by Jason Miller
Anci shook her head and said, “You guys and those damn nicknames. Need a computer to keep track of it all.”
Foghat said, “Big Bandit ain’t never let that go, either. He’s still as mad as a wet hen over it, you’ll pardon the expression.”
“Well, I can see that,” I said. “I mean, what if there were another Slim?”
“Two times the headaches, for starters,” Anci said.
Foghat pressed on. “Anyway, that’s what happened. I got in with Little Bandit and, of course, right away I fell behind. Way these guys got it rigged, you almost can’t help but fall behind.”
“That’s kind of what it’s all about.”
“Hell, I know. Know it now, anyway. Know it now all personal,” he said. “One night, few weeks into this thing, Little Bandit and some boys showed up at my place. Things got a little rough. No lasting scars or anything, but it weren’t a dance at the VFW, I tell you that. In the end, they used me to mop my kitchen floor and then they run off with my birds. I could hardly believe it. But that’s what they done. Said I’d get them back soon as I paid.”
“Damnation, Foghat. I hate it for you. I do. I hate it for your birds. But I can’t really get involved between you and Little Bandit, you owe him legitimate money.”
“That’s the thing though, Slim. I don’t owe him. Not anymore. I paid him. Every penny plus interest. Took me a little while and hurt like hell, but I did it. Sold my truck. Sold off a little piece of land I’d been holding back, Dad’s old hunting spot up there to Olney. Cleared the ledger. But no chickens were returned to me. Little Bandit says he’s keeping them. Some kind of lesson, he says. Warning to others. Says he might . . .” He looked away suddenly at the wall. His throat got thick. “Says he might butcher them, fry ’em up in a skillet. Little butter. Tarragon. Maybe a squeeze of lemon juice.”
“That’s pretty specific.”
“You should have seen him,” Foghat said. “He enjoyed it. Watching me twist like that. Suffer. Plus, way I hear he really does know his way around a kitchen.”
“Kinda unusual for a thug.”
Foghat said, “Slim, I’m begging you. Maybe just run out there to his place, have a word. Way I hear tell, you got a knack for this kind of thing.”
“Finding lost chickens?”
“Helping folks in need. Getting things done need doing.”
Anci hopped down from the couch and closed her book with a thump. She had that look about her makes me want to climb under a bed.
She said, “He’ll do it.”
Foghat and I said, “He will?”
“We will, I mean. I don’t like bullies and I don’t like assholes, and this Bandit . . .”
I said, “Little Bandit.”
Foghat said, “Big Bandit is just as sweet a little old thing as you’ll ever meet.”
Anci said, “I don’t like bullies, and I don’t like assholes or bad men run off with people’s pets. And this Little Bandit sounds like all three.”
Foghat smiled at her. I think there was a tear in his eye. I admit, I was kinda proud, too. It was quite a speech and this was quite a kid. Foghat seized my hand and shook it.
“Thank you. Thank you both.”
“All respect to your current situation, though, we can’t do it for free.” I said.
Foghat showed us his frown. It was a frown to beat all frowns. He looked at the floor some. He said something I didn’t quite catch.
“Well, I missed that,” I said.
Anci said, “He said he thought he might pay us in eggs.”
LITTLE BANDIT LIVED IN THE SPRAWLING WOODLANDS south of the Vale, off Hicks Branch near Goose Creek and the Kaskaskia Experimental Forest. You might imagine, there’s not much in the way of human development out that way. Few small farms. A rural school or two and a white water tower peeking over the tree line. If nothing else, it makes for a pretty drive. We were in the truck. Lovely day like that, we’d ordinarily have taken my bike, but there were chickens to rescue maybe, and I didn’t have that many little helmets at my disposal.
Along the way, Anci turned to me and said, “So . . . Luke Skywalker.”
“What?”
“I said Luke Skywalker.”
“I heard you,” I said.
“Then why did you say what?”
I said, “Why are you asking about Luke Skywalker?”
