Sneak Thief Page 10

  She closed her eyes. I thought she might be imagining the trees of Sass decorated for the holidays. “I love that idea.”

  A soft wind joggled the branches, casting a piece of ripe fruit to the ground.

  “One time I stole a Christmas ribbon,” I told her. “It was so pretty.”

  “Did you put it in a tree?”

  I shook my head. “Somebody might have found out I stole it. I did keep it inside my coat, though. I liked to look at it.”

  It was long gone now, of course. In ’Bagoville, even when you had a private stash, nice things had a way of disappearing.

  I reached out and plucked an apple. “You make pie from these?”

  “One certainly could. I like to use them for cobbler, served warm with plenty of cream.”

  That woman never seemed to run out of fine ways to fill a belly!

  “It’s funny, how you used to throw up your food, but you cook so good now,” I said.

  She leaned her head against a limb. “It took me a long time to make peace with food. I spent a long time doing simple things. Breathing the scents of bread and broth. Cutting open apples to look at the seeds.”

  With those words, a door of memory opened in my mind.

  I said, “My first daddy used to like to plant his apple seeds after he finished eating the apple. I don’t think any ever grew, though.”

  Mabel turned so she could look me in the eye. “Do you ever see him, Belle?”

  “Who? My first daddy?”

  She nodded.

  “Naw. After Nina kicked him out, he went to find work in Colorado. One time I found a paper with his phone number on it, and I called, but the lady who answered said he died from coal sickness.”

  Mabel sucked a breath through her teeth. “That’s a hard way to find out.”

  “Wasn’t no other way I could find out.” I paused. “I guess.”

  In the silence, I tapped a few apples and set them bobbling. “Ready for cobbler, I’d say.”

  She gave a soft smile, but she wasn’t ready to change the subject. “Do you miss him?”

  I recalled one time I’d missed my first daddy so powerfully, I spent a whole night crying. Nina called me an ugly crybaby and told me to shut up.

  “No. I had to stop that,” I answered. “I do like to remember certain things about him, though.

  “Once, he took me to this ditch out by the highway, and he showed me all the tadpoles swimming there. They were real cute. He said we’d go back later, to see them in their in-betweens. You know, when they’re mostly frogs but still with tails? But we never got the chance.” All at once, my eyes turned wet. I tried to blink the water away, but that only sent fat tears rolling down my cheeks. “I really wanted to see those frogs with tails!”

  “I bet he really wanted to show them to you,” Mabel offered.

  It was hard to go on having those feelings about lost frogs and my first daddy cast out, then dying. I was almost glad when a pain imp popped up near Mabel’s heart. Not for her pain, of course, but because it was something I could remedy.

  “I’m sorry, Mabel. I think my story hurt you some. I’ll be glad to take that away.” I reached for her imp.

  Before I could grasp it, she caught my hand in both of her hands. “Belle. Wait.”

  “But—”

  She gave my fingers a squeeze. “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to keep this pain. To be sad, together with you. Is that all right?”

  It didn’t make any sense, and I told her so. “Pain is terrible, Mabel. Why would you ever want to keep it?”

  She thought for a time. “You remember how we were talking about weeds? How we might not want them in the garden, but they still have their place?” When I nodded, she said, “I think pain has its place, too. Sometimes it needs to stay awhile. When we stop it before its time, we become less able to feel other important things. Even good things, like joy.”

  I shook my head. Pain never gave me no joy. “I don’t know about that.”

  “That’s okay. Friends don’t have to agree on everything.” She let go my hand. “But I still want to keep my sad for a while.”

  So, I sat with her there, among the apples, and let her have her pain. Even if I didn’t want my own grief, I surely couldn’t leave a friend alone while she wrestled with her sorrow.

  * * *

  Later that day, while Mabel and I were picking apples for cobbler, the phone rang. Mabel went in to answer it, but then she reappeared just as quickly.

  She handed me the phone. “Call for you.”

