THE BAG

A Tale of The Hatchback Woman by DAN JIRE

Alan Tuel slammed the hood of the red hatchback.

“It looks like it’s just your starter. Battery is fine. I suggest you get on into town and to a real mechanic pronto, while she’s still running,” Alan told the woman.

He watched her fetch a smile from a look of worry. Alan could only imagine what she’d been through and what she wasn’t going to tell him.

Not that he wanted to hear any sob stories. Everyone had one. That’s just how the world was.

The woman’s face was wrinkled from an unkind life even though she was easily beautiful, and perhaps was one of the most beautiful women ten years ago, before her prime left her. Still the beauty stayed in her eyes like undying twilight on a midsummer evening. Alan hoped it would never leave her, wherever she was going with her little red hatchback jammed to the brim. It was so full of random things that Alan couldn’t decide if she was living out of her car or moving somewhere.

But both were sob stories.

“I owe you something,” she said.

Alan guffawed, and shook his head.

“Please?” She looked back into her car and before Alan could dissuade her, she dove into the back and started to rummage. “I don’t have any money, but maybe…”

She popped back out of the pile of junk with a gold belt buckle. Her smile was gauging Alan’s interest. She jammed it so close to his face that he almost took it, but he didn’t want any reward or payment. People don’t stop for people on the side of the road anymore. That was something that ended with his generation. Somehow, they’d taught their children to be wary of strangers and thus became the world—a passing indifference.

“I couldn’t.” Alan waved the buckle away.

“It might be real gold. Maybe you could pawn it?”

“That’s fine, ma’am, my britches stay up well enough on their own.”

“You must. I insist.”

The woman jabbed the buckle almost to Alan’s chest. He really didn’t want it. It was ugly, had a big old eagle on it and he’d spent his entire life living in the South trying not to be a redneck.

Weren’t gold belt buckles the gateway drug?

After that he’d be jacking up his pickup truck and hooting at the hoochie mommas.

“No ma’am. If you need money you should pawn it yourself. That new starter you need is probably gonna cost more than that buckle can fetch.”

“Please, I want you to have it.”

Alan sighed he glanced into the car and back at the woman. “If you’re gonna have to give me something how about that plastic bag.”

“That?” she sounded disgusted.

“I usually keep a few bags in my truck, but I’m fresh out and I’d rather not toss the dirty paper towels on the side of the road. That’s what would make me the happiest. I’m a stickler about littering.” Alan smiled and winked and tried his best to be charming.

It didn’t seem to really work.

Still, the woman did reach back into the car and grabbed the bag.

Alan snatched it as soon as she turned around.

“Thank you very much. You saved me a pretty penny. Nowadays some stores charge you if you want your purchase bagged. It’s getting crazy out there.”

The woman’s answer was off putting in the way the words seemed to slam against some unforeseen wall, something more than just a period at the end of a sentence. She said, “I know.”

It was two words that carried some unfathomable weight. Alan knew she had experienced something so terrible, he wanted to keep helping her.

Then she asked, “You sure you don’t want the buckle?”

Alan smiled. “I’ll be fine, I got my bag now.”

“Just remember you chose it.”

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Alan thought nothing of what the woman said then and there. It would be days before he realized she tried to warn him. He had offered to follow her into a mechanic’s shop in case any more issues arose from her car, but she waved him off. His help wasn’t good anymore—like expired milk. Alan had better things to do anyways, or so he had thought.

Days later, he wished he had followed her.

He wished he could remember her license plate, or where she said she was from or going. But it all escaped him.

A security guard pointed his Maglite at the Alan Tuel’s backseat. There was no need for the flashlight since it was broad daylight, but it must’ve given the mall cop some kind of sense of authority.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Nothing,” Alan said.

“You mind unlocking the door and letting me see this ‘nothing’?”

Alan shook his head and shrugged. The store manager stood behind the security guard, nodding and smirking. They thought they’d caught him now.

“If it’s not in there, check his toolbox in the back of his truck,” the store manager piped up in all her defiant glory. “He’s been coming in and out all day. He was even smart enough to park just outside the security camera’s reach. He’s a pro ain’t he?”

Alan tried to protest, but all he did was let his mouth gape and shake his head. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He’d never shoplifted in his forty-two years of life and certainly had no intention to start now. He had merely been admiring an expensive digital camera for his niece who’d taken up photography. He kept trying to decide if it was the right camera and if he could afford it—which it was and he couldn’t. But he wished he could.

The mall cop dug his fingers into the bag and Alan immediately cried frame job. The camera was too big to have been in the bag, which lay flaccid on his seat.

“Are you kidding, no way, uh huh? You planted that, sir. I don’t know what’s happening here, but I don’t like it one bit.”

“I told you he stole!” the store manager cried.

“How? How did I steal it? I swear I never took it!”

“Lying doesn’t help you. You’re caught red-handed.”

“You mind coming back with me into the store, sir?” The guard wasn’t really asking.

“Fine, only if you show me the security tape that shows me taking that camera!” Alan was marching now. He stormed back into the store. The store manager trailed behind triumphant and bitter as she informed all her employees and patrons that Alan was the shoplifter.

“We caught him! Look at him squirming now!”

They went into the Loss Prevention Officer’s office.

Alan wanted that security tape so bad he could picture it. He could picture waving it in front of the judge to prove the frame job. He’d never stolen a thing in his life.

But as they sat there, something appeared to be wrong.

“Don’t you put a new tape in every day? This isn’t digital, is it?” the guard asked the manager.

