Our Daily Bread

by Lauren B. Davis

  Rascal barked, and then whined.

  She heard the ka-thump of her father’s recliner snapping closed and his footfalls, somewhat unsteady on the stairs.

  “Ivy! Ivy, are you all right? Ivy!”

  She would not say anything. He would have to come all the way; he would have to make that effort. She wanted him to worry about her for a change.

  And then he was in the door, one hand on either side of the jamb, his face red, his eyes wide. “Ivy? What happened?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I know times are tough, don’t you think I don’t know it. God knows it, too. He’s standing there beside you when you’re looking for honest work, trying to feed your babies, trying to pay your rent. He’s got His hand on your back, propping you up in these hard times and you know it’s true. We’ll get through this, friends, like we got through the war and the influenza. We’re not going to be like some around us, some I won’t name—but surely God knows their names, knows the filthy cabins in which they sleep—stealing and cheating and fornicating and cursing the Lord’s name. What does it say, friends, in The Book? It says, “Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine.” That’s Job 18:15. He knew a thing or two, did old Job.

  —Reverend Clarence Goodall,

  Church of Christ Returning, 1936

  A chill wind blew from the northeast every day, the weirdest month of May Albert could remember. The kids—the Lost Children—floated through the woods like miniature zombies, trying not to get caught, trying to grab food on the run and getting grabbed themselves. The sound of bottles breaking and the occasional scream, the occasional laugh, came from the main house. Around midnight Friday Dan appeared on the porch and took a few potshots into the woods, yelling something unintelligible. Albert came out to piss about three in the morning and found his fourteen-year-old brother Jack in a tree, like some ragged, rabid bat. Scared him so bad he’d pissed on his own foot.

  “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?” Jack called to him from a branch above his head.

  “What the fuck are you doing up there?”

  A stupid question, since he knew the answer. He’d spent more than a few nights in the trees himself, back when.

  The Uncles, it seemed, had stopped making shine altogether, and were concentrating their efforts on meth. They’d found a market. Albert counted eighteen cars coming and going over the course of three days, one of them Dr. Hawthorne’s. The good doctor handed out oranges and put antibiotic cream on the children’s cuts and bruises. Albert saw Jill around dawn, Saturday, kneeling beside a tree. She jumped a mile these days when anybody so much as touched her arm. Her nose had been broken some months back and even though Hawthorne had put a metal splint on it, it didn’t look right.

  “You hurt?” Albert asked.

  She looked up. Her lip was split, her teeth stained with blood. “How the fuck do you think I am?”

  There had been a time, when he’d first moved into the cabin—she was fourteen, maybe—when he’d brought her into the shack with him for a night or two, thinking he could protect her. It didn’t work out. Having her in the cabin overnight made him too uneasy. She was too female, with her musky smells and her breasts, round and high and full, even at that age, straining against her sweatshirt, swinging free and loose. She was too careless with the way she sat, in that short little denim miniskirt she always wore, and too careless with what showed from the top of her shirt when she bent over. At least he thought she was careless. If she wasn’t that was worse. If she’d stayed . . . well. He told her she’d have to find her own way. She’d spit on him. Scratched him, and then tried to rub up against him, until he pushed her out the door to land on her ass in the mud. Man, how she cursed him. But she got the message and didn’t come back. She was too old now to hide in the little places the kids found all over the woods and too small to fight back, like he had done when the time came. She’d slip over to their side any time, pick a man to latch onto and begin some games of her own, or else she’d go find some sturdy tree limb and hang herself. Wouldn’t be the first one. They called that old oak by the marsh the Judas tree.

  Albert stayed in his cabin all day Saturday and Saturday night. It was the first time in a while he’d spent that much time up there—usually he stayed out as long as he could, often just getting some booze and some pot and sitting out in his truck in the woods until things died down in the wee hours. But he’d heard from Jack and Jill that things were shifting around from bad to horrible and he wanted to see for himself. And see he did. Where before The Others had been cruel and selfish and violent, now they were fucking psycho. Paranoid and picking fights even with one other. Still, the customers kept coming. All those cars of townies coming and going. And some of those good people would be at church in the morning, listening to the Reverend Hickland strutting his stuff and calling out about the war on God’s people.

