Thieves I've Known (16 page)

You didn't put the meter on, says the woman. I like to pay for what I owe.

He thinks on that but doesn't argue. He pulls the lever down. They listen to the ticks as they make their way down the road.

These carrots yours? says the woman.

Who else?

I'll give you two dollars for them.

You can just have them, he says.

I need them for tomorrow. I have a donkey to feed. Will you take two dollars for them?

Johnson looks over at the carrots. I didn't see a barn at your house.

My sister owns one. She lives in a nursing home just south of here.

Johnson reaches over, takes the woman's arm. Holds it up. You can rest that awhile if you want.

A minute, says the woman.

Johnson nods. She's got a donkey in a nursing home?

Not really. My sister's a little far gone. She thinks she's got this donkey named Nelson. They keep him in a shed out back.

You feed him?

Three times a week, the woman says.

What about the other days?

I don't think she keeps track, and besides, she can't get up and around very well, so whenever I visit I bring some vegetables for Nelson. He's very particular. He eats mustard greens. You have any of those around here?

No, says Johnson.

You ever hear of a donkey eating something like that?

I haven't heard much about donkeys at all.

He'll eat alfalfa and carrots, says the woman. But he gets awfully irritable if I give him celery. He seems to like corn, though.

Johnson looks over at her. Sounds like you're the one a little far gone.

Maybe, says the woman. You'd not be the first to make the claim. You want to hear something else?

All right.

There's a red-handled brush. It's soft. Nelson likes to be brushed with that. If you brush him with one of the others, he doesn't like it.

They come to a four-way stop, and Johnson gives the woman her arm back. He slows the cab and looks for traffic. There's nothing, though, just empty tobacco fields and an old tractor, set near a wire fence. The moonlight reflects off the tire hub, and they smell fertilizer and the dusty crops through the open windows. They hear the whistle of a train in the distance, though they can't see it. Johnson pushes on through the intersection.

Sounds like this donkey's particular, he offers.

That's not the half of it, says the old woman. He likes to walk counterclockwise around the shed and the yard. If you walk him clockwise, he can't sleep at night. And then you've got to keep him from the roosters. They'll peck at his legs, and he'll kick the hell out of them. Then you've got a dead rooster on your hands, and what's that good for?

Johnson considers that. I can't think of anything, he says.

And you've got to get his blanket on anytime it's going to drop below forty degrees. He'll catch a cold otherwise. You walk out past the water pump—a yellow one—but that hasn't worked for years, and the shed is after that. The latch is tricky, though. You've got to push on the door, or else it won't open. There's a man who lives in the home with my sister, and he's always asking me how to work that latch.

Johnson looks over at the woman. Johnson doesn't consider himself a master of conversation. This sounds complicated, he says.

Well, all I really do is walk outside and stand on the porch for about a half hour. But sometimes it takes me a long time to think up a new story about Nelson. If I don't have something new, my sister gets upset.

Johnson takes up her arm again, lets her rest the good one.

I'd guess that means a lot to her, he says.

Maybe. She's pretty far gone. It's kind of sad really. Feeding an imaginary donkey. They'll likely be locking me up next. Do we have a deal for the carrots?

Sure, says Johnson. How's the finger?

The woman looks there. She tries to wiggle it a little under the dishcloth.

It might be I'll lose it.

Laika makes her way downhill through the strangleweed. Behind her, the lights and sounds of the circus begin to fade. The camel is down in a large meadow, not far from the tree line, and it looks like a strange little ghost at this distance. Beyond it, and beyond the trees, Laika can see a two-lane road. A few cars moving in either direction. She finds her footing in the rocks and the mud. At the bottom of the hill she smells the wet grass and sweetness of the yellow flowers that stretch across the field. Through the center, she can see the tracks that the camel stamped through the flowers. Bats circle the fields above her, and the sounds of the night bugs are loud in the valley, all along the hillsides.

