The Deepening Shade

by Jake Hinkson

  “It’s a pretty simple job,” she said. “We scope out the obituaries. When someone dies who looks like they might have something worth stealing, we wait until the funeral. Then we break in and rob the place. Some old lady is at the cemetery burying her husband, and we’re at her house carrying off her good china.”

  “I’m not a thief,” I said. “I’ve never done anything like that.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “I work at KFC.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Thirty-two years old and you’re frying chicken at KFC. How’s that working out for you?”

  “Mostly I’m on the register.”

  “Oh, well, heck. Get out of the way, world, we got a success story coming through.”

  “Fuck you, bitch,” I said. “You don’t know me.”

  She just nodded and pulled at her cigarette. “Hey, sweetie, you ain’t gotta get mean. I’m not talking bad about you. I got a crap job, too. Night shift at the Supercenter, grocery side. I stock shelves. You bought any beans at Walmart in the last couple years, chances are I put them there. But now I’m thinking about making some money on the side. I’m thirty-five years old and I got two kids. One’s got autism. You got any idea what it costs to have a nine year old with autism?”

  “No.”

  “A lot. Freaking doctors and tests and all kinds of bullcrap. And the worst part is, I know my son’s not ever going to get half of what he needs. Autism is a rich person’s condition. Ain’t easy to manage working the night shift at Walmart.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You got a wife, girlfriend, anything like that?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “You a drunk?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you have to attend the meetings?”

  “Drove through a girl’s bedroom two days after we broke up. I thought she was in bed with a friend of mine. Turns out, they were having dinner at Red Lobster.”

  “I figured it was something like that,” she said.

  “Why are you asking me to go along on this with you? Why not ask a friend?”

  She stared at the end of her cigarette. “I ain’t got no friends. None that I could bring in on a situation like this, anyway. When I saw you across the room, the way you sat there listening to everything with that court-mandated look on your face, I could tell you’d be up for a good deal like this.” She thought about that as her cigarette burned out at the filter. She flicked it into the parking lot. “So tell me, was I wrong?”

  ***

  Her voice crackled over the phone. “You read the paper today?”

  “I didn’t say you could call me here.”

  I was standing in the doorway of the manager’s office talking on his desk phone. He was out front, and although he was a pretty good guy, I didn’t want to press my luck. When he’d come out to the registers to tell me I had a call, he’d looked a little irritated.

  “I’ll make it quick,” she said. “Did you see the obits?”

  “Yes,” I said. I’d been getting the paper just to read the obituaries every day since we’d talked. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “Mildred Redding. Read it again. You coming to the meeting tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  “We’ll talk then.”

  ***

  Mildred Redding was eighty-four years old when she died. She’d left behind a husband named Tom, two kids, five grandkids, and one great-grandkid. She’d been a member of the First Church of Christ and of several social organizations. The obituary reported that she was now in heaven with her Blessed Savior. Her funeral was on Friday.

  ***

  “I started drinking when I was a teenager,” Sadie shared.

  People around the circle nodded.

  “It was just something the kids in my town did. It wasn’t seen as anything that bad. We all went down the river and drank after football games. Mostly beer. I drank a lot. I guess I was nervous. I drank a lot so I wouldn’t be so nervous. It worked. Loosened me up. And, added bonus, it seemed to make the boys like me more. I was never pretty. I was always a little too big, a little too plain. But get me drunk enough and some of them football players who usually made fun of me in between classes, all the sudden they’d want to hang around and get real friendly. I guess that made me the town slut. That’s what people said anyway. Never said that about the boys, though. They weren’t bad for having sex with me, but I was bad for having sex with them. They were just being boys. Me, I was… bad. I was broken. I was wrong. At the time, I didn’t think that was hypocritical, I just figured it was true.

  “That went on into my twenties. I got pregnant. Had a kid. Got pregnant again. Had an abortion. No rhyme or reason to why I kept one and got rid of the other. It wasn’t because of the men involved. They were all the same. I got pregnant a third time, and I kept the child. After that, I gave up alcohol. Once I gave up alcohol, I didn’t have to give up the men. They just stopped coming around.

  “No offense to any of the men here. I’m sure you guys are doing your best. But, ladies, the only man I ever met that I could count on was Jesus Christ. He was a virgin. You ever think about that? Catholics make a big deal out of Mary being a virgin, but I think people should think more about Jesus being a virgin. Bible never says he wrestled with sex. He had his mind on higher things. That’s why I love Jesus. That’s why I count on him. I don’t have to reach for a beer, anymore. I don’t have to reach out for some man. Cause I’m holding onto Jesus.”

  ***

  As we were pulling out of the church parking lot after the meeting she asked me, “You read Mildred Redding’s obit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “Why her?”

  “I smell money there. Old lady. Married, kids, grandkids. The house is over in Hillside, nice neighborhood. I bet you the house is two stories. She belonged to the Toastmistresses, for crying out loud.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It ain’t anything that poor people would waste their time on, I can tell you that. She’ll have jewelry and china. We can hock stuff like that. I know a guy.”

