Robbery and Delivery or Finding the Pain Behind the Beauty

I knew something was up from the moment he walked in. I had recently been promoted to Pharmacy Technician. From behind the elevated pharmacy counter I had a clear view to the front door.  He had that look that junkies get. You’ve seen it. Wired, agitated, and worn down.

My parents knew the owner of a small but busy drugstore that was tucked away in a tiny strip mall on a back street. That’s how I got the job.  In the growing southern city I lived in, that was how college kids like me found work. We knew someone.  In the mid to late eighties, knowing someone was important. At first I ran deliveries. This consisted of delivering prescriptions to the wealthy white people who lived to the south of our store and to black people, mired in poverty, living to the west side of town. The disparity was striking.

He approached the lower check-out counter directly in front of me and the pharmacist on duty.

Like I said, I knew something was up. Often people who were strung out and short on money to buy their drug of choice, or couldn’t get a scrip, or their dealer had run out would resort to Class V Narcotics. They could get these medicines without a prescription. If you drank a whole bottle it would temporarily provide a high in times of desperation.

 As a delivery driver I drove down private lanes that lead to mansions on sprawling lots.  Many of these private roads had small lakes surrounded by beautiful Oaks and Maples. It felt like I was a million miles from the city. Rarely did I meet the people who lived in these houses.  I either left the package at the door or the maid would answer the bell. The occasional butler would open the door and accept the delivery.

He asked the pharmacist if he could come closer. He had a private medical concern.  Many of the Class V users would fake stomach pains to try and convince us to let them sign for a bottle of Donnagel PG. It was a diarrhea medicine that contained paregoric. I figured that was why he was here, but the hairs were standing up on the back of my neck.

Driving the Chevy Blazer provided by the store, I turned off of main roads into neighborhoods that I had been told to avoid when I was growing up. Dangerous places. Before this job I had driven past these neighborhoods thousands of times. I think white kids like me were born with blinders that kept us focused on the splendid tree lined roads that enabled us to skirt these “bad places”. 

“Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.” 
― Bob Dylan

But here I am. A skinny, pale, stringy haired college kid making my way into a new world. My blinders vanished.

He was whispering to the pharmacist who then turned to me and said, “Can you step out here?”, trying to send a message with his eyes.  The drugstore’s pistol was just under the counter in a bin. I could see it. It was within my reach and situated in a way that would have made it easy for me to slip it into my hand. It was loaded.

Blinders now gone, I’m navigating new places. Seeing with the eyes of a child.  

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of

perception.”

― Aldous Huxley

Wow. Some of these neighborhoods were within walking distance of the street I grew up on. It was as if these cracked streets and dirt roads were somehow hidden like #12 Grimmauld Place under a Fidelius charm. The secret keepers in this case however were not motivated by fidelity, but by a desire to hide the effects of institutional racism.  In this wealthy banking city in 1986, how could there be roads that were not paved?  Or even graveled?

I leave the gun where it is and walk out to the check-out counter.  The pharmacist says we have a problem. The man pulls his jacket back to reveal his gun. He firmly places his hand around the grip.

The people I delivered to in the poor neighborhoods answered their own door. Mostly elderly ladies that lived in small duplexes, apartments, and hundred-year-old bungalows that were crumbling from neglect. Most were happy to see me. These folks didn’t have cars. This was a difficult city to navigate without a car.  Especially if you were old and the bus stop was several blocks away because the bus does not come down these streets. In my experience, all the people who lived in luxury on the private lanes had light skin.  All the people who lived in squalor on the broken back streets had dark skin.  

He says that he does not want to hurt anyone. He wants all of our Schedule II narcotics. He even knows where our safe is.  He goes on to say that he will accompany us to the safe, adding that if we do not cooperate, he will kill us.

Before the delivery job, I had been in a slumber. Living in a dream world where no one was hungry, everyone had a roof over their heads, and we all were safe. I’m awake now. Awake to the disparity that I knew existed. That knowledge had been a brown recluse spider hiding in the dark corners of my brain; not wanting to expose me to its venom.

We give him the drugs.  He starts getting nervous. He’s rushing us now, “hurry up, Hurry up!”.

He orders us to lie face down on the ground. He says “Close your eyes”. This makes me angry. Why close our eyes?  Is he going to shoot us execution style, in the back?

I keep my eyes open. He’s moving toward the door with his pillowcase full of Opioids and his gun pointed toward us. He’s very anxious. He’s hollering that we need to start counting out loud to 100.  “Don’t get up until you get to 100”, he shouts!

He runs out the door.  We are up by the count of seven.  The pharmacist goes for the phone punching 911.  I race for the store pistol.  I swing open the front door, gripping the gun with both hands and extending it in front of me.  I quickly turn one direction and then the other ready to shoot.  He’s gone.  He must have had a get-away waiting outside.

In the weeks that followed I often wondered would I have shot him if I had felt the odds were in my favor. If so, could I have lived with taking someone’s life?  Would it have been justified?  Certainly he knew the risk he was taking as an armed robber.

When I recounted this story to people I knew, most asked the same question: “Was he Black?”

They weren’t investigating the crime. They weren’t detectives trying to sketch a profile. Why this question? I’m not answering that question now. I did not like the question then either.  So, sometimes I said yes and sometimes I said no.  Here is the interesting part. If I said no, the response was consistently, “really? He was white?”. If I said yes, the answer was a nod or,” yeah, I figured.”

We want our fears and our prejudices confirmed. And then we want to hide them away. Just like we hide those who have the least.

We hide them right in our midst behind tree lined streets.

I got the job because my parents knew someone. I understand this. We hire people we know because we trust them. I do this myself.

But this practice is inherently biased.