Theft (2 page)

“I knew. That's all. Let's go.”

We walk out the front door, back door makes us look suspicious, Zeb says. He walks proud, like he owns this house. He hops on his bike, and I take my seat behind him, holding his waist as he pedals. I hear the sirens starting up. “Goddamnit, Zeb, they're coming, just like I said.”

He laughs.

“Pedal fast,” I tell him, looking over my shoulder, waiting for the red lights to bear down on us.

He pedals, and I feel the weight of our take in his knapsack, hear the gun clinking against the fishing bait and tackle, and I try but cannot recall a day in my life when I was not already guilty of stealing, Zeb taking me with him from day one of my thoughts.

Pretty soon, we're a good long way from the far side of the field, almost back to our neighborhood and the sirens are still whining, but it's okay because now we're not there and if they're coming for us, we're home safe, just two kids playing in their own neighborhood. I can hear Zeb's friends, Billy and Levon, laughing by the fishing pond, and in the distance I see a small red dot of a cop's light pulsing—can see it cruising between the houses across the field—and just then, Zeb swings his bike around and pedals back toward the place we just left.

“What're you doing, Zeb?” I think of hopping off, but Zeb pedals fast, sits halfway down on my legs, pinning me.

“You see that cop?” he asks.

“Yeah, I saw him.”

“I want to see what's going on.”

“You
know
what's going on.”

He hikes his knapsack up tighter on his shoulders and pedals harder. “You don't know what you're talking about. I want to see what the cops are doing. I gotta learn about these things.” He rips across the field, and pretty soon we're back in the big-house neighborhood. Zeb flies off the bike, his lanky legs clearing the center bar, and I have no choice but to jump off with him, let the bike fall. He flops onto the lawn across the street from the house, bends his legs over the curb, elbows on knees, chin resting in his palms, and his eyes fixed on the scene of our crime. He's out of breath, says, “Yeah, they're in there, all right.”

The door of the house we just robbed is open. Cops meander in the front yard, walk into the house with their hands on their holsters, on guard.

“Think they'll come over here?” Zeb says.

I clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.

Zeb laughs a little. “What's wrong, Willa? This is the best part.” He nudges my shoulder, and I push him away. “You want me to do the pharmacy, but you don't want to help me learn.” His voice is a hiss.

“All right,” I tell him. “I'm fine.”

The tallest cop walks across the street, swinging his flashlight in one hand, though it's broad daylight. “Look. He's coming over here!” Zeb whispers.

“Seen anything strange going on in that house?” the cop asks.

Zeb's canvas pack spews the scent of cheese balls and fish. He sits there with his neatly combed hair and his tidy T-shirt, no Marlboros wrapped in his sleeve now.

“Seen any strangers driving around this neighborhood?”

“No, sir.”

“You live nearby?”

“Not too far, sir. Just across the field. My mom's family used to own most of that field, you know. There's a pond there, too. Fishing.” He points.

The officer smiles and pats Zeb right on the backpack with his huge, bare palm. Zeb smiles, keeps his eyes wide open, looking at the house with the curiosity and wonder of someone who is innocent.

“Catch any fish there, son?”

“Lots. Yeah. Not today but most days I catch largemouth bass.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your dad ever take you up fishing in the mountains?”

Zeb shakes his head. “My Dad works too much for fishing.”

“Doesn't know what he's missing, does he?”

Zeb quits his
yes sirs
and
no sirs
now. He just eyes the cop and shrugs. “My dad's always working. My mom's sick and so he's always working. You got just the one job?”

“What's that, son?”

“My Dad works more than one job.”

“Is that right?” the cops says. When the cop turns to me, Zeb stares at him hard. “How about you? You seen anything unusual around here?” the cop asks me. He doesn't mean it, doesn't think a girl like me could know anything. I can tell by the way he smiles down on me and half-chuckles his question. There's no need to answer.

“All right then. You two better run along. This is no place for a couple of kids right now.”

When the cop turns around, I scuff my tennies, hole in the toe, along the concrete gutter. I feel the blood oozing up to the surface, and it feels good. It feels certain.

Zeb moans and straddles the bike, pats the seat for me to hop on behind him, and we ride back through the field, tall grass whipping my bare ankles, high altitude sun prickling the back of my neck.

When we get close to our side of the field again, I hear the other kids playing. I don't want to be with them. No one knows what me and Zeb do, and I feel their not-knowing like a fire in me. “Let me off here,” I call out, and Zeb lets the bike fall, and we both take off running different directions.

I run toward our house, fling the door open, and stand in the threshold panting like a chased dog. I can feel fear shaking my body, so I hold myself upright, arms crossed over my chest tight,
breathing smooth and quiet, and all the same, Mom, standing over her walker in her threadbare floral apron, turns from chopping vegetables in the kitchen and says, “Well, you're all out of breath. What've you been up to?” She smiles. She always smiles when I walk in the room, and it's something I can't stand, the way her love wraps around me when I've been out all day stealing with Zeb. Her shaky hands offer me a knife, and I grab a bag of carrots from the fridge, start chopping right alongside her.

“Been out with your brother today?”

“Little bit, yeah.” I notice her perfect hands, her long, tapered fingernails, when mine are just stubby nubs. As long as her hands are doing something, they're not as twisted up as they are when she's doing nothing, and it makes me want her to keep moving forever. She chops vegetables like a regular mom, and once I give into it, it feels good being with her, cooking, listening to James Taylor singing on the record player. The house is stuffy inside; the air thick, clinging tight to me, feels good against my skin, the comfort of it all.

