Stories by John Carr Walker
The Commitment of a Crime
Our old second grade teacher Mrs. Hunsacker was yelling orders across the counter at the line cook, night we robbed Yum Burrito. We wore ski masks to hide our faces from the camera in the suspended ceiling. Wore gloves so we wouldn’t leave prints on our way out the swinging door. Wallace Pearlman waved his knife at the cashier. Everett Rooker held the bag. Damon Coats demanded the money quick. Mrs. Hunsacker piped in: I’m sure you meant all the money quick-ly, young man. We hated Mrs. Hunsacker. Nothing we ever did was right. She said, You will remove your ridiculous hats indoors. We took off our ski masks. You will drop that immediately, Wallace Pearlman. Wallace dropped the knife. Mrs. Hunsacker yelled again at the cook, took her greasy brown bag, then asked, What are you still doing there? Wallace, his bare face erupting with acne destined to scar the rest of his life, couldn’t think of an answer. Then come, she said. In evidence that would be used against us, the camera recorded the voluntarily disarmed Wallace Pearlman following Mrs. Hunsacker out the door and away from the commitment of a crime. Fucking Wallace. And who’s that old bitch think she is? Why didn’t she remember us too.
Heaven
People with back taxes, parking tickets, and other city fines used to make up Spearwood’s work crews, clearing litter and beautifying our public parks. We didn’t like seeing work crews on our walks, deadbeats with plastic bags and high visibility vests, but at least they weren’t living rent free in jail. Last election, Spearwood voters closed the jail. Work crews have changed since then. Instead of debtors, we see known prostitutes out with leaf blowers. Wife batterers trim the grass along the creek bank with two-stroke weed whackers. Drug dealers walk shoulder to shoulder scouring the ground for styrofoam cups, candy wrappers, and needles. We’ve grown suspicious of any group wielding rakes. Students on service projects, church volunteers, the new mormon family next door—mow a lawn in Spearwood, stranger, and you’ll feel us eyeballing you. Police tasked with running the new work crews are fully armed with nightsticks, tasers, pistols, and rifles, but we don’t feel any safer. It’s been months since we’ve risked a walk in Grafton Park. Shame. The park must be clean as heaven now.
John Carr Walker is the author of the story collection Repairable Men (Sunnyoutside.) His work has appeared in Eclectica, Hippocampus, Split Lip, The Rupture, Pithead Chapel, Bodega, The Los Angeles Review, Paris Lit Up, Barzakh, Sophon Lit, and elsewhere. He writes about anxiety and creativity in the weekly substack John Carr Walker Sitting In His Little Room. A native of California’s San Joaquin Valley, he now lives in Northwest Oregon and teaches at The University of Portland.
Table of Contents for Flaw and Favor