“No, corporate is too cheap for that. We have to put a new tape in every week and as you can see…” she showed him the row of tapes all marked chronologically, “we keep them all in order up to two years back.”

“There’s no tape in here,” the guard said.

“No tape?” Alan asked.

The store manager checked herself.

A million excuses flew out of her until she settled on, “We have witnesses. We don’t need tape. Everyone who works here saw him take it.”

“What is this?” Alan was about ready to turn a shade of purple, he’d run out of red.

“With the camera’s cost we’re looking at a felony.” The guard called his superiors. The real police showed up. Alan was taken in and booked and the camera was taken into their possession.

It was near one of the worst days of Alan’s life.

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The police made him call a taxi to get back to the Mall so he could pick up his truck. It was another insult on top of the ridiculous $1500 bail they forced him to post. It was more than the camera was worth.

Alan tried to keep his eyes away from the store. He was so embarrassed. He opened his truck door and there was the mischievous bag—the magician’s bag. The mall cop had somehow yanked the stolen camera from like a rabbit. He went to flick it across the seat when he felt something in it.

He felt the bag on the outside it was small and rectangular. He pulled it out. A small cassette tape rest in his hand. He wondered how it got there. It wasn’t one he could play in anything he had at home. He’d never searched the bag when the woman had given it to him, but he was surprised the Mall cop had not discovered it.

He’d have a harder time explaining the tape he figured. His time would be better spent finding a lawyer.

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Alan watched his niece’s eyes. They were turned away from him, blinking naturally as she flipped through her portfolio. He had wanted to buy the camera for her and now he might go to jail for simply perusing the store.

She spoke of lighting and apertures, but all Alan could do was work on the sentence structure to tell her he was going to go to jail briefly or vacation or away. Then suddenly their eyes met.

“Uncle Alan?” Julie asked.

“Yes?”

“We’re you even looking?”

“Of course, I was,” Alan lied.

She didn’t believe him, but she started to flip through her pictures again. This time Alan looked and he saw something.

“Where’d you take this one?”

His finger smudged the red hatchback sitting next to a laundry mat. If he had known anything about composition and the rule of thirds, he would’ve known his niece had framed the picture perfectly.

“Down off Main Street I think.”

“Near Carytown?”

“Before Carytown.”

Alan knew the Laundromat. And he knew the red hatchback. Even in the picture he could make out the junk piling up in the back of the woman’s car. Her words came back to him now and he realized.

He wished he’d taken the belt buckle the woman had offered. He had less use for it, but it certainly couldn’t have been used in the frame job he now found himself caught in.

“Are you okay?” Julie asked.

Alan lied, “Of course.” Then he saw a cassette tape sitting on her desk. He pointed at the cassette. “What kind of music you listening to these days?”

“Uh, that’s a mini-DV tape. It’s for video.”

Like the one Alan had found in the bag.

“Do you have something that plays those? I’ve got one but I don’t know what’s on it. A friend left it with me.”

“My camcorder can plug up to a T.V.”

“That would be really great. Let me go get it.” Alan left his niece’s room without another word and he almost tripped on his way to his truck but he nabbed the tape off his dashboard and ran right back inside.

“You’re getting old,” Julie said as she waited for Alan to catch his breath. He tried a witty retort, but ended up just nodding and handing over the cassette tape.

She put it in and hit play.

“Stop!” Alan gasped.

Julie jumped from his tone. Her fingers fumbled until the video paused.

“Now, I remember. It’s a security tape. My friend had wanted me to hold onto it for safekeeping. I don’t think we’re supposed to watch it.” He lied. It was the footage from the store. The same footage he’d wished he’d had and knew could exonerate him from the crime of stealing the camera. But how could he use it now to prove his innocence?

“They planted it,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Alan smiled and took the tape back. “I should probably get this back to him.” By ‘him’ Alan was envisioning some lawyer who would help him win the lawsuit against the store manager and security guard who had accused him of stealing the camera. He didn’t want Julie to know a thing about it. He would buy her fifty cameras afterwards.

“I thought you were going to stay for dinner?”

“Can’t. I thought I told your mom that?”

Julie shook her head a bit disappointed. But she wouldn’t be for much longer.

“Look, I’ll let you in on a secret. I’ve got a surprise for you. It’ll be a while, but you’re going to love it!”

He kissed her forehead and she hugged him. He was slamming the door before he realized he didn’t need to run off right then and there, but he was motivated. He was going to drive by the Laundromat and see if the red hatchback was still there. He was going to ask what the woman had meant and tell her his strange story. He grabbed the bag sitting on his seat.

There was something in it.

It was much heavier than the cassette, only quite a bit thinner.

Alan stared at the belt buckle sitting in his hand. He had wished for it. He had wished she’d given it to him instead of the bag. He had wished for the security tape. He had wished for the camera. He wished for it again as he sat in his parked truck. He stared at the bag. It looked empty. He grabbed at it to crumple it up and throw it away once and for all. But his hand couldn’t close over it. There was something in it now.

It was bigger than the cassette and the belt buckle this time. He pulled it out, a strap dropped down around his wrist, the lens reflected the sunlight into his eyes and his fingers found where they were supposed to grasp. It was what Julie would have wanted. It was the camera Alan could not afford.

He knew the store was missing a camera again.

Would they think it was him again?

Would they come and find him?

Would they search Julie?

No, he couldn’t give it to her and involve her. It was somehow the bag’s doing, he had to be certain. He had to find out. He had to find the woman in the red hatchback.

THE END?