  “Won’t the cops check the pawn shops?”

  “This ain’t a pawn shop. Plus, my guy’s in Memphis. Cops here won’t check there.”

  “What if her kids divvy up the jewelry before the funeral?”

  “They won’t. No one does that. You wait till the old lady is laid to rest, then you start fighting over who gets what.”

  “Okay. So what do you want to do?”

  “I say we drive over there right now and scope it out. Then we go in on Friday. Funeral’s at noon. You work Friday?”

  “From three to eleven.”

  “More than enough time.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But how do we go about it?”

  She drove toward Hillside.

  “Just like I said.”

  “Neighbors won’t notice?”

  “It’s noon on a Friday. People will be at work. Anyone on the street who cares about the Reddings are probably going to be at the funeral.”

  That made sense. “You know what,” I said. “We should dress up. Like in funeral clothes. We show up with pots, like we’re bringing over a pot roast or something. That way if anyone does see us, they’ll think we’re just there to set up for dinner or something.”

  “That’s good,” she said. “I like that.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “What?”

  “What if someone is really there to do that? You know? If the family comes back to the house after the funeral to have lunch or a pot luck or whatever…”

  “We’ll be gone by then.”

  “But I mean, what if someone stays at the house to set up instead of going to the funeral?”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It won’t. People go to the funeral, and they pay their respects. No one s
kips the funeral to go to the house to set up. We’ll be in and out as quick as we can. On the off chance that someone is there early, we’ll roll with it. Just say we knew her from the freaking Toastmistresses.”

  ***

  The house was perfect. Even I had to admit it—and I was clearly the worrier of our little operation. It was two stories with tall hedges around the sides of the house. It had a lot of yard, which meant that the nearest house was too far away to give anyone much a view of what we were doing.

  We drove past the place a couple of times that night. The lights were on, and a couple of cars filled in the driveway.

  “Probably the kids come to visit the old man,” she said. “They’ll all be at the funeral on Friday.”

  I nodded at that, but realizing it was true made me feel bad.

  As Sadie left Hillside and headed to my apartment, I said, “Kind of a shitty thing to do, isn’t it? Stealing from some old man who just lost his wife.”

  She didn’t respond to that right away. She just stared at her headlights, one slightly cocked inward, as they clawed at the road in front of us.

  “It’s just stuff,” she said finally. “No one needs stuff. What’s he going to do with his wife’s old junk? What are his kids going to do with it?”

  “You know, hand it down to the grandkids.”

  “No one needs stuff,” she said again. “I need money. So do you. None of them needs that old stuff as much as we need the money.”

  ***

  I wore the best dark shirt I had, and I matched it with my pair of gray slacks. I looked like I was on my way to church. When Sadie came to pick me up, she was wearing a blue top and a black skirt.

  “We look pretty respectable,” she said.

  “Did you bring some pots?”

  She jerked her head toward the backseat. “Brought a couple.”

  We didn’t say much as we drove over to the Redding residence. I kept taking deep breaths. Sadie put a cigarette in her mouth, but she never lit it. When we got to Hillside and she turned down the street to the house, she removed the unlit cigarette from her mouth and mashed it out in the ashtray.

  It was a sunny Friday afternoon, but no one on the street looked to be home. No cars in driveways. No kids playing outside, no old ladies sitting by the windows. The Redding driveway was empty, so Sadie pulled in and drove right up to the house. She reached in the backseat and handed me an empty blue crock-pot.

  “Okay,” she said.

  We got out. Sadie carried a flowered casserole dish. The day was hot, and I was already sweating.

  Sadie walked up to the front door and knocked. We waited. She knocked again. We waited. She tried the door but it was locked. She pulled out a cell phone and held it to her ear, which was a nice touch. She even went through with a fake conversation.

  I thought that was a bit much. No one seemed to be watching us, and no one could hear her. But I guess it made her feel better to think that she was covering her bases. I guess it made me feel better, too.

  “Hey, we’re here at Mildred’s house. No one seems to be home, and we want to start getting ready for everybody. What should we do? Okay. Okay.”

  She hung up.

  “I’ll try around back,” she said.

  Carrying her dish, she disappeared into the bushes at the side of the house.

  For a moment, I was all alone. I stood there with my crock-pot. I tried not to look around. I tried to look bored.

  After a while of standing there sweating, I heard footsteps inside. I caught my breath as the door opened, but it was Sadie.

  I followed her inside and locked the door.

  “The back door was unlocked,” she said.

  The house had that old person smell. Nothing looked particularly valuable, though. Cheap porcelain knickknacks of butterflies and angels. A commemorative plate with Ronald Reagan on it. A 9/11 commemorative plate with some firemen on it.

  While I looked around, Sadie disappeared into the back.

  I walked down the carpeted hallway and found her in the master bedroom. She was going through the old woman’s jewelry case.

  “Check upstairs,” she said.

