A Good Plan
Both drolled in queue on the high-speed train.
“Orange juice. And no pulp please. I despise pulp,” said the boy to the bartender. He wore a Yankees cap, a striped Old Navy t-shirt, and black khakis.
The old man waiting behind was visibly undecided, considering what he should order. He wore a faded button-down shirt and a corduroy blazer, shoulders dusted with dandruff that could have been sitting there since 2005. A copy of War and Peace hung out of his left hand.
“Coffee, black,” said the old man.
He looked at the boy as if he was below him and to be fair, he was about two feet shorter than him and completely concerned with how the bartender was going to pour his orange juice. She did it well enough. Once he got his little plastic cup, pulp-less and tart to the brim, he asked the man if he liked orange juice.
“I suppose it’s alright.”
“I suppose so. Why do you like coffee?” asked the boy, trying to sound bored.
“It’s a treat I give myself on trains. I like to be awake to see the country pass by.”
The boy nodded his head, pulling out a pack of sour gummy worms from his Spongebob backpack. He popped open the packaging, blasting sour dust all over his black khakis. The man was annoyed by that, like the boy’s mess was his own.
“Do you wanna rob the folks in front of us?” asked the boy.
He had seen a movie where that happened. Two men, after months of planning, had figured the perfect heist to stick up a rich couple in their airplane. In the film, the robbers knew all about all of their assets. A rare art collection, multiple properties. Through verbal manipulation and a firearm, they could have it all.
“Through verbal manipulation and a firearm, we could have it all,” the boy said as he slid a blue-and-red sour worm into his mouth, chewing zealously.
The man was stunned, looking at the boy like he was twice his age. All he wanted, however, was to rob the folks in front of him. It wasn’t a huge deal. He had seen it in a movie and it had gone just fine.
“Kid, I don’t think that’s a great idea. I’m not sure if you saw that in a movie or what, but that’s not how real lif — ”
“I did see it in a movie! Ladies and Gentlemen, I understand that you may be afraid. I would be too,” said the boy in a deep register. “That’s the first line. I saw it with my dad.”
He reached back into Spongebob and pulled out a mini catapult and two rocks which he intended to substitute for the gun he would have otherwise used. They used a gun in the movie, he explained. That, perhaps, was one of the flaws of the plan — he lacked a firearm. It was not, however, for lack of effort.
A couple of weeks ago, his dad took him to a Bass Pro Shop and while his father looked at the candy-colored array of fishing supplies, the boy slipped away to the hunting rifle section. Astounded by the quantity of dead animals on the way, however, he got distracted by the fish tanks and taxidermy. The boy stuck his hands up to the glass, his eyes loyally following the path of a singular catfish. What a beautiful creature the boy thought to himself. He wanted to break him free. But he reminded himself that he could only execute one plan at a time. The catfish would have to be next.
Once he made it to the rifle section, he asked the twenty-something, pimple-faced employee plenty of questions about the caliber, ammunition, and stock of the rifles; all of the information he would need to know to perfectly plan the heist. The employee answered attentively although with suspicious eyes. There was, after all, a ten year old boy asking shockingly detailed questions about the rifles hanging on the wall behind him. Although in the boy’s opinion, he sounded like a natural.
He hadn’t missed a beat until he asked the man which rifle he would recommend for sticking up a high speed train — that’s what broke the illusion. The employee began to answer with alarm then, as if a cosmic sign was telling the boy that he had misstepped, his father appeared behind him with both hands on his shoulders.
“You’re always running off!” said dad while the boy assumed a face of humiliation.
“Excuse my colleague,” said the boy. “As I was saying…”
But before he could continue, his father dragged him away from the rifles.
The boy explained all of this to the old man standing next to him as he listened horrified, completely oblivious to the steaming paper cup waiting for him.
“Anyways, are you married?” said the boy while fidgeting with the rubber bands of the mini catapult.