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Guess what!” the caller said first thing.

  “Desiree?” I asked, distracted by the sad, flopping leaves of a nearby plant that had looked fine only yesterday.

  “Yes, it’s Desiree,” she laughed. “Guess what!”

  I set the plant aside for Mabel to look at later. “I guess…you got something you want to tell me.”

  I could almost hear her rolling her eyes—in a kindly way, of course. “You’re not very good at this game. Really, now. Guess.”

  “Okay, wait.” I thought for a second. “I got it. One of your horses did something funny on the dentist show.”

  “Well, yeah. Rooney did try to eat my hair,” she admitted. “But that’s not what I was going to say. Guess!”

  “Desiree,” I said, fairly sure I would only go on disappointing her, “I got a sick plant to care for, so maybe you could just tell me.”

  “Oh. A sick plant? Oh.” She sounded truly sorrowful.

  “It’ll be all right. Tell me what you’re so excited about.”

  “Well, I don’t know if you can come now, with your sick plant and all,” she began. “But tonight’s the start of the fair, and we go every year, and my ma said maybe you should go with us, and then you could spend the night!”

  “I—” I couldn’t find any words. There was so much packed in there. Go to the fair? Do it as part of a family? Spend the night at a friend’s house? Those things just didn’t happen to a girl like me.

  I tried to imagine myself getting on one of those fair rides. Or eating those foods that smelled so good when I sniffed them on the breeze. I saw people winning prizes and eating cotton candies—and tried to picture myself as one of them. Just as fast as I conjured it, the image got wiped away.

  Ain’t nothing there for ’Bagoville girls. Nor for sneak thieves. Hush Cantrell doesn’t go to fairs or throw a ball for a prize. That’s for people who have got. And the only reason I got anything is because it’s on loan from Mabel.

  “I can’t go. Sorry,” I said flatly.

  “Because of your plant.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Even though it wasn’t right, at all. I’d just told my friend a flat-out lie. Even more proof that I wasn’t fit for a fair.

  “Oh, Hush. Are you sure Mabel couldn’t watch the plant for just a little while? The fair only comes one time a year.”

  “Sorry,” I answered. “It’s a responsibility, you know?” And there I was, still lying to her. Of course Mabel could care for the plant. She had tended her plants before I came along and she surely could again.

  Desiree sighed. “I understand. I’ll let you get back to your work. Bye.”

  I felt like the sorriest liar who ever saved themselves from having a heap of fun.

  I walked over and gave the phone back to Mabel.

  “Got something for you to look at,” I said.

  Mabel studied the floppy plant and diagnosed it as having outgrown its pot. It took all of fifteen minutes to transplant it.

  “It’ll be better than new in a couple days,” Mabel promised me.

  “It don’t need nothing else?” I asked, hoping to turn my lie to a truth.

  “No,” she answered. “At this point, too much atten
tion would be as bad as too little. We’ll give it a good watering tomorrow, but that’s all.”

  I nodded, looking down at my shoes.

  “Did something happen, Belle?” Mabel wanted to know.

  I thought about denying it, but I’d had enough of fabling for the time being. “Yeah. I had…” I rummaged through my thoughts. “Can you tell me something?”

  She nodded, dusting potting soil off her hands.

  “All right. So, imagine a person is hungry and poor,” I told her. “And they get invited to a big buffet, with all kinds of good food. But only for one night. And they know they could have their fill for that one night, and it would be real fine. But then, the next day, they’ll go back to being poor and hungry, with only the memory of that good food—and the knowing that other people were still eating good, but not her. What would you say to that?”

  “I’d say that’s a tough place to be,” Mabel replied.

  “Right! And so maybe when someone invites you to this buffet, it’s easier just to say you can’t go, that you have stuff to do, even if that’s not one hundred percent true. That’s probably what you’d do, right?” I asked hopefully.

