Sneak Thief Page 9

  Desiree giggled. And then I giggled. And then—oh, Lordy—we got caught in one of those laugh traps, where you can’t stop no matter how hard you try. And Becky came outside and asked what was so funny, and we laughed even harder, our eyes a-watering, and us not able to squeak out the words We can’t stop! To this day, I can’t tell you exactly what got hold of us, but all that laughing, I do believe it was like vitamins for our souls.

  “But you were just joshing about a scam, right?” Desiree asked, once we’d caught our breath.

  “Nuh-uh,” I said. “We need a good way of tricking people into letting me get close enough to pull off the imps without jangling their warning bells. Like, if we were measuring them for clothes, that would do it.”

  “We could…offer a free measurement service.”

  “But what for? We got no clothes to sell.”

  “Oh, right.” All of a sudden, her eyes got wide. “Okay! How about this? A hugging booth! They had one at the Valentine’s festival last year.”

  “Hmm,” I said, trying not to hurt Desiree’s feelings by spurning the idea too fast. But did we truly want to go around hugging drunks and cat ladies? Because you know that’s who’d be coming. “I think some people’s sensitive about hugging.”

  Desiree seemed a mite disappointed, but she let it pass. “What, then?”

  I gave it a long think. “Too bad we don’t have no cause to pat them down, like the police do.”

  We were munching Mabel’s fancy cookies when a certain sight flashed before my eyes: JoBeth Haines, on the day I got busted, stuffing my borrow list between the pages of a yoga magazine.

  “I know! We’ll teach them yoga! It’s real popular!” I exclaimed. “While we’re helping folks get into the positions and whatnot, I can pull off the imps!”

  “You know yoga?” Desiree asked, looking somewhat awed.

  “Well, no.” That did gum up the works.

  “Hey!” Desiree got so excited right then, she squeezed her cookie to crumbs. “Ma has a yoga video! I bet she’ll let us borrow it. She never uses it!”

  * * *

  —

  “Okay, what’s this called?” Desiree bent over, hands and feet on the floor, butt pointed at the sky.

  We’d watched Becky’s yoga video twice and tried out all the poses, so now we were quizzing each other. We had to look like professionals, after all.

  “Dog something. Dog…downward-facing dog!”

  “And this one?” She lifted one leg and moved it in a circle.

  I thought it over. “That ain’t no pose.”

  “Right!” she said. “Hush, I think we’re ready!”

  I reckoned we were, too. “Now all we need is a place to hold the class.”

  Desiree tapped her lips with a fingertip. “I guess I could ask my ma if we could use the yard.”

  “Naw. You let me worry about that.” I thought I might have a notion. “Meantime, though, could you think up some advertising to get folks interested in the class?”

  “Advertising? Oh, definitely.” She gave me a business-like nod. “Before I wanted to be a horse witch, I was very nearly an adman!”

  * * *

  —

  That afternoon, me and Mabel were stuffing herbs into jars and pouring oil over them.

  “Smells good enough to eat,” I told her.

  “That’s the idea.” She gave one of her jars a sniff. “Mmm! Ever since I got pregnant, I just cannot get enough of the smell of olive oil.”

  “Maybe your baby’s gonna be Italian.”

  She looked up to see if I was joking. I grinned. She shook her head and went back to her oil smelling.

  She was unscrewing and re-screwing a jar lid when she asked, “So, how are you doing, Belle? With your loco and such?”

  I grabbed a handful of basil. “Last night was a bad time, but today I feel real good.”

  “Last night?” She looked worried. “Did you go out?”

  I shook my head. “Naw. Nothing like that. It was—” I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “You won’t get mad, right?”

  “There’s no penalty for honesty in this house,” Mabel promised.

  “It was your earbobs. The crystal ones you had sitting on the sink.”

  She was quiet for a time. “I believe they’re still in there.”

  I nodded. “They are. No thanks to my loco.”

  A truck rumbled down the street that ran past Mabel’s place. Through the fence gaps, I could just make out the outlines of the rattling cattle hauler it towed behind it. Must be a noisy way for a critter to travel, I thought.

  “So, what’d you do?” she asked.

  “What? Oh. I did the dangedest thing. I talked to—” But, for some reason, I still wasn’t ready to tell Mabel about the imps. Honesty didn’t mean you had to tell everyone every little thing, did it? A body was entitled to some personal matters, weren’t they? “That jar you gave me.”

  “How creative,” she said, and she wasn’t even poking fun.

  “And, uh, also I read some of this book Jimmy Orr gave me. It’s called The Big Book. You ever read that?”

  She nodded. “What’d you think of it?”

  I recalled one of the book’s passages. “It was simple—but not easy.”

  She gave a little chuckle. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Another truck drove by with another noisy livestock hauler. Poor cows are gonna go deaf.

  “So, uh,” I said, “I was wondering if I might ask you a favor.”

  “Ask away,” Mabel said.

  “You know that carport you have back there? The one next to the shed?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “How would you feel if I cleaned that off, maybe set your plug-in fan out there, and held me a yoga class? It would only be once a week, and I could ask folks to park around back—”

  “I’m sorry.” Mabel held up a hand. “I just need to rewind for a sec. Did you say yoga class?”

