Five Dollar Wrench

The First, Premeditated

Meditation is what well-off people do in order to live with what they've done. Or what they didn't do but should have. "I know the neighbor kid gets beaten. I hear it all the time but I say nothing, and I feel bad, so I'll sit cross-legged on the floor to become at one with the universe." Bullshit. That lady knew better. She needed to do better.

Everybody knew what was going on at the Wilsons' house.

Everybody acted like it was fine.

Meditation is for the guilt.

Some people aren't even decent enough to feel guilt. They deserve to get brought down to size.

Premeditation is when somebody like me knows what you deserve and comes up with a plan to give it to you. Years later, I would learn how much that distinction matters. The pre part. But at this point, I was just a pissed off kid.

Bud Marsh even looked like somebody who needed to get got. Buzz cut. Angry face. Big gut, yet gutless. And did I mention, he's a cop? That made the get even better.

I'd stolen plenty of stuff before, but only out of opportunity. This was the first time I came up with a plan, though it doesn't take a criminal mastermind to figure out where a guy lives and when he won't be there.

It's a small fucking town. I knew he lived on that side. The side where people aren't friends with people from my side. Buttmunch and Trina weren't friends, though. Their relationship was strictly transactional.

It took me three Thursdays to find him. I could have done it in two, but I ended up at the wrong house on my second try. The back door was unlocked and whoever lived there made good pie, so the trip wasn't a total waste.

The First Thursday:

I waited two blocks away from Trina's house, on Davis Street, because I knew which way he went after their regularly scheduled hump and whump. But which way did he go at the intersection?

Which intersection?

It's. A. Small. Town.

He turned left and went around the bend. Aha! But then where? "See ya next week, A-HOLE!"

Second Thursday:

I waited a couple blocks down, after the corner where Davis becomes Ash Street. I used to wonder why the same street gets a new name just because it changes direction. These days, I know. I digress.

Buttmunch came around the bend and parked in the driveway of an old yellow house. He took a bag of groceries inside. I thought, "Huh. Doesn't look like a cop's house." The next afternoon, when I slipped inside, I found out why. Oops.

Third Thursday:

Buttmunch came around the bend, right on schedule. He passed the yellow house and went another block before parking in front of a grumpy looking white house with a shitty shed in the back yard. "Oh, yeah, THAT'S a cop's house."

I returned the next day.

Everything was locked up tight. The windows. The doors. Even the ugly trap door looking thing that led to the basement. Why do some houses have those?

I couldn't get in the house, but the shed had a cheap padlock that was easy enough to snap off with a stolen pair of bolt cutters and some oomph.

For my plan, the shed was perfect.

I got in, and I dragged everything out. His snow shovels and rakes. The dusty gym equipment he never used. The rusty fishing gear. His tools and trinkets, and a cooler that smelled like something died in it. The fake Christmas tree, and all of the boxes. Half the shed was filled with stacks of boxes filled with important looking documents.

 I left all of that stuff spread across the lawn, and I put a new lock on the shed, because it would be wrong to leave his priceless, non-functioning, non-draggable, busted-up lawnmower unsecured.

Actually, I put somebody else's old lock on the shed. I had a big rusty Master lock that I found in the trash a while back, while looking for a reason to be going through somebody's trash in the first place. Hey, you never know what you'll find. I found a perfectly usable big-ass lock that just needed a new purpose, and this was it.

I didn't even steal anything. I just wanted Buttmunch to wonder what the hell happened when he came home and found his stuff sprawled everywhere.

I didn't know it yet, but this sort of thing is referred to as being premeditated.

Postmeditated is something else entirely.

The Jacobson lady's post-yoga shouting match with her husband is postmeditated. She did yoga on the porch, to become at one with the universe. Then, she'd tear her husband to pieces for whatever the hell she decided was wrong with him this time. And make no mistake, she decided.

And me? I followed Buttmunch to his place. I emptied his shed, except for the fucking lawnmower that wouldn't move. Then, I locked him out of it.

It was a plan executed to perfection.

Premeditated.

Even if it's true that dandelions can predict the weather, the fact that it poured down rain on all of his stuff was not entirely my fault. Maybe he should have bought a better lock. Or maybe his boxes of important papers needed to become at one with the universe.