The Good Thief (11 page)

That afternoon Benjamin went to find some supper and Tom and Ren set to changing the labels, from Doctor Faust’s Medical Salts for Pleasant Dreams to Mother Jones’s Elixir for Misbehaving Children . Ren soaked the old bottles and scraped the paper away with a knife while Tom set himself up at the table with pen and ink and wrote the new words out, taking a sip of whiskey between each finished piece.

Before they left Granston, Tom had trimmed his beard and purchased a new shirt. Now he tucked a napkin into the collar to keep it from getting stained and carefully pushed up his sleeves. The light from the candle flickered across his face. He appeared calm and nearly sober.

Ren could see that his penmanship was distinguished. The ends of the letters curled into patterns; his dashes and crosses fell in waves of varying thickness. When the labels were glued into place, they looked quite professional. Tom poured himself another drink and stretched his ink-stained fingers.

Ren leaned over the table, admiring the words. “Why’d you stop teaching?”

Tom frowned. He ran a hand over his face, leaving streaks of black ink on his forehead. “Do you have any fellows?”

“I used to,” Ren said. “They were twins. Brom and Ichy.”

“And do you miss them?”

“Yes,” said Ren. As he said it, he knew it was true. He missed everything about the twins, from the way they made him laugh in chapel to their secret codes over dinner. He even missed the parts he’d always hated, like the way Brom would continue to punch him, even after he’d given up, and the way that Ichy liked to confess to things he hadn’t done.

“It’s a damned shame to lose your fellows.” Tom took another drink. There were tiny red scars on his arm, left over from the chicken pox. He pulled his sleeve down over them, then wiped his nose against the cuff. “I had a fellow, once. We grew up together, and it was just as Aristotle said: One soul, two bodies. A true friendship. You don’t get many of those in this life, I can tell you now.

“We loved the same girl and asked her to choose between us. I was a teacher and didn’t have much money; Christian had some land and an inheritance. So she got engaged to him. But she continued to meet me in the woods at night. And God help me, I would have done anything she asked.”

Tom lifted the whiskey to his lips and finished it, keeping the glass there for a moment, his teeth biting down on the edge.

“He shook my hand in church, smiling with her arm through his. And right under his nose, she still reeked of it, like a buttered bun. I had too much to drink one night and told him everything. I said, ‘Do you know what her skin tastes like?’ I said, ‘Can you smell me on her fingers?’ He took a pistol out of a drawer. He told me to stop talking. I said, ‘Don’t you think we laughed at you?’ He pointed the pistol at his own head then and screamed at me to stop, and I said, ‘Pull the trigger,’ and he did.”

Ren gripped the empty bottle of Doctor Faust’s Medical Salts for Pleasant Dreams. He stared at the label so that he would not have to look at Tom. He knew from Brother Joseph that suicides were not laid to rest in the churchyard. They were buried at the crossroads, in unconsecrated ground, like Brom’s and Ichy’s mother. Their souls were sent to hell, and their ghosts turned into white rabbits that haunted the unmarked grave, startling horses and fooling travelers into taking the wrong path.

Tom’s eyes were shut tight. He wiped his palm back and forth across his forehead, smearing the ink deeper into his skin.

“After that I stopped being a teacher.”

For a few moments they sat in silence. Ren watched Tom for a sign of what might happen next, a curse or a sob, but the schoolteacher simply rubbed his fingertips together, then began making marks across the table, a line of thumbprints, all in a row.

The boy went back to scraping the labels off, and Tom sighed and began to mix together Mother Jones’s Elixir for Misbehaving Children. He used a funnel to fill the bottles with maple syrup, diluted opium, castor oil, and a bit of soured milk, until the consistency was light and sticky, with a tinge of brownness. He poured a tiny bit into a glass and handed it to Ren.

“Bottoms up.”

The boy sniffed the liquid, then stuck his tongue in. It tasted sweet and bitter at once.

“You’ll have to be more convincing than that.”

