A Good Friend Like Charlie

Charlie was as eely as a bar of soap. I knew that in kindergarten when I saw him slip Ms. B’s bracelet into his pocket. But I did not say anything, because it seemed funny. He started out shoplifting, but I refused to help. That did not satisfy him, so he was breaking into cars by the time he was eleven. He went to live with another family, but we still got to go to school together. By age 18, I saw his picture on the news a few time as “person of interest”. He bragged that he could always give “the coppers the slip”, and he proved it. He came to my college dorm room a few times to visit; he had the best stories, loud ones. We usually looked over our stuff good and hard after he left – my roommates and me. If you keep letting him in, we will have to move, they warned me. I had mixed feelings when they did. Charlie and I had been good friends since kindergarten. Seventeen years of friendship is ridiculously hard to throw away, so I decided to keep it. Charlie finally got caught and held by the police. He was thirty-four at the time. I had not seen him in four or five years. I visited him in jail after his mom called me. His stories were big and bold, outrageously funny! I laughed harder than I had laughed in years. When I returned home, a green package of gum was missing out of my right pocket. Slippery as an eel, Charlie was, and it made me happy. That Charlie! I said, knowing I would go back and take more gum. You cannot throw away a friend like Charlie.