Gypsy Raid
We had minutes. Minutes to grab anything Sara and I could get our dirty silent hands on. Mark stood watch at the heavy oak doors of the church, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and tapping his foot nervously. Sara and I were almost done blowing out and snatching the white prayer candles. My hands were burning from hot wax and incased by the dried paraffin from the first few candles I didn’t give time to dry. I still had room in my sack; not a good thing in Mark’s opinion. I walked down the center aisle of the church, scavenging for something we’d be able to pawn, sell or use.
“Ha, oh shit look at this!” Sara was standing in the first row of pews, looking down at something that put a grin and wide-eyed look on her dirt-smeared face. I approached her with an extended index finger to my lips, reminding her that we weren’t supposed to be there. Then I saw what she was looking at.
“Holy shit.” I heard slip out of my mouth in a breathy exhale, realizing it was kind of funny to be saying such a thing in a house of worship. On the edge of the pew’s bench was the basket of offerings that must have been left there from today’s service. It was filled with one, five, ten, and twenty dollar bills. No, not full; it was over flowing. I looked at the basket of money and forgot that we were on the clock. This run just got a whole lot more exciting…and illegal. Sara and I looked at each other for a moment, grins spreading across our faces as we realized what we were about to do.
The wax on my fingers made it easier to grab the bills. My knapsack, lacking an inch of room, was full of money, candles, rosaries, Bibles and a single song book. No one really buys the song books at our little merchandise marts we set up when we move around, but the Bibles, rosaries and glass-held relic candles get sold relatively quickly; especially in Mexican neighborhoods. I gently swung my pack across my back, making sure I didn’t break the glass, and grabbed the strap securely with my other hand.
“Let’s get out of here. Churches freak me out.” Having run out of room in her over-sized purse, Sara was now stuffing money into the pockets of her tattered jacket, her face still plastered with that greedy smile. She stuffed the last handful of bills down the front of her shirt and into her bra.
“We should take the basket too. Do you have any room?” Sara looked at my backpack, put the basket on the floor, and slid it under the bench with her foot. “Alright let’s go,” Sarah slung her purse over her shoulder as we started walking towards the back of the church where Mark was standing guard.
We were halfway down the center aisle when Mark let out a startling “SHHH.” The frantic sound reverberated through the aisles of the cavernous Catholic church and up through the dark wood of the ceiling to the tallest point of the central steeple. Sara and I froze in mutual terror and looked to the door where Mark previously stood. Only is arm was sticking into the church through a small crack in the double doors, only large enough for us to see his arm and his broad palm stretched wide in a Supremes “STOP in the name of love” way, while the rest of his body was hidden on the other side of the narthex doors; our only way out of the church’s great hall. Sara and I looked at each other frantically until a motion from the door caught our eye. The stop sign had turned into a fast up-and-down waving motion. Mark’s arm then slid, painful looking, through the door in a blink of an eye, the heavy oak door slamming closed behind him.
Sara and I remained frozen as the echo from the abandoning door close made its way down the aisle we were petrified in. As the sound reached where we stood, we split up. Almost as if the slam was a cue, we turned to opposite sides of the church and sprung our bodies into the same row of pews split by the central aisle of worn terracotta. My raw-skinned elbows and forearms pulled me under a bench in an army crawl and into the protection of sacred invisibility. I quickly maneuvered to face the aisle to see if Sara had landed safely. She was propped up on her elbows and studying her floor-burnt palms with an exaggerated frown. She looked to her left and let out a high pitched peep of excitement that made me flinch. She extended her left arm towards the row of seats in front of her, her right elbow still propped on the cracked clay floor. She slid a black retractable umbrella out from under the bench in front of her and, with a look of satisfaction, unzipped her bulging bag. Flinching again at the sound of the zipper I looked around me. There was dirt left behind from parishioner’s Sunday shoes, the shoes of those who just paid us their week’s tithing. We were giving them their poor and their hungry; we were just speeding up the transaction. I mused at the thought of the three us in line at a food pantry, pleading for another can of beans and a blanket, or begging for pity from some self-righteous suburbanite. I smiled at the thought of us ever falling to some pathetic poorhouse when a clinking noise, once again, snapped me out of my head.
