As a Thief in the Night

by Chuck Crabbe

  "Just from walking," Ezra answered.

  "Really?" the tall one asked as he approached. "You guys got that muddy just walking down the street?"

  "Yup."

  The other cop smiled. "Where are you guys headed?" he asked.

  "To a friend's place," Adam said.

  "We had a break in near by tonight, guys, and we're going to have to ask both of you to put your hands on the car so we can search you."

  "You can't just search us," Ezra said.

  The cop with the moustache took Ezra's wrist, placed his other hand on the back of his head, and then pushed him down onto the car's hood. Ezra lurched forward and put his other hand out to stop himself from coming down face first. "That's exactly what we're going to do," the officer said through his clenched jaw. He took Ezra's other hand away, and forced him down onto the police car.

  The engine was still running and the steel felt warm on the side of his cold face. The other officer pushed Adam down beside him and Ezra heard him grunt as he hit the car. He felt the cop's hands pat down his arms and the sides of his coat. They stopped when they felt the change inside the pocket of his jeans. Beside him, the other cop already had Adam's share of the money in his hand. The one searching Ezra pulled out the wad of cash.

  "Where did two little birds like you come up with money like this?" He held the money beside Ezra's face so he could see it.

  "From working."

  "Working? And what's all this white stuff all over your shirt?"

  "Laundry detergent, I guess."

  The cop took a piece of it from his clothing, rolled it between his index and middle finger, and then held it closer to his eye to inspect it.

  "Porcelain," he said to his partner. The other officer looked at him as if he didn't know what he meant. "From the statue, Gabe."

  Ezra heard the cling-clang of loose metal behind him and then felt steel on his wrist. Handcuffs. He struggled a little and the cop cut him with the sharp point of the male side of the cuffs. He felt it cut into his skin. A forearm came down firmly on his back, and he heard the sound as the handcuffs closed.

  "Michael, check the ground to make sure they didn't ditch anything." The officer who seemed to be in charge held Adam and Ezra by the back of their coats, presumably to stop them from trying to make a run for it, while the other one searched the ground with his flashlight. Satisfied, they opened the back doors of the cruiser and put both boys inside.

  "That's it. I'm finished," Ezra said. "Football...everything with my aunt and uncle...it's all over now."

  Adam tried to adjust his hands behind his back. "I know."

  The cops got into the car and made a quick count of the money they had recovered. The one with the moustache counted much slower than the other. His partner waited, looking a little impatient.

  "How much you got, Gabriel?"

  "Hey, what did I tell you about that?"

  "Okay, fine. How much you got, Gabe?

  "Eleven hundred and thirty-two," he said, satisfied with the redress, "and a pocketful of silver."

  The police station faced the main street, across from the legion hall and the post office. In fact, Adam Nayeve's father was inside the legion hall, drunk, when the police led his son and Ezra, handcuffed, up the front steps of the station.

  There were no cells in Belle River. The officers separated Ezra and Adam and put them in small, bare office rooms with cheap desks. They gave him the phone and he spoke with a legal aid representative who told him nothing other than that it was his decision whether he wanted to talk or not. The lawyer sounded as if he came from someplace far away. After they closed the doors on them, they were locked in from the outside.

  Maybe if we just give back the money...my hand to yours...I admit what I've done...you appreciate my honesty and forgive, forgive, forgive...seventy times seven...I shed tears of regret, sweat under your judgment...your breast swells with empathy for the misled child...Pastor Mark spreads the spirit of Christ...the police make paperwork errors all the time...if God intervenes on behalf of he who picked the pocket of God...He will abandon me now...no worse place to steal from...Alex must be in bed...find something else to match it...try to take comfort in degree...no, there's nowhere worse...nobody cares about the bank, of course...a house is common...but not to whoever lives there...maybe if you steal from your own family...Elsie will know now...things he stole from mom and Layne and me...her shame from the grave...cradle the excuse carefully...snatch utility from the arms of circumstance...if I had known it was a police car sooner, I would've run...Alex would've known...gotten away, too...where?...how would it have ended?...I'm faster than the fat cop...the other one might be a surprise...watch the chase end...where?...on whose terms?...multitude of tender mercies...

  A few minutes later the cop with the moustache came back into the office and told Ezra to take off his clothes.

  "My clothes? Why?"

  "They're evidence now. Take them off and put them in the garbage bag." He threw a folded green bag onto the table and turned to go back out the door.

  "I'm not taking off my clothes."

  The cop turned back, placed both hands on the edge of the desk, and leaned toward him.

  "You're in a lot of trouble, and now's no time to get yourself into more." He picked up the garbage bag and threw it onto Ezra's lap. "Put your clothes in the bag."

  "I'm not taking off my clothes," he repeated.

  The cop swung round the desk, pulled Ezra right out of his seat by his coat collar, and smashed him hard into the corner of the room. He pressed his forearm against Ezra's throat. Then he ripped off his coat, shook the bag open with one hand while he pinned Ezra with the other, and stuffed the coat inside. "Now take them off, or we can do the rest of it this way, too." Ezra slumped in the corner and the cop kicked the chair he had been sitting on toward the door. "Make sure you put your boots in there too," he snarled, and then he left and locked the door again.

