I Just Wanted a Cookie

I don’t like it. I just don’t like thinking about distorted minds, manipulators, swindlers, so I just don’t do it.

But at a summer street fair, I was waiting in a long line idly wanting nothing more than a stupid cookie. I wanted a cookie – that’s all – the kind of opulent cookie you sometimes find at summer street markets. Dodging cholesterol, I’d been doing my road work - running regularly. I believed I’d earned a maxed-out cookie. I hadn’t a single thought for conflict, but I found myself idly watching this kid vendor in a small gap next to the cookie guy’s stall. The kid was making change for a hobbling, bent old woman. Not knowing, she dropped a quarter to the sidewalk - and I saw the kid spot that - and I saw him put his left foot over her quarter and smile at her with his ten-year-old teeth – the kind of kid-smile that normally puts a full-nelson on ladies.

And it did.

She smiled and said sweetly, “Oh, here you are, dearie,” and handed him back the rest of her change.

Craning his neck to someone behind her, he prompted, “Next?”

I already said so, but get this: I don’t like telling this. In my mind, I haven’t spun that kid yet to where his memory doesn’t make me do another Rolaid; his stolen quarter reminded me of my ex-wife – who I had seen pull the same quarter stunt on her own son – put her left foot over his fumbled wedding ring right at the moment when the minister was expecting the nervous groom to produce same ring.

The street market was crowded. I knew the adult vendors were paying for their own spaces, but the kid was a “children.”  From the equally-spaced markings on the pavement, I could tell the other vendors had all scooched their displays, each contributing a few inches to the success of a ten-year-old “child” – a spatial subsidy.

The adult vendors were proud of insulating a young start-up entrepreneur from over-head expenses. Simperingly, now and again, I saw his neighbor vendors glance down at him, who – like a carney - was working his small table crowded with his pitcher of lemonade and plastic glasses and his cute little sign about money for “school supplies.” He even had a soup-can tip jar. Excessively, I thought, another vendor heaped praises on him. The kid smiled brightly. His little chest puffed. He was cocky.

 But they hadn’t seen her quarter.

A saw-dusted, ball-capped young man in black work Dickies, boots and a red-on-black checked work shirt stepped up to the tiny table. He had the calm, raw-boned look of a guy used to “gitin’ ‘er done.” I saw him dig in a hip pocket and drop change in the tip can. The young guy’s red hat advertised some kind of heavy machinery. He handed the kid a twenty, who declared something about getting the right change and jumped off his chair and took off behind the scenes.

People ahead of me in line were doing really pretty good putting up with our yakky-duck cookie guy. In the long interval between when the quarter kid took off and when I finally stepped to the head of my line and was handed a cookie the size of the bottom of a gallon paint can, the man in the red-on-black shirt had walked away disgusted – without his change.  

Cautiously, I nibbled cookie. Instantly, I was enthralled by the hoped-for but unexpectedly distinct peanut butter flavor! Instantly, I understood people’s patience in the cookie guy’s line. I mean, my cookie was loud! There are bland, stale discs that resemble cookies and then there are cookies that transport. I drifted away into the crowd.

Quite a large oil painting of, I guessed, an endless throng, caught my attention. For one thing, there were the colors – simple primaries. But each individual in the scene – hundreds, no, thousands of them – was distinct and sharply-focused, yet oddly looking exactly like pigmented cuneiform – as if I was seeing ancient Sumerian writing in color and on canvas instead of clay tablet.

An explosion of yelling yanked me out of my Gilgamesh mind-trip. Just in the instant I glanced that way, just for the briefest moment, the crowd parted: I saw the quarter kid screaming in terror and being savagely bitten on his hand by a smallish girl. Swinging at the end of his arm, I saw the girl lifted off the pavement, then both of them fall in a heap, wrecking his little table and equipage.

Flashing red and blue lights were reflecting off buildings across the street. Police. I didn’t see anything else. I was mildly curious about the smallish girl, but the commotion was over, so I sat down alone on an isolated bench and tried to take my time with the rest of my cookie. You know how sometimes, you get a big cookie and you get half way through it and you realize you’re tired of the rather insipid flavor? My cookie had staying power. I just sat there. I forgot about everything – about swindlers especially.

I did see the man in the saw-dusted, red ball cap a final time. He walked right by where I was sitting. With him – I was startled – I felt sure of it - was the same compact, tidy girl I had glimpsed ravaging the kid carney. The man and she were holding hands. I noticed a small, blood-stained tear in the left knee of her pink and grey-striped tights. Initially, his face beamed with pride – but hers, red and sorrowful.

But just as they drew abreast of me, for a moment, his face changed and he stopped straight-faced and looked down uncertainly at her as if struggling to decide something. With the palm of his free hand, he reached up and did what I call “the face wipe” – the gesture among quiet, reticent men that denotes a worried mind. I saw her bewildered, frowning little face turn up to her dad’s. She started blinking rapidly. Her wet face contorted and she burst fully into pitiful tears. Her dad picked her up in his arms.

 As if he loved her beyond measure, he hugged her. As if he would never stop until she did, one-by-one, her dad kissed her tears. As if his heart was breaking, too, he didn’t let her cry alone.

Then, they turned back suddenly, a look of resolve on her father’s face, and sat on the opposite end of my very bench. I stopped tasting. I had to know. I had to hear what they would say. I felt I knew the man’s dilemma. I stole glances.

So, what does this father do but, from an inside pocket of his red-on-black shirt, produce a cookie - luckily, but predictably inferior to mine - but a cookie none the less. Because of the timing, I knew he’d bought this cookie before his daughter had assaulted another child. Obviously, now, while he struggled what to say to her about the incident, his intent was to cheer – and, if I were him, mollify.

In his elbows-on-knees, lunch-break posture learned at a hundred construction sites, he leaned forward and munched cookie thoughtfully. Then, without preamble, he turned and asked her,

“Ruthie, how did you know his name?”

This seemed the wrong question. Out of my view, she started sobbing miserably again.

“I h-hate him, daddy,” she moaned sadly.

“Oh, hon’,” he said gently, “You don’t really hate him. You just don’t like his looks, right?”

“I do hate him, daddy. I do. Oh, I do! He’s a cheater!”

With that, I saw her angrily throw down her bit of cookie and jump off the bench and stamp on it with her foot.

“I hate him!” Ruthie stomped and yelled. “He spent all our money and the teacher never once said he should pay it back!” She paused. “I know it’s awful to hate, but I do. I’m glad I made him cry. I’m glad. I’m glad!”

To record the entire transcript of Ruthie’s testimony, my memory was driven beyond capacity, but the short version, I learned, is that “our money” referred to the fact that the boy Ruthie had bitten so viciously was the first corrupt public official she had ever encountered – Treasurer of her class at school.

But then, Ruthie began to cry again uncontrollably. Almost too big for it, shaking with grief, she climbed on her father’s lap and hid her face inside his shirt. I will never forget what she said,

“Oh, daddy. I know our treasury was only thirty-eight dollars. It wasn’t really anything, and besides, he’s a boy! So…but, daddy, daddy! He did the same thing to YOU!”