“On account of I watched Star Wars for the first time the other day, and now I want to discuss it.”
“I was kinda hoping we’d watch that together one day.”
“Well, you’ve been pretty busy lately, what with playing consulting detective and all, and I just felt it was time.”
“Oh.”
“So this galaxy he’s in.”
“Uh-huh?”
“You’d say it’s pretty big?”
I said, “I don’t know. I guess that’s the idea. It is a galaxy.”
She nodded. “That’s what I think, too. Big old galaxy with more planets than you can shake a ray gun at . . .”
“Blaster.”
Anci ignored me. “Shake a ray gun at, and every kind of alien race you can think of. And yet, somehow, the bad guy is his dad?”
“That’s how it goes, yeah.”
“And the princess . . . the one he kisses . . . she’s his sister?”
I said, “You said you watched Star Wars. Those other things happen in the other movies. The sister thing and the dad thing.”
“I know,” she said. “I watched the one, looked the others up on Wikipedia.”
“That’s cheating.”
“How you figure?”
“Reading ahead of the next movie. It’s cheating.”
She said, “So someone just wrote it all up online as a cheat? That what you’re saying?”
“Well . . .”
“You know what? I was reading about World War Two for history class the other night. Found out who won and everything. I reckon I might get expelled now, not having gone back to fight the Hitlers myself.”
I sighed. There was some things you’d just never get across to the younger set.
I said, “Okay, fine. It’s not cheating. It’s a personal life choice I’ve made when it comes to movies. So what about Luke and Vader and Leia?”
“Kind of a coincidence, don’t you think?” she said. “Them all being in one place at one time, big old galaxy like that? I guess we’re just lucky Chewbacca didn’t turn out to be the long-lost family dog.”
“I think it’s the Force brought them together, like with magic.”
“You mean the midi-chlorians.”
“And that’s in the dang prequels. How much Wikipedia did you do?”
“I did it all.” She was pleased with herself. She looked out the window, all satisfied. “I am now done with the Star Wars.”
“No, you’re not,” I said. I was smarting and determined to be cussed about it. “Okay, not the Force or midi-chlorians or whatever, then. How about fate? That’s a thing happens in stories. Fate brought them together.”
“Like us and the chickens.”
“No, not like that.”
“More like it was shoddy screenwriting.”
I was grumpy. Damn kids and their damn Hunger Games and whatever. I said, “You know, that movie was a big deal when I was a boy. People lined up around the block to see it. I lined up around the block, too. Few times, in fact. Spent eight hours in the blazing heat one summer to see the rerelease and didn’t even get a ticket.”
“Waited long enough, you coulda just watched it at home on your couch.”
“Well, we didn’t have that then. Home movies, I mean. We had couches. And where the heck did you get a copy, anyway? We don’t own one.”
“Found one on the Internet,” she said.
“Found one or swiped one?”
She looked at me. I looked at her. She leaned forward and turned on the radio and that was the last we talked about the Star Wars for a while.
FINALLY, WE ARRIVED AT LITTLE B
ANDIT’S PLACE. WAY it was, you had to leave the main road and trace a gravel path up a gentle slope and into the woods where the green ash were as big as hot-air balloons and the reed grass had put on its golden spikelets and now looked like nothing so much as a gathering of foreign kings. There weren’t any chickens in evidence.
I stopped the truck and got out and said, “Wait here with your phone, will you? I don’t think Little Bandit will want any trouble over this thing, but there’s no reason for you to go up there just yet.”
Anci seemed skeptical. Truth was, I was skeptical, too. Wanting trouble and getting trouble were two different things. She knew it and I knew it. But finally she nodded and said, “Fair enough. Try not to get your thumb pecked, though. Chickens can be pretty mean, you get in their way.”
“Okay.”
“And you’ll get in their way.”
“Unkind.”
“And try not to get into a fight.”
“I’ll try.”
“Text me the poopy emoticon, you get into a jam.”
I said, “Do I have that one?”
“Just watch yourself, man.”