  I nodded. For some reason, I was afraid to speak, as if someone might hear me.

  Upstairs, I found a guest room with more butterfly and angel junk. Down the hall, I found an office. A desk scattered with papers, a poster of the Constitution on the wall. Some books. I pulled open the desk drawers. In the bottom drawer, I found a tin box with a lock. It was a cheap little lock that came with a key. I was about to try to pry the box open with a pair of scissors on the desk when it occurred to me to open the top drawer. Sure enough, there among the paper clips was the key.

  I opened the box. Some legal looking papers. A checkbook for Mr. and Mrs. Tom Redding. An envelope. In the envelope, four hundred and forty dollars in twenties and fifties.

  I closed the box, wiped it down, put it back in the drawer, returned the key, and went downstairs.

  I carried the money envelope down in my hand, and Sadie smiled when she saw it. At that moment, I wished I’d stuck it in my pants and told her I’d come up short.

  She asked, “How much?”

  “Four forty,” I whispered.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  I shrugged.

  She held up her casserole dish. “I got some good stuff, too. We done?”

  I nodded and dropped the envelope in the dish.

  “Then let’s get out of here,” she said. “Don’t forget my crock-pot.”

  ***

  I didn’t breathe again until we were miles away and Sadie put the windows down.

  Looking through the stuff in her pot, I could see why she was excited about the haul. A diamond ring, two ruby rings, some pearls. Several gold necklaces and bracelets. As near I could tell, it was all real.

  “This is a great haul,” I said, sticking the pot in the backseat. “How much you think we’ll get?”

  She got on the interstate heading for Memphis. We were driving through rice country now. On either side of the road, the only thing to look at were miles and miles of little green rice plants soaking up the sun.

  “Don’t know,” she said. “We’ll see what the guy says. Good lord willing, it’ll be enough for me to get some stuff paid off.”

  I felt damn good. My heart had calmed down, and I leaned back and closed my eyes and just felt the warm wind slapping at my arm. “This was a fucking great idea, Sadie.”

  “I know. It worked out real nice.”

  “We gonna do this again?”

  “You bet your butt.”

  I smiled.

  “Everything works out,” she said with a satisfied sigh, “for the good of them that love the lord.”

  “What?”

  “Romans 8:28.”

  “You quoting the Bible?”

  “Yeah.”

  I laughed. “I guess it’s good to memorize some of that shit to keep up appearances.”

  She didn’t say anything. When I opened my eyes, she was frowning. Her whole forehead seemed scrunched down damn near to her eyebrows. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “To keep up appearances. To make people think you’re a Christian and stuff.”

  “I can’t believe you’d say that to me.”

  “What?”

  “I am a Christian.”

  “Yeah but…”

  “But what?”

  “You don’t really believe…all that stuff…” I stopped talking then because I knew I’d stepped in some shit.

  “Wait,” she said. “Are you telling me you don’t believe in god?”

  “Me? Not…really.”

  “Stop it,” she said, as if I’d just said the most absurd thing she’d ever heard.

  “What? I don’t.”

  “What kind of idiot doesn’t believe in god? How’d we all get here if there’s no god?”

  “I don’t know. Evolution and shit. The big bang.”

  “Can you
explain any of that?”

  “Any of what?”

  “The big bang.”

  “It was a bunch of particles and shit that exploded.”

  “Where’d the particles come from?”

  “I don’t know. Where’d god come from?”

  “He didn’t come from nowhere. He’s just always been around.”

  “Well then maybe the particles and stuff have just always been around.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “Neither do you. There are zero scientists sitting in this car.”

  “Hey, you don’t need a scientist to figure things out. Just believe what the bible says.”

  “Ain’t there something in there about not stealing?”

  “Yeah, there is, which means I’m a bad person. Fine. That don’t make the bible wrong about where we all came from.”

  “But how do you know it’s right?”

  “How do you know some scientist is right? Be honest, if you don’t understand what the hell he’s saying, then how can you know he’s right?”

  “Hey, I trust the people who gave us air conditioning and the internet over the guys who wrote the bible.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s the word of god.”

  “What does that even mean, word of god? God wrote a book? God writes? Why don’t he just come out every morning and tell us what’s going on? You know, like a team meeting. ‘Okay, you guys over here feed poor people today. And you guys over there need to stop killing each other.’ It’d make things easier.”

  “Now you’re just being stupid. He told everybody what to do in the bible. People make their own mistakes. You just read the bible and it’ll tell you what to do. You ever read the bible?”

  “I tried once. It was worse than when they make you read Beowulf in high school.”

  I thought that was pretty funny, but Sadie just shook her head.

  We rode a little while in silence. Ahead of us was an overpass. As we drove under it, I saw a state trooper’s cruiser hiding a little bit off the road. I looked in the rearview mirror. The cruiser pulled away from its spot and got on the road behind us. It wasn’t moving fast, though.

  “You see that cop?”

  She glanced at the speedometer and then at her side mirror. “I’m not speeding. He’s not moving to catch up to us.”