The Good Thief (27 page)

“Should’ve been you,” Pilot said, and it was only then that Ren saw Benjamin, curled up on the ground. His blue jacket was torn, there was a cut over his eye, and his right cheek seemed to be swelling.

A scream came from underneath the wagon. It was Tom. He cursed the men who were digging. Then he began to sob and shriek, his voice carrying through the night. The man in the bowler hat reappeared.

“Leg’s broken.”

“Tell him to keep quiet,” said Pilot.

The Top Hat searched Ren’s pockets and took away the bear knife. Then he lifted Ren again, brought him over to the twins and set him on the ground between them. The boys were dipped with mud from head to toe. Their clothes and faces were the same spattered brown. For the first time in his life Ren could not tell them apart.

“I’ve got water in my ear.”

“Are they going to kill us?”

Ren tried to answer but his sides ached. He watched Benjamin talking to Pilot. He knew it would have to be a magnificent story to get them out of this. He imagined Benjamin’s words, coming one by one through the air, and he began to pray on them, as he would on the beads of the rosary, each repetition gaining strength and power, until the circle was closed.

Benjamin was using his hands now. He was acting out part of the tale. Pilot nodded his head, listening intently, and then he lifted the end of the shotgun and brought it down on Benjamin’s face. Blood burst from his nose. Pilot took a step back, as if he didn’t want to stain his coat. Then he said something to the Bowler and the Top Hat and the men stepped in and began to beat Benjamin until he fell to the ground, his hands trying to protect his head, his voice begging them to leave him alone. Ren closed his eyes. He covered his ears. The screams continued while the bodies were collected, and the horses were rearranged, and Tom was dragged out from underneath the wagon. They kept on, howling and echoing through the woods, until all of Ren’s prayers had stopped.

A
s the riders entered North Umbrage the old fishermen moved under the bridge, the vagrants retreated to the alleyways, and the widows closed their shop windows and pulled the shutters. The only sight greeting Pilot and his prisoners was the smoke from the mousetrap factory, glowing in the early-morning light. Ren remembered how the building had looked from the rooftop—the girls in their uniforms streaming through one door, an ocean narrowing to a river.

Two of the hat boys were sent to get rid of the bodies. The ones that were left cut the ropes and untangled Tom, who’d been strapped to a plank from the wagon and dragged behind the riders. He had screamed for the first quarter of a mile, and then, to the relief of all, passed out.

Pilot slipped off his horse. Then he reached back, took hold of Ren’s arm, and yanked him to the ground. For the past hour Ren had been riding in front, gripping the saddle, watching the red gloves hold the reins and feeling Pilot pressed against his back, smelling of heat and leather. Ren kept his scar tucked up into his sleeve, his pulse pounding along with the hoofbeats until they reached North Umbrage.

He looked for his friends. The mud that covered the twins had now dried, leaving a thick coat of brown across their faces, caked and cracking all the way to their elbows. Brom dangled his legs from the Watchman’s saddle. Ichy simply fell to a heap on the sidewalk. Benjamin descended slowly, carefully. His clothing was shredded, his face so swollen and red he looked like a different person altogether.

After spitting on the sidewalk, Pilot beat twice on the entryway with his fist, and another man, with another hat, opened the door. The inside of the building smelled like a church—chilled, dank, and slightly earthy. The group made their way up the main staircase, two men following behind with Tom. All around was the rumbling, churning sound of machinery. Even the floor beneath their feet seemed to move.

At the top of the stairs another set of doors opened into the heart of the factory—rows of workbenches, equipment, materials, and girls. Boxes of mousetraps leaned against the walls. Piles of planks and sawdust gathered in the corners. The girls stacked and cut, stacked and cut, against a row of revolving blades. In the next aisle the wooden pieces were assembled; girls slapped the edges with glue brushes while others set the vises and nailed down the corners.

