While still staying at the Last Chance Mission in Indianapolis, Barney had gotten a job as a stock clerk at a local Food Lion grocery store. He learned the stock quickly because it wasn't all that different from the stock he carried in the Jacksonville Publix. After six months on the job, a position had opened up in the Kokomo store. It was a much smaller store in a much smaller town, but it was a step up to assistant manager. Barney took the job, thanked his friend, Bartholomew Vanderburg, pack his few belongings and moved to Kokomo. After a year in Kokomo, Barney was offered an even better position as the assistant manager of produce in the largest Food Lion store in Gary, Indiana. It still wasn't quite the level he had left in Jacksonville, but it was close. And before long Barney felt that his life would be back on track. But the high point of it all was the day he met Connie Jean Wilson.
Barney had only been on the job for a couple weeks when one day he noticed that he was being observed by an attractive young Midwestern looking girl with a cheerful round face and a warm, unassuming, but infectious smile. Connie Jean had only been working at the store a couple of months longer than Barney and was eager to make a good impression on the new manager of produce. It was her first job, or at least her first real job, and being raised in a strict, sometimes over protective family, she was eager to demonstrate that she could succeed on her own.
Connie was, as they say, a late bloomer. She had done well, academically, in high school and had gone on to a local conservative college for four years of Bible Studies. When she graduated, she stayed on to teach part time, but eventually took a full time position at her church in Gary as a secretary and Pastor's aid. She eagerly looked forward to the day that she would get married and raise a family, but the years rolled by with an unproductive sameness from one year to the next. For the first couple of years, her heart would pound each time there was a knock on the office door, as she waited for her knight in shining armor to come and take her away from this boring, low paying job and the drudgery of her daily life. But no knight came. Connie Jean was too attractive for the men she met around the church. They felt intimidated and a little overwhelmed with her presence and her exuberance. And the men she met in other situations, men who could appreciate her beauty and smart figure, didn't seem interested in a woman with her conservative views, ways and circumstances. After a while, it began to wear on Connie Jean, as she developed dark circles under her eyes and a slightly haggard and unkempt appearance. Then one day, as she stared in the mirror in disbelief at what she had become, she vowed to make some changes in her life. She quit her job at the church and applied for a management trainee position at the Food Lion. In the few months that had passed since then, she bought a whole new wardrobe, less conservative but still tasteful, and had gotten back her old spark and enthusiasm.
"Be careful when you spray the vegetables that way," Barney had said to her in his kindest and most helpful tone of voice.
"They said in produce training that you have to spray up and let the mist settle on the vegetables," Connie replied, pleasantly but firmly. "You are not to spray directly on the vegetables."
As she said this, she hooked the spray bottle on one pocket of her apron. Out of the other pocket she produced a four by six spiral notebook and began leafing through it.
"Ah there it is," she said proudly pointing to some illegible notes scrawled on the page.
Barney smiled and leaned forward to look at the notebook. "I guess it does say that," he conceded, although he could only make out one or two of the words on the whole page.
Connie beamed and put the notebook back in her pocket. "I memorized everything that they taught us," she informed him. "It's really important to me that I do a good job."
"You're doing a wonderful job," Barney observed, not wanting to dampen her enthusiasm. "But they don't always tell you everything you need to know in training."
Connie looked up at him, her eyes big and her countenance serious, ready to receive any wisdom that he might be willing to impart to her.
"What they don't tell you," he continued, "is that you have to hold the spray bottle over the vegetables when you spray up. If you stand back a few feet when you spray, the water gets on the floor. That makes the floor slippery and somebody might slip and hurt themselves."
Connie nodded, digesting this weighty piece of advice, and then stepped forward so that the spray bottle was over the vegetable bin and continued spraying. "Thanks for the pointer, Mr. Milford," she said as she focused on the serious business of misting the vegetables.
"I'm not a formal kind of guy," Barney replied, "please call me Barney."
"Only if you'll call me Connie Jean," she replied.
"Connie Jean it is." Barney walked away, but his mind stayed with her for the rest of the afternoon.
The next week he asked her to have coffee with him when the afternoon shift was over. The following week, they went to a movie. It was a romantic movie and Barney didn't really care for it, but Connie Jean seemed to like it so he didn't mind. He ate some popcorn and caught a nap in the middle, so it really wasn't so bad.
Barney arranged it so they both had Sunday afternoons off and on nice days they would go for long walks through the town. It was on one of these walks that Barney saw the marquee sign advertising the seminar.
According to the marquee, a couple of bunko experts were coming down to the University of Indiana from the Chicago office of Intercontinental Detective Agency to talk about con schemes and fraud. Normally, Barney was not all that academically oriented, but a handbill that he picked up describing the seminar mentioned the classic 'slip and fall' scheme that was usually perpetrated on grocery stores that belonged to large chains. A jolt went through him as though he had inadvertently touched a live wire, and he made a mental note not to miss this seminar.
Connie, being a trusting sole, had no interest in con schemes. So Barney had come by himself. He found a seat near the front and listened with great interest as Gita Ramana first described the personality profile of the typical con man and then Maria Diaz described the some classic cons, including the 'slip and fall'. He listened with such intensity that he almost forgot to breathe and had to shift in his chair to avoid becoming totally entranced with the lecture. When it was over there was a question and answer period, but the wheels were turning so fast in his head that he couldn't even formulate a coherent question. Instead, he waited till the seminar was over and went to the stage to get a pamphlet on Intercontinental's Bunko Division and business cards from the speakers. He wasn't entirely sure what he wanted the cards for, but he had too many things racing through his mind to worry about that for right now.
Upon leaving the seminar, Barney walked slowly back to the Food Lion where Connie Jean was working the late shift. His mind was still racing and the blocks passed without notice. He had a strong feeling that he should do something, something to get back at that little shit who had ruined his life. He thought he had put it all behind him, but this seminar had brought it all back as though it had just happened yesterday. He felt outrage. He felt anger. He felt like he wanted to kill.
"I can't let Connie Jean see me this way," he thought to himself. So when he reached the Food Lion, he paused in the parking lot and took a few deep breaths. "It's all in the past," he told himself. "And the present is good. I don't want to do anything that would upset what I have now."
With that he entered the Food Lion and headed toward the produce section where Connie Jean would be working. He walked down the notions aisle to the produce aisle and as he turned the corner, it was as though he was stuck in some repeating circle of fate. He saw, for the second time, something strangely familiar that would, once again, define his destiny.
The assistant produce manager was comforting Connie Jean, who was sobbing hysterically. At first, Barney thought that Connie had been hurt. Then he saw a customer lying on the floor in front of the fresh celery bin.
The assistant manager stepped back and Barney put his arms around Connie and said, "It's OK, Connie, just tell me what happened."
"Its my fault," she sobbed barely coherent. "I stood back too far when I was spraying and the floor got wet. This poor man came waking by and slipped on the wet floor. I think he hurt his back."
Barney looked down at the man on the floor as the ambulance crew prepared to move him on to the stretcher. It may have been a dozen years and thirty or forty pounds later, but he would never forget that face. It was the same kid that had pulled the same stunt in the Jacksonville Publix.