  “Hmm.” Mabel blinked a few times as she gave it some thought. “I don’t know for sure. I mean, it is a thing people do, trying to avoid pain by holding back from living. But…” She tilted sideways one way, then the other, as if she was weighing something.

  “But what?”

  “I don’t think we can be sure that a buffet is the only buffet, ever. Surprises come along all the time. I didn’t know you’d be staying here with me, but here we are. That’s a good thing I’d never expected.”

  “Yeah,” I sort of agreed. “But some people have more good surprises than others. Some people, it’s just one long life of sorrow.”

  “Not all sorrow,” she countered. “Even one buffet means it’s not all sorrow.”

  I jerked my chin back. “Well—”

  “What if by going to the buffet, you—she—meets someone who invites her to another buffet?” Mabel asked. “Or she learns something new that opens a door to a whole new adventure? There could be amazing surprises she’d miss because she didn’t go to the buffet.”

  I thought about that. Talking to Desiree at the laundrymat had earned me a crazy friend. And it led me to Jimmy, who arranged for me to stay with Mabel. Not just one good thing, but a string of them. I could have just kept my mouth shut and walked away, but then I’d have missed all of this.

  “It’s an old saying, but it’s true,” Mabel said. “Eighty percent of life is just showing up.”

  * * *

  —

  I went into my room and set the imp jar before me.

  “You know a lot about pain,” I said to the wrigglers. “What do you think? Take the chance on a good thing, knowing it could hurt when it’s gone? Or savor what happiness you can, hoping that there’s other surprises down the road?”

  They rippled and shimmied, but they didn’t reply.

  “I know one thing,” I told them. “I didn’t like lying to Desiree.”

  * * *

  —

  It was that last thought that finally brought me to Desiree’s door. Mabel’s borrowed satchel, filled with pajamas and such, hung over my shoulder.

  I knocked. And knocked again.

  I heard a giggle as the door flung open. I readied myself to grab Desiree by the arm and shout, “I can go!”—and found myself looking into a strange girl’s face.

  “Hi?” the girl said. She was pretty with real nice clothes, and she looked like she’d never missed a meal in her life.

  “Hi. Uh. Who are you?”

  “Wait, Kitty, I’m coming!” came Desiree’s voice from inside the house. “I’ll be right back, Ma.”

  And there she stood in the doorway, smiling so hard it pinked her cheeks.

  “Hush!” Desiree exclaimed.

  “I’m sorry. I…” I glanced at the plump girl. “Uh…”

  “Oh!” Desiree threw the door open wider. “Kitty. This is my friend, Hush. Hush, this is Kitty.” She waved her arms to Kitty, then me, then back again. “Kitty’s coming to the fair with us. Her mother couldn’t take her and—”

  “She’s a-spending the night?” I finished glumly.

  “Yeah.” A little frown creased her brow. “Are you okay? Did your plant die?”

  “Her plant?” Kitty asked with a sniff.

  Desiree turned to her friend. Her other friend. “Hush works at a nursery. She takes care of plants.”

  “Works, like a job?” Another sniff, and clearly a disapproving one.

  “So, your plant?” Desiree said gently.

  I shook my head. “No. It didn’t die. It—um—wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

  Now Desiree saw the satchel I carried. “You can come after all?” Her eyes lit up.

  Kitty’s eyes, I noted, did not.

  I had a powerful desire to roll over Kitty like a tire over a cow pie.

  “Would that be all right?” I asked.

  “Yes! Come in!” Desiree pushed past Kitty and shouted toward the kitchen, “Ma! Guess what! Hush can come!”

  “Yahoo!” Becky called back. Peeking her head out, she asked, “Mabel says it’s okay, and all?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I promised.

  “Come in quick, then! Drop your things in Didi’s room and we’ll get gone!”

  * * *

  —

  It was Jimmy and Becky, Martin and Desiree, me…and Kitty. The six of us piled into Jimmy’s truck.

  Kitty squeezed in after Desiree, so I was left to strap in next to Martin. I gave him a smile, but he was in no mood for fun.