I promised to watch myself. I promised to text the poopy emoticon. I closed the door and climbed the rest of the drive on foot and walked up to the house. It was a modest little frame house, probably built in the 1920s, painted white but dulled some by time and patches of moss from the encroaching woodland. There was a potbellied stove rusting in the yard. The door of the stove was open and a cat curled up inside asleep. There was a brown El Camino in the drive, but it was on blocks and it was the only vehicle in sight, so I thanked the midi-chlorians and walked around back of the house hoping to steal some chickens all easylike.
The back property was more woodland, spotted with young persimmon trees and sloping further upward until maybe two hundred yards on it was braced by a hogback of red sandstone. But no chickens or chicken houses. Not even a feather. I went to the back door and took out my tools but you could tell just by looking I wasn’t going to need them. I hesitated a moment. This was getting into a whole other thing here. Breaking and entering. Plus, there might be someone inside. It didn’t look like there was, but you never knew. Regardless, I’d promised to get those birds, and Anci wanted to try the eggs. Truth was, I wanted them too. They had nutrition and there was science to back it up. I stole myself for the rough work ahead. I pushed gently against the knob with one hand and the bolt pressed against its strike plate and loosed its screws from rotten wood. The door receded with a sigh. I went inside and closed the door behind me and my eyes began to adjust to the dimmer light. When they did, I froze and my mouth dropped open and I think I might have even said a bad word.
The kitchen was gorgeous. The stove probably cost more than my car; it was one of those restaurant-grade things, with eight burner-things and the separate warmer pad and a ventilation hood the size of a coffin. The counters were poured concrete, and a steel-frame island was topped with what must have been a half ton of butcher block and a brace of professional-looking knives. What at first I took to be an oddly placed gun cabinet instead held maybe two dozen glass jars filled with dried spices and a mad scientist’s collection of salts and seasonings.
“Day-yum.”
I turned. Anci, of course, standing in the doorway and gawking like I was gawking.
I said, “Dang it all, I told you to wait in the car.”
“You ran off without your phone, genius,” she said. I had. She handed it to me and lifted her nose toward the room. “This is quite a sight. How come our kitchen isn’t this nice?”
“How come our anything isn’t this nice?” I said. “Besides, I wouldn’t have any idea what to do with half of this stuff. This thing, for instance.”
“Ravioli maker,” Anci said.
“Really?”
“There’s a bread maker over there, too. But more to the point, I think I hear chickens.”
I did, too. A muffled clucking, somewhere nearby. We walked through the rest of the house—which looked more like a regular house—and to a doorway beneath a set of stairs leading upward to what I took to be a small loft. We opened the door and walked down some steps into a cellar where Foghat’s chickens were clucking away inside their cages: Belgian d’Uccle, Araucana, Welsummer, Cochin, salmon Faverolle, cuckoo Marans, modern BB red game. You name it. Even some of them white Sultans. Their feathers were all colors, or else they were spotted or striped, and sometimes they were both. They were kind of beautiful, I’ll be honest.
Anci said, “You think this is them?”
“Funny,” I said. “Let’s get them and get out of here before the chef comes home.”
East wall, there were double cellar doors such that you could walk up and out onto that side of the property, you wanted, but when we tried them they were locked from the other side.
“Guess we’ll have to carry them through the house,” I said.
“Everything has to be the hard way,” Anci said.
I brought down a cage from the top of the stack. Best to get started. A brilliant green bird looked at me with those dark eyes that are so much like a doll’s eyes.
“Don’t worry, little lady,” I said. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
A voice said, “That’s a rooster, dumbshit.”
And with that, a shadow draped itself over the room. It was like the light bulb had sparked out and the little cellar windows had blinked their lids.
Behind me, Anci’s voice was impressed. “That’s no moon. It’s a space station,” she said.
I turned and looked. It wasn’t a space station. It wasn’t even a moon. It was bigger than that.
It was Little Bandit.
HE SAID, “WELL, WELL, LOOKS LIKE WE GOT US A COUPLE chicken thieves here.”
