Sneak Thief

by Faith Harkey

  She got closer still, and I could smell the reek of drink on her.

  “You think you’re too good for me, you stupid cur? I got news for you. You’re nothing! You are no-body! You’re trash! And them folks you sent to mess in my business, them’s nobody, too. You little—!”

  I won’t say the name she called me, but it was foul and cruel.

  Right then, a hand thumped down on my shoulder. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “I’d say that’s about enough of that,” came a familiar voice. “Time you moved on, ma’am.”

  I turned around and nearly melted with relief. It was Ham, my worst and most devoted yoga student. He stood behind me like a wall. Every inch of his face meant business.

  “You don’t know me!” Nina snarled at him, but she did begin to back away.

  “Keep moving,” he told her once, when she looked like she was fixin’ to start up again.

  And to my relief, she did. It was over.

  Almost.

  Nina was just about to round a corner and disappear from sight when she shouted, “I know where you’re staying!” Then she was gone.

  I juddered like a plucked guitar string.

  An age seemed to pass before I looked around and spied at least four people staring at me. I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that I knew two of them.

  “Okay, Hush. Let’s get you back to Mabel’s,” Ham said.

  I burst into tears. It was a crazy sort of cry, loud and slobbery. The build-up of twelve years’ worth of weeping, maybe.

  “It’s all right.” Ham patted my shoulder. “You’re all right. Come on, now.”

  “I can’t!” I wailed.

  “You can’t?”

  I shook my head. “We’re having a cookout! I got to buy the meat!”

  “A cookout? You got to have meat, then,” he said with so much understanding I began bawling all over again.

  Right then, the meat man appeared—or maybe he’d been standing there the whole time. He reached out a hand and offered me a package of turkey.

  I looked it over. “That’s much better.” After a hard swallow, I added, “Thank you, sir.”

  “See? There’s your meat,” Ham said as gently as a three-hundred-pound man could. “Anything else you need?”

  Hand shaking, I showed him my list.

  He read it over. “Oh, this ain’t nothing. We’ll get you set up and back to your grill in no time!”

  And with that, Ham Quimby led me first to produce, then to dairy. He was very kind, even carrying the handbasket up to the register for me. Then I paid for it all with my own yoga money, just like the food-buying nib my mother said I was.

  * * *

  —

  When me and Ham got to Mabel’s, Jimmy was already there. He and Ham disappeared round back of the house, while Mabel took the bags from my arms and led me inside.

  “Are you all right, Belle?” A pain imp fluttered around Mabel’s heart. I reckoned it was for me.

  “You heard what happened?” I asked, alarmed.

  She quirked her lip. “Living in a small town has its pros and cons. On the good side, somebody cared enough to call Jimmy, and Jimmy cared enough to call me. On the less-good side, most everybody in town will know what happened by nightfall.”

  I hung my head. “Ugh.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “You said you heard it all,” I told her.

  “But not from you. Sometimes a person needs to say a thing out loud.”

  I found she was right. I told her most of it. Not all. I couldn’t bring myself to say the name Nina had called me. Not because it was so rare; people in ’Bagoville said it all the time. But because it seemed so shameful to have your own ma use it on you.

  “She said she knows where I’m staying.”

  Mabel sighed. “Again, no secrets in a small town.”

  I looked around me. Somewhere along the way, I’d begun thinking of Mabel’s home as my own. On a wall, in place of pride, there hung a photo of the Holts, laughing over some private, family jest.

  “Nina is my ma,” I said.

  “Yes, she is.”

  I grabbed the edge of a table. “Do you think I done her wrong, Mabel? Leaving her like that? Staying here with you, living fine?” And Nina, with all those pain imps latched onto her?

  “What I think…wow.” She looked off in one direction, then another, and shook her head. “No, Belle. I don’t think you’ve done her wrong. I—I won’t claim this isn’t complicated. And hard. Goodness knows it is. But the truth is, there are certain things a person is responsible for and certain things they’re not. And a kid is never, ever responsible for their parents. It’s always the other way around. When you’re old enough to make your own way in life, that can change. But for now”—she rubbed at her forehead—“Nina’s done some things wrong. She’s got to fix them.”

  “Do you think she is? Fixing them?” I asked.

  “You could ask JoBeth. I think the police are checking in on her from time to time.”

  “She was real drunk.”

  “Nina? Yeah, I heard.” Mabel’s heart imp was bright red.

  “Makes me think she might not be fixing things.”

  She was quiet for a while, sifting through her thoughts. “It’s hard to say. Sometimes a person gets overwhelmed, even when they are trying. They slip up.”

  “But the things she said!” I cried.

  “I know, Belle. The things she said.”

  * * *

  —

  It wasn’t long before we heard Ham’s truck drive away. Jimmy strode in with his own batch of imps on his heart.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you, Hush,” he said.

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Looking at Mabel and me both, he asked, “Did y’all want to cancel the cookout? I imagine you’re not in the mood for a big to-do, just now.”

  I spun on Mabel. “Please don’t! Desiree already knows about it! Besides, I never been to a real cookout, one that ain’t charitable.”

