Thieves I've Known

by Tom Kealey

  “I could take it myself.”

  Shelby stuffed paper towels around the dishes and said nothing.

  Grimsley put his hands in his pockets, stood awhile, then went back to the bathroom.

  He caulked the spaces between the boards, flattened the paste with the tips of his fingers. When he was done, he carved his mother’s initials into a corner of the wood, which he always did when he completed a job. He didn’t wait for the caulk to dry. He stapled the remainder of the plastic over the wood and pressed it flat against the caulk so it would hold. Afterward, he cleaned out the tub and put his tools in order.

  Outside, he set the ladder against the house and climbed up. He wrapped some insulation in plastic and stuffed it inside the hole. Then he went back to his trailer and looked through the pile of old junk he kept behind the house. He sifted through some rotten logs, an old radio, some broken birdhouses, some engine parts—a carburetor, a water pump, half a fender—and found a thin piece of sheet metal. It began to snow again. He took the slot of metal back to the woman’s trailer and fixed it over the hole in the roof with his hand drill. Climbing down, he stood in the snow and watched the door to the trailer, listened for movement inside, watched his white breath in the air. Then he picked up the ladder, his toolbox, and walked home.

  Mona listened to him with her arms crossed. “You’re an old fool,” she said.

  Shelby finished packing her grandmother’s things. She rolled up clothes, wrapped the woman’s jewelry in plastic wrap, set them all in a paper bag in her suitcase. She found a slingshot at the top of the closet, and a pair of men’s underwear. She looked for letters but found none. A stack of newspaper clippings about tornadoes was in a box under the bed, and a book about Australia. In the center of the book, Shelby examined pictures of aboriginal boys and girls, their faces painted in reds and whites, their joints like knotted spools. She studied the photos of the coastline, the wasteland of the desert, kangaroos, and rats, a man with tooth marks down his arm from a crocodile. The man seemed proud. She found a collection of scented candles in another box, covered over with a thick, green army blanket. Among the woman’s files and bills she found some cartoons and a drawing that Shelby had made with crayons when she was younger: a church with a dog on the steeple. In a white envelope she found a picture of a naked young man.

  Afterward, she packed up her own things, leaving her toothbrush, some clothes, and her book and journal on the kitchen counter. She set a pot of water to boil and opened the book. She wrote.

  When we left Kitty Hawk at the end of 1901, we doubted that we would ever resume our experiments. Although we had broken the record for distance in gliding, and although Mr. Chanute, who was present at the time, assured us that our results were better than had ever before been attained, yet when we looked at the time and money which we had expended, and considered the progress made and the distance yet to go, we considered our experiments a failure. At this time I made the prediction that men will sometime fly, but that it would not be within our lifetime.

  When the tea had boiled, Shelby found a mug in one of the boxes and poured herself a cup. She began copying the passage into her notebook. When a knock came at the window, she set the book aside and went to the door.

  “You’re to come for dinner,” Grimsley said. “And to stay over too. No sense in staying alone tonight.”

  “I like it alone.”

  “Well, if you don’t come, I’m going to be in a lot of trouble.”

  Shelby looked at him. “Your trouble is not my concern.”

  He was glad of her tone. He could go now, and it would not be held against him. He was glad to be done with this girl.

  “I know what you’re feeling,” he said. “When I’m hurt I want nobody about me, cause I don’t want them to see me hurt, and it’s none of their damn business anyways. People seeing me hurt just gets me more hurt. What’s the point, you know? Does that sound right to you?”

  She nodded. “Something like that.”

  “Well, that’s not good thinking,” said Grimsley. “This is not a world to go alone in, and today’s not a day to stay alone. I’m afraid for you, and my wife is afraid for you. We’d like you to come stay with us tonight. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Shelby blinked. “I didn’t know you were going to get all worked up.”

  “I’m not worked up,” said Grimsley.

  “Right,” said Shelby. “What time?”

  She’d annoyed him again. “What time what?” he said.