I tell you, this was a glacier of a man. He was so wide he filled the cellar door stop to stop and so tall he had to tilt his neck slightly to avoid notching his clean-shaved head on the top of the frame. His eyes were too small for his face and his mouth and lips too wide for it, like they couldn’t figure out how to manage that enormous head. His arms and hands looked like two industrial Shop-Vac hoses were trying, unsuccessfully, to suck up a pair of giant uncooked hams.
I reached back and pressed Anci a little further behind me. I was cussing myself for bringing her along and I was cussing myself again for forgetting my phone in the truck. I was cussing myself for taking this ridiculous job in the first place, and cussing chickens and other birds of all kinds everywhere and at any altitude. Mostly, though, I was cussing Little Bandit.
I said, “I was about to say the same thing. Except there’s just one of you.”
“How do you figure?”
“Figure the first thing or figure the second thing?”
“The first one.”
I said, “Well, you did take them, didn’t you?”
Little Bandit shrugged.
I said, “Took them and refused to return them, once the terms of your agreement with Foghat were met?”
Little Bandit shrugged.
I said, “That true? ’Cause if it’s not—if Foghat still owes you, I mean—we will walk out of here right now without fuss.”
Little Bandit said, “It’s true. As far as you walking out of here, though, that is another story entirely. Foghat eventually gave me what he owed me, sure, but he made me work double for it. Had to chase him, on the phone, on the computer, on foot. Even had to hire out a little help.”
“Yeah, we heard some about that, too,” I said. “Goons aren’t cheap these days, are they?”
He took that with another shrug. “Cousins of mine, actually. Plus one buddy of the cousins. Nice fella. Lost his job recently and needed some work.”
“I don’t care.”
He said, “So, yeah, I got my money, but I got it and I’m not too happy, you understand? Usually, I get paid back with a little cinnamon sprinkled on top, I’m happy. But the way this thing went down, way Foghat made me wait and work and sweat, I a
in’t exactly throwing a party. So I decided to keep his birds. Teach him a little lesson. Plus maybe the next guy hears the word and doesn’t make me sweat so much.”
“Tell you what,” I said. “Let me take this kid out of here, drive her home, then I’ll come back and you and I can talk some more or dance or whatever it is you want to do.”
Anci said, “Over my dead body.”
“Hush.”
Little Bandit said, “Sorry, Slim. Like to help you. Really would. But you pretty much fucked the monkey coming out here like this, breaking into my house, and trying to make off with my things.”
“That last business is still under dispute.”
He nodded. “Okay, you can have that one. That last one. The other things, though, there ain’t no dispute about it. Unless you just somehow materialized down here in my basement.”
Anci said, “Could have been the midi-chlorians.”
“I don’t exactly follow that,” said Little Bandit. “Though having that business thrown in my face don’t make this any more pleasant. The midi-chlorians. They damn near ruined the franchise with that nonsense.”
“That’s how I feel about it,” Anci said.
“What was the matter with just the Force?” said Little Bandit. He threw up his hands. “It was a perfectly elegant explanation for the universe’s supernatural cosmology. I just don’t get it.”
Anci shook her head. “Shoddy screenwriting.”
Little Bandit looked at Anci. Anci looked at Little Bandit. Both of them nodded. Agreement had been reached.
“Little miss,” he said, “I like you. Like your handle on things. Might even like to get your thoughts on the expanded universe one day, this latest movie. But right now I got to take care of business with your dad. You ain’t got nothing to worry about. I’d never hurt a kid, and I ain’t even gonna hurt your daddy too bad. Just shove him around a little, put a foot up his ass to teach him a lesson about sticking his nose in.”
“We could call the police,” Anci said.
Little Bandit nodded. “Could at that. Can’t even say I’d blame you, really. Course, it’ll take them an hour or more to get out here, and once they do I’ll just have you arrested for breaking in. Man’s got a right to protect his home, disputed chickens or no.”