Thieves I've Known (14 page)

“We'll wait,” they said.

The priest sat near the window and looked out at the snow. He had the blanket around him, and he pulled it close so that it covered his body up to the neck. He'd been into the wine a bit, and he'd had the shivers all night. When he closed his eyes he had a strange but familiar dream where he was sinking in deep water. There was something heavy in his pockets and it was pulling him down. The water was cold and it was dark below him. There were people above in boats, people he seemed to know, sitting and watching, though no one moved to help. The weight and the cold pulled him down and he struggled to get at the air. He breathed in and was pulled under.

When he woke, he looked out at the snow. Nothing much had changed. Saint Joseph was out there, where he always was, and the statue wore a coat of ice about his shoulders, and there was a tiny white hat of snow on his head.

The priest heard a knock at the door, and he stood up and walked across the sacristy in his stocking feet. On the ledge outside were his boots, set upright and facing the road, as if he could simply step into them. There was a cold wind, and he shivered in the doorway. Two sets of snowy footprints led away from the church. He looked out into the street, and there were two boys passing through the glow of a streetlight. They were walking fast, and their hands were stuck down into their pockets. The head of the shorter boy jerked to the side. The priest picked up the boots and found a note tucked into one of the foot holes. The note was written in small block letters, though it contained no names. It asked him to please put the boots on, and near the bottom was a reminder about a mass at nine-thirty the next morning. It was a feast day, the priest remembered now. Something very important had happened a long time ago.

We didn't ask your name
, the note read.
Will you tell it to us tomorrow?
These words were crossed out once and then written again, then crossed out again, then written a third time. It seemed as if there had been a very serious discussion about content between the writers of the note. The priest looked at the bottom of the paper.

We'll be waiting for you
, it read.
At nine. If it's convenient. On the back steps
.

Laika stands on her hands, watches a young elephant and its trainer, upside down, make their way slowly across the tent grounds. The elephant's trunk keeps tickling the armpit of the trainer, and the trainer swats it away, taps the straw at the ground with his short pole. The damp air smells of straw and the sweat of the circus performers. Some sour candy, baking somewhere. A tired donkey—painted in red and white stripes—is tied to a fencepost, and it watches Laika with lazy eyes, as if it is asleep and observing a dream.

A child, years younger than Laika, runs past her, and the child's dramatic costume—covered with tiny silver bells and larger pieces of crystal—seems to make an irregular song, like a wind chime or a collection of tiny clocks. The child begins to herd a group of pelicans toward their cage, and Laika, still in her handstand, shifts the weight on her arms, turns to watch, adjusts the large rubber ball at her feet, raises it toward the roof of the tent. Behind the pelicans, a pair of jugglers toss four or five torches back to one another, underhand. The woman juggler is blindfolded. The torches are not yet lit.

Laika hears heavy footsteps behind her but does not turn to see their source. She closes her eyes and listens to the sounds beyond the steps: an organ playing something bouncy and ridiculous, and the shouts of the barker practicing in front of the reptile tent. Laika can make out only a few words: A Seat at the Glass, A Few Coins in Your Pocket, Lizards Big as Men. Someone grabs her ankles and she is lifted up. She hears the ball bounce to the ground. Feels fingers at her neck, her ribs, her wrists. The blood rushes back from her head as she is lifted up, tilted horizontal, and carried away from the ring.

When she opens her eyes, she sees the top of the tent. She looks below her. Three clowns stare up. They have a tight hold of her and she cannot move. Their faces seem cruel and grim. The clowns are in makeup but not yet in costume. They say nothing as they carry Laika from the tent. Outside, the rain has stopped, and between the clouds she can see a few stars. The air is humid and warm, and the clowns slip along through the mud, cursing quite loudly, but their grips on her do not slacken. Over by the trailers, the acrobats appear—all of them standing naked—smoking cigarettes and motioning to each other with their hands as a way of speaking. She always takes note of the acrobats. Always. In the moonlight, they seem beautiful and ancient.

