Thieves I've Known (6 page)

So I did that. I wasn't scared at all. I wanted to dance up there on the hood.

“How crazy are you?” said Albert.

“Crazier than hell.”

“Everybody knows that.”

“Damn straight they know.”

“Tell them,” he said.

“I'm crazy,” I yelled out. “I'm crazier than hell.”

“Nobody crazier,” he said. “Now get back in here.”

I looked behind me, into the wind. It about lifted me off of there. I watched the tobacco fields coming toward us in the dark.

“I can't ever fall,” I shouted at Albert.

“That's right, don't do that.”

I looked at him through the glass again. “I'm not ever going to.”

“Okay,” he said. “I hear you.”

I looked as clear at him through that glass as I could manage. We hit another dip in the road, and my feet came off the hood for just a second. I grabbed onto the busted wiper.

“You can slow down then,” I said.

And when he did, I climbed back over the windshield and into the seat. The car behind us passed us on the left side and we watched it go, an old drunk farmer it looked like. I took up the quilt again. I hadn't lost the shivers.

“Where's she live?” I said.

“Farther on.”

“Near Jake?”

“No.”

And he didn't say anything more. He'd been in the Gulf War, Albert, and I thought maybe we might see one of his friends tonight. They were scattered all about these parts. I came up every weekend from Raleigh on the bus, spent Friday and Saturday nights with him. With his veteran's check we bought groceries for the week, worked on the car. Whatever there was to do. We had a canoe, and we'd take that out in the river when we felt like it, if the water was still enough to get back upstream. We read the newspaper to each other. We watched
TV
. We drank. In the spring and summers we had a vegetable garden, though we didn't have much success with that. We went bowling sometimes. Albert had been a combat engineer in the war. They found and disabled landmines. They called themselves a name that I'd always liked. Sappers. He'd had a friend who missed a wire. The man's helmet snapped Albert's spine. I'd heard this story only a few times. There was a pop and then the other pop and then silence. Stateside, I'd lived with him for a while in the hospital, sneaking around, after Ma went under the table.

“How about some beers?” said Albert.

I reached back, pulled two from the twelve. I opened them, passed one over.

He took a long swig and then another. He looked out on the road for a while and we didn't say anything. We watched the farmhouses spaced every few miles, some standing, some fallen, some looking to. I drank my beer. I didn't want the cold of the drink, but I kept sipping at it. About the time it was empty Albert turned to look at me.

“That was fun as hell,” he said.

I was feeling the buzz already. “Damn right. That was fun as all get out.”

“You're not that crazy,” he said.

“No,” I said. “That was above me.”

“No need to do that again.”

“No,” I said. “That's it for now.”

We took a turnoff from the highway and drove along next to a long gully filled with dark water. The moon had reached its height and was beginning to dip, and I watched it, the strange patches of gray and blue. I tried to see a face in the moon, but I couldn't quite make it out. That storm smell was in the air again, and there were clouds off toward the north, not dark but white-gray, and I watched them, waiting for lightning. The road turned to gravel and we slowed down. We could hear the rocks and pebbles kick up from the tires, clattering in the wheel wells and popping against the chassis. I took out the beans as we rode along and snapped a few in half, chewed them down. I handed a couple to Albert, and he studied them, set them on the dashboard. I watched them rattle with the movement of the jeep till they became lodged against the windshield. I pulled my hands from beneath the quilt. Unsteady. I was still trembling. They looked like mad hands to me.

We pulled into a trailer park, and a couple dogs came out and chased along beside us. We passed empty clotheslines and a yard full of tires and bicycles. An old metal barrel filled with wood, burn marks down the side. Lights inside the trailers were blue and shifting, televisions likely, but maybe ghosts, said Albert, and he made some creepy voice and I rolled my eyes. I wasn't sure how, but he was making fun of me. There were chairs tossed here and there, sideways, like no one would be sitting out soon, and the dogs gave up as we pulled past a small lake in which I could see the moon, and at the near end I could make out a school bus, half sunk in the dark water. I curled my hands into fists, thought that might help some. We pulled up next to a yellow trailer with Christmas lights—white, red, and green—though it was the wrong season. They were strung all along the roof and around the windows.