Sara was trying the shove the umbrella into her purse that obviously had no room for it, causing the glass housing the prayer candles to clink and the rosaries to shake against them like maracas. I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth to get her attention. She stopped suddenly and looked up at me. With a murderous look I mouthed the words “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” Exaggerating each word to make sure she knew who she was dealing with. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know why Mark keeps her around; the girl is just bafflingly stupid sometimes. Sara looked at me like a dog that’s just been scolded, then wiggled as she stuffed the fairly sizeable umbrella down the front of her ratty frayed jeans. I rolled my eyes and strained them to look back down the aisle. It didn’t look or feel like anyone was coming and I hadn’t heard anything except the noises from Sara’s acts of defining stupidity. To be sure we were in the clear I gave myself a couple more minutes of dead silence, straightened my hat, and slowly pushed myself out from under the protection of the pew’s splintering wooden bench.
Stealthily, I placed one hand on the seat of the pew I was just under, and reached up to grab the back of the row in front of me. Slowly, very slowly, I pulled myself up, my legs absorbing the weight of my body as I finally straightened my legs. I stood for a moment, staring at the altar at the front of the church, feeling painfully vulnerable and small in the loftiness of the old church. A shiver ran down my spine, snapping me out of my frightened stupor and into full attention. The church seemed so much bigger and daunting when I was the only on standing in it. Pains of stained glass filtered dusty light beams into the church on both sides of a huge, and very realistic, crucifix. I couldn’t help but feel guilty when I looked at the pained face of our lord and savior, crowned with thorns and pinned up with nails. The hot Arizona sun through the stained glass colored his skin, as well as the wood paneled walls and sloping ceiling, a warm palate of different reds and oranges. The musky but pleasant smell of incense tickled my nose and reminded me of how angry my mother would get when I lit sticks of Nag Champa in the house; it covered up the cigarette smoke and weed stink. I almost felt the need to kick down a kneeler and ask the man nailed to the cross before me for forgiveness, for everything I’ve done or didn’t do during the year since I fled home, but my voice of looter reason yelled at me to stay focused.
I looked down to the left to see Sara, still hiding under the pew, motioning for me to get back down or leave or something of that nature. Yeah, like she has any say in what I had to do next. She’s still new to our modern micro caravan. If you asked me, I still think she shouldn’t be here. She’s the kind of stupid girl that could get us busted by her own careless airhead mistakes; but Mark insisted that six stealing hands and another pair of tits could always be of help.
I felt like a mime, my steps taken so lightly on the soft soles of my deerskin moccasins, which were procured by Mark’s swift hands at an Indian reservation shop in Cherokee country; he gave them to me on the same night he told me he loved me, and I haven’t worn any other shoes since. I wondered jealously why he insisted on keeping Sara around, if he had any sort of feelings or attraction to her. My selfish thoughts aside, I reminded myself of one of the cardinal gypsy rules; if you’re in the middle of a potentially illegal loot spot- move.
I walked, quiet as death, to the wall where the prayer candles once burned in penance before we extinguished their messages. Under a pane of warm stained glass I slid against the wooden wall to a kneeling position that still gave me a decent vantage point of the entire great hall. I panned the room; altar, aisle, pews, DOOR. As my eyes reached the double doors they swung open. Before I could hide, I saw the white robes of a prepubescent altar boy. Exhaling slightly I made eye contact with Sara once again, then looked back at the altar boy who was playing with some handheld game device while walking distractedly down the aisle. She looked at me and winked while reaching a hand down the front of her pants to grab the umbrella. I crouched at the end of the pew I once hid under and crept closer to the aisle the boy was nearly in the middle of. Sara maneuvered the umbrella out of her pants as we took our hiding positions; then we attacked.
Sara thrusted the umbrella into the altar boy’s path causing him to trip, face first, into the hard floor. His gameboy flew out of his hand and slid to a halt a few feet in front of me. The boy, still shocked from his fall, began to whimper as I grabbed the game device and stood up quickly and ran as fast as I could, hearing Sara steps behind me, through the doors of the church and into the safety of the setting Arizona sun. Another successful night as a modern-day gypsy.
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