Theft (8 page)

BEFORE BEDTIME THAT NIGHT, I scour my hands with Lava, the soap Zeb uses after he works on lawn mower engines, cars, guns. It feels like sandpaper on my skin. Brenda has told me about her aunt who died from not washing her hands before supper. Zeb says it's bullshit, but I scrub my hands till they turn bright pink, anyway.

Mom comes and tucks me in. She used to read to me, but she can't do that anymore, her own will slipping away from her day
by day. “You look all balled up,” she says, and I notice her voice is falling away, too, becoming a soft whisper even when she means to be strong and gentle. I pull the covers up close around my neck. “That can't be comfortable,” she says, “You're all tight. Don't you want to stretch out?”

I shake my head no, and she bends over and kisses each eyelid. “Sleep sweet,” she says, and she tells me she loves me and I want to say the same thing back to her but I feel her fading away. I keep my hands hidden under the sheets. That day, they made a dog get a beating; they stole. I dream of them sometimes, my wrists bloody stumps, my fingers shriveled like burned branches, black with disease. They have done evil things, I know, but I want to wake with them in the morning. I do not want my hands taken from me in the night.

IT'S STILL THE MIDDLE of the night, but before he comes around the corner, I can feel the door opening. Zeb steps close to me, kneels down by my bed. “Don't you ever sleep?”

“I
was
sleeping till you opened that door,” I tell him.

“You can't hear that door opening.”

“Well, I did.”

“Okay, c'mon,” he says.

“What?”

“Got something I need you for.”

“Johnny's pharmacy?”

“I told you a million times I'm not good enough for that job yet, Willa.”

I cross my arms and turn over, facing the wall. “Then I'm not going with you, Zeb. I am
not
stealing anything.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“No I'm not.”

“Willa. You are. Just quit.”

I keep facing the wall. I tuck my hands into my armpits.

He sighs. “Look, you know the Thatcher dog?”

My stomach tightens soon as he says it. “I know the Thatcher dog, yeah.”

“Gonna save it.”

I turn and look at him.

“You
in
or
out
?”

“What're you going do?”

“Save the dog.”

“How?”

“You in or out?”

Even in the dusky light I can see his smile. He looks like a scruffy young Elvis, kind of pretty, a little bit tough. I search his pockets with my eyes to see if he's still carrying that gun. There's nothing. So I release my hands from under the sheets, swing my legs over the side of the bed.

“I'm not swiping anything with you, Zeb.”

“Get your shoes on.”

I grab a jacket and zip it up over my pajamas. Me and Zeb walk out of my room and down the hallway. Half of me wants Mom to wake up and find us and tell us both we're in big trouble and send us straight back to bed. But I know she can't hear us, and even if she could, there's nothing she could do, not in her condition. So we tiptoe through the living room and step out.

There's a different color to things in the night. Night-green lawns, night-silver cottonwoods by the pond in the field. The dog is almost complete shadow now, shrunk away in his night-sleeping corner.

“That poor pup's canine teeth haunt him,” Zeb says. “He was meant to be wild, like a wolf.” When we come up on the dog, he flips to all fours. “Look at that:
Instinct
,” Zeb says. “Beautiful.”

“Don't get that dog barking, Zeb.”

“The Thatchers are gone up to their cabin. Chet's got two homes, you know, says he's fixing this one up to sell it so he can ‘get the hell outa dodge.' That's what the fucker actually said to Dad one day when he was out there watering his lawn every night
like he does. Anyway, this old dog can howl at the moon if he wants, can't you boy, yeah. No one's coming for him.”

The dog stretches his whole body into an arc, butt in the air, muzzle pointed toward the sky. He makes a moaning sound. “Hey boy,” says Zeb, and the dog comes wagging over, jowls loose, slobbering. I squeeze my whole hand through the diamond shaped wire of the chain-link fence. Zeb can only fit a few fingers through. But the pup leans in, and we both scrub him good behind the ears, the way he likes.

“I've never heard jackass Thatcher call him by a name,” Zeb says. “Hey boy, good pup.” The dog pushes his nose through the fence, tongue working me and Zeb, chin to forehead. “Good dog, yeah, good boy.”

The dog starts off running, runs to the other end of the short pen then back to where we're standing, then back again to the other end, all of five strides, over and over, the pen too tight around him.

“He's running crazy like that damn fox. Remember that fox I told you about?”

“Yeah, Zeb, about a million times I remember your damn fox story. You were camping in the San Juans with your Boy Scout troop when you saw him.”

“Yeah, I was. Wish I could set this dog loose in the wild, like I should have done with that fox. I could go with him,” Zeb whispers. “He'd be better off fending for his own instead of being fed by Chet and beaten by Chet with the same regularity. They fucking beat you down, don't they? Yeah boy, yeah.”

Zeb looks up. “All right, we've got to hurry, Willa.”

“Thought you said they were out of town?”

“Yeah. But I made a deal with myself that if I go a week without stealing, Mom'll get healed. Starting midnight tonight, no more stealing. It'll all go away if I can just do that one thing.”

“Well, I made a deal with myself that I'm not stealing anything with you, Zeb. Like I said.”

“We're not stealing. We're saving the dog.”

“Dog's right here.”

The dog wags his tail, stands on his hind legs, and rests his feet on the chain-link. He starts licking toward me, his tongue lapping up nothing but air. Zeb points to the Thatcher's open window, exactly the same slim crack people always leave in their windows and I can never figure out why. It's just a matter of closing the window an inch to keep their houses safe and tight.

Zeb slathers the Vaseline on his hands, and I feel my body start to shake. “I told you I wasn't swiping anything.”