  If Friday and Saturday were hellish, Sunday was plain weird. The place collectively crashed. After a week of using, The Others, both men and women, slept like they were in comas. The kids wandered about, scrounging food in the eerie silence. Only Fat Felicity, Harold and Sonny kept watch on the commerce.

  Albert wasn’t sure how much more he could take. He told himself the only reason he stayed was a vague hope Jack might grow up fast enough. At least then there’d be two of them, unless Jack slipped over, too, which is why Albert didn’t confide in his little brother. It might happen. It had to happen, generation to generation, sins of the fathers on the heads of the sons and daughters. Even The Others must have been children once.

  It was as though they could read his thoughts. Every time they got within speaking distance they had something to say. “You better watch yourself, boy,” said Old Harold. “Don’t go getting any ideas, Bert. Don’t forget we all of us got a past together. Gonna have a future together, too,” said Lloyd. “What do you think you are, better than the rest of us? In your little bachelor pad. Bringing little girls in there, are you?” said Dan, scratching his armpit and then smelling his fingers. Thinking you were better than the rest was the worst thing there was up on the mountain. Punishable in any number of unpleasant ways. His mother and the rest of the women spoke to him less and less, but Old Felicity shot him death eyes and spit every time she saw him. He hated her eyes, with their drooping lower lids, their watery, red rims.

  On Monday, everybody was irritable and depressed. Grey clouds dangled like old dishrags in a murky sky. It was late morning—a time when school kids (other than Bobby Evans who was ditching) were in class, and upstanding citizens were at their jobs, but before the mail truck came around at just past one and the UPS men got round to this neighbourhood. Albert and Bobby drove to Prattsville, twenty miles away. The air inside the cab smelled of coffee mixed with the sharp tang of adrenaline. On the side of the truck a stick-on vinyl sign read: Garcia’s Economical Landscaping. Back at the compound, hidden in a metal box under a bunch of scrap metal, were signs that said, Rodriquez Lawn Care, Szniak Plumbing, L.E.D. Electrical and Hidden View Nursery.

  “Good day for it,” said Albert.

  “You think so?” said Bobby.

  “You’re not such great company, you know that?” Albert reached over and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, cheer up. I know it’s hard, but who needs her, huh? You think I wouldn’t stand up and fucking cheer if my old lady and all the rest of those shits took off? You’re goddamn right I would. Fuck ’em. I’m never having any kids, you know that? Never. You ever met anybody didn’t have trouble, and I mean real trouble, with their families? They are there to fuck you up. That’s it. They are there to see if you’re strong enough to survive and if you’re not, you’re not. It’s like Darwin right? Survival of the fittest. Throw the baby bird out of the nest and see if it can fly and if it can’t then feed it to the cat. They tell you it’
s all about love and that shit, but it’s not. It’s about biology. Survival of the species. It’s a badge of honour, is the way I look at it.”

  “What is?” asked Bobby.

  Albert chuckled. Bobby was like every other kid—looking to make sense of crap that was never going to make sense. Life, as Albert saw it, was just a load of steaming horseshit and that was that. But if you were weak, like young Bobby was weak, you needed a reason. You needed meaning. “Look, you got abandoned, right?”

  “She might be back.”

  “Maybe. But let’s say she doesn’t come back. You’re motherless, pal. Motherless. That means you got to be a man. No more kid shit. You think some guy in Africa or China or someplace, somewhere where they leave their weak out to be eaten by lions, like the Eskimos, tossing their old people out on the ice to die, you think they don’t have to grow up fast and strong? Sure, that’s why blacks are such good athletes, right? Because in olden days their parents ran off and left them out in the jungles and they had to survive. They had to fight for themselves. Fend off tigers and snakes and shit. And if they did, then they were stronger, tougher, more likely to survive. You got to think of it as a kind of gift from the natural order. You know?”