  The girl said nothing.

  “Oh,” said Grimsley.

  In the evening, they drove the truck out to the bay, passing the lines of boats tied to the docks, the empty masts lined in rows like candles. Two women stood on a sandbar, casting their lines out into the surf. Long shadows stretched from the tree line. Shelby sat between Grimsley and Mona, moving her knees to the side every time Grimsley shifted gears. She kept her eyes down and picked at the tips of her fingers. Mona had packed dinner in a basket.

  “Do you know your sister very well?” she asked Shelby.

  “Not really.”

  “Does she have a family?”

  “No.”

  Mona nodded. “Well it’ll just be the two of you, then.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A flock of gulls scattered as Grimsley pulled into the parking lot. Out past the schooners, the red light of a buoy could be seen near the mouth of the cove. The light bobbed and dipped with the current.

  Grimsley helped the two women onto the trawler, put some oil into the engine, started it up. A cloud of black smoke blew out of the pipe, and the deck hummed under their feet. Outside, he scraped the ice off the cabin windows, and inside Mona got the heat going, set a pot of water to boil on the tiny burner. Shelby sat on the bench near the wheel, stared out onto the black water. She could see the reflection of white clouds, a few stars. Grimsley untied the line and switched on the running lights. He took the wheel in the cabinhouse, peered out into the dark, opened the throttle a bit. The trawler pushed out past the dock and the other vessels, moved into the bay.

  “I’ll let you take the wheel in a while if you’re up to it,” said Grimsley.

  “Okay,” said Shelby.

  “You been on the water before?”

  “No.”

  Mona opened the basket and took out a thick candle. She set it in the center of the chart table and lit it. The tiny glow reflected off the port windows, seemed to sit out on the water. Foil wrappers and plastic containers of food were set on the table, plates on three sides after that. Forks and knives soon after. Through the planking, they could hear the lap of the water over the hum of the engine.

  “Well,” said Mona, “we need to eat before all this gets cold.”

  Grimsley took the trawler out a little farther, headed toward the buoy and the reflection of stars in the water. Mona served slices of turkey and gravy, some vegetables onto their plates. After he dropped anchor, they settled around the table.

  Tea was poured, and Grimsley began eating. Shelby looked at her plate and closed her eyes.

  “You not hungry?” he said.

  “I don’t like to eat in front of people.”

  Grimsley looked over at his wife.

  “Why’s that?”

  Shelby shrugged. “I get sick.”

  “You do whatever’s comfortable,” said Mona.

  Grimsley kept his eyes on his plate as he ate. He’d heard some strange things in this life—he had his own strange things, he knew—but he’d not heard this before.

  “Maybe I’ll eat something later,” said Shelby.

  “Whatever you want,” said Mona.

  “I know that’s rude.”

  “Nonsense.”

  They ate in silence, and Grimsley looked up at his wife every once in a while. The water was calm in the bay, and the vessel rocked slowly in the current. A little tea was spilled on the table. When the candle went out, the flame dipped into wax, they didn’t light it ag
ain. They sat in the shadows cast by the bulbs outside, the sky’s reflection on the water.

  Shelby put her elbows on the table. “Can I ask you something?”

  Mona looked up from her plate. “Sure.”

  “Don’t look.”

  The woman smiled and dropped her eyes. “All right.”

  “What happened to your arm?”

  The woman pulled her sleeve to her wrist, covered the burn.

  “Sorry,” said Shelby.

  “No, that’s all right.” She kept her eyes on her plate. “There was a fire downstairs when I was a teenager. I was about sixteen or so. My father was drinking, and it got started, and it burned the house down. I woke up and I was burning. I opened up the window and got out. That’s all.”

  “Did he get out?”

  “No,” Mona said. “He and my mother and my sister didn’t make it out. The fire moved pretty quickly. It wasn’t that good of a house.”

  “And you were sixteen?”

  “That’s right.”

  Shelby stared down at the food on her plate. “Where’d you go?”

