Charming Creeps
Predators I have known
I was fifteen, standing in my favorite mall store, MusicLand. Jeans patched to hell and back, barefoot, because it was early summer, and because all would-be Bessemer, Alabama hippies went barefoot. Some did it even in winter, but my non-hippie mother would have had my head examined and more, had I left our house in January without shoes, or my “heavy coat,” a black fake-fur coat she bought me because that’s what some of the Beatles wore in all those photos even she had noted and maybe loved.
West Lake Mall in Bessemer was named after the lake the city fathers drained so that their sons and daughters could walk without shoes from MusicLand to Expressions (our “head shop”), and on down past the Karamel Korn booth and maybe even into WT Grant’s because they, too, sold albums. The mall was one level, about as long as a football field which, given the passion for Crimson Tide and War Eagles gridiron action everywhere, made a good deal of sense, except, of course, if you remembered fishing in that former lake, or dancing at its mid-lake pavilion, accessed by a lengthy and impressive pier.
The first clerk who handled MusicLand’s wares approached my friends and me on this day. He wore pink double-knit pants, white patent leather boots, and some kind of paisley shirt. His hair was white-boy kinky, his nose upturned, and with his thin…