Ren lifted the glass. The medicine took its time, sliding slowly along the edge of the cup like molasses. Only a drop fell into his mouth. It tasted terrible, but he swallowed it down. “Now what?”

“Now,” said Tom, “you have to be good.”

The next morning when Tom and Ren arrived at the shearing, it was well under way, the fields still damp with dew. Nearly one hundred men, women, and children were talking and milling about and inspecting each other’s herds. Tables with food and drink were set up on the grass. Ribbons of different colors were tied to the trees and fence railings.

Ren looked over the people gathered and searched for Benjamin. He’d left before dawn, taking the wooden case with him.

“Remember,” Benjamin had said just before he closed the door, “you aren’t supposed to know who I am.”

Ren’s boots were soaked through from crossing the field. The wet leather rubbed against his bare ankles. Tom stopped just outside the crowd, reached down, and took Ren’s hand. It was strange, pretending to be father and son. They were both ill-suited for their roles. Ren’s hair stuck out in all directions and the schoolteacher reeked of whiskey. Tom tightened his grip, and Ren looked up at him.

“No heroics,” he said. “If something goes wrong, I want you to run.”

Ren nodded, and the man and the boy stepped into the crowd. They passed the tables piled high with scones and muffins, a side of ham, a barrel of cider, and a smattering of cakes covered in sugar. As they moved closer to the shearing, the smell changed to that of fresh manure and the heavy scent of wool.

The farmers took the sheep one at a time and tossed them onto their backs, then went to work with the hand clippers, starting at the head and making their way across the spine and down the sides, until the animal’s coat came off in a single matted piece. The coat was then set apart, weighed, and examined, until its price was decided.

Bits of white filament floated in the air. The fingers of the shearers shone with lanolin, their leather aprons stained with it. As the day wore on and the sun grew high, a few took off their shirts and worked bare-chested, suspenders at their waists and kerchiefs tied around their necks.

The sheep waited behind a fence, watched others of their herd being shorn, and bleated. One by one the sheep were taken, thrown on their sides, and expertly cut. Afterward they looked naked and stunned. When they were released, the animals shook their heads and stumbled against each other in the grass, their steps wobbling, as if they had been reborn.

A contest began. A man in a vest and high boots and another with a scar along his cheek were timed against each other, their clippers flying, the sheep struggling in protest, the crowd cheering them on. When the men were finished they were covered in sweat and wool shavings. The judges inspected the fleeces, and declared the man with the scar the winner. Everyone cheered, and the next two competitors stepped forward. Nearby, a group of children climbed a tree to get a better view.

“Go on,” said Tom.

Ren left his side reluctantly and joined the other boys and girls. The children scrambled in the branches and chased each other around the trunk. Curious, a few eyed Ren as he walked over and stood next to the tree. On the other side of the field, Tom pointed at him and made slashing motions in the air. Ren wet his lips. He pulled his hand into a fist. Then he held his breath, walked up to a towheaded boy, and punched him as hard as he could in the neck.

The boy fell to the ground, gasping and wheezing. The other children dropped from the tree and formed a circle around him. Ren’s hand throbbed. He felt surprisingly good.

A boy in overalls stepped forward. “What’d you do that for?”

“I don’t know,” said Ren. “Because I felt like it.”

They watched the boy struggling for air. A few of the children backed away, and a few came closer.

“Is he going to die?” one of the girls asked.

“No,” said another. “But if he does, we know who did it.”

The boy in the overalls shoved Ren to the ground. “How’s this feel?” he said, then he started kicking. Ren tried to fight back, but the other children joined in, even the girls, so finally he just went limp, waiting for it to be over, feeling a sense of injustice all the while. He could make out the boy he’d punched, only a few feet away on the grass. The boy had recovered his strength and was now crawling over to spit on him.

“Get off,” said one of the farmers. “I mean it, Charlie.”

“He started it,” the boy in the overalls said.