  “Yoga. Yes,” I told her. “Me and Desiree were watching a video of it and we got to thinking we might be able to teach folks. Help them have less pain and whatnot.” I couldn’t have been more honest. I was only withholding certain bits I wasn’t ready to share. Wasn’t the seeing of invisible pain imps a personal matter, after all?

  “I…don’t know what to say to that,” Mabel remarked.

  I felt a touch disappointed. “Guess I could use the Town Hall.”

  “No, you can use the carport. Of course you can,” she said. “But you’ll stick to the easy stuff, won’t you? I mean, you’re not really qualified. Yoga instructors usually work at it for a few years, at least, before they start teaching.”

  “I reckon we’re more qualified than most in town,” I said truthfully. “You may not have noticed, but a lot of people in Sass are old. Or fat. Probably most of them wouldn’t know a downward-facing dog if they sat on it.”

  She smiled. “Well, you have a point there.” Snipping a sprig of rosemary, she said, “So you’d sweep out the carport?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Real clean.”

  “And you really would be careful? You wouldn’t put Roxie Fuller in a headstand, for instance?”

  I laughed. “No, ma’am. Super careful.”

  “Could I come to the class?”

  “Sure!”

  She sighed real deep, but it had a certain good humor to it. “All right, Belle Cantrell. You’ve got your space. Let’s start us a yoga class.”

  It was a good thing both me and Desiree were there to teach yoga because those folks needed a lot of help, and I don’t just mean me plucking off their pain imps.

  “All right, that’s real good, Ham,” I said as encouraging as I could. “But if you want to call it warrior pose, you got to bend at the knee.” I flexed to show him how. “I think you ought not ho
ld your breath so. You’re getting real red in the face.”

  Ham Quimby, a big man with spiky hair, still didn’t manage to bend his knee—but he did lean so far forward that he nearly squashed poor Mabel when he fell. Gamely rising again, he muttered to himself, “Rome wasn’t built in a day!”

  Even so, things were going fine. Not only did the carport clean up real good, but Mabel had helped me set up three plug-in fans, mounted high up on a beam, so folks could stay nice and cool. She’d also loaned me her radio and a bunch of plinky-plunk music. People seemed to like that.

  Desiree made the rounds, fixing poses where pain wasn’t the problem, but only sorry listening skills or lack of coordination. Me, I showed off the positions up front and did most of the talking, strolling around now and then to snatch off a pain imp.

  “Imagine you’s a tree now, real strong and straight,” I said, wobbling on one foot with my hands pressed together. “This here’s called tree position.”

  I caught a glimpse of a pain imp on one lady’s neck. Miz Buchanan, I thought Desiree had called her.

  “Miz B,” I said, walking up from behind. “You look like a turtle in his shell. You got to stick your neck out.” I swiped my hand under her hair, tapped her neck, and scooped up the imp.

  She turned her head real sudden. “What’d you do there? Hey! What’d you do?”

  Everyone stopped to look, especially Mabel, who had already winced more than once as folks wobbled and creaked.

  “I, uh, I fixed your prana,” I said, thinking faster than I knew I could. “How’s that feel now?”

  She rolled her head around. “It’s the best I’ve felt in an age!” Now she rolled it the other way. “Fixed my prana, huh?”

  Mabel raised an eyebrow.

  “Hey! Hush!” a man called. “Come fix my prana, too.”

  “Me too, Hush!”

  “My leg prana’s troubling me. Can you fix that?”

  I made my way up to the front and quietly dropped Miz B’s imp into the mayo jar, which I’d left there earlier. On my way to check a lady’s “prana,” I traded smiles with Desiree. She gave me a thumbs-up.

  At the end of class, I told everyone to lay on their backs on their mats. “It’s called corpse pose, but that’s what you call a symbolic name, and not an instruction. Everyone walks out of here on two feet, y’all understand?” One very old lady was looking far too comfortable for my peace of mind.

  Everyone chuckled.

  I turned up the music. “Let yourself be floppy. And heavy, like you weigh a million pounds. Now, we’re gonna stay like this for a time, so just close your eyes and reeee-lax.”

  From where I stood, I gave everyone a last good looking-over. I couldn’t see a single pain imp left in the bunch, and my jar was a darn sight fuller than it had been. A number of our eight students had grins upon their faces, and every one was looking so content I wanted to whoop. Of course I didn’t. That would have ruined the effect.

  As the yogis collected their towels and whatnot, more than one of them drifted over to the mayo jar, screwed it open—Lordy, no! The imps’ll get out!—and dropped a few dollars in before sealing it up again. I was relieved to see the pain imps weren’t of a mind to escape—not a single one broke free.

  Desiree and me were working out a way to split up the money—some for her, some for me, some for Mabel since it was her carport—when Mabel herself walked up.

  “Belle?”

  “Ma’am?” I tried to grin, but something told me this might not be good.

  “We need to talk.”

  * * *

  —

  After Desiree scooted home, Mabel set out the fixin’s for tea, then sat across from me at the dining table. Her face was as serious as I’d ever seen it, and I couldn’t think of nothin’ else, except I was busted.