From the window, me and Mom watch Zeb out in the field, the skinny, angled silhouette of him. He's walking with my best friend, Brenda, and the little gun he just stole is still in the front pocket of his baggy jeans. I can see it hammocked there, swinging every time he takes a step. He's carrying his hunting shotgun over his shoulder, too. He stops walking, sets the butt of the shotgun on the ground, and leans it so Brenda can balance it for him while she stands next to him. He lights a cigarette, and the smoke curls from his nostrils. Mom shakes her head, and I can't tell if it's the old house making her sad or Zeb. “How many times I've asked your brother not to carry that gun outside. And with Brenda right there with him.” She stops chopping, and it's like an electric current runs all the way down her left arm, coming out through her trembling hand.

“Shooting birds,” I tell her. “He promised he wouldn't shoot birds any more.” Zeb knows me and Mom both love birds.

“He'd better not be shooting birds, or anything else for that matter.” She's angry, and firm, but there's nothing she can do to
stop him. Not in her condition. “He shouldn't be smoking, either,” she says. “I hope he doesn't smoke when you're with him.”

“He does.” I regret saying it soon as I hear it out loud.

She shakes her head. “Where's Brenda's father, anyway?” she asks. “Letting her run around all day like he does. That man had no business adopting a daughter, taking her off an Indian reservation, to boot.” She whispers the adoption part shamefully, like she always does.

Zeb and Brenda walk through the old house, the east wall fallen down so me and Mom can see inside it like a huge, square skeleton outlining the place where Mom grew up. Zeb and Brenda duck out of sight when they sit behind the crumbling wall. At first I can see the smoke from Zeb's cigarette trailing above the crumbled wall. But pretty soon, it disappears too.

I lift my hand from the cutting board, rest it on Mom's shaky hand, and she starts peeling potatoes, as if I hadn't touched her at all. “That's grandma's rocking chair in that house, isn't it? The chair where you first felt Zeb kicking in your tummy.”

She looks out at the old house, says nothing. I stay close to her, our fingers brushing occasionally as we work.

“You must've moved out of that place fast, leaving all that stuff inside it.” She keeps peeling and I keep talking, and I can see her wanting me to shut up, but I don't. “Wish we could go visit that house together someday, you and me.”

Finally she stops busying herself. She sets the peeler aside and rests her palms in mine. I feel the shudder of her disease surfacing on her skin, and I brace myself against it, let her trembling enter my own body so maybe I can take it away from her. The morning I spent stealing with Zeb washes away, and the world slows down to something smaller, something better.

She shuffles with her Parkinson's feet over to the chest of drawers under the TV and pulls out the old photo albums. Most of the time when I ask about the house, she finds something else to talk about. Today, she pulls out these old photos. I sit next to her and she shows me. The house in the pictures looks small but sturdy, like something from my
Little House on the Prairie
books. I trace the outline of it and let my fingers pass over the tidy barbed-wire
fence my grandfather built. It looks new, but it's sagging and straggly in the field now. I see the horses grazing in the background. “Nuisance,” Mom says, almost smiling. That was the name of her family's horse.

I see the old mare, but I can't stop looking at a grove of apple trees and some pines landscaping her yard, because they're the same trees I see every day, still standing in the field now. I turn the page and look at a faded black-and-white photo of Mom when she was younger than I am now. She's standing under the shade of my favorite climbing tree, with her own brother on one side of her, and another kid, a tall, lanky boy, on the other side. All three kids have on overalls with frayed hems that hang about six inches too short, and their bare, boney legs are splashed with mud. They wear leather shoes, not tennies, and they hold a line between them with six fish dangling from it like huge clothespins. They're smiling like they're about to burst.

“We had lots of fun when we were kids,” Mom says.

“We could have fun there now. You and me. Go fishing there someday.”

“There's some good fish in that pond. Used to be.”

“Still is. I catch good fish there all the time.”

She nods, and her hand stills long enough for her to turn the page, but it goes back to trembling soon as she rests it in her lap. I watch her, and I know what they say is wrong. I know this disease will not keep getting worse in her. I know she'll fight it off, strong as she is. We sit there, me and Mom, and I look from the black-and-white photos out into the field, where the blue sky aches above the wheat-colored grasses and the trees still stand like they used to a hundred years back.

Just then Brenda and Zeb stand up. Zeb lights another cigarette, and Mom's trembling comes back. “Damn Zeb,” I whisper, and Mom turns her head enough so that I know she heard me. But she doesn't say a word. Brenda shoulders the shotgun for Zeb now, and they walk together out toward the pond, hitting each other as they walk until Brenda finally breaks off from him and heads back toward home. Couple minutes later, when Zeb's alone in the field,
I hear the pop of his gun, and I feel Mom jerk against it. I close my eyes, quit looking out the window. I don't want to see what he's shooting.

BY NOW, THE DAY has worn Mom out. So I help her to her bedroom, and she naps. I lay next to her reading one of my library books till I can't stand the indoors air anymore. There's no trembling when she sleeps, so I bend over and kiss her on her cheek. I can't kiss her when she's awake because her trembling scares me so much. But when she's sleeping, it's like she's almost normal. I leave her sleeping, and I head out to the field. I walk out to my favorite spot by the pond and lay down, my arms crossed under my head, thinking. The coolness of the earth seeps through my thin T-shirt, chills my back.

The day is working its way toward evening now, so I start to get up, and I see Zeb walking toward me, alone, no guns this time, far as I can tell. I want him to leave. I want this field all to myself, I want this sky. If Mom can't be here with me on account of her Parkinson's, I want to be alone. I don't want my brother walking the same ground as me. But he keeps heading toward me in a straight line, and I see his hands clasped in front of him. He's holding something close to his chest. “I don't need whatever you got for me, Zeb. Don't want one of your damn presents,” I call out to him.