The center of the room held the metalworkers. Some attached hinges, some bent corners, and some worked the cranks of machines. Thin wires were fed to the gears at one end and emerged as long spirals from the other, curling like snakes toward the ground. A girl snipped the springs and delivered them to another row of workers, who fit them into place on the mousetraps. Leaning over one of these tables, her hands black from grease, was the Harelip.

She had seen them coming. Ren caught a glimpse of her when they entered the room. She had stopped working when she saw Benjamin’s swollen face. But now her head was bent over the mousetrap, her hands moving fast, manipulating the wire as if it were a needle and thread.

The floor manager, a bald man in his forties, walked along the rows extinguishing the lamps used for night work. As he passed Ren, a shriek came from the back of the room. Several girls left their places and ran over. A girl was standing by one of the revolving saws with her hand in her mouth, blood running down her chin.

“Posts! Posts!” shouted the floor manager. The girls hesitated, then scurried back to their workbenches. After her first scream, the girl had not said a word. She just stood there and bled. Ren watched as the sawdust around her began to darken.

“Here,” said the floor manager, and tried to hand her a rag.

The girl stumbled to the ground. The floor manager wrapped the rag around her hand and carried her out. A few moments later he returned and strode toward the Harelip, took hold of her arm, and led her to the revolving saw.

“Promotion!” he shouted, and slipped her into place on the line. When he turned his back, the Harelip rolled her eyes, then shot another look toward Benjamin. She chewed her lip, took a handful of sawdust, and threw it onto the machine. The shavings turned red, and she brushed them onto the floor with her fingers, then pushed them to the side of the machine with her boot.

Pilot maneuvered through the workers, turning down one row and another, then up a staircase guarded by two men, who stepped carefully aside as they passed. The hall beyond was lined with a long carpet patterned with green flowers, so thick that Ren’s shoes made no sound as he trod upon it. His feet sank into the pile, and he thought of the moss in the woods behind the orphanage, the deep emerald color that grew where the trees fell down.

At the end of the hall was an open door. The hat boys carried Tom through. Ren followed, into what appeared to be an office. An accounting machine took up space in the corner. A pile of ledgers sat next to an overcrowded shelf. In the center stood a giant wooden desk, its surface scarred with crosshatches and stains, the knobs brightly polished and shining. The desk took up most of the room. Ren and the twins filed around it as if it were a dining room table.

“You’ll wait here,” said Pilot.

“This is all a mistake,” said Benjamin.

“We’ll find out soon enough.” The hat boys put Tom on the rug and left the room grinning. Then Pilot shut the door and locked it.

Benjamin leaned against the wall, gingerly feeling his ribs. His lips were twice their size, the skin around his eyes cut and bruised.

“You’re hurt,” said Ren.

Benjamin’s voice was raw. “I’ll be fine.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We need to think. What he knows. What he wants.” Benjamin felt along the edge of his jaw. He reached inside his mouth and, wincing, removed a tooth.

Ren looked around the room, wondering what McGinty could possibly want. From the look of the place he already had plenty of money. The chairs were covered in fine leather, the brass lamps glowing. On the desk was a set of gold pens, and behind it on the wall hung a series of paintings depicting fox hunts. There was the trumpeter, leading the horses. There were the first riders, leaping over the hill. There were the packs of dogs spreading out through the grass. And there was the fox, a small patch of red, sometimes streaking across the field, sometimes huddled, terrified, just moments away from being discovered.

On the other side of the office was a large window overlooking the factory floor. Benjamin shuffled close and leaned his hand against it. He seemed to be testing the corners for an opening, and when he found none, his arm came down heavy against his side.

“I have to go to the privy,” said Ichy.

Brom shoved him. “You should have said something before.”

Ren watched the twins argue. He could not shake the feeling that their bad luck had brought this on. He wished that Tom had never adopted them. He wished that he had never been their friend.

Ichy began to whimper and Ren felt a twinge of guilt. “There’s got to be something you can use,” he said, and searched the room until he found an old jelly jar full of pencils. He dumped them out and handed the glass jar to Ichy. For a moment Ichy seemed relieved. He ran to the corner of the room and opened the front of his trousers. When he was finished, he stood there, holding the bright yellow liquid.

