Thieves I've Known (15 page)

Johnson eats the carrot, chews slowly, and waits. After a time, when no one comes out of the house, he honks again. He notices that the window near the front door is propped open with a wooden spoon; he can just make it out from the light of a streetlamp down the road. A broken porch swing sits out in the yard. He thinks then of something his mother often said: Much of life is not what is done simply, it's what is simply done. She had all her strange sayings, and he keeps only a few of them now. He is forty-two, and she has long since passed away.

He takes his flashlight from under the seat—Johnson has used it as a club on more than one occasion, when a passenger has tried to rob him—and he gets out of the cab. His feet slip in the mud as he makes his way up the driveway. He thinks he can hear chickens in the yard next to this one, though he can see little. When he comes to the steps, he goes up them and presses the doorbell. When there is no sound, he taps the door with the flashlight, shouts, Cab! in through the window. A dog barks from somewhere down the road.

I'll need some help with my bags, the voice, a woman's voice, inside says, and so Johnson tries the knob, lets the door swing open. He steps into the darkness and switches on the flashlight.

The house is mostly bare, with a few pictures of children on the walls and two chairs placed oddly back-to-back in the den. A coffee mug filled with pencils sits on the floor and a large black freight scale stands near an empty table. He goes into the hallway and calls Cab! again.

Down here! is the reply, and he follows the voice. He passes the bathroom and the laundry, and he enters the kitchen, where a lamp glows in the corner.

An old woman cranes her neck toward him. A few mannequin heads are set on the countertop, some bald, some not. They have no eyes, but they face toward him, all in a row. Johnson notes that they are quite creepy. The woman sits at a table next to the countertop. A cat sits in her lap, looks up at him also.

Hey, says Johnson.

Hey, says the woman. You see my glasses anywhere?

Johnson looks around. No.

Your head looks like a big potato from here.

A potato?

Maybe a squash.

Johnson looks at the woman's hand. It's caught in the stamp needle of a sewing machine. Gobs of wet tissues are set all along the table.

Did you call an ambulance?

I can't afford an ambulance. I called you. How much is a lift into town?

He thinks that over. Thirty or so.

The woman seems to think it over too. All right, she says. Give me a hand with this lever.

Johnson sets the flashlight on the counter. When he bends at the table, the cat jumps off the woman's lap and sniffs his shoes. He examines the needle, and the woman points at the lever above it.

Just one good yank, she says.

Not sure if I'm equipped.

Don't be a ninny, says the woman. I've got the hard part.

Johnson sets one of his thick hands against the tabletop and with the other he takes the lever. He nudges the cat away with the toe of his shoe. Then he pulls the lever up, slowly. The woman makes no sound. When her thumb comes free, she holds it up to the lamplight, and Johnson picks up a dishtowel from the sink, runs some water over it. The woman's glasses are next to the sink, and he picks them up as well.

Here, he says, and he sets the eyeglasses on her face, hands her the dishtowel. She looks up at him.

You don't look like a potato at all.

Thanks, he says. You want some help out?

I could probably make it. What kind of help you offering?

I'd have to pick you up, he says.

That might be nice.

So he pulls her chair back from the table and slips his arms under her knees and around her back. When he lifts her up, she feels like a small stack of blankets.

I won't drip on your shirt, she says.

He takes the flashlight from the counter and maneuvers his way out of the kitchen and into the hallway. She reaches over, turns on the light for him. The dishtowel is stained red, and the old woman has a streak of blood in her hair where she brushed it back.

When they come to the den, Johnson looks at the two chairs. Their backs are pressed against each other and they face away, as if two invisible sitters are in argument.

Why are they turned like that? he says.

The chairs?

Yes.

When I'm thinking about writing a letter I look out the window, she says. When I write it, I face the wall.

He nods at the freight scale. And that?

My father's. He owned a vegetable store. Years ago, I guess. They'd sell by bulk.

It's still accurate?

I suppose.

Johnson steps into the den, switches his flashlight on. The cat has followed them in, and it watches as Johnson steps up onto the scale. He shines the light at the reading.