  “You think?”

  “I know. Trust me.”

  Bobby fidgeted in his seat and cracked his knuckles. “You still live near your folks,” he said in a hesitant voice. “Maybe you should show me.”

  “Goddamn it, Bobby. You know, I should do it.” It had started a few days ago—the kid pestering him to take him up to the compound. “I should take you up on the mountain one day and show you what tough really is.”

  “Don’t get mad, Albert. I’m just saying . . .”

  “Well, stop saying. You don’t have a clue. I don’t get you sometimes. What do you want to hang out on the mountain for? Just drop that shit and keep your mind on the job at hand, okay? You think you can handle that? Good. Then focus. No rain yet, so there’ll be no footprints if we move fast enough. That’s what you have to watch out for in winter, if there’s snow. But the cold’s good. Keeps people inside minding their own business like they ought to. You got your gloves, right?”

  “Sure.” Bobby pulled a black leather pair out of his pocket.

  “Good boy,” said Albert, as Bobby smiled and went a little pink.

  Albert had scoped out the house six times over the past month. You had to be thorough. You had to be professional. No drugs. No booze. No crazy knife-wielding, psycho bullshit. He’d made that very clear to Bobby. This wasn’t some jacked-up ghetto shit. This was clean. Mostly, he’d told Bobby, it was about seeing what you were made of. Seeing what kind of blood ran through your veins. It was also about seeing how far Bobby was willing to go, how far he was willing to push his limits on Albert’s say-so.

  Albert liked having Bobby around. It felt good to have a friend, someone who looked up to him. It was a clean thing, something he could be proud of. Not a trace of mountain on it. Some people might say Bobby was too young to be Albert’s friend, but that wasn’t so. Six or seven years wasn’t much. And Albert believed he was doing Bobby good. Who else did the kid have to turn to these days? Having Bobby around was like having a protégé. But today would be a one-time thing. Albert was clear—he wasn’t going to initiate the kid into a life of crime. This robbery was merely about gauging willingness and nerve, seeing if the kid could keep a secret, which Albert thought of as the measure of a man’s integrity. It was also about . . . well, Albert couldn’t think of a good word to describe it—sharing was too faggy. It was about the power of secrets. Things just between two people. Call it a rite of manhood. Maybe he’d take the kid up to the compound sometime. Just to show him how a man could live independent from all assholes, or nearly so, if he put his mind to it.

  Albert glanced at Bobby. He was smoking, but then Bobby was always smoking these days. His eyes gazed fixedly at the road ahead. A muscle in his jaw tensed. Well, that was all right. It was natural. First time out. Albert reached over and gave Bobby’s boney knee a squeeze. Not much muscle under that skin. Maybe he should abort the mission.

  “You’re all right, aren’t you, sport? Still time to turn around, you know?” Leave it up to fate, maybe. Leave it up to the kid. He was old enough. A damn sight older than Albert was when he took responsibility for himself. “It’s up to you. I’m okay either way. I won’t lose no respect for you, if you want to go on home. What do you want to do, young Bobby?” And he smiled, to show the kid he meant it, the way a brother would.

  There was only a moment’s hesitation. “No. I’m good. Like you said, it’s just an insurance thing, right? It’s not like we’re taking anything sentimental, right?”

  “No personal things. Except maybe some jewellery, but even that, I take only replaceable stuff, like gold chains and single stone rings. Nothing that looks like Grandma passed it down. And no religious stuff like crosses. Bad karma. I knew a guy who threw a bar of soap into a kid’s aquarium. Laughed when he imagined the kid’s face when he came home to a tank full of dead fish.” There was no reason for Bobby to know the guy was Albert’s uncle, Lloyd. Bastard. “No cause for that shit. You have to have ethics.”

  “Right.”

  “So? What’s it gonna be? You wanna skip it? Go for a pizza?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Your call, Bobby.” And Albert kept on driving.