  “I don’t like rides. Cotton candy makes me puke. I don’t care whose cow wins best in show,” Martin complained, ticking items off on his fingers. “Why do I have to go, again?”

  “Because it’s your father’s birthday and we’re celebrating as a family,” Becky replied.

  Martin grunted.

  “It’s your birthday, Jimmy?” I called out.

  “Forty-two years young,” he replied.

  “Well, I hope, um…” I’d never actually wished anyone a happy birthday before. “I hope you’re even younger next year.”

  There was a sliver of a pause before Jimmy answered, “Thank you kindly, Hush.”

  In the backseat, Kitty sniffed. She was all about the sniffing, that one.

  Desiree leaned forward and set her elbows on the back of the bench seat Martin and I shared. “So, tell me now! What happened with your plant? Was it a dramatic rescue?”

  I turned to face her, straining against the seat belt. “Mabel said it might not be sick after all, but only in need of a new pot,” I explained. “She also has this special food for transplanted plants, which is what you call it when you move them from one home to another. It has extra—”

  Now watch what Kitty did here: she flat-out rolled her eyes and mouthed, Boring.

  For Desiree’s sake, I swallowed my ire and asked through gritted teeth, “Kitty, what do you do for fun?”

  Desiree gave Kitty her full attention, waiting for an answer.

  “I’m an equestrian,” Kitty drawled.

  I sifted my brain for that word and came up empty.

  Desiree piped up. “That’s a fancy name for a horse rider. Kitty and I take lessons together. So, I’m an equestrian, too.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Right. A questrian.”

  “E-questrian.” Kitty said it slow and loud, as if she was talking to a fool.

  “How about some music?” Becky called from the front, then turned on the radio fairly loud.

  I watched—but couldn’t hear—as Desiree whispered something in Kitty’s ear. Probably talking about horses. And all their special lessons together. Ki
tty probably has bags of money for lessons. She probably—

  Money! Oh, crow!

  “Jimmy, Becky,” I yelled forward. “I’m sorry, but I left my money at Mabel’s house. I have to go back for it.” Would my yoga money be enough for the fair?

  Ma Orr waved a hand in the air. “Oh, sugar, it’s our treat.”

  “I don’t need the charity!” I cried. “I swear if we could only just stop off—”

  “Really, Hush. It’s our pleasure,” Jimmy shouted over the music. “It’s a part of my present that we can all do this together.”

  My belly twisted. Charity case or ingrate? There was no way to win.

  “If it’s your present, I guess…,” I said, feeling like the poor girl headed for the rich buffet. “Thanks.”

  In the rearview mirror, I caught a flash of Kitty expressing her sour feelings about me. Desiree wasn’t looking real happy, either.

  In the fading daylight, the sharp colors of the fair seemed magical, but treacherous, too. As if you could stare at those whirling rides and flashing neons until they held you frozen in a party-colored dream forever.

  Becky disappeared, then came back with a box of gold coins. She set a handful in each of our palms: Desiree’s, Martin’s, Kitty’s, and mine.

  “I promised Jimmy we’d look at the antique cars,” she told us. “Will you be all right on your own for a while?” She glanced at us, me and Kitty especially. A worried look crossed her face. “Mmm—maybe Jimmy and I should skip the cars.”

  Desiree’s brother was already sauntering off.

  “Meet us back here at nine, Martin!” Becky called after him.

  “You have to go see the cars, Ma,” Desiree told her. “Dad’s been talking about it for weeks. Don’t worry.” She waved an arm. “We know most of these people.”

  Jimmy strode up with two race-car soda cups. “Ready, Beck?”

  Ma Orr nodded. “All right. You three be good—and kind. We’ll see you at nine sharp, and we’ll all do the funhouse together.” She wove her arm through Jimmy’s and they started off. After a second, she called back to us, “Those tokens are good for food, too. Eat if you’re hungry, all right?”