“What should I do with it?”

“Here.” Ren took the jar back. The glass was warm against his fingers. He screwed the cover back on. He pulled open a drawer and hid the whole thing inside the desk.

Tom began to moan.

They hurried over, and Benjamin felt the leg carefully. But as soon as he touched it, Tom began to scream. Benjamin told him to be quiet. He took off his coat, then tore a strip of cloth from his shirt. He wrapped it around the broken leg.

Tom screamed again. “My boys!”

Brom and Ichy watched the blood streaming from his leg, their mouths open.

“He wants you to come,” Ren said.

“Do we have to?”

Tom dug his nails into Ren’s arm.

“Yes.”

Brom came forward and held Tom’s hand. Ichy held the other. The schoolteacher gazed somewhere over their heads, and then his eyes closed, and he fell unconscious. Benjamin took Ren’s fingers. He put them where he’d tied the shirt. He said to hold the pressure. Ren pushed down, feeling the pulse in Tom’s leg.

“Do you think we could ask for a doctor?” Ren asked.

Benjamin shook his head, then glanced at the door. Someone was coming.

The Top Hat and the Straw Hat stepped in with their guns drawn. They took their places on either side of the entryway. Pilot came forward next, fixing his leather gloves. Then he held the door open for a man dressed in a yellow suit.

The man walked in like he meant to prove something. His jacket was off and carried over the shoulder, suspenders tight, shirtsleeves rolled up and tied with pink ribbons. He was nearly as fat as Brother Joseph, and carried most of the weight in his stomach, which pushed out before him into a hard round ball as he crossed the room and took a seat behind the enormous desk. He seemed annoyed, as if they were all gathered there to keep him from something more important. It was clear that everything in this room—the paintings on the walls, the rug under their feet, the factory on the other side of the window—belonged to him. Silas McGinty.

He pointed a finger at Benjamin.

“Nab,” said Pilot.

“How come I don’t know ’im?”

“Because he hasn’t been worth it,” said Pilot.

“And now he is.” McGinty shifted his weight. His words sounded like they were passing through a grater as he spoke them, bits and pieces falling off along the way. “And tha children?”

“Our lookouts,” said Benjamin.

“Yah needed three?”

“One for each direction.”

McGinty fingered the ribbons on the sleeves of his shirt, then finally lowered his attention to the floor, where Tom was slowly bleeding onto the rug.

Benjamin pressed his hands together, as if he were getting ready for a bargain. “My sister and her family died last week of a fever. The town was afraid of spreading the sickness, so they put them in the ground without telling us. When I found out, I went to fetch her and the rest so that we could give them a Christian burial.” He smiled, and Ren could tell that it hurt.

McGinty pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. “That’s a good story,” he said. “Now I’ll tell yah one. Once theah was a pig who liked ta eat and sleep and roll in tha shit sometimes. One day tha fahmah who owned tha pig came along and cut his throat and cleaned out his guts and ate his ass fah bacon. End a story.”

Benjamin stopped smiling.

“Yah gotcha fingahs in tha graveyahd,” said McGinty. “Not very nice. Not at all.”

“Please,” said Benjamin, “just listen to me for a minute.”

Ren watched McGinty’s freckled face, the bump on the bridge of his nose. He could tell that the man was losing patience.

“I won’t allow it. Not in my town.” McGinty turned to Pilot. “How much is he wohth?”

“Seven hundred dollars.”

“That’s quite a lotta money. Musta done something very intahresting ta be wohth that much.”

Pilot reached into his coat, took out a folded advertisement, and began to read, the words falling one after another into the room: “‘Arson, train robbery, bank robbery, horse robbery, and general thieving, desertion from the military, illegal gambling and games of chance, impersonation of an officer of the law, impersonation of a naval captain, impersonation of a minister, claim jumping, vagrancy, disorderly conduct, assault with a deadly weapon, littering, loitering, and the selling of false deeds.’”