Sneak Thief Read online

  I didn’t have to think for very long. There was no one. I was just about to say so, and surrender to my terrible fate, when the knowing Voice whispered a name in my mind.

  “Belle?” The dispatcher pressed her lips together, waiting and hopeful.

  “Yes, ma’am. There might be someone.”

  She gave a little sigh of relief. “Good. Who?”

  “Jimmy Orr.”

  JoBeth’s eyebrows rose. “All right! Do you know his number?” She picked up the phone.

  My hopes crashed into that puddle of sunlight at my feet. “N-no. I don’t know it.”

  The librarian/dispatcher waved a hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll call Sue. She’s good friends with Becky.”

  She made a call to Sue, a call to Becky, and a call to Jimmy. Not five minutes later, Desiree’s daddy walked in the PD door. He wore a blue work shirt that said DANDY ANDY’S on the pocket. His eyes were worried but kind.

  “Hello, Hush,” he said.

  “Hello, sir.”

  “JoBeth, is there someplace Hush and I could talk?”

  She pointed us to a hallway on the far side of the library.

  I got up to follow Jimmy down the hall, when I remembered something. “Can I have that book?” I jutted my chin in Jimmy’s direction. “It’s his.”

  The dispatcher’s eyebrows flew up again. “Sure.”

  * * *

  —

  We sat in hardback chairs at a little round table. The only other thing in the room was a picture on the wall. It showed a flying duck, the kind with the band around its neck.

  I set the book between us. “I stole this from your house.”

  Jimmy looked at the book for a long time.

  “Telling you that probably wasn’t the best way to get you on my side,” I added.

  “Hush,” he said, “why did you ask JoBeth to call me?”

  “I had to have someone vouch for me,” I replied.

  He nodded. “I understand that. But why me?”

  “I didn’t have no one else.”

  He reached out for the book then, and held it up. “Why did you take this?”

  I closed my eyes, swallowed, and admitted, “It’s my loco. I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Did you need this book in particular?” he wanted to know.

  I shook my head. “No. It just had to be something.”

  He set the book back down. I was worried he might lash out, but his eyes were still kind.

  “Do you know what an addiction is?” Jimmy asked me.

  I wasn’t sure what it had to do with anything, but I was game. “It’s when you can’t stop taking drugs.”

  “That’s one kind,” he agreed. “But there’s others. Anytime a person can’t stop doing something, that’s what you call an addiction.”

  I didn’t have to cogitate for long before I realized what he was getting at. “I think…I might be addicted to sneak thieving.”

  He nodded. “I think you might, too.”

  It was too terrible and too wonderful, all at once, to have a name for what I’d done. An addiction. I was more ashamed than ever, but the relief of having spoke it out loud made my eyes brim with tears.

  “I swear I tried not to take your book, Jimmy!” I cried. “I took your floss, too!”

  “Okay,” he said softly after I was done with my lament. Then he sighed. “Okay, Hush. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  I heard Jimmy’s voice, and JoBeth’s, as they talked something over. In about ten minutes, Jimmy walked back in.

  Setting his back against the door frame, he said, “All right, Hush. Here’s what’s going to happen.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “After you go home tonight—” he began.

  “No! I’m sorry, but no! I can’t go home tonight, sir!” I was grateful that Jimmy had come, and I wanted very much for the Orrs to like me, but no matter what, I could not, would not go home only to have Baron Ramey cart me off to be a con man’s helper.

  Jimmy paused, but he didn’t blink. “How come?”

  I didn’t know what to say or how to say it, so I just shut up.

  “I want to help you, Hush, but you’ve got to help me,” he said. “Tell me something. Tell me the smallest bit.”

  I set my hands on the table and looked at them, hard. They weren’t a grown person’s hands, no matter how much I sometimes imagined they were. Truth to tell, under the harsh PD lights, those hands looked downright small. They could sneak-thieve, but what else were they good for?

  I did need help.

  “I steal things, Jimmy,” I said.

  “I know it,” he replied.

  “But that’s all I do. I don’t want to trick old people out of their money and leave them broke.”

  His brow wrinkled. “I don’t quite follow you.”

  It took me a minute to say this last part: “My mother wants to send me to a hustler, to help him run his scam.”

  He opened his mouth and shut it again before he finally spoke. “I understand you now. Stay put. I’ll be back in a while.”

  This time, I heard Jimmy and JoBeth talking, plus the sheriff, too. For most of it, I couldn’t make out their words, but once I did hear Sheriff Thrasher say, “If that woman ain’t got a larceny record longer than my arm!” Not long after that, JoBeth peeked in, smiled at me, then shut the door. I couldn’t hear anything after that.

  * * *

  —

  The minutes ticked by. At what I reckoned was the thirty-minute mark, JoBeth brought me a soda and a sandwich in a take-out box. Another half hour later, I’d eaten maybe three bites and I was still alone.

  Finally, though, the door opened and Jimmy came back in.