She keeps low as she pushes through the flowers. The camel eyes her from the field. A thick rope hangs from below its jaw, and the twine stretches across the ground like a long water serpent. She imagines it in the reptile tent. And then she looks up at the stars and the moon, and they put her in mind of a march she'd made as a child. Days after she'd been passed through the barbed wire. She'd held onto an old man's hand, and the man had guided her through a stretch of fields not unlike this one. As they reached the mountains, she'd become the guide to him. She'd pushed him forward and up during that night. All the night.
Behind them, they could hear the mortar shells, and the hooves of horses along the road. Another woman—the old man's wife—walked ahead of them, and every few minutes she'd turn and look down at them. She held the hands of two other children. You'll make it, she'd said, although she'd not spoken any words. It was the expression in the woman's face that seemed to say that for her.

Laika, now, can't remember either of their names. But she sees their faces very clearly.

When she comes almost free of the flowers she slows, begins to whisper to the camel in tones meant to soothe. Her voice is not insincere. The camel points its ears forward, studies her, as if with a little effort it might make out the words. Its tail snaps at the few bugs that have found its coat. Laika is almost within spitting distance by then—the camel's spitting distance, not hers—and she keeps her eyes on the rope. A few steps and a dive and she might have it. But the camel begins to move, backing up toward the tree line. Laika quickens her pace, and the creature turns—they are not without speed—and sets off in the direction of the road. Laika runs after it. She cuts through the flowers. The rope trails behind, and Laika smells the must and fur of the creature. She dives then, reaches out for the twine, and catches it near the end. She clamps one hand over the other. But the camel pushes on. When the line snaps taut, it whips through the palm of her hand, tearing the skin. The knot slips through her fingers, and she watches it skip across the grass and mud.

She sits up. Examines the burn on her hand. No blood, but it's hot to the touch. She spits into it, rubs it cool. What were their names? The man and his wife. She thinks of her mother's name. Whispers it to the bats above her. She stands up, rubs what mud she can manage off her clothes. She was very angry a moment ago, but now that has passed and has passed for the night. She follows the creature—jogging, then running—out toward the road.

The boys smell of sewer and gasoline as they make their way along the ditch. They have a good start to the train yard, and they pause at the edge
of the field to wash their hair and faces in mud water. Eli cleans out the puncture in Toomey's knee, ties one of his socks around the wound. After, the younger boy leans heavily against him, and they take the quickest pace they can manage. Their eyes, still stung by gasoline, won't stop dripping tears.

At the rail yard they find a hole in the fence and sit under an abandoned boxcar. They keep watch, down toward the tracks. Eli finds a wooden stake, keeps it between his fingers, digs down into the mud. They look behind often, waiting and worrying. They think they can see men with pipes and long chains in the shadows, and then they blink them away. The shadows take another form. In the rail yard, a pair of figures stands between a locomotive and a tanker car. The workmen check the connection.

After a time, the sky begins to drizzle. The boys listen to the rainwater. It trickles off the side of the boxcar.

I'm hungry for some pizza, says Toomey.

Eli frowns at that. What're you telling me for?

No one else around.

Eli says nothing to that.

Toomey looks behind them. With some chicken and potatoes, and extra cheese.

We'll maybe get some potatoes tomorrow, says Eli. You'll have to imagine the rest.

And some soda.

Water, says Eli.

And some bread sticks.

Bread, no sticks.

And some ice cream, says Toomey.

All right.

Really?

No.

What're you teasing me for?

Eli shrugs. No one else around.

Down by the tracks, Eli can see a workman open the gates. The boy crawls to the boxcar wheel. He finds another pool of mud water, and he washes his eyes again. He works the plan in his head, not for the train but beyond it.

I heard Jenna downstairs, says Toomey.

Eli looks back at him. I know, Toomey.

So I went down there.

Well, you shouldn't have. They could've killed you too.

The fire escape, says Toomey. Like you showed me. I could see them through the window. She wasn't dead yet.

Eli looks out at the train. He says nothing.