When Albert cut the engine we could hear some music from the inside, something slow and strange, and beyond that the crickets ticking
together out by the lake. He switched off the headlights and we sat and listened to the music. We finished our beers—my second, Albert's third—and watched for movement in the trailer. I put my fingers up to my neck, to feel my pulse and what my heart was pushing through.

A light came on above us, and we both held our hands up to block the shine. In that light Albert looked as old as I'd ever seen him. He looked as old as Ma. Older.

Somebody came out on the steps, and Albert reached over and opened the glove box, and there in the light I could see one of his pistols. The one missing from the gun cabinet. The long black handle was sticking out from the papers and maps. But he left the pistol there and took out a roll of money. He closed the box and I got out and got his chair.

Merrill came down the steps. She was wearing a black dress and a thin rope necklace, and boots. When I'd gotten Albert out of the jeep and settled into his chair, she took his head in her hands, gentle, like she was trying to find his ears in all that hair of his. We were just outside the light, but I could see that she was a little older than Albert. Her hair was tied back with a band and she had a slight smile, though it seemed to me that there was maybe another face behind the first, one that was sad and not smiling. She bent down and kissed him at the bridge of his nose, and then she just held his head for a while, but she was looking over at me.

“Daniel,” I said, though she hadn't asked.

“The brother,” she said.

“I told you I would,” said Albert.

She nodded and took her hands from his head, slowly, like maybe she might put them back there again.

“Can I touch you?” she said.

I looked at Albert, and he just shrugged. I felt like there was maybe a joke being put on me.

“Where?” I said.

She smiled. “Right here.”

I shrugged. “All right.”

She stepped over and put one of her boots on my shoe, then she pushed back my hair with the tips of her fingers. I looked away.

“Can I turn you into the light?” she said.

“Not too much,” I said.

“Just a little.”

When she turned me, she pushed my hair back again and lifted my chin up. I had to squint in the brightness.

“You all right?” she said.

“It's strange,” I said.

“You're shaking.”

“I'm cold.”

“You don't feel cold,” she said. “You're a beautiful child.”

“I'm not a child.”

“No,” she said.

I wanted to get out of that light then, and maybe she sensed this, because she took me out. She let go of me.

“Let's say we go inside,” she said.

So we went up into the trailer. I leaned Albert and his chair back and pulled him up the steps. I'd done this many places before. I knew the trick of it. He stared up at me.

“You're spooking,” he said.

“Says you.”

There was a couch inside, two chairs, lampshades. Drapes on the windows. Merrill turned off the spotlight outside, and there was a white candle on a small table, lit, and the red and green lights shining through the glass. I liked the music on the radio. Still slow, but no longer strange. Something familiar, though I could not quite place it. Merrill was in the kitchen, and her steps seemed to follow the music as she walked about. A big map of the country was pinned up on the wall opposite the couch, and I examined it for a moment. Little stars drawn here and there: Fresno and Grand Junction, Boston and Sioux Falls, Portland, both of them. Below, on a shelf, were about a dozen porcelain mice, each of them the same it seemed. Each of them standing with the same hopeful expression—big
eyes—but dressed different, in little felt outfits. A hippie and a surgeon, a nurse and a fisherman. One of them held a butterfly net.

Merrill called from the kitchen. “Don't make fun of my mice, Daniel Atkins.”

“I thought they were rats,” I said.

She looked at me from over the counter. “You can wait outside in the jeep if you want.”

I looked at Albert, and he gave me a look I couldn't read. He took a swig off a beer.

“I didn't mean nothing by it,” I said.

“Then have a seat,” she said.

