The Good Thief (37 page)

“By the time we could get him downstairs, you were gone.”

“And the kitchen was full of dead men.”

“We dragged them out to the stable.”

“We thought they’d taken you away to be murdered.” The boys tried to look brave, but Ren could tell they had been undone by the thought.

“Papa made us barricade the door.”

“He was afraid they were coming back to kill us.”

As they talked, Ren looked at the blood. It covered the rugs in great swirls, streaked over the wood, and trailed in spots, leading out to the backyard.

“Where’s Dolly?”

The twins exchanged a look.

“They shot him,” Ichy said at last. “They shot him so many times he couldn’t get up.”

Dolly was in the same stall where they had kept the farmer’s horse. The smell of manure was slightly faded, replaced by dust and gunpowder. A quilt was thrown over him, and a pillow Ren recognized from Mrs. Sands’s parlor was propped underneath his head. There was a bandage on Dolly’s neck and another across his shoulder. His arms, legs, and chest were plugged and oozing, his monk’s robe wet with blood. Underneath it all, the ground was turning red.

Outside the stall was a pile of carefully arranged blankets, hiding the bodies of Pilot and the hat boys. Beside this pile the donkey was slowly chewing through a mound of hay. Tom sat grimly on a stool, watching the animal eat, his leg stretched out before him, his gun cradled in his lap. When he saw Ren in the doorway, his face softened. “Our fellow,” he said.

Ren stepped forward and touched the wrapping on Dolly’s neck. His fingers came away stained, the color of wine.

“He said he put you up the chimney.”

“He did.”

Tom lifted his eyebrows, then shifted his foot. “I thought he’d lost it.”

Ren put his head to Dolly’s chest.

“He’s gone,” said Tom.

Ren kept listening.

The schoolteacher stuffed the gun into his coat. He sat and watched the boy for a while. He shook his head. “Why don’t you come inside?”

“No,” said Ren.

Tom tugged at his beard and sighed. Then he balanced, stood, shifted the splint, and dragged his leg out of the stable. Ren heard him cross the yard to the boardinghouse and then shut the door behind him.

The afternoon passed into evening. As Ren waited, he told his friend all that had happened. He talked until he could think of nothing to say, and then he talked some more. He could hear the donkey eating on the other side of the stable. Occasionally the animal stuck its long gray nose over the railing as if it were wondering what Ren would say next. When the stars came out, Ichy and Brom brought a candle and another quilt. Ren wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. But he did not want to leave the stable. Not yet.

At dawn he opened a window so Dolly could hear the birds. Their songs went on and on without stopping. His own throat was dry, but he felt that if he could talk to Dolly for just a little longer, his voice would reach him. That the right words could make anything happen. He thought of the statue of Saint Anthony, and all the empty prayers he had said before it, wishing for things that had never been lost.

Ren spoke to Dolly about the orphanage, and then about Saint Anthony himself—how he preached to the fishes, and reattached Leonardo’s foot, and raised a little boy from the dead. “At the end of his life,” said Ren, “Saint Anthony moved into a walnut tree. He didn’t want to touch the ground anymore. He wanted to get as close to heaven as he could.”

Now the boy took Dolly’s giant hand in his own. It was cold, the fingers stiff and unyielding. Outside, the morning birds chattered and sent out their calls. There was a flutter, and a swallow’s nest high in the stable rafters began to peep with life. A bird cried out, its mate answered; their babies opened their mouths to be fed. Ren leaned against Dolly’s pillow. He watched for signs and he kept talking, about a saint leaving the world of men, and climbing up into the leaves to spend the rest of his days, and how, when he did, Christ had come to him, and miracles had happened in the branches.

T
hey broke up what was left of the furniture, threw boards and pieces of chairs into the fireplace. They took the odds and ends wedged in front of the door, and pulled the stuffing from the sofa in the parlor to use as kindling. Before long a fire was built up. And Tom and Ren and the twins drew around it.