  “Well, believe it or not I stayed with a group of nuns for a while. I didn’t have any family, and that’s where the state put me until I was eighteen. That was an experience.”

  “Did they try to convert you?” said Shelby. She was interested in this story.

  “No,” said Mona. “Honestly, I think they were glad to get rid of me. But they fed me and gave me a roof over my head and taught me some discipline. There was one nun, Sister Marilynn, and she and I kept up till she died a few years back. I don’t remember knowing her that well when I was there, but she became important later. Her family actually put me through two years of college.”

  “Did you finish?” said Shelby.

  “Careful,” said Grimsley to Mona. “This is her favorite question.”

  Mona smiled as if she were in on the joke. “No. I met Grimsley then. And when I met Grimsley a lot of things ended and a lot of things began for me.”

  “That sounds like a loaded statement,” said Grimsley.

  “Oh, it is,” said Mona. “I’ll keep my room to maneuver.”

  She had met him in the prison where he served for six years. After he’d killed his two friends in the accident. He worked in the prison office on Fridays, and they had gotten to passing notes. It had seemed dangerous and thrilling to Mona at the time, though she was not now sure in reflection. That time came back to her now. She looked over at Grimsley. That had been many choices ago.

  “You are going to have a wonderful time on the West Coast,” said Mona. “There is so much to see there.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Shelby.

  “You’ve got an exciting life ahead of you,” said Mona. “Doesn’t she, Grimsley?”

  He nodded. “We went through the coast of Washington on the way to Alaska every summer. How many years did we do that?”

  “Nine years,” said Mona.

  “You have to take the ferryboat through the Inside Passage,” he said. “You’ll see amazing things.”

  “Bears and dolphins,” said Mona.

  “Not together, though,” said Grimsley.

  “The northern lights,” said Mona.

  “Those are at night,” said Grimsley.

  “She knows that,” said Mona. “She’s not a ninny.”

  Shelby picked up her mug, sipped at the cold tea. Grimsley and Mona finished their dinner. Through the windows of the cabin they could see the glow of the moon behind the clouds. The dark waves rippled in the light.

  “I’m afraid,” said Shelby.

  “Of course you are,” said Mona. “That’s perfectly normal.”

  “I don’t feel perfectly normal,” said Shelby.

  Grimsley looked at his wife. He wished he had better luck. Like a working brain or a wisdom that came from experience. Instead he seemed to have his endless confusion. He wished he had something better to share with those around him.

  “You’re going to see all these little golf balls in trees,” he said.

  Shelby looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Little golf balls,” he said. He looked out the porthole. “Hundreds of them in the trees it’ll look like. When you visit Alaska. You can see them from the ferryboat. But when you get closer you’ll see that they’re the heads of bald eagles. Maybe not hundreds of them. But close. You’ll have never seen anything like it. All these bald eagles in the trees.”

  Mona looked at him, surprised. He hadn’t spoken this much in years. He went on.

  “And when you see those,” he said, “things will be a lot better than they are now. Things don’t always stay this way. You’ll see those bald eagles and you’ll remember us, telling you this. You probably won’t remember our names, but that’s okay. You’ll be a lot better, and all this stuff you’re feeling will seem very far away.”

  Shelby placed her hands on the table. She took up a napkin and blew her nose. Another trawler passed them by outside, this one coming into shore, and they bobbed in its wake.

  “I’ll remember your names,” she said.

  Now, there are two ways of learning how to ride a fractious horse. One is to get on him and learn by actual practice how each motion and trick may be best met; the other is to sit on a fence and watch the beast awhile, and then retire to the house and at leisure figure out the best way of overcoming his jumps and kicks. The latter system is the safest; but the former, on the whole, turns out the larger proportion of good riders. It is very much the same in learning to ride a flying machine; if you are looking for perfect safety, you will do well to sit on the fence and watch the birds; but if you really wish to learn, you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial.