  “Tell me about the house again,” said Bobby, as if it was a bedtime story.

  “It’s a nice house, but not too nice, so there’s no alarm. Backs onto a wildlife preserve, so no backyard neighbours watching us go through the window, not that there’s likely to be anyone home this time of day. Working neighbourhood, but not blue-collar. Those guys get laid off too much, or the job site’s shut for one reason or another. Stick to office worker types. No kids, which means a better class of jewellery, most of the time, and a little more cash lying around, and maybe some cameras and silver and iPods and laptops and whatever other crap yuppies can’t live without.”

  Bobby lit a cigarette off the butt of the previous one. He jiggled his leg and drummed his fingers on the dashboard while Gregg Allman sang out about the midnight rider. It was one of the songs Albert listened to when he was on the prowl. Not gonna let them catch old Albert, no sir. The road goes on forever. As they turned off and got closer to the prey house, he switched the music over to “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi. Kick it up a notch or two, but not too much, not so much some passing motorist heard the bass pumping and took a long enough look to remember who they were. Not so much young Bobby would flip out into psycho mode.

  They pulled into the quiet development. Houses nice and far apart. Two-acre zoning here. Albert parked the car in between two houses.

  “You all right?”

  Bobby looked at him, a little pale and wide-eyed, but solid. “Yup.”

  “Let’s do this, then.”

  The inside of the house was dim, even though it was morning. Lots of trees around the house. This was good—less visibility from outside. The sliding glass doors had been a cinch to jimmy. People would never learn the power of a few well-drilled holes with screws through them. Not that that would have stopped Albert. Glass broke easily. They walked into the family room. Albert stepped over the threshold with a sense of entering sacred space. There was something about the sweet violation that was not unlike seduction. His breath quickened.

  They were in what he was sure the homeowners must call “The TV Room” since a huge flat-screen hung over the fireplace and dominated the space. The air smelled of coffee and air freshener. He ran his finger along the mantel and checked the finger of his glove for dust.

  “Tidy people,” he said, in a quiet voice, the voice he always used on a job. It was what he thought of as his Holy Voice. And then, to Bobby, “Stay here.”

  While Bobby stayed by the door, Albert po
ked his head around the corner to get a lay of the land. He had an idea from the outside, but it was often hard to tell until you were inside a place. Kitchen to the left, some room beyond that—dining room probably—office to the right of the family room. A hallway led from the kitchen to what he presumed was the formal living room and the stairs to the second floor. That would be their first stop. Bedroom for camera, jewellery, cash in the back of a drawer, and then work their way out. A scratching noise brought him up short. He laid a hand on Bobby’s chest, stopping him from moving forward. The boy’s heart thumped under his sharp breastbone.

  “What?”

  “Shush.” Albert listened, ears straining, skin at the back of his neck crawling.

  And then . . . peep.

  Huh?

  Peep, peep.

  “Fucking birds,” Albert smiled. The scratch of claws on paper and seed. Peep.

  Albert scanned the room, making an inventory, estimating space in the two canvas lawn-mower bags he’d brought to carry out the take. Ah, that enormous, expensive television. Such a shame since it was too big to grab, although the DVD and game console fit into the bag nicely. Couple of nice silver candlesticks and three picture frames. Leave the photos of Romeo and Juliet on their vacations and their wedding day. He never took photos. Frames were generic, people’s faces in them, specific. No evidence, thanks very much.

  “They got a lot of CDs,” said Bobby, who had opened a lacquered cabinet.

  “Fuck the CDs. No resale. Upstairs.”

  Along the hallway, they passed photos of fields and churches and lakes and in each of them the back of the same woman’s head. She didn’t like her photo being taken, apparently.

  “What is that?” Bobby said.

  On the wall hung three objects—a small enamel dish; a Celtic cross made out of stone; and, on an iron plaque, a little statue of a man with a raised lance standing over a dragon, with a little bowl attached beneath the dragon’s legs. It was at this latter item Bobby stared, his face mere inches from the statue.