Thieves I've Known (21 page)

“All right.”

She showed him the pipes in the kitchen, the aluminum pan filled with water and the towels spread on the floor. It was cold in the trailer, a draft seemed to come from the bathroom. He bent and took the flashlight from his pocket, inspected things, ran his finger along the rust and the mold.

“That's behind the wall,” he said. “You had anyone look at this?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Don't have a lot of money.”

Grimsley looked at the wall under the sink again. “That won't cost much.”

She showed him the bathroom and the plank of wood on the roof. The bulb over the sink flickered. He brought a chair from the kitchen, set it in the tub, had her hold it still. He stepped up, pulled away some plaster, pressed the wood back, inspected the hole. A bit of snow fell down in his eye. He felt the damp along the ceiling.

“This whole thing is rotten,” he said.

“How much do you think?”

He looked at her, genuinely confused. “How much do I think?”

“How much do you think it will all cost?”

The light flickered in the bathroom again. Grimsley looked up.

“That do that much?”

“All the time,” she said.

“Anywhere else?”

“All over.”

He looked down at her and smiled a little. “You're having all kinds of trouble.”

Her expression didn't change.

Grimsley paused. There was something off about the girl, he thought. He stepped down from the chair. He felt a sting in his knee, almost slipped when he took his weight off it, caught himself with his hand on the tub.

“You all right?” Shelby said.

He closed the lid on the toilet, sat down. He pushed his fingers to the base of his kneecap.

“This thing acts up on me when it's got a mind to.”

He sat for a while, rubbing at the knee. The pain was sharp, behind the cap. He watched the lamp bulb flicker, let the pain run its course. After, he limped into the kitchen, sat down on the remaining chair.

“Do you have some ice?” he said.

“I have some snow outside.”

He nodded. “That'll do.”

She found a plastic bag and went out. Grimsley rolled up his pant leg, looked at the blue skin. He took the bag from her when she returned, stretched his leg, and set the pack on his knee.

“It'll be about fifty for the roof,” he said. “We might skip the plaster, just put some insulation up there with some plastic. The wiring might be extra.”

“I think the wires will have to wait.”

“It's bad luck to let things go.”

“Maybe so,” she said. “My name's Shelby. I can get half that fifty now, and maybe the other half in a week or two.”

“That'll do. People call me Grimsley.”

“Mr. Grimsley, when'll your man come?”

Grimsley looked up from his knee. “What man?”

“The man who's going to fix the roof.”

“I'm going to fix it.”

Shelby looked at his knee. “I can't help you if you take a fall.”

He looked back at her. “You're not going to help me if I take a fall?”

“I'll help you,” she said. “But I can't pay for the doctor or anything.”

“I got enough doctors already.”

“One of the nurses might be around,” the girl said. “They could have a look at you.”

He frowned. “You're talking like I'm already out there with a broken neck.”

“I'm just saying,” she said. She tapped her knuckles three times against the wooden table. “I hope nothing happens.”

“Don't knock on wood,” said Grimsley. “Snap your fingers instead, it works better.”

When his knee felt better, he hobbled back to his trailer across the snow. He found his toolbox and some old work clothes. For some reason, the
girl, Shelby, reminded him of his own sister, a woman he owed a few phone calls to. He hadn't spoken with his sister since last Christmas. She lived on the other side of the country now. There was always something about her that made Grimsley feel inadequate and foolish. Like he thought their conversations were about one thing, and then they turned out to be about something else—something over his head. The girl made him feel that way. As if she was having two conversations, one with him and the other with someone more interesting and important.

He drove into town and found the pipes he'd need. He bought some washers, a large roll of plastic, a collection of nails and screws, and a pack of cigarettes that he hid under the maps in his glove compartment. He drove to the sawmill and picked out some pieces of scrap wood, borrowed a ladder from the foreman. In the old woman's trailer, he turned off the water and set the plastic down in front of the sink, turned the faucet until it ran dry. He didn't much like the smell in the trailer—mold and dust, and another smell that came from the woman's bedroom that he tried not to think about. Shelby sat at the kitchen table, had put on an extra sweater, watched him as he bent in front of the sink, as he set himself flat on his back. She took out her pen and the Wright brothers book, and she went back to her journal.

