Sneak Thief

by Faith Harkey

  * * *

  —

  The rules were different after that. I didn’t have to go to juvie, but Mabel and Jimmy made me sit down with them for a half hour each day to talk about things. Not any particular things. Whatever I wanted to talk about, in fact. But I had to talk.

  I was also on a sort of restriction. For the time being, I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone. It didn’t matter who I was with—it could be Desiree or Mabel or the man in the moon—but I couldn’t go around by my lonesome.

  There was one other punishment I added for my own self, mostly because I was mad and determined to make myself learn. I was gonna read that Big Book and study about all the ways my loco made me crazy. Because it seemed to me that far worse than the sneak thieving of flosses and candlesticks was the stealing of pain imps—a crime that just about got two people killed. No, I didn’t care much for that Bigger Power they was so excited about in that hardcover, but the Big Book was 575 pages long. The BP couldn’t be on every single one of them, could it?

  The book was still turned facedown on the carpet in my room.

  “See, this is what you get,” I said to myself as I turned it over and unbent the folded pages. “Now you have to read.”

  I read.

  We took inventory, making a list of all that was good, and all that was bad, about us. For the first time, we saw ourselves clearly. With clarity came courage. We asked our Higher Power to help us make amends for each of our wrongs. That was when things really began to change.

  When things really began to change, huh? Change, I reckoned, was exactly what I needed to do. For starters, I needed to stop putting folks in the hospital with my pain thieving.

  I skipped over the Bigger Power stuff and honed in on that word amends.

  * * *

  —

  “What’s amends?” I asked Jimmy that night as he and me and Mabel sat around the table.

  His eyebrows shot up. “You been reading that book I gave you?”

  I nodded.

  “Good for you. All right.” He set his hand on his chin and appeared to think it over. “An amends is a way to make something right. If you owe money, you try to pay it back or work it off. If you owe an apology, you give it.”

  Suddenly, the engine in my brain sparked and roared to life. I turned to Mabel. “Like Crispy did with his letter?”

  She nodded. “Yes, actually.”

  Jimmy didn’t know what we were talking about, so I told him about Crispy.

  “That’s a fine amends,” Jimmy agreed.

  “Did you ever make amends?” I asked him.

  “I made a lot of them, after I quit drinking.”

  I thought back to Nina in the grocery store and all the apologies she might owe. And that was just the one time; she wasn’t even a regular drinker. A full-on drunk really could have a heap of amends to make. “Was it hard?”

  He sipped from a coffee mug. “It was at first. But then it started to feel really good.”

  “Desiree, will you help me with something?”

  The rainless clouds had gone, leaving the sky summer bright. We were sprawled out on the Orrs’ front lawn, soaking wet from helping wash Jimmy’s truck, then turning the hoses on each other. Desiree was in her bathing suit, but I didn’t have one, so I wore some old shorts and a top of Mabel’s that read I DIG NATIVE PLANTS!

  “You know I will,” she replied. “What’s up?”

  Desiree knew pretty much everything now. I’d told her about how my imp plucking had harmed Ham and Nina. She also knew about me stealing the candlesticks and what I’d done with them. Her eyes turned wide and worried as I explained about Baron—from the breaking of Nina’s arm to the time he’d held me to a wall by my throat, which I’d never told anyone before. But even after all that…I could tell Desiree still liked me just fine.

  I said, “Okay, so you know I’m trying to bust out of my loco for thieving, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I’m reading this book your dad gave me—at first I stole it, but then he said I could keep it—and it says, if I want to change, I have to do some things.”

  She rolled onto her side and pushed herself partway up on her elbow. “Like what?”

  I turned, too, so we were facing each other. “I have to make a list of myself, everything good and everything bad about me. Then, when I see all the things I’ve done wrong, I have to go around and make stuff right.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Yeah, but you don’t understand. I’ve done a lot of things wrong. Just keeping track of it all is gonna be a chore!”

  She sat upright now. “It won’t be as hard as you think. I’ll even do it with you.”

  “You’d do that?” I asked. “Make a list, too?”

  Desiree dipped her chin. “We can plunk it into my tablet and make it all official.”

  “And your computer can tell us which amends to make?”

  “It can tell us what we’ve done and what’s left to do,” she replied.

  I grinned. “All right, then! Let’s dump out the trash cans and polish the silver, girl! We’re cleaning house!”

  * * *

  —

  “I’m a sneak thief and an occasional fabler. I do stuff without thinking first. I quit school, and even when I did go, I was late a lot. I’ve been selfish and rotten, and most days I’m at least a little ornery. You got all that?” I asked, looking over Desiree’s shoulder at her computer tablet.

  Ornery, she typed. “Okay, yeah. But you haven’t named a single good thing about yourself.”

  “All right. I’m—” I ransacked my brain. Twice. “I can’t think of anything.”

  Desiree shook her head and rolled her eyes. Then she began typing. “You are thoughtful of other folks’ suffering.”

  “You see what good that did me. And them!” I reminded her.

