Thieves I've Known (3 page)

When the truck entered the park, they could see three men already in the back huddled against the wooden slats and a driver, sitting alone, in the cab. Rainwater kicked from the tires. Phillip folded and refolded
as the truck approached the collection of crates and the window rolled down. A bearded man peered out into the rain.

“I got work for four. Bring you back around eight.”

“How much?” said the woman.

“Fifty.”

“What're we to do?” she said.

He pointed his thumb at her. “Not you then. I'll take three of you men and the boy. Decide and get in.”

The woman sat back down on the crate, gave the man a look, although there'd likely be other trucks to come along. The old man and two others shook out their ponchos and umbrellas and climbed into the back of the truck. One of the men remaining lit a cigarette.

“You give my friend a lift?” said Phillip. “Wherever we're going?”

“Going where I always take you,” the man said. “I said I'd pay for four, now get in or get out.”

“No pay,” said Phillip. “Just a lift.”

The man shifted the truck into gear. “If there's room,” he said. The window rolled up.

In the back of the truck, Shelby and Phillip stood against the cab, tried to hold the plastic bag against the wind as the truck made its way up the road. The backs of their shirts were wet through their jackets, and they shivered with the cold. In the gray wood, previous workers had carved their initials or nicknames. A few hearts were scattered here and there between the cracks, an etching of an airplane. Next to Shelby's head, an inscription read
Tony hates Eloise
.

“Hey,” Phillip said to the man with the coffee mug. “You got any kids?”

The man looked up out of his poncho. “What's that to you?”

Phillip took out the piece of folded paper, handed it down. The man took it with the tips of his fingers, turned it over in his hands, examined it.

“Brontosaurus,” he said.

“Sure.”

“They're likely to swallow it,” the man said, but he slipped the paper into his shirt pocket.

During the ride, Shelby imagined a truck much like this, one in her future perhaps, a warmer ride even in Alaska. It would be summertime, and she'd be headed west from the train station in Anchorage, to work the fish lines in a small harbor town. She'd picked some of these towns out on a map, names that she liked: Kasilof, Ninilchik, Port Graham; and she'd read a slim book by a woman who'd done what Shelby hoped to do: worked the lines in the summers, saved her money in the winters, invested in a boat after that—the woman, like Shelby, was no fisher-woman, she'd had others work for her—made her fortune and was making more. The woman, like Shelby, liked the water. Phillip thought it a strange, unlikely wish.

“This woman made it,” Shelby'd said.

“Make sure you read about the ones that didn't,” he'd said.

They rode the seven miles toward Bremerton, caught a glimpse of the bay during one stretch, the vessels making their way down Saratoga Pass. The rain fell harder the closer they came. Eventually the men made some room and the two teenagers knelt against the cab, covered their heads with the plastic, watched the raindrops through the thin black covering. The light of the sky was becoming a brighter gray.

In Bremerton, they jumped out at a traffic stop, waved back at the men in the truck, who stared dully after them. They cut down an alleyway, past a diner window fogged up from the rain, past the lines of ships moored at the docks, their white masts bobbing in the air like a row of birthday candles, past the stacks of netting. In the ferry terminal they opened a pack from the cigarette carton, lit up, counted out their money. Phillip paid at the counter for his ticket, boarded alone. Shelby waited on the dock, out of sight, she hoped, behind a wall of crab traps and crates. On the ferry, Phillip rolled his ticket stub into a ball, leaned over the railing, looked behind him. He'd hoped to be sly, but he looked guilty as the damned. He threw the stub out over the water, just a few yards, wondered if he'd been spotted. Shelby found the balled stub in a crack between the
crates, slipped her hand inside, nabbed it between the tips of her two longest fingers. She held her breath at the gate, held up the ticket, folded flat but looking worn and wet. The teenager, about Shelby's age, looked to get out of the rain, waved her on, tore the next ticket.