  Waving a hand at the room around me, I turned to Jimmy. “Someday soon this is all gonna be over. We got to cook out while the cooking’s good!”

  Jimmy opened his mouth, thought it over, and closed it again.

  Mabel was the one who finally spoke. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, Belle. Not yet.” Then she added, “There’s no reason to cancel the party if you really want one.” She smiled.

  I told her I did.

  Jimmy nodded and said he’d run home to collect Becky and Desiree and Martin.

  After he was gone, I told Mabel, “You’ve got an imp over your heart, again. I—I keep bringing you pain! Don’t you get tired of me?”

  She set her fingertips over her chest, not far from where the imp wriggled. “Not even a little.”

  Recalling what she’d once said about pain having its place, I said, “So…I reckon you want to hold on to that one for a while, then?”

  She nodded. “I think what happened to you today deserves a little grieving.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “It kind of might.”

  * * *

  —

  After our button-buster of a supper—I learned I like my burgers well-done and smothered in onions, by the by—the grown folks gathered over coffee, Martin left to raise hell (Jimmy’s words), and I took Desiree to see my favorite part of Mabel’s garden. It was an old tire swing, hanging from a big oak tree, surrounded by wildflowers of every stripe.

  “It’s nicest if you take off your shoes,” I told Desiree, one foot already bare.

  She kicked off her flips. “That does feel good.”

  “Hop on. I’ll push you,” I said, standing behind the swing. “Then you dangle your toes. It’s a right tickler.”


  She gave the tire an ambitious glance from a distance, then ran at it and threw herself on, full bore. The force of barreling-Desiree-plus-swing nearly knocked me over!

  Laughing, I righted myself and grasped the swing rope. “Dog my cats, girl! You’re gonna kill me!”

  She laughed right back. “You didn’t know I had so much power behind me!”

  “I reckon I didn’t!”

  I gave Desiree a push, then another. Once she caught the rhythm, she leaned into it, pumping her legs to swing higher, and higher yet. I didn’t know a body could climb so high on a tire swing! She just about flew. There were times, even, when it seemed she reached high as the sun, the light of it blazing all around her, turning her into something magical and wild.

  After a time, Desiree stuck down her feet to help me stop the swing.

  “You want a go?” she asked, breathless.

  “Naw. I do it all the time.” I grinned. “I like to twirl it up and let it unravel.”

  “That’s fun,” she agreed. But it seemed her voice was far off, and I thought she had something on her mind.

  “The other thing I like is to lay on my belly and just hang.” I said it, though I was mostly just filling the space until she chose to tell me where her mind was.

  When she finally did, I wished she hadn’t.

  “Was that your ma in the store today?”

  “You, uh, you heard about that?” I don’t know why I was surprised. Mabel surely had warned me.

  “Martin was in there buying a razor for his invisible beard.” She was trying to lighten things up a little, but I was way past laughing. Desiree was going to know the truth of me now—maybe she already did. The end of our crazy friendship had finally come.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “That was my ma.”

  “They say she’s a hustler’s shill,” she told me.

  “What’s a shill?”

  Shrug. “I thought you might know.”

  She was still sitting on the swing, using her feet to push her an inch this way, an inch that way.

  “She’s bad, though? That’s why you’re living with Mabel?”

  I flumped down on the ground and started swatting at flower tops. “Naw. She ain’t bad.” I stopped to think that over. “Well, maybe she is. I don’t rightly know. She’s got a lot of pain imps, I did see that.”

  “Do you miss her?” Desiree asked.

  I didn’t…and I did. I reckoned neither answer said anything good about me. “Maybe. But I don’t want to go back.”

  After a time, she pointed to the ground beside me. “Hand me that rock, will you?”

  I did.

  Squinting one eye shut, she held the rock up to the light. “Are you a thief?”

  I jutted my jaw. “Word does get around, don’t it?”

  “Is it true?”

  “It was true. I’m getting better.” I winced a little, waiting to hear what she’d think of that.

  She let the rock slip between her fingers. It hit the ground with a thump.

  “Now you just steal people’s pain,” she mused. “Thief of pain.”

  “It’s progress.” I grinned, hoping to lead her into a smile.

  “Are you really my friend, Hush Cantrell? You kept a lot of things from me.” This time, when she laid those big eyes on me, it seemed she was looking at my innards, trying to suss out the truth.

  It occurred to me, then, to look-see if she had a pain imp. She didn’t.

  “I think you probably are my friend,” she went on. “But I also think you’ve got a few things to learn about how to be a friend.”

  After a time, I roused the courage to ask, “Are you my friend? Still?”

  She reached out a foot and kicked the side of my arm. Soft-like. It didn’t hurt.

  “You clabberhead! You think I’d stop liking you because of who your ma is?”

  Now that I thought on it, that didn’t sound like something she would do.

  “I reckon not,” I said. “But there’s the sneak thieving, too.”

  “But you’ve turned it into something good, haven’t you? Taking people’s pain away?” She was silent for a time. “But—please don’t ever steal from me.”