I sat down in a chair next to Albert, and he closed his eyes and listened to the music. He started moving his shoulders, his neck. He seemed to be whispering some words, though there weren't any voices on the radio. I crossed my arms over my chest. I was shivering something terrible.

“I've got a whole box of donuts here,” said Merrill. “I think these are going to be good. You'll have some donuts?”

“Sure,” said Albert. He opened his eyes then and reached into his pocket. He took out the roll of money—twenties—and handed it to me. He nodded at Merrill.

“Give it to her?” I said.

He nodded.

So I got up and leaned over the counter. I looked at her for a moment. I was scared of her, though I didn't want to show it. I handed over the money.

“Those are steep donuts,” I said.

Something young came over her face then. Some sort of pleasant tremor it seemed to me. She had the same expression as when she'd tipped me into the light. She reached toward the money but took hold of my wrist. Her grip was tight, and I didn't know if I could pull free.

“Did you hear that, Albert?” she said.

He was laughing. “I heard him.”

“Steep donuts.”

“You sending him out?” said Albert.

She was laughing now, and she began to move again to the music. “I was never to send Daniel Atkins out,” she said.

And then she put the money away and let go of me. She handed over the donuts.

So, we had some donuts and some beer, and I was feeling all right. Merrill helped my brother out of his chair, helped set him on the couch. She leaned him back till his head was lying on a pillow. Then she slipped his shirt off, turned him over. In the hospitals I'd seen the nurses do this a hundred times. He had his eyes closed, and it seemed that his face held some troubled thought. I could barely make it out in the candlelight. It sent a chill down my shoulders. He reached back, and she took his hand.

“There's a blanket,” said Merrill. “On the bed in the room. When you get it, bring me the brush on the nightstand.”

“Me?” I said.

“Yes you, Daniel Atkins.”

So I went in there and got the blanket. And I got the brush. On the stand there was a picture of two teenagers. One was spot-on for Merrill, and she and a boy were leaning against a fence. The boy she was with was good-looking, and he held an old-time pocket watch in his open palm. He was looking at that watch like it was the most curious thing. The younger Merrill looked delighted. I picked up the picture and checked the hallway. I studied that watch in the picture. I was wondering what was so curious about it. I wondered if the boy was just performing for the camera. I was getting pretty drunk. A minute, and I set the picture back as best as I could.

In the den I gave Merrill the brush, and she looked at the blanket and said, “Go on.” So I sat back in the chair and pulled the blanket over me. I took the last swig of a beer and put my feet up on the table.

“Where do you live during the week?” said Merrill.

“Me?” I said.

“Yes you. I don't want to talk to this fool brother of yours.”

“Hey,” said Albert.

“Hey,” said Merrill.

“With my Ma,” I said. “Up in Raleigh.”

“Are you in high school yet?”

“Next year,” I said. “If some things start to go right. I've missed some time lately.”

She nodded. “We've all got things to take care of. Albert has told me some about you.”

“A little,” said Albert.

“What does he say?” I said.

Merrill was sitting next to him, and she poured some clear, scented oil onto her hands. Then she rubbed it into Albert's back. “You're a hell of a bowler,” she said. “That's him talking. What else? Bowling's a good start. Someone takes something up, they should be good at it. You're a swimmer, and you work nights at a restaurant. Dishes, right?”

“Boring,” I said.

She rubbed the oil into his shoulders, down his spine. “Well he didn't tell me that part. Here's one. You order your clothes on hangers, light to dark.”

I smiled at that. “Which way?”

She considered. “Light on the left.”

“Wrong.”

“I've got to keep closer attention,” she said. “Now I've got to make up for it. When you were younger you had a duck who you thought was your girlfriend.”

I sat up at that. I looked at my brother. “Albert!” I said.

He opened his eyes and looked up at me. They were both laughing.

“Be careful what you ask,” said Merrill.

I tucked the blanket up to my neck. “She was just my friend.”