She was my friend, says Toomey.

I know.

Where's that train go?

How would I know? Out of here, I guess. Keep quiet now.

They wait after that, watch the two figures under the lamplight. The two men share a cigarette. One of them writes something on a clipboard. Eli had lived once, out there, where the train might go. His grandfather. It seems like a long time ago, but it's only a year. The train begins to move.

They watch the boxcars pass, and the tankers after. It's a long line. The whistle blows, and Toomey covers his ears. It takes Eli from his thoughts. He'd almost found the face of his grandfather in his mind.

You ready? he says.

Toomey says nothing.

Eli waits for the whistle to stop, then he takes the boy's hands from his ears.

You ready?

They messed her up bad.

I know, says Eli.

They rise and run. They run past the two men and they run out past the gate. Eli takes Toomey's weight on, slips the boy's arm around his
shoulders. There's a naked woman there, by the side of the tracks, sitting in a pile of cardboard boxes. They pass her and run after the train.

Marley sets the old woman's hand under a lamp light, examines the wound. Her brother Johnson sits in the corner, sipping at the last beer in her refrigerator. They listen to the old appliance now, the motor rattling in the next room. She slips out her kit from a desk drawer, pokes through the bottles and the gauze pads. She finds a plastic bag of syringes near the bottom.

This'll be your second needle of the day, she says.

The old woman smiles, polite, takes the glasses from her face. She sets them on the table, looks away so as not to see.

Tell me something, she says. To keep my mind off it.

She says this to Johnson, who stares blankly at nothing in particular. The chair beneath him is small. Unstable under his weight. He sets his hand against the windowsill for some leverage.

I got nothing, he says.

Tell her a baseball story, says Marley. She sets the needle into the rubber tip of one of the bottles, draws the solution out.

That's all a blur, he says.

He used to play, says Marley. Did he tell you that?

No, says the old woman. She feels the needle sink into her finger, just below the knuckle. She moves it from her mind. Where?

In Virginia, says Johnson. Double-A ball.

Position?

Pitcher, he says.

What was your
ERA
?

Johnson says nothing, chances a look over at her.

I know some things, she says.

I don't doubt that.

What was it?

It was through the roof, he says.

Hmm.

Not always, Marley says. Later, maybe.

Later was what counted, Johnson says. Let's not talk about that.

Marley slips the needle out, sets the syringe aside. He had a sinker no one could hit.

What else? says the old woman.

Johnson shrugs. I could field some. You get a pitcher who can field, you'll win some games.

Marley pours alcohol onto one of the gauze pads. She begins to clean the wound. The old woman tightens up, sits forward.

This stings, says Marley.

That's not a lie, says the old woman.

Marley reaches up, adjusts the light. She points it at her brother.

He was quite good, she says. I thought so, anyways.

Johnson squints, holds his hand up against the glow.

You have to say that. You're my sister.

She keeps the light there, and both women watch him for a while. He ignores them, looks out the window. His cab is parked at the curb. He'll make no money tonight.

Eventually, Marley turns the light back toward the old woman's hand. Some things can't be helped, she says.

In the night, the train passes on toward farmland, and Eli sits at the edge of the flatbed and looks out into the darkness. Fields and silos mostly, a small herd of goats staring out at the train. Stretches of tree line border each property. Toomey is asleep under a tarp. His head rests against a bundle of pipes, and below them the heavy wheels rattle against the tracks. The air smells of axle grease from the train and wet hay from the fields. It puts Eli in mind of another train he'd once taken. He'd seen a coyote from the window once, and another boy in a trailer park that he remembers now. His own age. The boy was balanced on an old tire, like a carnival performer. He'd waved at the train as it passed, and Eli imagined that the boy was waving at him. He'd tried to figure what the
boy had seen and felt: windows black with the night, the breeze as the train passed. The boy had worn a cap backward and had no shoes on. Eli had leaned into the window, watched the boy until he was almost out of sight. He waited for the tumble to earth that did not come.