  He sat down and took his own deep breath. “There’s an offer on the table, Hush. Sheriff Thrasher okayed it, and I think it’s a good plan. You listen and tell me what you think, all right?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I know a lady in town, her name’s Mabel Tromp—sorry, Mabel Holt. She got remarried. Anyhow, she runs a plant business,” he explained, “and she could use an extra hand around the garden. Plus her husband and her son are away for the summer, so I reckon she’d appreciate a little companionship. I spoke with her just now, told her about you and your situation. She thought she might be willing to have you stay with her for a while. Now, you’d be expected to work four hours each day—”

  “I’ll do it,” I said, eager to not have to go back and face Nina and Baron.

  He lifted his hand. “Hold up. That’s not all. You’ve got you a problem, Hush, and you need some help to fix it. So here’s what I need you to promise me. Every time you feel your loco, before you steal something, I want you to talk to someone. Me or Mabel or JoBeth or whoever. Though I’d recommend that you choose someone other than the shop owner you’re thinking of thieving from. That might not go as well.” He smiled.

  But me, I wasn’t smiling. “I don’t know if I can promise that.” What if there was no one nearby to talk to? What if the train was a-coming down so hard I couldn’t think or talk, but only steal?

  “Can you promise to try?” Jimmy asked.

  I thought about it. “Yes.”

  “That’s good enough for me. But what that means is, if you do steal something, you still need to come to me or Mabel, so we can try to set things right. Will you do that?”

  The very thought of it made my gut clench, but I did manage to tell him, “Yes.”

  “Now, there’s some other rules you’d have to follow.”

  I nodded, though I couldn’t help wondering how I was going to keep track of all this.

  “Any guidelines Mabel sets for you, you have to obey.” He tapped the table to let me know he was serious. “And you’re not to go see your mother, at home or anywhere else.
No matter what. If you need something from your house, clothes or what have you, let JoBeth know and the sheriff will get them for you.”

  “I don’t know how Nina will take that, me just up and disappearing,” I said.

  “You let me and Sheriff Thrasher worry about that,” Jimmy rumbled. “This summer, I want you to think real hard about you.”

  I didn’t tell him, but I was already thinking hard.

  “What about after the summer?” Going back to Nina’s after three months gone, and her having all that time to stew in her juices, getting all cross-legged with me? It might be easier just to go back now.

  “That’ll depend on how you do. And what your mama does. If you do go back, she’ll have to clean up her act.”

  I sighed. There weren’t nobody, nowhere who could ever stop Nina from doing what she pleased.

  Jimmy sniffed out my doubt. “As of today, a sizable number of very fine people care what happens to you. You’re not alone anymore.”

  I nodded and tried to believe it.

  “What other rules?” I asked.

  “Not too much else. I want to see you at my house at least once a week for supper. I hope you’ll spend a good chunk of your free time with Desiree. She likes you very much, you know.”

  I’ll admit, that made the darkness seem a little brighter.

  “Other than that”—he raised up his hands—“maybe try to eat some more of your lunch while you make a list of things you’ll need from your house. In a little while, you, me, and JoBeth will get into my truck and head over to Mabel’s.” His chair creaked as he leaned back. “So, that’s the offer. Take all of it or none of it. What do you say?”

  “Can I just ask one thing?”

  “You bet.”

  “Is the other choice juvie?”

  “Most likely,” he replied.

  “I just wanted to know.”

  He dipped his head. “Always good to know your options.”

  I looked around me, at my hands on the table, at the duck pictured on the wall. I considered the lunch JoBeth brought and the patient expression of the man sitting across from me. I mused on Desiree, some. Baron’s job offer came back to me, as did Nina’s cold reply. I thought of the chance I’d taken that morning, stealing from the finest store in town. Any yokel would have known I’d get caught.

  I took a deep breath and swallowed it down. “I’d like to take the offer. And not just because the other choice is juvie.”

  * * *

  —

  I gave my list to JoBeth, and she promised the sheriff would have my things to me by nightfall. She also gave me my rainbow rock and started to return my money.

  “Could the sheriff give that to Nina for me? It’s really hers.”

  JoBeth looked at me sideways.

  “I didn’t steal it. It’s just change from buying toilet paper.” I thought for a second. “Maybe he should bring her the TP, too. She’s out.”

  The librarian/dispatcher laughed. “I’ll let him know.”

  Jimmy and JoBeth and I were on our way out the door when I remembered, “Oh, your book, Jimmy! I left it on the table!”

  He went back for it, then handed it to me. “Tell you what. You hang on to it.”

  “Thanks.” I couldn’t help marveling. Two presents in two days—and considering how awful I’d been! I’d never known the like.

  As we drove toward Mabel Holt’s house, something peculiar happened. It was like a bunch of doors got thrown open in my mind and all kinds of mess started spilling out. Memories like crazy! I saw sunrise breaking over busted appliances. Chickens scratching bare dirt. A pile of trash burning on a cold winter morning.

  I recalled Nina chasing off the gray-haired lady who’d wanted to help me with my schoolwork. After that came a memory of a sick dog whining outside our ’Bago door. I had tried to give him water, but he’d died anyway.

  Then I remembered my first daddy bringing me some broken crayons and paper with printing on the backs. “It’s good enough for starting,” he’d said. “But I’ll try to get you some better colors when I get paid.”