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s still a fine quality in a person.” She drummed her keypad, pondered, then started typing again. “You are honest.”

  “I am not!”

  “You ’fessed up about almost killing Ham, didn’t you?” she asked. “And you told me about Baron. I could tell it was really hard for you, but you told it.”

  “But, still—”

  She overrode me. “You are good at plants. You’re smart.”

  “Now, come on!”

  “You try. You don’t give up on things.” She tapped, Doesn’t give up.

  “Fine, good!” I can’t explain it, but it was hard, hearing somebody say so many nice things about me. “Now what about you?”

  “What about me?” Desiree asked.

  “Your good things.” I started counting things off on my fingers. “You’re nice. And fun. And weird, but in a likeable way.”

  “Yeah?” She turned to look at me, her nose all crinkled with laughter.

  “And you’re beautiful,” I added.

  A curious moment passed right then, quiet and loud all at once.

  Desiree took my hand. “Thank you, Hush. You’re beautiful, too.”

  * * *

  —

  As for the list of amends, we decided to start with the most recent first: the imp stealing. That way, any ill that might yet come of the pain lifting could still be remedied.

  Desiree and I sat looking at my jars of pain imps.

  “I should offer to return them,” I said. “But does it matter which one goes to who, do you think?”

  She canted her head and considered. “Do they all look the same?”

  I told her they did. “I reckon I can only try my best. All right. So let’s begin with Mabel. It was her pain imp that started it all.”

  Desiree typed, Mabel Holt—1 pain imp.

  It was hard to remember every person I’d plucked and how many imps they’d had, but in
the end I think we got fairly close to the truth of it. And, boy howdy, did I have a big, long list of folks to make amends to.

  “You know, they might not even believe me,” I said. “Seeing as how I’ll be carrying nothing but an empty-looking jar, offering nothing but the word of a known thief.”

  Desiree gave me a funny look. “Yeah, but, Hush, this is Sass.”

  “So?”

  “Surely you know there’s more magic in Sass than there are ankle biters at a lollipop stand?”

  “Mabel did tell me about something called shines. And wish cakes.”

  “Yes! Exactly!” She straightened her glasses. “In Sass, people believe in magic. If you tell them you’re a pain lifter—and remind them of how good they felt after you plucked their imps—they’re going to believe you.”

  I goose-necked. “If you say so.”

  * * *

  —

  “Oh, sure!” That was Laura Lynn, one of my yoga students, getting all giddy. “Pain lifting! Sure! Old Nate Cunningham’s granny used to have that shine!”

  “I—I heard that, too.” I was more than a little flummoxed by her response, even after Desiree’s claims of magic and believers.

  “So, you say you lifted some pain of mine?” Laura Lynn asked.

  With a firm nod, I said, “Yes. Right there on your setter.” I pointed to her right butt cheek.

  She gave it a good think. “You know, it has been weeks since my hip last flared up! You did that?”

  I hung my head. “I took it without your permission, yes, ma’am. But I want you to know, I think I can give it back, no harm done.” Holding up my jar, I went on, “You’ll have your pain just like it never left.”

  She scratched her chin with one long fingernail. “And, uh, why would I want that, exactly?”

  “So you have your early-warning system. See, as I understand it, pain is a teacher, and it tells us we have to worry.” I couldn’t help feeling I didn’t have that exactly right. “Point is, if something’s wrong with you, but you don’t have any pain, how will you know it? So if I give you back your pain, you’ll know there’s a problem.”

  Laura Lynn’s laughter sounded like a rippling stream. “Oh, sugar! I know there’s a problem! I’ve been crooked and slantwise since I was born! And unless I want to have surgery—which I do not—the only hope for me is your yoga class and, apparently, your pain lifting. So, if you’re asking me to take my pain back, I think my answer is, thank you very kindly, but no!”

  That left me somewhat addlepated, but after a moment’s reflection, I remembered the cause for my going there: to make amends. If Laura Lynn didn’t want her pain back, maybe I could still do right by her.

  “You’re surely within your rights. I wouldn’t want unnecessary butt pain, neither,” I said. “But I want to promise you: if you were to keep coming to my yoga class, I swear I would never lift another pain off you without asking first.”

  She thought that over. “That’s very good of you.”

  I waited to see if she had any anger she wanted to ventilate, as the Big Book said she understandably might.

  “That all?” she asked.

  “That all with you?”

  “Unless you want to buy a water purifier.” It turned out Laura Lynn ran a small business out of her trunk.

  “Not today. But thanks for offering.”

  * * *

  —

  That was pretty much how it went with most of the townsfolk. Nearly all of them believed I could—and did—lift their pain. And all but one said I was welcome to keep it, thank you very much.

  “I reckon you should give back all of it,” Ham said, his voice still a little raspy with the effort of healing. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  He was home from the hospital, but still under doctor’s orders to rest, so I was sitting beside him in his bedroom, the TV on, but muted.

