THE MORAL ECONOMY OF PETTY THEFT
It was the same for all the neighborhood kids – our families had less stuff in smaller houses with larger families than the “English” kids – so, if you wanted something, it was OK, really, an obligation, to take it from them who had so much they would not miss a thing. This imperative underlay theft of toys from yards and porches (brand names from television commercials, not the cheap knockoffs you got at the dime store), clothing (left overnight to dry or hanging on a school hook), tools (spades, hammers, screwdrivers), and whatever object triggered the impulse to have something you didn’t. And it was just so easy. Really. All you needed was a plan to act fast, be nonchalant, always have a quick getaway, and deny everything if caught.
Big Tony wanted a bike, and Ivan had the one he wanted. Ivan and his friends would ride their bikes on our street, even though they didn’t live in the neighborhood. Big Tony had us throw stones and water balloons at them, but those guys just laughed and pedaled faster. So, Big Tony found out where Ivan lived and told us repeatedly how he would sneak over one night and take his bike. It was thrilling to hear him. Big Tony had one problem: he needed a way to get to Ivan’s house. Weeks passed with us asking older cousins if they could drive him, and word got around that Big Tony needed a ride, so Joe, who worked at a gas station while he was going to trade school, agreed. For a price. He wanted three packs of Player’s unfiltered cigarettes and a bottle of Seagram’s Rye Whiskey.
All of our fathers drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes. Since they all had three to four-pack-a-day habits, it was easy to get the empty cartons, and since they often got blindingly drunk, it was effortless to take a cigarette here and there to fill those bright green boxes; we even had the slips of silver foil to wrap them in before we put them in the cartons. The whiskey was more complicated. Our houses had stashes of whiskey – the distillery was one of the five factories surrounding our neighborhood. Sometimes, a box or two of amber-filled bottles would show up in a garage and be distributed (the calculation of this seemed to be a complex one involving cash, payment of gambling debts, and a social hierarchy we knew instinctually). Still, every father on the block knew precisely how many unopened bottles he had. They all just did.
Santino came through. His father was one of the quiet ones, but when he got mad, he got loud. You could hear him yelling and cursing between the whip/smack sounds his belt made on the flesh of whatever child he was angry at. And he left marks. We all had them in various shades, depending on when you had gotten them. Still, Santino’s father, when he got mad, needed longer to get the anger out, so he left ones that seemed to be deeper (he often used the buckle end of his belt) and be on places of the body you couldn’t hide with clothes, like the face and hands. We were all there when Santino brought a bottle of rye to Big Tony. He asked that he be allowed to use the bike occasionally, and Big Tony agreed.
A couple of days later, Big Tony is riding his bike. He was so proud of that thing. He let us all have a turn, just up to the stop sign and back, and let us clean and shine it up for him; he even let us fill up the tires with a manual pump someone had in a garage somewhere. Big Tony rode daily; sometimes, he went up into town. One thing he never did, though, was to let Santino borrow it, even though the beating he got when his father found out a bottle was missing was one of the worst ones yet, with two black eyes, a gash on his chin, and a left hand that hurt for weeks. Whenever Santino asked, Big Tony always told him he could use it later, that he had something to do. And Santino, being quiet like his dad, just nodded at these excuses.
I was throwing stones into the ditch when I saw the police car. It headed slowly towards Big Tony’s house. I could see Santino and Big Tony talking in the driveway, but I couldn’t hear them. All I saw was Santino riding the bike down the street. The car stopped. I ran to the small crowd of kids already there, waiting to hear what the cops would say to Big Tony. His mother came out, apron still on; she frowned when she saw that the officer was not Italian and pretended she spoke no English, “…no Inglish…no Inglish…” she kept repeating while showing too many teeth. Big Tony was in trouble; he had been seen on a stolen bike in town around the High School.
Yes sir.
I didn’t know it was stolen.
I borrowed it from someone.
Santino D’Angelo.
He said he found it at the dump by the quarry.
No, sir, I don’t know where he is now.
Yes sir.
He lives two houses from here.
Thank you, sir.
Santino, of course, wasn’t at home. His mother came to the door frowning and repeated the “…no Inglish…no Inglish…” mantra through clenched teeth until the officer left.
A few hours later, Santino came walking home. We swarmed around him, talking too fast about what had happened. He listened to all of it until he got to his house.
The bike is where I found it, at the dump, by the quarry.
A few of us ran down to the quarry, and the bike was there. But it had been smashed up. Broken up. Beaten up, taken apart as if it didn’t matter at all.
Rina Palumbo (she/her) has a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins and is working on a novel and two nonfiction long-form writing projects alongside short fiction, creative nonfiction, and prose poetry. Her work appears in The Hopkins Review, Ghost Parachute, Milk Candy, Bending Genres, Anti-Heroin Chic, Identity Theory, and Stonecoast Review et al.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 