A flap in the animal tent is pulled back and Laika is suddenly blinded by bright orange lights. She smells must and dung, hears an annoyed horse snorting somewhere. Her chin is knocked against a support bar of the tent. When Laika complains, the three clowns look up at her briefly, and then all three say, Sorry, together, like a choir, a bit off tune. The clowns stop at a tall fence line. They toss her over the side. She's falling like she's always falling in her dreams. Laika lands in a pile of fresh straw. The albino camel, a few feet away and always temperamental, observes her, chewing his dinner sideways.

That camel—the albino camel—had spit at her only yesterday, missed by an inch or two, though Laika's face had caught the spray. Now it offers no move toward her. Its ears retreat and it sniffs the air. Laika watches the feet of the clowns as they exit the tent, more feet beyond. She offers her middle finger, and the last clown, without even looking at her, offers his in return. The tent flap drops closed, and just like that they are gone.

A long brush and a bucket drop into the straw next to her, and Laika looks up at the large frame of the tent boss. His moustache is blonde, with streaks of gray at the ends, and his dark spectacles glitter in the lamplight. He holds his tall hat in his hands, straightening the lip, and he clicks his tongue while observing her.

What's another term for indispensable? he says.

Laika is annoyed. Assistant Camel-Keeper, she says.

That's right.

She sits up in the straw. Picks up the bucket with her smallest toe. You say that about everyone.

The tent boss sets his hat on his head. But I'm lying to them.

The two boys keep the rats away with splintered wooden boards that someone had thrown down the elevator shaft. They build a wall of garbage with food and empty vials and needles, and the rats—two or three at a time—try to break through. A milk carton floats in the muck, and half a skeleton of a rat or cat is half-submerged next to it. Toomey, the younger of the two boys, stands on a burned tire near the corner of the shaft, and Eli, fourteen, pushes the rats away. The smell is terrible. They take shallow breaths and think about suffocation. Above them, the drug dealer and his men enter the elevator, and when it lowers to the bottom floor the boys kneel in the muck and try to keep their heads from being crushed in the gears.

In the second hour, and in the third, the light in the shaft begins to fade, and the roaches emerge from the walls. The boys slap at their necks and legs.

The elevator shaft door opens on the second floor and a thick beam of blue light illuminates the cinder blocks. The boys squint in the brightness and press themselves against the wall. The elevator is well above. A figure stands in the light and something heavy is tossed down. They hear it slap against the walls—a plastic bag—and tumble down the shaft. It splashes in the muck and sends the rats scrambling for the hole. Another bag follows. It just misses Toomey but breaks their wall of garbage. Two bags more. Eli closes his eyes and tries to make himself smaller, but the last bag hits him hard in the shoulder and neck. He feels something sharp, then something warm. The shaft doors close and they are left in darkness again.

Eli brushes the broken glass out of his hair, wipes the blood at his neck. They rebuild their wall and sink further into the muck.

The old woman sets the unfinished wig aside, cuts the string with scissors, and examines her finger. She'd slid it too far under the needle, and
it had been drawn into the sewing machine. Her finger is jammed into the sewing machine. A line of white stitching runs up her thumb, and the blood drips into her palm, off the side of the machine, collects in a small pool on the table. But the old woman can't see much of this. She'd sewn without her glasses, which she couldn't find, and this was the result. She has a deadline for the wig, for a man across town, his hair fallen out from a harsh medicine he's been taking. She scoops the wig up in her good hand, tosses it to the counter to keep from staining it, and then she sets her face close to the damaged thumb, takes some tissues from the box next to the machine, applies some pressure to the wound.

She tugs at the lever to the needle, but her thumb has broken the machine. She sets the soaked bunch of tissues aside. The telephone, she believes, is not far from her on the counter. Where are her glasses? She dreads calling anyone she knows. She might be taken away from her house. Her house might be taken away from her. She squints and can just see the distance to the counter. She wonders if the table can be tugged that far. Her cat, Hungry, is a gray blur sitting next to the telephone.

Would you pass that over? she says.

Hungry answers with what sounds like a question in his throat.

Well, what'll happen to me if I quit? the old woman says. In a couple weeks they'll be throwing sand on my casket.

Hungry says nothing to that.