They sat in the cabin, sharing coffee from the thermos, set their socks and sweaters across a bench to dry. They watched the flag at the stern flap in the wind as the ferry pulled out from the bay, headed into the pass, watched the gulls and terns gliding behind the fishing boats headed in the same direction. She'd brought paper, Shelby, and they practiced the folds to pass the time. Made the fish, the baby starling, the teacup, and the seven-pointed star. A young girl sat across from them, next to her mother. Though Halloween had passed, the girl wore a grinning skeleton mask. Her eyes looked wide through the holes, and as Shelby and Phillip completed each figure, each animal or structure, she slipped the mask to the top of her head, hugged the toy elephant doll she held in her hands, looked away and then back again at the folded paper set next to the socks and sweaters. Then the girl pulled the mask back down over her face.

“You're scary looking,” said Phillip.

“So are you,” said the girl.

The girl's mother flipped through a magazine, not taking her eyes from the pages. At one point she handed the girl a peppermint and a napkin. The other passengers, few this time of year, looked out on the water or walked out to the deck, feet spread wide with the dip and roll of the vessel. A radio hummed with static, not music but news, a buzz of quiet voices discussing stocks and markets, bills and pending deals. White spray from the water splashed against the decks and the windows.

“Would you like one of these?” said Shelby. She pointed at the folded papers.

“Depends which one,” said the girl.

“You can pick it.”

The girl pushed her mask up to her forehead again. She looked up at her mother for a moment and then back at the line of figures. She
ignored the fish and the boot, the cube and the starling. She eyed the teacup.

“I'll take the star,” she said.

“Go get it,” said Shelby.

The girl slid off the bench, pressed her feet against the floor, hesitated, and then took two steps to the opposite bench. She held her elephant doll tight, then touched one of the sweaters for a moment, and then took her hand away. She clicked her tongue while deciding and took both the star and the teacup, then returned to her own side, leaning against her mother.

“I like your elephant,” said Shelby.

“You can't have it.”

“I didn't say I wanted it. I just like it.”

The girl turned the elephant's face toward her, examined it. “I left the good one at home,” she said.

In the Seattle terminal, they waited, wanting to stay warm. Outside, the rain had not let up, gave no sign that it would. They ate an apple each, shared a sandwich, wiped the peanut butter from each other's lips. Shelby hoped she might find answers to questions on the boy's lips, with her finger, wondered if he might be thinking the same thing. They said little though, were comfortable and intrigued with each other's silence. Phillip brought out a long plastic garbage bag and they tore it in half, a side sheltering each, and walked out into the rain.

They looked for street signs and examined Shelby's map in the doorway of a bookstore, walked along the dock, staring out at the large black-and-red tankers, the smaller fishing boats, the yachts in the harbor in the rain. A rope trailed after a ship, tied to the stern like a long, thick water snake. Phillip thought about Shelby's eyes, which he liked. He thought about a lot of things: his mother, who they were going to see, his roll of money in his pocket, the skeleton mask on the girl on the ferryboat. In his notebook he'd drawn similar masks, but they were the faces of aliens, not skeletons, although he saw the resemblance now. When he could afford it, he rented old movies—anything science fiction—read
dime novels from the used book store on 7th Street. He watched the sky at night. What would they be like? He drew robots and three-headed creatures, hovering cubes and giant eyes. Then, reading more, he'd become serious. If they came, they'd be near to humans—would appear in that form at least. He was not completely certain, but had settled on this theory, not his own, but read in books.

He thought about the aliens a lot. Thought they might seek him out—not just him, but all the people who believed. He sketched and sketched in his notebook. His mother, when she'd lived with him, thought the drawings foolish. The faces were smooth and expressionless, the limbs he didn't know about—how many and how long—but the eyes, dark and deep, were warm in his drawings. Eyes looking for an answer, scientific but not unfeeling. He thought he might wait another year, believing. After that, he'd have to give it up. He believed, but he didn't have faith. It was a problem, he felt, that he had in many areas. Sometimes, he thought life might not be out there after all, and if it was, it might not visit him.

They found the address in a phone booth, shared a cigarette inside the glass, kept out of the rain. After, they found the barbershop on James Street, a shop away from the corner, but they could only make out shapes—people sitting, the motion of hands—through the fogged window.