  “I need you to be honest with me,” she said.

  “Very honest,” I promised.

  “There’s something you haven’t told me, isn’t there?”

  All at once, I exploded into a panic. “But, Mabel, it don’t have nothin’ to do with my loco and I felt sure I was allowed to have some things that was my own private thoughts and I swear, I swear, no harm’s come to anyone, nor could come—”

  “Belle—”

  “But if you really feel I’ve been a fabler, I’ll get down on my knees right now and ask for your forgiveness—” I started sliding from my seat.

  “Belle!”

  “Yeah?”

  She gave a saddish half smile. “I know a healer when I see one.”

  I jerked my chin back. Me? A healer?

  “I am a little sorry you didn’t feel comfortable confiding in me, but we haven’t known each other that long. And yes, you’re right. Everyone’s allowed to keep some thoughts private.” She paused. “Honey, relax. I’m not going to take anything from you.”

  I realized I was holding myself ramrod-straight. I tried to settle back in my chair. “All right.”

  She blinked a few times. “Um. So, I guess what I want to say is: A healer has an important job. It’s no small thing, caring for others.” Mabel shrugged and shook her head all at once. “Lord knows you’re savvy, Belle, but you’re young, too. And I’m enough of a healer myself—with herbs, not like what you do with your hands—to know you shouldn’t tackle this all on your own.”

  “I’m fairly used to tackling things on my own,” I told her.

  “I know. And I respect that,” she said sincerely. “But some things we aren’t meant to do by our lonesome. Like your loco. You needed some help with that, right?”

  “Ye-ah, but…” I was struggling in my seat again, though I can’t say why, precisely. It just seemed so important that no one get between me and my imp plucking. As if letting someone meddle with it—especially a grown-up someone—might crush the bloom when it was just beginning to grow.

  “Okay, Belle. I see you want to work this out for yourself.” She held up a calming hand. “Can we talk about it just a little, though?”

  What I really wanted was to go hide under that fine bed she was loaning me, shouting, Them’s my imps! as I went, but I had a notion that might seem a little nutty. “I guess.”

  “How long have you had it, this gift?” she asked.

  I didn’t have to think back very far. “It started the day we met, when we were in the garden and your back twinged you.”

  “Dear goodness! Not long at all! And you healed me then.” She paused. “You did, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well…you seem to be right on schedule. Sass kids who develop shines—they do tend to find them at twelve or thirteen.”

  I puzzled over that. “What do you mean, ‘shines’?”

  “They’re, well…My mom called them gifts of power,” she explained. “But if you look at it simply, it’s just a little spark of magic. A thing you can do that, maybe, makes the world a little nicer.”

  I couldn’t help thinking of Desiree’s longing to be a horse witch. Was that a shine?

  “And your shine is growing plants for healing?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Though I’ve picked up a bit more magic along the way. My wish cupcakes, for instance.” Now Mabel seemed to think for a while. “So, the first time you saw the pain imps, you just knew what to do about them? Intuitively?”

  “I don’t know that word,” I told her.

  “It means you understood how to heal people without thinking about it or being told how.”

  “Oh. Then, yeah. I reckon it was like that. But it’s not real complicated, anyway. Just pluck them off.”

  “And did you do the same thing for that lady in the hospice?” she asked.

  “The skeleton person, you mean? Uh-huh. And Crispy, too, when you were out of the room.”

  She seemed a little surprised
by that. “Does it make you tired after you’ve done it? Do you feel sick at all?”

  I thought of the ache in my hand when I held an imp for any time, but that wasn’t sick or tired. “No.”

  “Well, that’s good. Some people do, you know.” She leaned in. “But you did say you had some bad dreams. How are those?”

  I’d had one more dream about Baron Ramey’s teeth tearing into raw meat, but that was it. “Mostly all right. Better.”

  She took a long swig of her tea. “Hmm. I guess everything seems okay. Surely your students today were happy enough.” She gave a little laugh. “But if you do find yourself in a quandary, or if something just doesn’t feel right, send up a flare. Please?”

  I told her I would. “But, uh, can I keep teaching yoga?”

  She set down her mug with a thump. “Are you kidding? Those people would whup me with their yoga mats if I canceled that class!” She was full-on beaming now. “Did you see their faces?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That was something, wasn’t it?”

  On one sunny Friday morning, I went into the garden to find Mabel sitting in the crook of her granddaddy apple tree, wedged between two low, chunky branches. She looked right comfortable there among the fruit and leaves.

  “Is that safe for a pregnant lady?” I called to her.

  “I used a step stool,” she called back. “Come join me.”

  I climbed into the tree and found my spot, a little higher than Mabel, with a sturdy place to rest my setter. It was sort of nice, with the dewy air and whatnot. Apples dangled all around us, glinting red in the morning light.

  “I didn’t know grown folks climbed trees,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more of us did?” Mabel mused. “Maybe you and I should start the Sass Tree Climbers Club. We could meet every Friday and all of us sit in the same tree like a flock of crows.”

  “Come wintertime, we could tie red and green ribbons in the treetops,” I suggested.