The old man was unsure if he should respond to the boy’s questions. He wasn’t sure why, but a little bit of fear nestled in his lower-stomach. Then he remembered that he was sitting next to a 10 year old, and he was probably just a little too nosy. An active imagination, all that.
“Used to be. Been a long time now,” said the old man with reserve.
“Oh. Like you had divorcing?”
“Sure. We had a divorce,” said the man. “When you’re twenty, it’s hard to know what you’ll want for the rest of your life.”
“Yeah that’s a bummer. My parents are doing that right now, I think.”
The old man wasn’t sure how to respond to that; the boy didn’t appear all that phased by the information. He was swinging his legs, analyzing the nutrition facts on the back of his gummy worm bag.
“Is 46 grams of sugar a lot?” he asked.
“Sure, it’s quite a bit.”
“So why did you try a divorce?”
The old man didn’t say anything in response to that. The boy didn’t even seem to care, he was completely enthralled by the gummy worms bag, twirling it around, looking so close as if there were hidden symbols only visible on close examination. The man looked at the window behind the boy, the remnants of Cincinnati passing. He took his first sip of coffee.
“Does it make you sad?” asked the boy.
“Has no one told you that you shouldn’t ask questions like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like the one you just asked me.”
“Questions about feelings?”
“Well… yes!”
“If you tell me, I promise I won’t rob the train. Anyways I don’t get sad. I can control it.”
The man looked back at Cincinnati for another moment, took a deep inhale and opened his mouth to speak. He explained to the boy that he’s probably wrong and that it’s very hard to control feelings like that. Plus, he had no idea why he wanted to know so much about his marriage. The old man was probably less interested in himself than the boy was.
But the boy, adamant and stubborn, slid his little plastic cup to the man.
“You can have my orange juice.”
Then a little flash of something passed the man’s mind. An image of somewhere that he hadn’t seen in a long time, like having a recurring dream you had forgotten about for years. His joints loosened a bit and that swarming tension in his stomach came back.
“OK. It was very long ago so I may not remember perfectly. But we met in the weeks before Christmas, in New York. I was on holiday from college in a low-lit dive-bar celebrating with a few other boys. There was a band playing, but they were probably more drunk than we were because I recall the music being dreadful. I do remember that. But I hadn’t drank so much, anyway — definitely not as much as the others. I think I was beginning to grow quite bored, actually, staring off, and then one of my friends shook my shoulders. Mate, mate. He said. Look at that angel over there. And he pointed at a young woman, about my age, singing along with the band. She was always smiling, like it was enough just to breathe the air in that bar. She was up close talking to the piano player and I don’t know why, but I got a little jealous. I didn’t know her, but I thought he was so lucky to be talking to her. Some of the lights in the pub were broken and didn’t shine so they cast a half-glow on her face, like she was in a film. I asked the bartender for another gin and tonic then I went to talk to her. And she flashed that same smile at me. I couldn’t believe it. We kept talking until I forgot I was talking to someone. And then she came over to my friends and we drunkenly sang songs of longing and desire, arms wrapped around each other. She pulled me in and unabashedly kissed my cheek. I’m sure I looked so embarrassed, my face used to get very red. But I kept singing. Even the piano player sang with us, eyes shut, in his own reverie of song. The room moved and swayed like an impressionist painting and I kept drinking my gin and tonic. ”
“Did you get married?” asked the boy.
Get Wesley Jansen’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
“Much later. And I’ve held up my end of the deal.”
“The deal?” asked the boy.
“You said that if I told you, you wouldn’t rob the train. You can keep your orange juice, though.”
“I don’t know. That story you just told reminded me of how good my plan was compared to your plan. Also what’s an impressionist?”
“Well it’s a period — ”
“Nevermind. If you liked the girl so much then why did you do divorce?”
“Well I guess things change as you get older.”
“Robberies don’t change. You can rob a high speed train whenever you want. As long as you have a good plan, nothing bad will happen. Why didn’t you make a plan?”