How much you weigh? he says.

About eighty.

He checks the reading again. Subtracts the woman's weight from what he reads. He shifts the woman a little higher in his arms, watches for any movement in the needle. Those carrots don't seem to be helping. He frowns and exhales.

Laika stands under the bright yellow and blood–colored lights outside the reptile tent. She holds a coffee mug filled with potato soup, and she spoons it, blows the steam away, takes another taste. The circus has opened, and she watches a small group of children form an attentive semicircle around the jugglers. The jugglers' torches are now lit, and the
blindfolded pair toss the flames underhanded while black smoke curls in the air. The children turn their heads back and forth then back again, following the flames. On a stand near the center of the tent, the organist plays the same ridiculous tune, and behind him, a clown stands with a pail of water.

Laika walks through the crowd, tries to keep the soup from spilling. In the main ring, a woman with dark, curled hair balances atop one of the jogging elephants. The woman has always put Laika in mind of her mother. The crowd is seated in stands on three sides, and there are orange glow-sticks here and there, a pair of children holding sparklers. Around and around the ring the elephant goes, and the woman sets her hands against the creature's thick back, handstands, points her long legs at the roof of the tent. The acrobat leans in to keep from falling. The crystals in her costume catch the spotlights, and around she goes again, glittering like a figure in water. The elephant trudges on, looking, unlike many of the animals, happy to be of service.

From somewhere Laika hears a barker. She imagines the man's hand sweeping above the crowd. I Have a Number for You Sir. And I Believe It's a Winner. In six hours, well after the circus closes, Laika will find the acrobats again, will unbraid the dark curled hair of the woman, will rub away the knots in her shoulders. When the woman needs a brief affection—she often seems to—Laika will hold her hand.

And of course Laika will think about her mother, who, years before—almost five now—had passed her between lines of barbed wire. A man and his wife were waiting in darkness on the other side. Laika, as a young child, had left the refugee camp that way. They were many miles outside Sarajevo. The floodlights were out then, and the soldiers were standing at the gates.

If the rain holds off this night, Laika and the woman will sit near the bonfire—the bonfire after most circus nights, and there might be a boy—the giant's son—who Laika wouldn't mind speaking with again. There is something that she finds delightful about the giant's son that she can neither understand nor explain. The boy had taken her out to the
tracks the morning before. He'd set his head against the rails, looked up at her. You can hear them coming, he'd said, but when she knelt next to him she'd heard nothing. The cold metal had sent a shiver through her ear that ran down her arms to her fingertips.

She checks her watch, finishes her potato soup. She slips down a space next to the reptile tent, watches for snakes in the straw. They often escape. Above her, she watches a monkey on the tightwire. It swings by its hands across the wire to a bell, which the creature rings with a thump of its fingertip. Then, back across. The floor is twenty feet down, and when the monkey returns to the stand, it is rewarded with a piece of fruit from its keeper.

Out through the back of the tent and up the hill past the trailers. Laika looks up at the leaden sky and thinks she can see some shapes in the clouds. A man with no arm in that one. The broken tip of a javelin in that one. A giant eye that can see everything but her. She is not without some skills: past the trailers she finds an open space, does her cartwheels and then a running tumble, lands on her feet, and then tumbles again. The hand walk is simple to her, even in the mud, and she sets herself on both arms, turns with a slight movement of the fingers, watches the upside down hooves of the horses in the animal tent.

She opens the flap with her feet, walks into the light, her palms and fingers pressed against the straw and the dung. Her shadow is clear in the lamp glow, an upside-down girl, but she can't seem to see herself in it. She imagines it as maybe belonging to another girl from somewhere far off. Maybe someone with her face, but a different name. The wire gate to the camel pen looks, from her angle, to be open, so she closes her eyes and breathes in deep: it gives her a buzz with all that blood in her head.

Then, she falls over and gets up quickly. Another rush. She looks at the gate, and again it seems open. That couldn't possibly be. She scans the pen for the white camel, the rare and expensive camel, the camel that she alone is responsible for and to. Laika runs into the pen and searches
every corner, every possible hiding place. There is no hiding place here for a camel of that size. Here there is only straw.

