrambled down the bank of Canoe Brook and underneath the bridge to catch my breath. It was always exhilarating getting chased by grownups, but I had to balance the thrill of my escape with getting punked outof my cash. I scolded myself and wondered how I could be so stupid, so gullible. The tickets were red and looked real, but something was off if that ride operator noticed it so easily. I still had a couple dollars and some change in my pockets, so the evening wasn't a complete bust, but I felt like a rube. I wanted to confront the criminal who'd fleeced me, but I convinced myself he was long gone.
In the clammy cavern under the street, with years of road salts leaching from above forming miniature stalactites that hung along seams in the concrete, I did some calculating and realized the idea of the thief having left this target-rich freakshow was just me being chickenshit. He wouldn't split after one menial score; he’d be running that scam until he got $200 or got arrested – or stabbed. Somewhere among the throng, he and his shady accomplice were stealing. They wouldn’t drive in from Whippany or wherever to take one kid for a five-dollar hustle. I walked through the crowd with a mean mug for an hour and found several friends, some holding hands with girls and slipping off to the known make-out places, but I was too distracted and finally gave up and walked home.
I returned the next evening, scanning the scene that had been so much fun every summer – now tarnished by my being ripped off by this lowlife. I strolled past the plate toss booth, people throwing nickels toward plates that were buffed each day with Turtle Wax to ensure only the luckiest, loftiest tosses might stick the landing to win a glass featuring the RC Cola or 7-Up logo. I couldn’t let it go; I had been jobbed, and I was obsessed with finding him and unconcerned with what I would do if I did – a combination I now realize was reckless. Just before dark, when I was about to call off the search, I spotted him. The smooth talker who'd scammed me said something to his friend and then walked down a path toward where the brook made a gradual bend behind the Mobil Gas station, where my friend Karen’s brother Ken worked. The sidekick got on a long line for funnel cakes, to spend some of my cash. I figured he would be occupied for 15 minutes.
With no idea what I’d say, I followed my nemesis down to a sandy shoal of the brook, rounded stones scattered underfoot, flat skipping stones that nested in the palm of your hand amidst boulders that four kids could never budge, and every size and shape in between. I saw an eighth-grade kid I recognized about to hand some cash to the huckster, who was holding what appeared to be a small bag of weed up toward his chest as if to say, “Hand me the money first.”
"Hey! That's oregano in that bag! Get out of here." The words just blurted from my mouth, as much a surprise to me as to them. The buyer ran off, scared shitless. The thief turned to me, trying to comprehend what had happened, shifty eyes flitting. He’d probably had an adrenaline surge when I shouted, but he stayed cool. It was just him, me, and the lingering question I never considered during the last 24 hours of self-torture: Now what?
"What are we going to do about this?" He said metronomically, adding a bit of theatricality. He wasn't really any bigger than my older brother, and probably around the same age, 18 or 19. I wanted to say something, but I was just too angry – and scared – to assemble any words. I was standing on a deposit of fist-sized river stones, mostly dark basalt and some pinkish sandstone. He was 10 yards downstream on a sandy berm in the oxbow with no ammunition to speak of. I bent over and picked up a cool stone and he started to say something. “Kid, listen,” was all I heard before the rock flew from my hand. I hurled the projectile at him the way I’d throw baseballs to my grandfather. He would goad me to try to make his hand sting, the way my uncle did when he was drafted into the majors out of high school. The thief pivoted, his boot sinking into the silt, and the rock thumped his side as he pirouetted. An agitated, shrill "Fuck, fuck!" released from his mouth along with his breath, absorbed into the canopy of trees over the running water. The scene was absurd, like a barbaric Benny Hill skit. I had drilled this guy with a rock, thrown as hard as I could, and I stood there wondering what was next. I heard him whimpering over the trickle of the flowing brook. I picked up another stone and took a step toward the grifter. I had not anticipated any of this. His hand was holding his side; his elbow cocked askew like a chicken wing. I'd hurt him badly.
"What the, what was that for?" He struggled to breathe.
"You stole my money."
"I think you broke my ribs, aww Jesus."
"Maybe we're even. Maybe we’re not."
He winced and stumbled a few steps forward. I cocked my arm, the second projectile at the ready, and he stopped, holding one arm defensively outward with the other still glued to his ribs. "I just want to find my friend and go. I won't be back." He was mouth-breathing rapidly, wheezing and beginning to cry. I pointed silently up the bank towards the music and the crowd, and once he gimped out of sight, I took a long running leap across the brook onto the opposite bank, side-stepped up the steep slippery rise, and ran home. I didn’t realize I still had the stone in my hand until my mother asked me about it while making a root beer float in the kitchen.
The next day I noticed she had placed the rounded river rock into the oversized snifter glass terrarium in the family room, where it sat among plants, shells and sea glass for years until we moved. Thousands of years of mechanical weathering had shaped and transported the stone an impossible distance, and following a brief interlude as a weapon in my hand, it now held court with Scotch moss, tiny ferns and a Venus fly trap in a silly glass jar thrifted by Irwin the decorator.