I Just Wanted a Cookie

The hailstorm of mendacity and swindling are always out there, impinging on my optimism.

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 my ten-minute, three-milers regularly. I believed I’d earned a maxed-out cookie.

I hadn’t a single thought for conflict, but standing in line for a cookie, I found myself idly watching a 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, fumbling with her little coin purse, she dropped a quarter to the pavement and I saw the kid-vendor spot her silver disc 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 old ladies.

And it did.

She smiled back 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 him - 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 the cost of over-head - the price of the spaces they were paying for. 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 didn’t see the old lay’s quarter fall.

Then, a saw-dusted, ball-capped young man in black work Dickies, boots and a red-on-black checked work shirt stepped up to the kid’s tiny table. The man 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 front of 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 the cookie 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.  The kid-vendor had never returned.

Cautiously, I nibbled cookie. Instantly, I was enthralled by the hoped-for but unexpectedly distinct peanut butter flavor! Instantly, I understood people’s patience inthecookie guy’s line. I mean, my cookie was loud! Thereare bland, stale discs that resemble cookies and then there are cookiesthat transport. I drifted a short distance away into the crowd and found an empty bench.

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, but in living color, and on canvas instead of clay tablet.

Just then, a startling explosion of a shrill little voice yelling what sounded like a name yanked me out of my Gilgamesh mind-trip. Just in the instant I glanced back that way; just for the briefest moment, the crowd parted: I saw the quarter kid, heard him - screaming in pain - and being savagely bitten on his right hand by a smallish girl. Swinging at the end of his flailing arm, I saw the little girl lifted off the pavement by his terror. I saw her pink and grey legs fly. I saw both kids crash into a heap, wrecking his little table and equipage, his tip can rolling away.

I was mildly curious about the smallish girl, but I just wanted a cookie, so I sat down alone on an isolated bench and tried to take my time, tasting gratefully the rest of my cookie. Our kid swindler had stopped crying. It seemed his hand was being bandaged.

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? Well, my cookie had staying power. So, I just sat there. Except for seeing the red and blue lights of a police vehicle reflecting off the windows of a building across the street from the market, 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 munching. I was startled; walking beside him, I felt sure of it, was the same compact, tidy girl I had glimpsed assaulting the kid carney. The man and she were holding hands. I noticed a small, blood-stained rip in the left knee of her pink and grey-striped tights. The man’s face beamed with pride – but hers were red and sorrowful.

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 away 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. The pair walked back, and sat on the opposite end of myvery 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 his cookie before his daughter had assaulted the kid swindler. Obviously, now, while he struggled what to say to her about the incident, his intent was to cheer her – and, if I were him, mollify.

He handed her a portion of their cookie. Sitting on my bench, in his workman’s 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 our 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 not the first corrupt public official she had ever encountered; her first was the embezzling 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 muffled her tender face and voice inside his shirt. I will never forget what she said,

“Oh, daddy. I know our class 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!”