“My hands won't fit through that opening,” he says. He jabs the Vaseline my direction. “I just need you to push it open a little bit for me. That's all. Then you can go.”

He's talking all matter-of-fact, like he can't hear a single word I say about not stealing, and then a light comes on in the Thatcher bathroom and I hit the green lawn and lay flat on my stomach, my heart beating hard enough to make my whole body throb. Zeb leans back against the windowsill, looks down at me. “What the hell, Willa?” He laughs.

I grab his ankle and try to pull him down with me. “Light!” I whisper and point, “Light!”

“I see the light.”

“I'm not getting caught, Zeb. I am
not
getting caught and you're a liar, you told me we weren't stealing anything, damn it, Zeb.”

He cranes his neck backward, eyes to the stars, shaking his head. Then he looks down at me. “You think I'd do anything to get you in trouble? I wouldn't get you caught, no way.” He offers me a hand up. “I'd take the blame completely, Willa, you know I would. I would never do anything to hurt you.” I offer him my hand. He pulls me up. “I told you I was saving the dog, and I keep my word, don't I? I keep my word to you.” He brushes off the front of my clothes, combs the hair back from my face with his fingertips. “I wouldn't hurt you.”

I stand there, shaking, confused.

“Okay,” he says after a while. “All right.” He pats my bottom, something he knows I hate, and he points me toward home. “Go. I'll figure a way on my own.”

I walk a few steps away from him, then stop and look over my shoulder. He takes out some kind of tool from his pocket, walks toward the back door, bends down to the doorknob, begins working on it.

“Zeb,” I whisper, just loud enough so he can hear. “How do you know they're not home?”

He's absorbed, doesn't answer, and then there's a
click
, and the back door swings open. The light turns off in the bathroom, and I watch the shadow of a man pass by.

“Shit, Zeb, no!” I run to him and grab his hand, pulling him my direction. “I saw someone Zeb! I saw someone in the bathroom!”

“You didn't see anyone.”

“I was standing right there and
I saw someone
. Come on.” He yanks his hand from my grip, tells me to go home. He takes a step into the house, and I tug with all my weight against him.

“Damnit, Willa, let go. There's no one here.”

I hear a creaking sound like wood underfoot. My eyes go wide.

“That was me.” He points down to his feet, makes the creaking sound again.

“But I saw someone.”

Zeb walks into the house with me hanging from his arm, backpedaling against him. Inside, we both stop. The place is quiet. No lights anywhere.

“What if Chet has a gun?” I ask.

“He can't have a gun because
he
is not
here
.” Zeb shakes his head. “Jesus, Willa, you're acting like a regular kid. Just—
git
.”

A regular kid is about the worst thing Zeb could ever call me. So I take a deep breath and steel myself against my own will. “Okay. I'm
in
,” I tell him.

He looks at me for too long a time, then smiles. “What if someone's home?”

“There's no one home here, Zeb. You can see, there's no one home.” I let go of his hand and lead the way into the house, still shaking inside.

We stand in the middle of Chet and Dolly's living room now,
inside
the forbidden house with its forbidden yard. There's
something smothering here, like the air in the place is yellow and damp. The wood paneling turns the living room dark as a cave, but there's a little scalloped wooden shelf above their curtains. It's just a foot or so below the ceiling, and it's jammed with stuffed animals and elves and ceramic figurines, a circus of sad, big-eyed animals glaring down from Thatcher heaven. I think they're supposed to look playful or cute. But they look like little monsters, evil things.

“Freaky, huh? Like little goblins,” Zeb says. He never says anything like that, and it sends a goose bump chill tickling my neck. He laughs. Just then, the automatic light timer clicks loudly, and a light comes on in the bedroom. “Oh, look, someone's home,” he says.

I jerk my head that direction, and he laughs again. “Come on, Zeb, cut it out!”

He leads me down the hallway. The light is still on in the bedroom, and Zeb waits at the door. The light in the living room dims and Zeb jolts with fear, which sends my heart like a fist into my throat. He laughs so loud the dog starts barking again.

“Shit, Zeb, I said I'm in. Quit teasing me.”

He puts his hand on the doorknob of the bedroom, turns it slowly so it clicks real soft. He looks at me, raises his eyebrows. He still believes I think Chet and Dolly are in that room. He's halfway right. He slaps the door open. It bangs against the wall, swings back toward us, and I gasp. He stops the door with his palm. The bed is empty, all made up and tucked in tight at the corners.

“Like I said. They're at the cabin.”

It feels like cold water splashing my face on a hot day, that feeling of fear turned to relief, the exhilarating part of stealing. I can't help laughing with Zeb now. I trust him. I should've trusted him all along.

There's a smell in the Thatcher's bedroom, something mustier than in most places we've been, even though the place looks clean. I breathe in quick little sniffs, trying to keep the stink out of my nostrils. The room is cramped but orderly, no clothes on the floor,
no laundry. But the furniture is crammed into the place, making it harder for Zeb to move around. He squeezes through the tight space between the bed and chest of drawers and heads straight for the clothes closet. I stand there, still basking in that sweet exhilaration. In a minute, Zeb comes out of the closet with a hanger that holds nothing but belts. The bent part of the hanger twists through the opening in the buckles, and they're stacked buckle-on-buckle, about half a dozen of them. One by one, he takes the belts from the hook, shoves them in his knapsack. Then he heads back into the closet, finds another hanger with two more belts on it, takes them, too.

“Fucker,” he says. “Let his pants fall down off his fat ass. Moon the neighborhood with his fat white butt.”