The Good Thief (14 page)

As soon as he had done this, Ren began to worry. Mrs. Sands would certainly know that he had eaten the cake. He held his breath, expecting the landlady to come around the corner. But a moment went by, and then another, and Mrs. Sands did not appear.

A bit of soot began to sprinkle down from the chimney into the fireplace. Ren could hear a scraping noise. Something was caught inside the flue—a bird, or perhaps a squirrel. At Saint Anthony’s when it was cold, birds would fall down the chimney, drawn in by the heat. Then they would dart around the kitchen, and usually spent the rest of the day throwing themselves against the windows. Whatever creature was traveling through Mrs. Sands’s chimney was taking its time, and the boy realized after a few minutes that it must be climbing down. His heart beat quickly, and the scratching stopped, as if the creature inside the chimney had heard it.

Ren crouched down and looked. About halfway up the flue there was a man, propping himself with his legs and shoulders. He slid his heels against the brick, first one, and then the other, sending a cloud of black dust onto Ren’s face. The boy stepped away and tried not to sneeze. He covered his nose with the edge of the nightgown and held it tight. He looked about frantically for a place to hide and slipped into the potato basket. A few small roots had been left in the bottom, and the boy could feel them pressing into his knees.

A leg dangled from the chimney. Then another. The feet kicked aside the logs and ashes and the final remnants of Ren’s clothes. The man untied a rope that was fastened to his belt and bent over, his hands on the floor as he crawled out of the fireplace. Then he stood, brushing off his coat and shaking his legs. He was no more than four feet tall.

It was as if he had been made from other people, none of whom were originally the same size. His head was too large for his body. His feet too small. His arms were long and powerful, but his legs were short. His eyes were dark and sloped down at the corners, while his brows went in the opposite direction, giving him a clever look. His hair was black and shiny, along with his beard, which was neatly trimmed around his jaw.

The small man walked over to the table, lifted the napkin off the tray, and began eating what was left of the meal. When he was through, a jackknife appeared from under his sleeve and he cut the apple into pieces. He smacked his lips and ground his teeth, using all the effort of his tongue and jaw. Ren imagined it was the same way the man would eat a person, if given the chance.

The dwarf set the apple core next to the fireplace. Then he took off his boots and removed his socks. They were made of soft checkered wool and full of ashes. He shook them and Ren saw clouds appear—tiny, dark explosions of soot. The socks were placed next to the apple core. Then his coat came off. Then his shirt. Then his trousers. Ren saw his humped, misshapen body for an instant before he climbed into the pot. The water splashed and echoed in the empty room as the man washed, rinsed himself, and came out. Ren saw him plainly now—strong arms over a curved spine and a tiny dangling penis no bigger than his own. The dwarf took the same towel Mrs. Sands had used on Ren and rubbed it quickly over his back and down each of his legs before slipping back into his clothes.

On a table beside the fireplace was a pair of clean, mended socks. Ren caught a glance of the dwarf’s knobby feet before they disappeared into the new socks and then into boots. When the small man was finished tying the laces, he crawled back into the fireplace, wrapped the rope around his waist again, and began to climb. His rumbling echoed in the hollow of the chimney as he rose, then grew quieter halfway up the flue. Ren peeked over the edge of the basket. The dwarf had left his dirty socks. He had left his apple core. He had also left a small wooden horse.

The boy pushed the potatoes aside and climbed out. The horse fit in the palm of his hand. It had been cut from a wood knot—he could see where the branch had started to grow. The burr was twisted where the saddle should have been. There were delicate cuts on the legs for hooves. There were tiny holes for the nostrils and careful lines carved to show the movement of the tail.

Ren took up the hot water bottle, brushed the ashes off with his nightgown, and tucked it into the crook of his elbow. It was warm and heavy, and the boy wrapped his body instinctively around it. Overhead, the scratching in the chimney was muffled. There was the sound of a kick. Ren got to his knees in the fireplace and peered up into the darkness. He couldn’t see anything. And then he saw the night and the stars.