Inside, they sat down in a row of chairs under a television, kept their eyes on the floor at first, watching the strands of hair turn in the puddles of water, listening to the buzz of a razor, the click of scissors.

“Be with you in a minute,” said the barber.

The man's head was bald, but he had a full gray beard, thick and clipped at the sideburns and moustache, thin on the chin. He chewed on a toothpick. One of his eyes was gray also, looked damaged in the glow of the fluorescent lights. The customer had his eyes closed, seemed asleep as the barber held the hair between index and middle fingers, snipped some away. A newspaper lay open on the seat next to Shelby, but she watched the reflection of the television in the mirror behind the barber. As they waited the president walked down a ramp from a helicopter,
and a crowd, at night, stood outside a building billowing smoke. Two women swam through floodwater in a red river, and an astronaut floated in zero gravity. Space was dark and open behind him. On Earth, a young boy in an orange jumpsuit was led away in shackles, hand and foot.

They listened to the slap of customers' shoes in the puddle near the door, waited for the bell to ring in the frame. The barber toweled off his hands, set his money in a drawer.

“Which one or both?” he said.

“You know Carney Booth?” said Shelby.

The man set the towel on the chair, closed the lid over the damaged eye for a moment, looked Shelby up and down, then Phillip.

“I might,” he said. “Who's asking?”

“A friend.”

“There's a few types of friends out in the world. Which kind would you be?”

“My sister's his girlfriend.”

The barber nodded. “Seems like he might have a few of those.”

“Maybe,” said Shelby. “But I got one of his favors to call in.”

“What kind of favor'd you give him?”

Shelby looked over at Phillip, who kept his gaze at the floor.

“Your name's Otis,” she said to the man.

“You could read that on the window outside.”

“You were army buddies.”

“Navy.”

“Then you know him?”

“I knew a man named Carney,” the man said. “I'm not sure about a favor, though. What are you asking for?”

“A lift up to Rawlins. Just take an hour, far as I can tell.”

The man considered. “Two hours there, two hours back. Take up most of my day.”

“We've got to be there at three, but we'll get back on our own.”

The man turned his head, as if he was refiguring the conversation. “Nothing but a prison up there,” he said.

“That's right.”

“You visiting?”

“That's right.”

“Who?” said the man.

Shelby nudged Phillip. “My mom,” the boy said.

“What's she in for?”

Phillip said nothing, shrugged.

“Am I mumbling?” said the man.

“No sir,” said Phillip. “Drugs.”

The man picked up the towel from the chair and sat down, set his feet up on the stand.

“What's so interesting about that floor?” he said.

Shelby glanced at Phillip but said nothing.

“Something more interesting than the person you're talking to?”

They looked up at him, turned their eyes away for a moment, then looked again.

“You don't like my eye,” he said.

“It's fine,” said Shelby.

“It scares you.”

“No sir.”

“I'm old enough to know a lie when I hear it,” he said.

They looked at his eye. A gray film seemed to cover it, and beyond the film, the pupil took away the color, seemed to bleed into the white. It was neither menacing nor warm, only there, staring at them. Phillip wondered what the man could see.

“It scares me a little,” he said.

The man looked out the window, at the bell at the top of the door frame. They listened for the sound, Shelby and Phillip, aimed their own eyes back to the floor, watched the hair float in the puddle.

“You'll get used to it,” the man said. “I have.”

They drove out the highway north, took a two-lane road from there, past the lumber mills with the saws and the stacks of cottonwood trees and
the lines of trucks idling at the loading docks. Shelby sat in the backseat of the car, listened to the strum of an acoustic guitar from the tape player. Through the window, through the rain, she saw the lights of a high school, could see the heads of students in a classroom, computers against the wall, a large gymnasium next to the school. She could not make out faces, but the students seemed like they were going places, the way they held themselves. She felt far away from Bremerton, missed it, like you'd miss the humidity of summer, the bone cold of rain in a truck headed toward the coastline, missed the voices of people you liked but didn't quite trust.