The woman sets her feet against the floor, takes the leg of the table with the good hand, pulls. An inch or two toward the counter. She scoots her chair the same distance, pulls at the table leg again.

It puts her in mind of something from decades before. She was a teenager then. She'd taken a motorboat up the Cape Fear River, though she can't now remember why. A handsome and dangerous boy upstream, likely. It was night, and in the beam of the spotlight she'd spotted a coyote swimming across the river. Its eye had burned red in the glow of the light, and it seemed both angry for the interruption and a bit frightened of drowning. As she steered around it, she could see that a pup followed
the coyote, and then another after that. They bobbed in the wake of the boat and disappeared.

Laika leads the albino camel into the pen, ties it securely to a post, offers a stick of celery to keep its attention. She takes up the brush and the bucket of water, climbs up a ladder, and examines the creature's coat for the usual bugs.

Laika wants to be an acrobat more than anything in the world. In her mind she stands in the middle ring of the circus. Imagines her toes against the mat. She begins a jog, then a sprint, counts out the steps, concentrates on the vault spring. She tries to feel rather than see the pyramid of acrobats beyond. They are waiting for her to cap the top of the pyramid. When her feet tip the board her arms are tucked against her sides, legs stiff and knees loose. She vaults up, twists as gravity takes its course. She flies over the top of the pyramid. Misses it completely. Other times, in her mind, she smashes into the top row. The acrobats fall around her. There's a broken wrist and a dislocated hip, someone's eye gouged out. Worse sometimes: her own spine.

Laika can't get it right. Her head.

She sets the brush against the camel's coat, pulls down and back.

Eli steps onto Toomey's back, takes the screwdriver from his pocket, slides the blade between the doors of the elevator. The switch is popped and he opens the doors an inch, listens for any noise in the hallway. When there is nothing, he pulls the doors apart, looks down the hall.

A broken mop sits in the light of an open door. Eli pushes off Toomey, rises out of the elevator shaft, pulls his friend up after. They breathe the hallway air. Eli makes a promise to himself to never go in a place like that again, come what may.

The boys make their way quietly into the stairwell. They pause, listen, then go down the steps.

The air outside is cool now, though they can smell the stench from the sewage plant. It's an improvement over what they breathed before. They kneel on the stoop, in the shadows, and examine the back lot. Eli
lets his eyes adjust to the light of the moon and a streetlamp across the wide, fast-moving river. Abandoned cars stretch across the lot. Lines of fencing. Trash of all sorts: tires and bricks, a shopping cart. An oven, half-sunk in the mud. What remains of a burned-out chimney. A roach crawls over Toomey's hand, and he shakes it free.

They see the spark of a lighter in the backseat of one of the cars. In the glow they can make out a face: a man named Baxx, one of the dealer's men. The flame goes out, and Eli surveys the rest of the lot. He listens to the wild river beyond the cars and the fencing. Somewhere, from the front of the building, he can hear a metal pipe thumping against bricks. Coming closer.

Don't stop for anything, he says.

The boys rise and run.

Johnson wipes his fist against the taxicab's windshield, makes a hole in the fog to see through. He runs the address through his mind again and watches for numbers on mailboxes, of which there are few. The road is narrow and bordered with deep gullies along each side and lined by pine trees that bow a little with the wind. He'd been sleeping in his cab, on a turnoff on the state highway. Before the call came in. Briefly, he'd had a dream where a voice had said, There's Not Enough Room, and there was a wolf, somewhere in the distance, and others approaching in the rain. Later, he felt himself begin to drown in dark water, but he couldn't make a sound. Something was pulling at his ankles, something down there in the dark, and Johnson couldn't make it let go.

When he finds the address he turns into the driveway and tries to push the dreams from his mind. He is a large man, Johnson, and he's been struggling to keep the weight off. He keeps a plastic bag of carrots in the seat next to him to keep his hunger at bay. The house is dark, although there seems to be a porch light on in back. He honks the horn, makes a notation in his logbook, and takes out a carrot. He thinks when his shift is over he might get good and drunk, although that would not be unusual. He rubs at his legs, numb from sitting in the cab so long.