I
t was barely dawn, the sky outside still dark. Ren’s shoulder itched. He could feel the woolen nightgown tangled about his legs. He was half-asleep, and just beginning to realize that he was in a real bed, not wrapped in a blanket on the cellar floor, when he heard a banging right outside the window. Ren bolted out of the sheets and rushed over to look. Mrs. Sands was down below on the sidewalk, clutching a bin and a tiny metal broom, dumping ashes from the fireplace into the street. She hit the back of the bin with another bang, and one last final cloud of gray smoke filtered out and into the air around her.

She was wearing an apron and a deep purple shift with the sleeves rolled to her elbows. On her head was the same cap she’d worn the night before. It was clear that Mrs. Sands had been up for hours, scrubbing her house. Ren looked at her face as she tucked the bin and broom beneath her arm and glared at the clouds. The expression was hard, as if she expected someone to start throwing things at her.

Across the room Tom let out a snort. Benjamin rolled to the side and pulled the quilt over his head. The room had seemed cold and friendless to Ren the night before, but now, in the morning light, he could tell that it was well-kept. The floor was oiled; the rugs faded in places from the sun, but clean. The bureaus were covered with crocheted doilies, and the mirrors were polished and free of dust. On one wall there was a quilt sampler. On the other hung a bouquet of wildflowers, pressed under glass and framed. And on the far wall was a shelf, with only one book on it—a King James Bible.

Ren heard a pair of footsteps go by the door. He ran over and pressed his eye against the keyhole, but all he caught was a blur and a thundering of boots on the stairs. A stream of air blew in, making him blink, and as he drew away he could smell the greasy scent of bacon.

Ren tried the lock. There was a click, and then he was through. Outside he found the drowned boy’s clothes, folded and waiting in a basket. They had been mended—the trousers turned and hemmed, the waist taken in, the sleeves shortened. Ren pulled the nightgown over his head and tried them on. The clothes were now exactly his size. The inside of the jacket was lined, the buttons polished. The cuffs of the shirt were finished, and the trousers had pockets without any holes. Ren slipped his hand inside and pulled out a handkerchief, ironed into a perfect square.

These were not the short pants and tattered coat of an orphan. They were the clothes of a man. Ren spread his arms out, his fingers stretching at the end of one sleeve, his stump peeking out of the other. The fabric fell straight and true, a clean line right past his shoulders. Mrs. Sands must have been up most of the night tailoring the fit. Ren turned the cuff and looked at her stitches—they were perfectly proportioned, even, and true. He felt a rush of delight. No one had ever done anything like this for him before.

There were voices coming from the kitchen. Ren made his way to the staircase, his hand pressed against the wall. On the last step he paused, and listened.

“
GET
YOUR
FINGERS
OUT
OF
THERE
.”

A highly pitched set of giggles burst forth from inside the kitchen, making it clear that Mrs. Sands and her shouting were of no consequence to the gigglers. Ren turned the corner, and that’s when he saw them—four girls lined up on the bench—plain, plain, plain, plain. They all wore heavy boots and the same coarse dress of navy blue. One of them had a harelip.

“I didn’t touch anything,” said the girl with the harelip. Behind her back she was holding a piece of bacon. The grease was staining her dress, a small circle of widening darkness.

“YOU’RE
THE
WORST
OF
THEM
ALL
,” said Mrs. Sands, and clapped the girl once on the ear. The girl went down, her hands coming out to stop the fall. She landed on the floor and the bacon broke in two and Mrs. Sands snatched the pieces up like a bird. The landlady grimaced, showing her crooked teeth, and cleaned the meat with the skirt of her apron.

The girl touched her head where it had hit the edge of the bench. The corners of her mouth turned around her harelip. She held her fingertips up. “No blood this morning,” the girl said. “You’re slipping, Mrs. Sands.”