The kitchen was destroyed. The table was in pieces, pots and pans bent out of shape, food splashed on the ceiling, the bench splintered. Black soot and ashes spread across the hearth.

Ren found the bag he had packed to run away with underneath a broken chamber pot. The jars of pickles had smashed, the cup of lard smeared over the cloth. Ren found a knife and used it to peel the last few potatoes. Brom fetched some water and they put it in a pot over the fire and added the lard, and the sprouting potatoes, and a bit of dried parsley still hanging from the ceiling.

There was nowhere for them to sit, so they crouched on the floor. A kind of sadness began to sink in as they ate. All four stared at the fire and told their stories as best they could, while picking glass from the sour pickles on their plates.

“Benjamin’s got nine lives,” Tom said after Ren had finished.

“Will he come back?”

Tom took a bite of potato with his fork. It was still raw, and he made a face as he returned it to the pot, then dried his mouth on the back of his sleeve. He shook his head.

“What about us?” Ren asked.

“I’ll return you to the orphanage.”

The boys were silenced by this. It didn’t seem possible.

Tom put his plate down. “I can’t feed and clothe three boys. I can’t provide for myself even.”

“I’m not going,” said Ren.

“You want to live on the streets? Become a thief? Or a beggar?”

Ren sat in silence. He was already both those things.

“Look at your friend,” said Tom. “Look what happened to him.”

“He was protecting me,” Ren said.

“He was a killer. He was made to die that way. But you weren’t.”

In the fire was a set of kitchen chairs, a piece of the bench, and the top of Mrs. Sands’s chest. It was burning, the hinges glowing red. Ren glanced around the room. The boardinghouse seemed ready to collapse upon them, the heavy beams overhead bending low. They were sitting in a pile of wreckage. A sinking ship.

“It’ll be the one good thing I’ve ever done,” said Tom.

Ren pulled his sweater close. It was hard to believe that after all that had happened he would be going back to where he started. Ren wiped his cheek and a spot of red came away on his fingers. The glass was gone, but it had left a mark. He reached into his pocket and felt the paper Benjamin had given him. He unfolded the page and handed it to Tom.

The schoolteacher squinted his eyes and began to look it over. He read it through. He read it again. He read it once more. Then he burst out laughing, shaking the paper in the air before giving it back to Ren. Brom and Ichy leaned over their friend’s shoulder, and together they studied the words.

Being sound of mind and memory, I do constitute and appoint this my last will and testament revoking all former wills by me made. Imprimis, after payment of just debts and funeral charges, I will and bequeath all of my estate both real and personal in manner upon my death, to my nephew, Reginald Edward McGinty.

At the bottom was a signature, hurried and slanted, and it read: Silas McGinty.

“What does it mean?” Ren asked.

“It means you get the factory,” said Tom.

Ren dropped the letter in his lap, confused. “What am I going to do with a mousetrap factory?”

“Make mousetraps?” said Ichy.

Tom started scratching underneath his beard, first with one hand, and then with both, rubbing back and forth until the hair on his chin began to rise from the static. “He must have planned it,” Tom said with a grin. “He must have planned it from the very beginning.”

Ren thought of Benjamin’s broken teeth. His busted arm. How he’d made himself look so defeated. How he’d written the will, as if he’d been dreaming the words for years. How he’d held it out to be witnessed. Benjamin had known that McGinty would not read the paper before signing. He knew the same way he’d understood that Ren had been beaten by Father John, that the farmer would not chase them after they stole his horse.

“I’ll bet that factory’s worth a lot,” said Tom.

“But he’s gone,” Ren said. “He won’t get anything.”

“He didn’t do it for the money.” Tom took the will back from Ren and examined it again. “He did it for you. His own little monster.”

The front door rattled, as if it were listening in.

Tom and the boys looked at one another. The schoolteacher drew his pistol from his jacket. Brom reached for the poker, and Ichy grabbed a piece of wood from the fire. Ren looked about for some kind of weapon, picked up a dented frying pan, and held it over his head. Slowly they moved to the entrance, Tom dragging his leg behind. He nodded, and Ren and the twins moved what remained of the broken furniture piled there and slid the bolt. Then they stepped back into the shadows and Ren said to the other side, “Come in.”