  I was on my feet in a shot. “I would never!”

  Desiree hopped off the swing. Wrapping her arms around me from the side, and setting her cheek on my arm, she said, “And I would never stop being your friend.”

  Bad dreams beat me down hard that night. First were the ones about Nina—her screaming at me in the store, her swallowing fire and puking up pain imps, her grabbing me by the hair and dragging me off while Mabel cried in a cage, belly all flat because someone stole her baby. But the worst ones were the Baron Ramey dreams. First I’d hear Nina’s voice say, “I know where you’re staying!” and then came Baron’s, “I know where you’re staying, too!” And there was his truck cruising that road behind Mabel’s place, and I was all alone. And suddenly a door slammed in the house, and a terrible voice sang, “The party’s over!” and the shadow of a knife appeared on a curtain—

  * * *

  —

  “Wake up, Belle. It’s just a dream.”

  The voice was gentle, but coming as it did against a backcloth of terror, I could only run, retreating far and farther into my nightmare, looking somewhere, anywhere, for a safe place to go.

  “Belle. It’s Mabel. Come back now. You’re all right.”

  The first bit of daylight snuck past my eyelids. The sleep began sloughing off. I started to recall things other than my dreams.

  “Mabel?”

  “Yes, honey. It’s me.”

  Now I did open my eyes. Mabel hadn’t been crying, and her belly was still fat and round.

  “You—you’re all right?” I asked her.

  “Me? I’m fine.” She nodded. Reaching off to one side, she came back with a glass of water and offered it to me.

  I took it and drank deep. “Thankee.”

  “Welcome.” After I sipped some more, she said, “Nightmares, huh? Real bad?”

  “Real real bad,” I agreed.

  Recalling Mabel locked in that dream cage, seeing Baron’s truck behind her dream house, and harking back to Baron Ramey’s terrible song, I said, “I think I have to leave, Mabel.”

  “Leave? How come?”

  “I’m putting you in danger. If Nina knows where I am, then Baron Ramey knows where I am, and who knows—”

  “Baron Ramey? From Dietz?”

  Dietz, a town not far from Sass, was known for its villainy.

  “You know who he is?” I asked.

  “Belle, everyone knows who he is. He comes into town for the express purpose of making trouble. I think Mike Thrasher has arrested Baron Ramey more times than your—uh, your average felon.” She set a piece of her hair behind her ear. “Your ma knows Baron Ramey?”

  “Oh yeah,” I replied. “She knows him.” And all at once, I was telling the whole story about the day I got busted. About Nina’s bruises and Baron Ramey’s visit and their plans for me. “He is a bad man, Mabel. He could slip his rocker, easy, and decide to come up here and fetch me for Nina. He wouldn’t think twice about hurting you to get what he wanted. You and the baby.”

  She rubbed her big belly. “I won’t say it’s not scary. You’re right. A dangerous man like Ramey can get all kinds of nastiness under his skin. But it’s a small town, and when I let Sheriff Thrasher—and JoBeth, and Jimmy, and Ham—know Baron Ramey’s in the picture, I have no doubt the wrath of all Sass will rain down long before Baron gets within a hundred paces of this house.”

  “But—”

  Mabel held up her hand. “Remember what I was saying just yesterday, about how it’s always the adult’s responsibility to look out for the kid?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let
me do my job, girlfriend. You stay right here and let all us grown-ups do our jobs.”

  One part of me wanted to argue, but another part of me thought, What would that be like, to be taken care of, to be kept safe? The answer gave me such a snug feeling that I wanted to burrow into it and hide from my old life forever.

  The argufying part won a little. “But Baron Ramey’s smart!”

  “No, Belle. Baron Ramey is strong and fractious and mean. But he is not smart.” She seemed to be thinking hard when she added, “I do want you to be careful when you’re going around town, though. Stay where people can see you. Try not to be alone. You hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

  “Hang in there, Belle. Maybe go sit in a patch of sunlight to chase away the last of those nightmares. There’s breakfast on the table and fresh buttermilk in the fridge. Eat your fill. I’m going to phone the cavalry.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She left to make her calls.

  You’ll likely never hear me say this ever again, but sometimes it’s downright comforting to let an adult lay down the law.

  * * *

  While I was feeling fairly safe with every eyebulb in town upon me, having each person in Sass know my personal business was no bowl of Monkey Puffs.

  Oh, sure, I got plenty of sympathy: “It just breaks my heart to think of you cooped up in that dirty motor home with that wicked mama of yours!”

  And, as one might imagine, it was hard not to be grateful for well-meant help such as: “It ain’t your fault your ma’s a reprobate. You just hold your head up high!”

  I got legal advice, too: “What you got to do is put a ad in the Sass Settee, saying you’re officially severing yourself from all your mama’s affairs. That way, if she robs a bank or something, you’re not liable for the money.”

  After a week of scrutiny and counsel, I was feeling so vexed that my loco got the best of me. Desiree and me were looking at the magazines at Beezer’s when the pressure come on so hard and so fast I had a borrowed gum pop in my pocket afore I even knew it.