  In her memory, Shelby thinks of her hands on the wheel of the trawler, turning the point of the bow into the waves, pulling back on the throttle. In the spotlight, white mist from the water floated in the glow. They’d gone out beyond the cove, Grimsley pointing out the crab traps and the shallow reef hidden on the port side. In the bay, they’d pushed the throttle forward, skipped across the whitecaps, kept their eyes on the blue-black water. Orange jugs floated in the moonlight, and a tanker moved slowly across the horizon, an irregular shadow across the long flat water. Shelby had wanted to move out farther, perhaps circle the vessel.

  “It’d take all night,” said Grimsley.

  But they’d gone anyway, the trawler dipping and rolling in the open ocean. The tanker moved faster the closer they came, across the horizon and north toward Wilmington. Shelby looked out through the fogged window. At some point, she knew they’d never reach it.

  “Gas’ll run short,” said Grimsley.

  “A little longer.”

  “It’s your swim back.”

  When they’d turned around, Grimsley let her keep the wheel, into the bay, and then past the shallows, into the cove. Mona’s eyes closed as she sat on the bench, slept little, rolling and dipping with the waves. On the far shoreline, they could make out a campfire on the beach, a half-dozen figures kneeling in the white-orange glow. Shelby guided the vessel around a stretch of fisherman’s netting. Grimsley mumbled directions, watched her hand on the throttle. She eased the boat into the berth, past the other trawlers, the crab boats. She brought the vessel level with the dock. Took her time, cut the engine.

  Outside, Grimsley kicked the ice off the bow, crouched at the railing, felt a sting of ice in his knee, then in his belly. He was unsure of the source. He was an old fool, he was sure, looked at his own reflection in the water. Any light in a rooster’s eyes, other than the sun, was bad business. Had that been his mother’s? He wasn’t sure. He took the ratline in his fist, reached for the dock. Too much good luck was bad luck, but no bad luck was always good luck. He was sure of that, felt the ice melt and sting in his belly.

  He had his favorites too, but he’d not yet had cause to use them all. Don’t litter. Leave sleeping cats alone. To keep evil spirits aw
ay, drop some burnt cinders into your shirt pocket. And if you find a stranger’s wallet, always take a dollar before returning it. Then, give that dollar to another stranger. It will bring all three of you good luck. Grimsley caught the dock with the tips of his fingers, kept the line from touching the water, and wrapped it around the wooden bollard.

  COYOTES

  Nate and Merrill fussed about in the kitchen. The boy was seventeen, the girl almost sixteen, and their father sat at the kitchen table repairing a clock that a neighbor had brought to him. He was almost seventy, the father, and had long been deaf. His heart was weak now, and he was no longer able to work as a fisherman, as he had for the whole of his life. There were filets of cobia baking in the oven, and asparagus and corn frying on the stove. The boy concentrated on assembling a salad: they’d been heavy on the vegetables lately. They were good for the father’s heart. The man searched among the parts spread out on the table: the gears, the recoils, the pin and escape wheels, though he could not find the switch he was looking for. A wave of heavy rain washed over the house, then died away, leaving a steady, irregular patter. It was early autumn, and the edge of a hurricane had passed through the harbor town. They’d spent the afternoon waiting for the walls of their trailer to collapse. The boy, then the girl had signed to their father. Bad rain, or Heavy wind, or This is the worst now, and he’d signed back. I cannot hear, but I can feel.

  He had a strange sign, the old man. Formal and slow. He did not touch his body when he signed, and he looked up at them now, banged his knuckles on the table to get their attention. If the traps are washed away, we cannot afford to replace them.

  We know this, signed the boy, and then he said something to his sister that the man could not make out. Why do you tell us things we know already?

  The money is short here, the man signed back. There is nothing else worth speaking of.

  The girl set the wooden fork aside and signed at her father. Her sign was slow as well, but complicated. She touched her face and chest often as she signed. You will get the boat back in the spring. Then Nate and I will fish. How do you fit many worries into a small head?