Everything stilled for a moment. Then Mrs. Sands began to cough— hengh, hengh, hengh—and the rest of the girls on the bench burst into laughter, as if they had been holding it in for years. The girls banged their heels into the floor and howled as the girl with the harelip rose to her feet. Mrs. Sands turned and laid the bacon carefully on a plate. It wasn’t until she wiped her eyes that Ren realized she was laughing too.

“HUSH!” she said. “YOU’LL
WAKE
EVERYONE!”

“They should be awake already,” said the Harelip. “Honest people don’t sleep in the morning.”

One of the girls on the bench, with long brown hair and a gap between her front teeth, saw Ren hiding behind the door. “Who’s that?”

“THAT’S
OUR
NEW
DROWNED
BOY!” said Mrs. Sands. She walked over and took hold of Ren’s collar and dragged him into the room.

“Why didn’t you tell us about him?” asked the Harelip.

“IT’S
NOT
MY
BUSINESS
TO
TELL
ANYONE
ANYTHING!” Mrs. Sands said, and she suddenly picked up Ren as before and held him to her, squeezing hard. Then she dropped him to the floor, twisted his ear between her fingers, and used it to lead him into a chair.

“
YOU
SLEEP
WELL
IN
THAT
OLD
BED?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Ren. “But there was something in the chimney.”

Mrs. Sands paused, as if she was giving this information time enough to leave the room. Then she shouted, “
YOU
HUNGRY
,
THEN
, BOY?” Ren said yes he was, and it was only a moment before Mrs. Sands pushed a plate in front of him, full of eggs and butter and bacon and bread.

Ren forgot all about the dwarf. He tucked a napkin into his collar and ate everything in front of him. He finished the bacon and Mrs. Sands added more. He ate all of the bread and she followed it with muffins. He licked the last piece of yellow from his spoon and she had another soft-boiled egg cracked, the shell peeling off from the pure white jelly with the fresh smell of vinegar and salt.

The girls watched this happen silently from the bench, swinging their boots. The one with the gap in her teeth rolled her eyes, and the Harelip caught Ren looking and stuck out her tongue. It was bright reddish pink, mirroring the turn of skin above it. Ren could not look away, and when he didn’t, she blew him a kiss.

“Is there any water?” Benjamin stood in the doorway, half-dressed. His hair was loose, his eyes shot with red.

Mrs. Sands’s cheeks colored. She quickly drew a basin from underneath the counter and began to fill it from a pail. Benjamin walked over to the table and put his face in the bucket instead. He rested there for a moment, bubbles coming up beside his ears, and then he threw his head back and shook it like a dog. Mrs. Sands began to cough.

The girl with the gap in her teeth elbowed the girl with the harelip, who stared at Benjamin as the water soaked his shirt, running down his chest and shoulders.

“Who do you think you are?” said the Harelip.

Benjamin walked over to the bench and stood before the girls. He buttoned his shirt, then slipped his suspenders on. “I believe,” he said, “I’m your neighbor.”

Mrs. Sands began rolling dough on the counter, sprinkling flour and pressing her weight rhythmically into the wooden pin. Ren leaned his head against the back of the chair and watched her, as if he had done this a hundred mornings. At the other end of the room the girls let out another torrent of giggles while Benjamin introduced himself. Mrs. Sands slapped the dough harder against the counter.

A loud clanging of a bell sounded—followed by another, of higher pitch. The girls tore up from the bench, reaching for their shawls, holding them above their heads like sails before bringing them down and tying the corners around their necks.

“We’ll see you at supper,” the Harelip said, looking back over her shoulder at Benjamin. A moment later they were all gone, the kitchen door banged shut.

“Who are they?” Ren asked.

“
MOUSETRAPPERS
,” said Mrs. Sands, and threw another mound of dough on top of the first. She motioned with her head to the corner of the room. On the floor was a small wooden container. When Ren crouched down he could smell the freshly cut wood. In the side there was a circular opening, covered with a piece of tin. It was hinged one way, like the door in the gate at Saint Anthony’s. Ren reached out with his finger and pushed it open. The box shuddered, suddenly coming to life, and the boy drew his finger back quickly. He could hear the mouse scratching on the other side of the door.