Page 21 - Leather Blues

Leather Blues 9

“That’s too large, I’m sure,” she said.
“The boy’s probably right.” The clerk spoke regally over
the knot of his tie. “He really ought to know,” the salesman
said. “He came in here several days ago with a group of boys
who disturbed the manager no end. We have such a problem
with juvenile shoplifting.” He looked Dennis straight in the
eye. “And we always prosecute,” he said. “I remember your
boy particularly. He’s big for his age and his face is more
noticeable than ordinary. We found him actually wearing
this very jacket in the shoe department.”
“I was trying it on,” Denny said. He didn’t mention the
extra fingers and touches the man had plied across his body
as he took the jacket from him that afternoon.
“As his mother,’’ the clerk said, “I thought you would like
to know. He probably doesn’t tell you everything.” He shot a
hard glance at Denny. “But we don’t like unattended young
boys playing in the store.”
“Thank you,” his mother said. “I’ll talk to his father.”
Denny pulled the jacket down from the iron rack. He
slipped his arms into the leather and pulled up the zipper. “I
like it,” he said.
His mother looked nervously at the pinchmouthed clerk.
“It does have windcuffs,” she said. Then making an uncon-
vincing attack, for a moment she stared the clerk in the eye.
“Well, Dennis,” she said. “We’ll take it. That’s what we’ll
do. We’ll buy it right now. No sense shopping around and
then coming back right where we started.” Her eye could
not again meet the clerk’s. “I think this one will be fine,”
she said.
Back in the neighborhood, though the Michigan eve-
ning was late Indian Summer, Denny wore his brown leather
jacket out to show his buddies.
“Take it and shove it,” Stoney said. “Who needs a
crummy leather jacket.”
“But it’s real,” he said.

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