The sticky summer dirt is easily ignored by children with one focus. Worry free and full of energy, we just wanted to play. Steven and I made our way from my apartment building on Union Street to the familiar Getty Gas Station a few bikeride minutes away. I was about ten years old and Steven about seven. We had effectively grown up as so-called cousins ever since our mothers immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1986. Steven had not been born yet. While we grew up in neighboring towns, our mothers would often visit each other and their children, myself, Steven, my sister, and his sister, would play and play as children do.
On this particular day, it was just me and Steven. When we arrived at the Getty, I decided to purchase a soda from the vending machine just outside the entrance. One at a time, I placed my coins in the vending machine, watching the counter display my cumulative deposit. When I ran out of coins I pressed the big rectangular button with the label depicting the drink I desired. But no soda can. I pressed the button again and again. Nothing and nothing. The cashier came out of the Getty and I mentioned that I had deposited the required total but nothing came out of the machine. I knew it was a lie, but I figured it was harmless. Steven silently watched the scene unfold. Kind as he was, the cashier added a few more coins, pressed the button, and handed me the soda he knew I wanted.
Later in the day, when Steven and I were back on Union Street, I was startled to hear my mother angrily calling my name. Her rage placed a particular fear in me, a fear developed through the time-honored Dominican custom of belting children as needed. She walked up to me and communicated her utter disgust with my scam, and I immediately realized that Steven had decided to clear his conscience. Steven had a deep sense of right and wrong even at his young age, or maybe because of it. He had witnessed my lie and the result of that lie: his cousin walking away with something for which she did not fully pay. It had bothered him all the way home.
Decades later, I would return to this memory often. A memory that stands in sharp contrast to the present day - for both me and Steven - and one that would create more questions than answers in my mind.