Porch Pirates, a fantasy
Lee gets a break, for once. Cruising through the Compass Rose subdivision, looking for packages to snag, and here comes a Package Express vehicle from the other direction. It passes, and Lee sees in the rear-view mirror where it stops. No hurry, proceed to the end of the block and slowly U-turn to give the driver time to complete the delivery and move on. The packages have been there less than a minute when Lee scoops them up and drives off. The Ring video doorbell may have seen Lee, it may have even glimpsed the beat-up old car, but Lee knows from long experience nothing will come of it. The low resolution image of someone wearing an unmarked cap will be useless for positive identification. Lee is careful to park the car where the camera won’t catch the license plate. The homeowner may get upset, may post a frame capture to NextDoor, but they will be made whole one way or another, by the seller or insurance. Lee just hopes the boxes have something good in them.
Once there was a new laptop. It could have brought a hundred bucks, and Lee was tempted to sell it, but decided to keep it. You could go online and play games on it. And once there was a case of wine. That was pretty good. Lee didn’t know anything about wine, but the buzz felt good, and made sleep easier. Of course, if you overdid it, you could wake up hungover, and that sucked. Dee wouldn’t drink any. She said it might hurt the baby. She had made up her mind to have it, even though the kid who knocked her up had taken off.
Usually, the loot Dee snagged was just stuff. Cheap plastic crap from China. Replacement parts for old cars. Whirligigs to stick in the back yard. If they could use an item, Lee and Dee kept it. It was like the world paying them back in a small way for all the hard knocks. If they could sell something, it helped Mama cover the rent. Often, they just tossed their loot. They didn’t have extra gas to drive around returning shit.
Lee didn’t like this way of life, but life was not fair. There were no good jobs, not for someone like Lee, who had had to drop out. Uber didn’t pay shit, and the car was not good enough. Lee was not hurting anyone, but did not mind messing with somebody’s day, somebody who had so much more going for them than Lee and Dee. Not enough food, no education, no healthcare. Papa had died from a heart attack caused by overwork at age 46. Mama was borderline diabetic.
Lee went back to their place to drop the stuff off. No point getting caught with a pile of other people’s packages. Opening them was like Christmas for Dee. You never knew what you would get. Lee took the Amazon box and let Dee open the other one, the one with the LeafSide sticker. What the hell is this stuff? It looks like ingredients for cooking. No actual food. Nutritional yeast? Erythritol? Must be some kind of health food thing. They sure come in big containers! Freeze-dried tomatoes and tamarind paste. Weird spices like “black seed”, turmeric, and fenugreek powder. Vitamin B-12. Organic brown rice flour and buckwheat flour. Egg replacer. Why not eggs? What does he do with this stuff?
Just then, Dee said, “Ooh, this box has food! But it’s all like mixes you add hot water to. Want to try some?” They found a couple of pots with lids and made two of the LeafSide meals. Lee thought they were okay, a little bland, so he added some salt and a dash of picante sauce, actually one that he had found a week ago in a package he snagged. It didn’t seem like a lot of food, but it satisfied them better than they expected. It didn’t make them feel bloated or sleepy, like lunch usually did.
When Dee asked about what Lee had found in the Amazon box, Lee started to say it was a bunch of crap they should throw away. It reminded Lee of what was left on the supermarket shelves when the stores were nearly empty because everyone was stocking up for a coming hurricane. But instead, Lee answered, “It looks like a bunch of stuff for vegan cooking. Want to keep it?”
Dee had brought up going vegan recently. They had heard conflicting ideas as to whether that would be good for the baby. She said, “Can you tell how they use it?”
This gave Lee the idea of looking up the addressee online. Maybe he ordered special stuff because he’s sick, but maybe it’s stuff to keep him healthy. As it turned out, not only did the guy have a pretty unique name, but he had a whole website about how he eats. Lee skimmed it and quickly decided it was too much to read. But over the next few days, Dee kind of got into it.
Very gradually, Dee and Lee transitioned to eating whole food, plant-based. Mama’s borderline diabetes cleared up. She lost weight, and they all felt more energetic during the day, and slept better at night. Lee and Dee’s acne cleared up. Dee saved money on food, since brown rice, quinoa, dry beans, fruits, and vegetables in season are cheaper than fast food, milk, and processed meats. After six months, Lee felt better about the world at large. Maybe life could be worthwhile without screwing one’s fellow humans. Lee stopped package pilfering, and got an entry-level job. Eventually, Dee and Lee used the Contact Me page on the website they found to thank the author, whose packages they had taken, for making a positive change in their lives, and promising to pay it forward.
