Theft (6 page)

Then there was the life he had here, outdoors. The times he felt most like himself were the times he'd spent out in the woods, alone, or riding Rosalita. The longer he spent outdoors, the more the truck stops and highways faded away and his memory skipped a few decades and settled back on his life growing up, the house he was born in but could not remember, save for the rotted bones of it that stood in the field where his mother was born. He'd spent the best part of his earliest days in that neighborhood, growing up with his sister. He didn't want any of it back. That wasn't it. His future gnawed at him more deeply than any memory he could conjure, the vagueness of it, like smoke with no source of fire, just a dreary haze rising from something dowsed. He'd outlived most of what he loved, and what remained was shrinking away fast. Like the field; like his mother and the cruel and persistent illness that had crippled her; like wilderness.

There were some things you could not change. He knew that. But when he'd sent that email, he'd made one decision. And with his hand there on Rosalita's dying body, he made another: to change his future, his life.

A FEW DAYS AFTER that he woke a little later than usual and saw the trail of police cars winding their way on the skinny road that switch-backed its way up the mountainside below him. They were silent from this distance, their diminished red lights flashing through the morning fog. Four of them, and no one else living near his place on this mountain. Just Zeb and Brenda.

The cars approached closer now, and he felt something ping in his chest, as if his lungs were strung with musical wire and a sharp sound played in him, something as comforting and familiar as an old song: seductive and certain and alive. His confession had been the right thing to do. He had finally made the right choice.

He walked outside to get a better look at their arrival. He saw his own breath in the late autumn chill, and he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his Lee jeans. He could hear Brenda calling him from inside, as usual, telling him his breakfast was made and she was not going to hold it for him, and she would let it get cold, and the coffee, too, and when was the last time they'd sat down together for breakfast anyway. And then she quit talking.

With his head cocked a little sideways, he almost smiled. He walked back into the house, tossed the rubbery eggs Brenda had made into the trash, stood at the stove, and started cooking his own breakfast.

Through the narrow doorway of the cabin, he could see Brenda crashed out in a heap on the musty, plaid, living room sofa. She would be surprised to hear a knock at the door, to see anyone other than him in her house. In a dozen years they had not invited anyone to their home, did all their visiting at the feed store or Gnarly's Saloon instead, Zeb preferring, as he did, to choose the times when he was feeling talkative, even gregarious, and protect the times when he was not. Over the years, his gregarious times had come down to a few dozen long nights at Gnarly's spent joking about some of his best pranks, but mostly telling stories of his childhood with his sister, stories the townies took as tall tales and bragging, but Zeb took as a chance to try and figure it all out. Brenda avoided joining him on these occasions, her version of each of his stories differing from his, and both of them being right. Still, he knew she would wake with a start at the strange sound of a knock on the door, her sodden consciousness trying for the sharpness it had had in her youth.

He flipped the eggs in the pan, liked over-easy better than scrambled anyway, and waited for the bacon to sizzle white around the edges, the meaty parts crispy and charred, and he lifted the
frying pan and the breakfast slid onto his plate. He sat down at the table and ate. A cool sensation like rivers rushed through his muscles. Any minute, the cabin door would open. Brenda would wake and not understand what was happening. The salty eggs tasted good on his tongue, the home-cooked meal a comfort to him now.

He stood at the window sink, washing his plate, and sponged the egg grease into the sink. He wiped his hands on his jeans, watched the red lights flicker through the trees that striped the horizon, then he walked to the living room, took a handgun from the mantle, a box of ammo from a drawer in the coffee table he'd made of beetle-kill pine that he'd harvested himself, walked to the back door, and hurled the gun and ammo into the air. They landed past the tree-lined edge of his property.

“Brenda,” he said, standing above her as she slept on the couch. “Brenda.” He shook her shoulder, and she roused. He was surprised at the feeling that swelled in his chest when her eyes opened and connected with his. He wanted to say something, but instead, he just looked at her, almost kissed her, but didn't. She squinted at him, shook her head in annoyance, and slept again.

“Tell them you don't know anything,” he said, finally. He walked down the short hallway to the kitchen.

“Tell who?”

“Anyone. When they come asking for me.” He added, “Please.”

He heard her gruff laugh coming from the living room now. “Is that what you're thinking? Someone's coming for you?” she said. “They could care less about your petty stealing, your little pranks. Delusions of grandeur, sweetheart, delusions of grandeur.”

He leaned on the small windowsill in the kitchen, watched the police cars finally emerge from the narrow, tree-shrouded drive that led to his place, something settling down inside him as he watched. He saw them, their sedan wheels bobbing, barely able to hold the muddied road, a black and white SUV behind two cars, an impressive parade. It frightened him. And it felt good.

The chair legs stumbled across the knotty wood floor of the kitchen as he pulled out a chair and sat back down at the table.
Brenda was already snoring again, the sound like a wind through the cavern of the living room.

The knock came just after he took his seat, and he pressed his face into his palms, inhaled deeply, felt the ache of a held-back smile in his jaws. They were polite enough to knock. He considered pulling the door open for them, reaching out his hand in greeting, but it was just a consideration. His heart jackhammered in his chest, alive and slamming through the years of cement and pavement time had packed around it.