The clinking stopped. The latch turned. And there stood Mrs. Sands. She was wearing her old brown dress and pinafore, a heavy blanket across her shoulders and a white cap pinned to her hair.

“
LOCKED
FROM
MY
OWN
HOUSE! WHO’D
BELIEVE
IT?
AND
HERE’S
THE
DROWNED
BOY
,
COME
TO
WELCOME
ME.”

Ren lowered the frying pan. She seemed thin. She seemed pale. But she was taller, somehow, and stronger in the bones, as if something inside was lifting her up. Her eyes were sparkling and her face had a glow. And when she opened her arms Ren ran forward and buried his face in her skirts.

She smelled just the same—of rising yeast and warm water. She bent down and Ren felt himself being lifted until she was cradling him, just as she had when he first came into her home. “NO,” she said. “NO
MORE
DROWNED
BOY
. MY
BOY
. MY
BOY
.” Mrs. Sands was smiling with her crooked teeth and rocking him back and forth. After some time she put the boy down and turned her face away and wiped it with her skirt, until it was wet from her own tears as well as Ren’s.

“I COULDN’T
STAND
BEING
IN
THAT
PLACE
ANY
LONGER
.”

The twins stood to the side, confused by all the shouting. Finally Brom put down the poker, and Ichy tossed the wood back into the fire. Tom slipped the pistol into his belt, hopped over, and took her hand. Mrs. Sands allowed him this, but it was hard to say if she was annoyed or amused as he brought it to his lips. She looked the group over and shook her head.

“
WHAT
HAVE
YOU
DONE
TO YOURSELVES?”

Ren looked down at his clothes, streaked with filth and blood, and then at Tom, his leg tied up in bandages, his beard arranged in every direction, and then the twins, their feet bare and filthy, their faces drawn and half-starved.

“We’ve been lost,” said Ren.

“THAT’S
WHAT
THE
SISTER
TOLD
ME.
AND
SHE
TOLD
ME
ALL
THE
REST
.
ABOUT
MY
BOY
THAT
NO
ONE
WANTED
.
AND
WHAT
HE
DONE
FOR
ME.
AND
I
COULD
THINK
OF NO
ONE
ELSE
WHO’D DO
THE
SAME
. NO
ONE
ELSE
WHO
CARED
.
AND
NOW
WE’VE
FOUND
EACH
OTHER
, HAVEN’T WE? WE’VE
FOUND
EACH
OTHER
FOR
ALL
TIMES
.”

She brought her skirt to her nose again as she cried. Ren led her into the kitchen and brought her to the fire, and then realized that there was no place left for her to sit down.

Mrs. Sands lowered her skirt and looked around the room. She eyed the shredded sofa, the ruined rugs, the smashed mirrors. The torn books, broken vases, and dismembered pillows. She saw the busted windowpanes, the blood and soot strewn across the floor, the pile of busted furniture. She put her hand against the wall, and it came away smeared with dirt. She kicked aside a pile of potato peelings. She lifted the needlepoint sampler of the Lord’s Prayer, and put a finger through the cloth where it had been sliced in two.

“
WHAT
HAVE
YOU
DONE
TO MY HOUSE?” She broke away from Ren, suddenly full of force, and ran around the kitchen, tripping over pots and pans and spoiled food, pushing aside the remains of chairs and tables, and stood before the open, empty pantry door. She screamed. And then the broom came out, the one article still in the same place she had left it, hanging on a nail by a small, worn piece of rawhide, and she began to hit them all—Tom and Brom and Ichy and Ren. “
WHAT
HAVE
YOU
DONE
TO MY HOUSE?” They scattered in every direction, but she managed to thrash each and every one of them, until Ren got down on his knees, the bristles battering his shoulders, and promised to stay and make everything right again.