“I don’t give a damn who did.” The children backed away, and the man took Ren by the coat and pulled him to his feet. He brushed some dirt from the boy’s jacket, then hesitated. “Jesus Christ.”

Ren pulled his scarred wrist back inside his sleeve. The other children hushed. He glared at them all, his face red.

“He lost his hand in a thresher,” Tom said, stepping forward. “Ever since, he’s always starting fights.”

“Well, he got this one finished for him, all right,” said the farmer.

“I’m sorry for the trouble.” Tom took Ren roughly by the arm. “I just can’t make him behave.”

“All that boy needs is some tonic.” Benjamin appeared, slipping out of the crowd, swinging the wooden case, and smiling. He set the case down, unbuckled the straps, and pulled out a bottle. “And I just happen to have some with me today. Mother Jones’s Elixir for Misbehaving Children.”

“If it’ll stop my boy from getting into trouble, I’ll pay you five dollars for it,” said Tom.

“That’s kind of you, friend,” said Benjamin. “But it’s only a dollar a bottle.”

“One dollar,” said Tom. “That’s a bargain.”

“It is,” said Benjamin.

Tom handed him a wrinkled dollar bill, and the tonic was passed over.

Ren’s lip was split and his ribs ached. “I’m not going to drink it.”

“If you don’t, I’ll tan your hide.”

The bottle was opened and put in his mouth, and Ren drank all of it, the thick liquid sliding down and nearly gagging him, sweet and sour. When he couldn’t take any more, he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, walked over to the boy he had punched in the neck, fell to his knees, and asked forgiveness.

“It’s a miracle!” said Tom.

The farmers were not convinced. It was only when Ren started praying with a face of genuine gratitude, because the opium had lifted the pain from his ribs, that a few of the farmers’ wives approached.

“Satisfaction guaranteed,” said Benjamin. Those seemed to be the magic words, for as soon as they came out of his mouth the first bottle sold, to the mother of the towheaded boy.

Once the medicine was administered, the children stopped fighting and chasing each other and climbing trees. They stopped roughhousing and spitting and stealing bits of food from the table. In fact, they stopped doing much of anything at all. They sat down in the grass, and stared off into space, and were silent.

“It’s amazing,” said one of the mothers. She sniffed the bottle.

“Natural ingredients,” said Benjamin. He’d sold almost the entire case. The crowd had left the shearers and surrounded him instead.

Ren felt his eyes opening and closing against his will. His mouth was full of saliva, and it ran down the corners of his lips. He turned his head. Over to the side, near the edge of the field, there was a man. For a moment Ren thought it was Father John, and then he was sure of it, and then he thought he must be dreaming, because the man was smoking and Father John had never smoked. The man was watching Benjamin closely, and before he had finished his cigar he put it out on his boot and cut purposefully through the crowd.

“What do they call you?”

“Johnson,” said Benjamin. He held out his hand, but the man didn’t take it.

“I’ve seen you before, but that wasn’t the name.”

“It must have been someone else.”

The man spit on the ground. “You calling me a liar?”

“Not at all.” Benjamin turned to the people gathered, to show his good intentions, but it was clear that this fellow was known to them and Benjamin was not.

“Where’d you see him, Jasper?” someone asked.

“On a poster in Galesburg,” said the man. “He’s wanted for armed robbery. I’m sure of it.”

One of the mothers screamed. The women elbowed past and rushed to their children, shaking and slapping the girls and boys and crying their names. Several men lunged forward. Benjamin threw the wooden case, knocking them down, then hopped the fence, fell to his hands and knees, and disappeared among the herd. The farmers called the rest of the men away from the shearing, and they started off in different directions with their shotguns, the sheep bleating in fear as they rushed past.

Tom took hold of Ren’s hand and led him off at a strong pace, back to the wagon. “Don’t stop,” he said. “Keep moving.”

Ren held on to his stomach. He pretended to be sick from the tonic. But in fact he was feeling wonderful. Better than he’d ever felt before. The grass was so green underneath their feet, it was as if he could fall into it and keep on falling forever.