“Well you can’t really make plans for stuff like that. People don’t know how they’re going to feel after many many years, not even a couple days.
“I don’t understand romance,” said the boy.
“Well I wouldn’t much expect you to.”
“See, with my plan everything works. I know the little steps I have to take to rob this train and leave it as the richest kid in the world.”
Then the boy dug around his backpack for something. Out of it, he pulled a large red siren-light.
“See! This will get all of their attention. I got it at Party City. Can you hold on to my stuff, please?”
And before the man could respond, the boy forced both slingshot and siren-light on top of the man’s wrinkled chino pants. Then suddenly, the boy heard something far off at the end of the cart. He whipped his head to see who was coming and to his remiss, it was the ticket checker, a bonafide employee of the train in a black-and-white checkered vest. He was a threat. The boy frantically looked around, desperate for a solution and looked directly at the man. Help me, he said with his eyes.
The man understood immediately and seemed to catch the boy’s franticism. He hesitated and scatteredly shoved the slingshot to the right of him and the siren light behind the bar. The bartender gaped at the two of them, and the boy put a finger to his lips, shushing. Vest marched down the cart and after what seemed like an hour, reached them.
“Tickets?”
Hand shaking, the boy handed him the ticket. He told Vest that it was the real deal, nothing to worry about.
“OK. You’re good to go,” said Vest, continuing down the cart.
The boy, stunned, turned to the old man and opened his mouth to speak.
“You believe in it,” he said.
“In what?”
“The plan.”
“I absolutely do not.”
“Then why did you protect me? Only people who believe in you protect you.”
“You know that robbing people — taking their things — is unethical? It means you’re being a bad person.”
“I don’t know unethical,” said the boy. “Anyways, give me that.”
He reached to grab the slingshot sitting to the right of the man. The man stammered, trying to protest, then the boy asked the bartender for another pulp-less orange juice and his siren-light. The bartender obliged.
“Please wait,” the old man begged.
The boy slipped the slingshot into the waistband of his black khakis. He hoisted the siren-light above his head like a great athlete does a trophy. He flipped the switch underneath, and the blaring spiral filled the train. Onlookers gawked at the boy. He assumed a proud pose, chin raised above.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he yelled coolly, “I understand you may be afraid. I would be too. But this can go one of two ways: The easy way or the hard way. The easy way; you give me everything in your wallets and we go on with our days. But the hard; you refuse and things get nasty,” he said as he yanked the slingshot string, snarling his teeth, prepared to shoot a rock at any innocent onlooker.
He directed his slingshot towards a slim young man in a tailored suit and slicked-back hair. He recoiled in terror and yelled for the train attendant.
Vest came urgently running down the aisle. The boy, after noticing him, directed his slingshot at his top button.
“Stay where you are,” the boy warned holding the slingshot ready to shoot.
“Easy kid,” said Vest.
He crept towards the boy with a pinty grin on his face. The boy’s shooting arm trembled. He pulled the string back a little bit farther, as far as it could go, tears burrowing in his eyes.
“Stop!” he said, voice shaking.
“Just give me the toy,” said Vest, holding his arm out.
“It’s not a toy.”
As Vest came within two feet of the boy, he swiped out his hand to grab the slingshot until he noticed a flash to his right. The old man gripped Vest’s shoulder.
“Enough,” said the old man.
“Sir, sit down.”
“You just don’t understand.”
“What exactly don’t I understand?” asked Vest.
“His plan. He knew you would do this.”
“I’m sor–” managed Vest before the old man was throwing his right hand into his face. Vest crashed into the couple next to him. The old man winced, shaking his hand in immense pain. The boy couldn’t believe what he had seen. He considered himself a glass-half-full kind of boy, but this outcome never even crossed his mind. He hadn’t planned this at all.
“Oh my God!” said the boy. “I knew it!”
“Shut up,” said the old man.
“That’s right. Maybe we should put the slingshot down,” said the man in the suit.
“You shut up too,” said the old man. “And give him all of your money.”