  Ezra stood under the florescent light in his underwear and tried to listen at the door to what was going on outside. Soon, the two cops led Adam into the room. They had made him remove his clothes as well. His body was skinny and very pale and the bones in his shoulders stuck out sharply. Ezra tried to silently communicate what had happened to him and also to study Adam's demeanor to see if he too had been pushed around. The officer that had attacked Ezra earlier brought in two chairs for them to sit on. The cops were much friendlier than they had been earlier. The heavier one had Ezra's hat in his hand and he placed it over the boy's head, playfully. It was ridiculous, Ezra thought, to take his clothes away and then put his hat on him. He felt like it had been done to make fun of him. One of the cops sat on the corner of the desk and the other stood on the opposite side of it, across from them.

  Now they spoke more calmly, even kindly, with them. They knew there was someone else involved. The church had given them a count of the money stolen and a third of it was still missing. If they were willing to tell them who the third person was, maybe they'd be willing to reduce the charges. They might even be able to drop some of them. Besides, neither of them seemed like the type of kids that would be able to dream something like this up.

  They left the two of them alone to talk about it.

  "What are we going to do, Adam?"

  Adam looked at the floor and shook his head. "I don't know."

  "I think we should tell them."

  "Why?"

  "Don't you think Alex would do what he had to do if he were in our place?"

  "Maybe..."

  "As soon as our parents come in they're going to know Alex was with us. At least this way we have a chance to get the charges dropped."

  Adam ran his hands through his hair and then rested his face in them. "Okay, suppose we tell them. What do you think Alex is going to do when he finds out we gave him up? He's going to kill us. You've heard the way he's been talking lately, looking for a gun and all that."

  "He won't know. He'll think our parents told them."

/>   "Alright," Adam sighed. "It's you and me, buddy." He put out his hand and Ezra shook it.

  But when the cops came back Ezra could not bring himself to say it.

  "We want to help you guys, but we need a name," they told him.

  Ezra looked at the floor. He felt Adam staring at him, but he didn't want to be the one to say it.

  "Guys, we need a name..."

  The room was silent for almost a full minute before Adam finally said, "Alex DaLivre."

  The police went to Alex's house and woke him up with a flashlight in his face. They searched his room and found the rest of the money and the knife he had used in a hole in his mattress. His mother cried and spoke of the devil in him while he stood at the end of his bed and blankly watched them tear through his things. She was also upset that the officers had not taken their shoes off at the door. They cuffed him and gathered up his clothes, as well as the shoes he had worn that night. Mrs. DaLivre slapped Alex in the face and disowned him as they walked him out the door.

  Alone in the small room, Ezra heard them come back into the station. He heard Alex's voice but could not make out what he said. He had no wish to see any of it and was glad, at that moment, to be shut away.

  They had no intentions of dropping any of the charges, of course. Paperwork was drawn up for three counts of break, enter, and theft from Calvary Pentecostal Assembly. They held off allowing Ezra and Adam to call their parents until they had gathered as much evidence as they could legally use. With all three thieves in custody, the officers decided it was time to deliver the news to the families.

  Gord was up watching television when the phone rang. Elsie had been asleep for some time. They told him that Ezra had been arrested and that he had broken into the church and stolen a substantial sum of money.

  "Is he alright?" Gord asked.

  "He's fine sir."

  "Where is he?"

  "He's here. In holding."

  "The station here in Belle River?"

  "For now, yes. But later tonight we'll be sending the boys to a cell in Essex."

  "I'll be right there."

  "He's going to need some clothes, and shoes, too."

  "Why? Where are his clothes?"

  "They've been taken into evidence."

  Gord hung up the phone and stood in the dark kitchen. The dirty dinner dishes were still in the sink; he had told Elsie that he would do them, but had not. He stepped into the doorway and looked toward the bedroom. There was no point in waking her, not until he knew for sure what was going on. Quietly, he snuck across the hallway and grabbed some clothes from Ezra's empty room. Gord looked at the boy's empty bed and prayed for a moment that when he opened them Ezra would be there. Of course when he opened them things were exactly as they had been. He never prayed and thought it was stupid to have done so now.

  As he walked beneath their bedroom he stopped to listen for sounds from Elsie, but he heard none. He feared that she would somehow find blame in him for all this and hold him responsible. No, he would wait until morning to tell her. He put on his coat and left as quietly as he could.

  Ezra's first feeling when he saw his uncle was safety, and then an awful sense of shame. He knew he had betrayed everything Gord and Elsie had done for him, and he knew there was no way of returning to them as the son they deserved. But for now he could not let in the awful flood of this knowledge, for if he did, he was certain that he would not be able to survive the cruel waters of his corruption, waters that he had swum in so mindlessly, but that he was now beginning to feel turn against him, indifferent to his broken breath. The money they had stolen was spread out all over the large table in the station's office, along with the knife, their clothing, and their shoes. The ring wasn't there. Maybe they hadn't noticed it. His gloves were there though, and he knew there was blood on the inside of one and he was grateful for the lining in them. For the time being the material hid some of what he had done. Gord looked over the evidence quite severely.