  I unscrewed the jar lid and took out eight pain imps, the number I’d plucked off of him over his weeks of yoga, plus the one from his appendix.

  He looked at my cupped hand, but of course he couldn’t see the imps. “Will it hurt?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” I told him. “You’re the first one who’s wanted them back. They do give a little ache when I hold them in my hand.”

  He sighed. “All right. Let’s have them.”

  I held one up after the other, each to the spot where I thought I remembered plucking it. Of the eight, only four took.

  I tried again, and failed. “I’m sorry, Ham! Some of them won’t stick.”

  “Which ones?”

  I told him.

  “Oh, well,” he said. “The one on my arm was a burn from the grill. It’s all healed up now. And my leg, that was just a pulled muscle. Those usually fix themselves fairly quick. The other two, whatever they were, must’ve cleared up, too.”

  I know it may seem silly, or even obvious to a smarter person, but I realized something right then: I was not the only hope for removing folks’ pain. Sometimes suffering could heal on its own, without my help. Heck, I’d even seen hints of it before, when someone’s pain imp winked out right before my eyes, but I hadn’t really understood.

  “What about the others? Do they hurt?” Of the four other imps that did stick, all but one looked fairly pale. That one, over his appendix, was darker.

  “A little ache, like you said. Except for the incision. That one does smart.” He shifted a little in his bed. “But I guess that’s what the pills are for. I don’t much like medicine,” he confided.

  I helped him get as comfortable as I could and even ran down to Beezer’s to drop off that prescription he hadn’t needed until he had his imps back. Before I left, I made him the same promise that I’d given to all my other imp-plucking victims: I would never again lift his pain without his say-so.

  “That would probably be for the best,” he sighed. “But it is a fine gift you have. I wouldn’t set it on a shelf altogether.”

  “Maybe. Truth be told, it seems a lot bigger than one person can keep track of. I don’t know how Granny Cunningham did it.”

  I was on my way out when I remembered something.

  “Hey, Ham,” I said. “Thanks for that day in the grocery store. Standing up to Nina.”

  “Happy to.” His soft smile was a comfort to me. “How is your ma? I heard she had some trouble.”

  I looked down at my hands. “I, uh, I’m not sure.” I hadn’t seen her since that visit to the emergency room.

  According to Desiree’s database, Nina was the last, lone person on my imp-amends list.

  Me and Mabel and Jimmy had a long talk about it—whether I should offer amends to Nina and, if so, how and when. It was hard because, even though I figured that I should make an apology, I couldn’t help feeling that she owed me some amends, too. Underneath my worry for Nina’s injuries, I was mad. I never deserved to be scourged with the lash of her heartlessness. But then again, if she’d been in so much pain that she couldn’t think straight…I couldn’t help recalling what she’d said in the emergency room about having a notion that she wasn’t a real good ma.

  The decision I finally came to—with Mabel and Jimmy’s okay—was, no matter what Nina did or whether she ever volunteered her own amends, I did need to make an apology and offer her imps back.

  Nina wasn’t staying in ’Bagoville anymore, Jimmy told me. After the hospital, she’d decided to start fresh. So, she went to a place called Brandy’s Family Lodge. It was “something like a halfway house, and something like a shelter, with people to help her heal and grow.” I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but it didn’t really matter. That’s where Nina was, and that’s where I had to go.

  The next morning, Mabel drove me and my imp jar to Brandy’s.

  Even though I’d never heard of it, the lodge was in town, not especially far from
Desiree’s house. It was a kind of square with a hole in the middle of it—four L-shaped apartments on the outside and a garden in the middle. Nina’s apartment was number three.

  “I’ll wait here for you.” Mabel eased herself backward onto a bench in the garden. So round and cumbersome, that baby was getting! “Call me if you need anything.”

  I told her I would. Then, after a fair amount of dillydallying, looking at the flowers and whatnot, I got up the nerve to knock on Nina’s door.

  All at once, there she was in the doorway. My ma. Her arm was still in a sling and her bruises had greened up something awful. Her pain imps hung on. But she did smile, and she even tried to hug me, which was mighty peculiar because neither of us really knew how to do it right.

  The place was nice-ish inside, with a small brown sofa and carpets only a little stained. A book beside a lamp had the title The Courage to Heal. It was bookmarked at the halfway point. There was a table, too—that’s where I set down the imp jar—and a couple chairs around it. I sat. After a pause, Nina took the seat next to me. We swapped nervous howdies.

  Then there was a great deal of quiet.

  All at once, a pressure built up in me—worse than a hundred locos and full of rage, on top of it.

  The holler tore out of me. “How could you!”

  Nina’s eyes got big, but she didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  “You were gonna send me off! To trick old people out of their money! You were going to grind out all the good left in me—which wasn’t very much, thanks to you and your meanness! I’m your own flesh and blood, and you treated me like I was nothing! You called me names, you—you made fun of me for wanting toilet paper! You are a despisable good-for-nothing, and if there was an award for worst mother in the world, they wouldn’t even consider you, because you’re no mother at all!”