  I couldn’t recollect the day he left, but I remembered how the shadows in our RV turned dank once he was gone.

  I recalled the only time my cousin Sheena ever got struck with a fit of generosity. It was my fifth birthday and she gave me a can of co-cola. It was the shiniest, prettiest thing I ever saw, without a dent or a scratch, and it was mine!

  Can clutched proudly to my chest, I ran past one rusted-out RV, then another. Nooter, the ’Bagoville cat, batted at a piece of broken glass as I toddled by.

  I found Nina, my ma, sitting on our retractable step, her back leaning against some feller’s front, him whispering something and her laughing deep in her throat.

  “Go away,” she said as I walked up.

  I held up the can. “Open it.”

  Nina looked at me through half-closed eyes. “You steal that?”

  “Sheena give it to me!” I grinned big. “Can’t open it.”

  Nina took the can and popped the top. I reached out. She started to give it to me, then didn’t.

  “Thirsty?” She passed the co-cola to the man.

  “It’s mine!” I hollered.

  The man made a show of drinking it down and belching when he was done. Then he crumpled the can and dropped it on the ground.

  “Ain’t nothin’ yours till you’re paying the bills,” Nina said.

  I picked up the squashed can. It was dirty now, not pretty at all. Bits of water collected in my eyes.

  “You’re even uglier when you cry. Git!” Nina pushed at me with her foot.

  I stumbled off, my steps made clumsy by a haze of crying.

  As I went, I heard the man say, “That one’s got a face only a mother could love.”

  “Not even,” Nina snorted.

  “Whose is it?”

  “It don’t matter. Want another smoke?”

  I had waited till Sheena drove off in her car, her face all broken up by the spider lines of her shattered windshield.

  Her RV door didn’t lock, so getting in was easy.

  I went to the fridge and took me a new can of co-cola.

  I never did open it. Just stuck it in the glove compartment of an abandoned car and went out to admire it, sometimes.

  That memory started the shame bricks crashing down on me all over again.

  In the world outside my head, Jimmy Orr’s truck shuddered as we hit a pothole. A few seconds later, we rolled up to a flower-painted gate.

  The doors in my mind shut themselves back up, as if my brain understood I had to set my attention on new things now.

  I was a woods tromper as a young’un, so I thought I’d seen some plants. But Mabel’s garden, dog my cats! Plants on the ground and plants hanging in baskets from the trees. Little plants, big plants, plants with flowers, and plants with fruits. There were even plants running up the sides of other plants!

  And me, I didn’t know the first thing about caring for them.

  “She’s gonna show me what I got to do, right?” I asked Jimmy as we walked through a low, open gate. “I mean, I heard you have to water them, but—”

  “She’ll show you,” Jimmy promised.

  “I bet you’ll have no trouble at all,” JoBeth added.

  The house was a strange thing—a small wooden building with a bunch of birds painted on the sides. Still more plants hung at the edges of the porch, as well as some of them dangly noise-makers. As we turned a corner, I could see a lady sitting on a bench swing.

  She looked up and saw us. “Hey, Jimmy!” Grabbing the swing chain, she pulled herself to standing. “JoBeth!”

  Then she turned my way, so I got my first good look at her. She was only a mite taller than me, but she had more meat on her. She wore a plain dress and
a friendly smile. Her belly was baby-round, pregnant, though I wasn’t enough of a judge to know how close she was to bursting.

  She stepped down off the porch. Her feet were bare.

  “Are you Belle?” she asked.

  I very nearly corrected her, but something in the way she shaped my name made it seem downright…pretty. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She took my hand in both of hers and gave it a shake. “I’m glad you’re here, Belle. I’m Mabel.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this lady stranger who I’d be living with for the next three months, so I held my tongue.

  “Hush here was concerned that she didn’t know much about gardening,” Jimmy said. “That won’t be a problem, will it?”

  “Absolutely not,” Mabel answered. “Beginners make the best and fastest learners.”

  “Mike will be by later with her things,” JoBeth told Mabel.

  “I ain’t got nothing with me,” I added, somewhat shamefully.

  Mabel waved a hand. “You can borrow something of mine, if the need arises.”

  I nearly protested—I just swore off borrowing! But then I realized she must have meant it in the sense of a loaner, so I only thanked her and fell quiet again.

  We four of us stood around and stared at one another.

  “All right!” Jimmy said after the stillness dragged on good and long. “We’ll let you ladies get acquainted.” Patting my shoulder, he added, “You’ll do fine, Hush.”

  “I’ll work real hard,” I said. “Jimmy, Miss JoBeth, I know you two was the only thing standing between me and the bad place, so, uh—”

  All of a sudden, JoBeth was down on her knees squeezing the dickens out of me. “You just be good, you hear me? You just be good!”

  Pressed up against her as I was, with little room for air, I could only mumble. Still, I think she got a notion of my good intentions.

  * * *

  —

  Mabel chit-chatted as she led me inside. “My husband, Tom, and my son, Travis, are off on a road trip—some much-needed bonding, stepfather to stepson. So, it’ll be just us girls for the summer.”