  "What's all this?"

  Ezra could not look at him. "That's what we took."

  "I see...money. You did this for money."

  Ezra remained silent. The officers didn't say anything about the idol he had smashed. He covered the hand he'd used to hit it.

  The police explained the options: a statement could be written detailing his involvement, and the court would look upon his cooperation favorably. Of course Gord had been raised as part of a different generation, by parents who had grown up before World War Two, parents who believed in coming clean when one had done wrong, and that honesty was the best remedy for deceit. Of self-interest, cunning, and the necessity for harsh strategy in such times he was innocent, naive actually, in a way that Elsie would not have been. He told them that Ezra would write the statement. They gave him a few documents to sign, including one that stated that he was waving legal council for the time being, the paper on which to write the statement, and ushered him and Ezra back into the small holding cell.

  Standing there in his underwear Ezra still looked more like a boy than a man. Gord passed him the clothes he had brought and watched him put them on. Then they sat down and went through what had happened.

  It was important to be as clear as possible. Ezra wrote a sentence, read it aloud, timidly, and they discussed what had to be written next. Facts, not feelings, were given. He detailed the steps they had taken in their crime, and Gord had to separate within himself the desire to strike him and the desire to hold him. Ezra took comfort in the sound of the words passing between them and tried to make their meaning hollow so he would not feel them.

  The statement took almost two hours to finish. Nothing of what it would all mean, or of what would now happen, passed between them, and the silence oppressed him. Ezra signed it at the bottom of the final page.

  Gord signed the papers himself and gave them to the officers. Packages containing the same paperwork were on the desk for the other two boys. Their parents had not arrived yet. After making certain that there was nothing else to be done, Gord returned to the cell where Ezra was waiting. He stood just inside the doorway.

  "Okay Ezra," he said, preparing to leave. He had given all the comfort he intended to give.

  "What's Elsie going to say?" Ezra asked desperately, breaking the seal of his silence. Tears streamed down his face.

  "I can't believe you've done this, Ezra. How am I even going to tell her?"

  Ezra's features rippled with fear and shame as he grabbed at his hair and sobbed loudly.

  "I have to go now. I've got to wake up early to get my son out of jail." Gord turned and walked out of the office, leaving the door open.

  "Uncle Gord," Ezra said to his back as he moved away.

  "What is it?" Gord asked, stepping back into view.

  "Did you bring me shoes?"

  "No, I didn't." He looked at Ezra's bare feet.

  "I don't have any. They took mine."

  There, on the other side of the door, Gord slipped off the brown boat shoes he was wearing, placed one beside the other with his foot, and slid them across the floor to Ezra. Gord walked out of the station in his stocking feet.

  Ezra sat there alone for a long time. They had told him that a police van was coming to move all three of them to proper holding cells in Essex, where they would spend the night. He guessed that it must be after midnight. It was quiet while he waited and all he could hear was the two men moving around outside the door. But then, here of all places, he heard someone playing music on what he thought must be some kind of horn.

  Two police cars came to take them to the cells in Essex where they were to spend the night. When they brought Ezra outside it was very dark, and Alex was already in one of the cars with Adam. They made eye contact through the back window and Alex smiled at him. Ezra searched his face for signs of malice, for some hint that he might know that he'd been betrayed, but found none. Apparently, they hadn't told him yet.

  They put him in the other police car, by himself, and the two cops who would b
e driving him sat on the hood and smoked cigarettes before leaving. After they were done smoking they got into the car and pulled out of the station lot. He began to feel drowsy. Sleep tempted him as it often does when we feel we have been emptied of all emotion and have nothing left to give, or left to lose.

  They drove past the hardware store and over the small bridge. Ezra looked downriver at the waterway that Papineau had called 'Belle' in the storm. The last of the ice had melted now and it flowed out in pieces toward the lake.

  Ezra fell into fantasy—one he had cherished since he'd first visited the small river in the Walpurgis woods as a boy. He lay on a small, flat raft with a single sail. It was made of small trees that had been cut down and tied together, and Ezra imagined that he was staring up at a warm sky. The easy river bore him toward the lake, and as he saw himself carried downstream, he laid his head against the window of the police car and surrendered to the current's fate.

  Ezra Mignon was dreaming of his mother. She had been reading on her swing when the goat ran hard and fast through the area that enclosed it. It tore through the fence like an efficient blade. The animal's movement pulled her eye away from the book. It didn't stop running after it cut through the fence. Beyond the yard were the vines, and it disappeared amongst them. His gaze went from its speed to her ease. She used her toes to idly push herself back and forth and did not seem surprised by what had happened. Instead, a subtle and satisfied smile faded into her features, as if something for which she had been waiting finally happened. After another moment of appreciation, and a breath of resolve, she laid down her book and stepped behind each of the other three swings, each belonging to one of her sisters, drew them back in turn, and set each in motion without a rider. All three swung back and forth under the tree. Hers was still among them. Then, without a backward glance, she walked across the carefully kept lawn, and into the vineyard. She disappeared from his sight into the grapes, those great mysteries of adaptation and complexity and intoxication, at the same place the goat had.