It is my belief that flight is possible, and, while I am taking up the investigation for pleasure rather than profit, I think there is slight possibility of achieving fame and fortune from it. It is almost the only great problem which has not been pursued by a multitude of investigators, and therefore carried to a point where further progress is very difficult. I am certain I can reach a point much in advance of any previous workers in the field even if complete success is not attained just at present. At any rate, I shall have an outing of several weeks and see a part of the world I have never before visited
.

Grimsley tried to be quiet with the wrench against the pipes, not for Shelby but for the woman. He pulled out the backboard, wiped up the water in the back, set the rusted pipes on the plastic.

“You want some help?” said Shelby.

He looked at her. He almost said, You can help by leaving me alone, but that would've been big-time bad luck.

“I'm all right,” he said instead.

“I could hold the flashlight.”

He sighed, he hoped silently. “If you want.”

She set her notebook aside and sat on the floor next to him. When he asked, she passed him a metal file, some sandpaper, a plastic washer. They could hear the ping of rain on the rooftop of the trailer.

“That'll get in the bathroom,” he said.

“I put the wood back.”

He held up his left arm, looked at his watch. She shined the flashlight there.

“Not sure we'll get to that today,” he said.

“That's all right.”

“Don't you go to school or something?”

“I dropped out.”

He was surprised. “Really?”

“The studying gives me problems.”

“Maybe you studied too much,” he said.

“Never heard of that.”

“Too much of something is bad luck.”

“How do you know when it's too much?”

He looked back at her through a crook in the pipes. “The studying?”

“Anything.”

Grimsley considered her question. He set the wrench against the floor. This was exactly the type of conversation he'd been worrying about. “I don't think it's my business to tell you to go back to school or not,” he said.

She blinked. “I didn't know I'd asked you that.”

“Isn't that what I just said?”

“Sort of,” she said. “But I didn't know you were thinking that.”

He frowned. “You see that scrap of sandpaper?”

She found it under his boot, and he took it from her, handed back the wrench. He worked the grit off the edge of a pipe, closed his eyes so as not to get blinded by the falling sand.

“How old are you?” she said.

“It'd be bad luck to tell you,” said Grimsley

“You look kind of old, but you act a lot younger.”

He took up the wrench and readjusted the flashlight in her hands. If he just kept his mouth shut here, he was going to be in for all kinds of good luck.

“Did you finish school?” said the girl.

The question seemed to indicate that he hadn't, though that was not her tone.

“Are you asking if I graduated?”

“Yes.”

“I graduated, but I didn't end up walking in the ceremony.”

“That's strange,” she said. “Why not?”

He didn't answer that. He had been in jail at the time. He'd driven drunk and killed two of his friends who were riding with him. The memory came back sharp and clear. He suddenly wanted to get out from under the sink and away from this girl.

“Are you glad you finished school?” Shelby said.

“I hadn't really ever thought of it,” said Grimsley.

The girl thought that over. “That doesn't push me either way.”

At home, Grimsley set his flashlight back on the dresser, put the toolbox away in the closet. He changed his socks, which made him feel better. In the kitchen, he sliced up onions and potatoes, took out the cream from the fridge, made some soup at the stove and left it to warm for Mona. He cut a few slices of bread and set them on his bowl and ate his dinner in front of the television, watching a game show and a special about penguins, who he thought were pretty stupid. He drank a beer so he could sleep, and as he set the empty bottle next to the empty bowl, he closed his eyes and propped his feet on the stool he'd carved when
he was younger. He had a dream where he lay flat in the middle of a pond as snow fell on him, covering him until he looked like a large, irregular mountain range or a white sand dune. He was both under the snow and watching himself on
TV
. There were penguins under the ice who kept knocking, waking him up. The penguins were very adamant, as if he owed them something and they had arrived to collect. The snow felt hot, not cold, and it burned his skin. There was a narrator on
TV
who told him the man under the snow had been there a thousand years and would be there a thousand more.