Toomey slips in the mud and topples into a line of wire. It tangles his shirt, his jeans. He can't get free of it. Baxx is out of the car and shouts back toward the building, and Eli pulls the wire free, pulls the younger boy up, gives him a shove toward the river. They desperately want to get to the other side of the fast-moving river. They watch Baxx try to cut off their angle to the water.

Toomey heads away from the chimney and toward the fence. The dark water of the river is twenty yards ahead of him, and he scrambles over what is left of a couch, takes the back end like a hurdle, hears Eli close behind, sees Baxx bearing down on them. At the river bank the boy jumps, feet first, and lands in water to his kneecaps. His spine runs a lightning chill, and he pushes out and dives.

He tastes gasoline. It sears the back of his throat, stings his eyes. The shock of the cold water pushes him on. He comes up for air, and he can feel the current pushing him quickly south. He turns, looks behind at two shadows, a man and a boy. The boy dives, and the man falls back into the bank, sinks to his knees. A screwdriver is stuck through the man's palm. Behind him, two figures run in shadow toward the river. The water rises, and Toomey goes under.

He lets the swift current take him away from the men, out to where the water becomes sudden deep. His shoes kick against nothing. Surfacing, he catches a glimpse of the far bank—mud and shallows—and he makes for it. He kicks through the cold water. Under the surface he thinks of Eli, and above it he thinks of his own drowning. He chokes on the gas water. The fumes begin, it seems, to trick his vision. He's almost to the far bank, but the water moves there in a strange way. He pushes down and his shoes find mud and shallow water.

The first of the rats. Claws and tails. Teeth. They hook to his arm and he shakes them free. Feels one at his neck, and then he's in the thick of
them. He sweeps them heavily aside, chokes on the gas again. He falls in the shallows, and they're upon him. Toomey gets up, moves forward. He finds the bank and comes free of the water.

He steps on the rats, trips, falls in the mud and broken crates, feels a nail stick into his knee. It goes in deep, and when he raises the leg a board is stuck there. He can't bend his leg. He takes hold of the board. A gunshot behind him. He pulls the board out, pulls it free, cries the pain out of himself. The knee goes numb. He hits the rats with the board, and then he's up the muddy bank. He looks back for Eli. Looks for what the moonlight will offer. The men are climbing a fence on the other side of the river. The current has taken him far downstream. A boy surfaces in the shallows below, and Toomey stumbles down the bank. He takes the collar of the boy who kneels in the shallows, choking.

Over the bank and into a ditch. No rats there, only broken pipes and some beer bottles, a box of diapers sunk into the mud. The boys spit poison from their mouths. Their lungs are like fire. They listen to the river, they try to stay alive. When he catches a clean breath, Toomey feels at his knee. There's a sick-feeling hole there.

They lie in the ditch and look up at the sky. They don't have the energy yet to move, though they can hear the shouts of the dealer and his men across the river. The stars are out, and Toomey sees them as bits of blue. He looks for the moon but can't yet find it.

They coming? he says, and Eli raises his head. The boy picks up a length of pipe and crawls slowly up the ditch. Toomey can see his head poke up into the clearing.

They wait. One boy watches and the other boy listens. When Eli climbs down he looks at his friend. He has a smile on his face.

They can't swim, he says.

Johnson drives the taxi slowly, passes the turn for the state highway. Next to him, the old woman holds her bad arm with the good hand, tries to keep it elevated. Johnson has a sister, Marley, a nurse. He thinks maybe she can help this woman out. He'll skirt the city, near the old fair-grounds,
and head up to her house. A farm on the other side of town. Above them the sky has cleared of clouds, and the moon shines through the tree line. It puts Johnson in mind of a girl he'd once known. She'd had a penchant for climbing things: trees and rooftops, a billboard for a hotel chain near where he'd grown up. He was afraid of heights himself, but he often, as a child, found himself waiting on her. He feels the crick in his neck now, from staring up all those years ago.