From there on out, the cops did what he knew they'd do. They called his full name. Zebulon Pike Robbins. They threatened him. They announced their warrant for his arrest. Brenda slept. Then the toughest among them jiggled the door handle, hoping the door was locked so he could bust it down—Zeb knew this, knew too much about them and how their thoughts twisted around in their brains. He knew the constant anger inside that gave the cops a reason for living, knew it like it was his own blood, but darker.

The toughest cop opened the door first. It pushed open easily, and then the rest of the blue uniforms spilled in. But by that time, Zeb had already slipped through the floor-door in the work shed and made his way through the narrow cave of the bomb shelter that had been built by Clean Dan, the crazy recluse who had lived in the cabin before Zeb. As Zeb made his way up the hillside, he imagined Brenda fully awake now, standing in the kitchen half drunk and trying to make sense of it all. That swell of emotion came to his chest again, and it puzzled him and he quelled it, and he kept on walking up the mountainside.

HE KNEW WHAT WOULD happen next. He knew they'd call in other forces, bring the dogs out. With the powerful scent glands they had balled up inside their noses, dogs could see without
laying eyes on things. A canine sniffs the air and has all the information anyone needs about a place: the mood, the danger, the food sources. Zeb understood the cops and the dogs, the ferocity and drive both shared.

He also knew this: The most dangerous part of any weapon is the end of it. The blade of a knife is half as damaging as the point. The middle of a chain is soft when it wraps around you, though the end of it can shred the skin. It was against all instinct and human intuition, but Zeb had learned over the years that when someone attacked you, moving
in
, not backing away, was always the best defense.

So as the men hunting him dispersed into the field, he methodically circled back to the center. It wasn't haphazard or even overconfident. It was analytical. He watched their steps and made his decisions. He needed them to want him, and he needed them not to find him. He was driven by this crazy hope he had about maybe seeing his sister one more time. She was a tracker, after all. She knew him, and she knew these woods.

He knew he had advantages over the cops. He understood this land better than anyone, the crevices and open spaces, the places any well-trained hunting party would look, and the ones they would likely overlook. For every step they took into the woods, Zeb took two back toward home. He watched them expand around him. He stayed at the center. By the time the back-up police wagon came with the canines, he'd already circled back onto his own property, the starting point. On the way, he'd picked up the handgun and ammo he'd tossed, just in case, and he tucked them into his pockets. A few cops guarded the periphery of the home, but none were near good old Clean Dan's shelter, an easy way in and out.

Now, he sat in the workroom of his cabin wrapped in a deerskin clothing he'd tanned and sewn recently. Its musky scent might confound the dogs, at least momentarily. He looked out the narrow window, saw the cops walking back and forth to their cars, doors hanging open like heavy wings, cherry tops circling like Christmas lights among evergreens, radios squawking in
almost-victory. In the midst of it all, his eyes rested on Rosalita. Even in death, that beautiful horse comforted him. He'd seen her born on this land and had stayed with her till she died, and in all that time, nothing had restrained her or made her anything other than
horse
. Even her death was a part of this landscape, violence being a part of how everything lived out here.

Keeping one eye on the window, he sat down, pulled a bag of Drum tobacco from a leather pouch. When he opened it, the smell of fresh tobacco mingled with the scent of the leather. The dogs were off leash now. It thrilled him and humbled him to be hunted by dogs. He took a pinch from the tobacco pouch, placed it in the white paper, then rolled the smoke tightly, licked its seam, and smoothed it over. He heard voices in the kitchen, and the sound startled him. One officer had stayed back, with Brenda. It was something he hadn't planned on, and it made his neck throb and his throat tighten. He'd wanted to talk to Brenda before he left. He'd wanted to tell her what was on his mind. He listened hard, trying to drown out the pounding of his own heart in his ears.

Brenda was sober, even lucid now. He heard her ask the man if he cared for coffee, and Zeb's heart thrummed.

“No, Ma'am,” came the voice.

“You saying what you got on him?” Brenda asked.

“What we got on him's a confession. Written and detailed down to the last iota.”

“What's he confessing to that's causing this kind of hullabaloo?”

“He your husband, Ma'am?”

“We never had a ceremony. But we're pretty damn sick of each other by now and here we are living in this damn house together anyway, so I think that qualifies.”

This was the part of Brenda Zeb had grown to love. She was raw, open, even beautiful in her thick strength and abiding anger.

“No ceremony, no information,” the man said.

“Sonsabitches,” Brenda said.

“He got any real family you know of?” the man asked.

Brenda laughed. “Yeah. He's got a father. Good luck talking to him because he hasn't talked to anyone in over ten years. And
he's got a sister who's a damn good friend of mine who I haven't seen since the Dead Sea was just sick. She tracks wolves in some remote corner of the planet that even Zeb can't find, so good luck there, too.”

Zeb half smiled. He could hear Brenda cleaning up the kitchen, something she did on the rare occasions when she could not find words to express the intensity of her emotions. She banged pots and pans loudly, made the silverware sing like out of tune wind chimes. “He means something to me, you know,” she said after a while. Said it calmly and with measure.