When he woke, he could hear Mona in the kitchen, and he didn't know how long he'd been asleep. The
TV
was turned off, but he could see the blue glow of another set, out the window and in his neighbor's trailer. Mona brought her soup in from the kitchen and sat down next to him. She worked at a printer's shop all day, and the tips of her fingers were stained blue and red.

“How'd you do?” he said.

“Same as always. How'd you do?”

“That girl is frightening,” he said. “She's like something out of one of those movies where people get possessed.”

Mona looked at him. “You're definitely losing your mind. She seems like any other girl to me.”

“You don't know things like I know,” he said.

“And I'm grateful for it,” said Mona.

She ate her soup, and he closed his eyes again. She'd wake him in another hour. The things he knew—or thought he knew—she'd begun to catalog in her mind. She thought she might like to remember them, if he went before her. She'd written some of them down on a paper bag she kept under her sweaters in the closet.

If a relative is sick, leave a lock of your hair outside your window, or, if you don't like them, a penny, face-up. Don't drop an unused line in the water: you're just asking for trouble. Some of his ideas made some sense to her: never kill a mud-dauber or a spider, and don't touch a dog's bone. Some of them, she didn't know what to make of: a fish
with one eye should be thrown back in the water. Always stir a pot with a spoon, never a fork. And then she had her favorites: never wrestle a bear, no matter how much money you're offered. Don't make a wish on a shooting star. Make a promise instead, and keep it. And don't lie to your wife.

She dipped her spoon into the potato soup and watched her husband sleep.

In the morning, before the nurse arrived, Shelby called the doctor. Her grandmother slept quietly, but her arms and hands had turned a shade of blue. The doctor told her to put the oxygen away—it was no longer a relief to the woman and she would be more comfortable without the mask. There were only a few more days, he seemed sure this time, and after she'd changed her grandmother's nightgown, placed the tablets on her tongue, brushed the woman's hair and rubbed her hands and arms, Shelby took a page from her notebook, sat at the kitchen table, and wrote to her uncle in Chicago. When Karl arrived, she helped him with the bedsheets, with the sponge bath. She watched the man's fingers, which she'd always liked, and said little.

It was an odd thing, waiting for someone to die. Shelby had been passed from home to home throughout her life. This was her third stay with her grandmother, and she loved the woman, though she felt detached from her, as she often did from the world. Shelby wondered if there was a trick in her mind that she could learn, to connect again and hold a full heart. She had been very close with her grandfather. When she thought of her heart now, she thought it around a quarter full. She wondered if it was filling or falling.

Outside, the sun had appeared in a cloudless sky, although it was still quite cold. The ice on the pond glistened in yellow specks, and she watched a young boy—about her age—shoveling the steps to a trailer. Shelby waited for Grimsley after Karl left, took out her notebook at the table, brewed some coffee on the stove. She opened the dog-eared text. This time it was a quote from Orville Wright.

The sunsets here are the prettiest I have ever seen. The clouds light up in all colors in the background, with deep blue clouds of various shapes fringed with gold before. The moon rises in much the same style, and lights up this pile of sand almost like day. I have read my watch … on moonless nights without the aid of any light other than that of the stars shining on the canvas of the tent
.

Grimsley set the ladder against the trailer, packed snow around the feet. He took the tool belt from his shoulder, hitched it around his waist. He slung the plastic tarp over his shoulder and made his way up the ladder. On the roof, he tested one foot, then the other, brushed off the snow, and removed the wood. A girl's face looked up at him through the hole.