“Yessir,” I said. And I can believe it. Because nobody ever burned you out and taxed you into the ground. I can see you beating your own kids for being hungry. Bet you’re real thick with the tax men. Never had to say “Yes, sir” while you were hungry right down to your bones and saw your children starve.
I used to walk through the market at midday. It’s amazing how the bare smell of food can keep you going. Even watching somebody else eat sometimes helps, though you wouldn’t think it. And even more curious is the way a real meal in the evening, if you take it slow, can be invested with the taste of the best things you could wish for.
Sometimes at the end of the day I’d beg scraps off the tradespeople in the square. They were good about it, they knew how it was. But at noon you couldn’t ask since they had to make their living too, and sell as much as they could before the end of the day. The soldiers had plenty of food of course, and kids used to hang around them, pick up whatever they threw away. That might have been a good idea for me to try. Yet I never did know a soldier who’d dish out so much as a crust to a grown man, though he’d give anything to a child. Part of it may be natural sentiment, but I believe they also consider it actually unlucky to refuse a child. Say no to a man and the only had luck is his own that you refused.
That afternoon in the market I couldn’t stand it any longer. The weeks seemed like months, and while I thought that, began to seem like years. All the way through in my chest and legs and belly I could feel all of that time I’d gone without food.
It was bread set out to cool. And I smelled it from a long way off. From beyond the fruit and vegetable stands and the basketware it led me, pulled me, right through the crowd. Sweet and warm, giving off fragrance like a tree in bloom.
If Jake had been along he’d have known how to handle the situation. He says just never give your right name and you’ll be all right. With the political atmosphere like it is they’ll never bother to pick you up on the street again unless they recognize you. And that’s unlikely, because they think we all look alike. Or if it’s one of ours working for them, chances are he’ll let it go unless it’s for something so big that he’d get a recommendation out of it.
Jake was very relaxed when he toted things off. He knew all the right lies to tell, and the right names to say, and he’d state with great confidence that so-and-so had sent him to collect the article because he had an account there. “Oh, aren’t you Mr. so-and-so and isn’t this such-and-such a street?” he’d ask. And then he had a charming manner of apologizing while he handed the thing back, and a self-assured way of asking directions as to how to get to the mythical place he’d mentioned.
I’d never done it before myself.
I walked blind, straight to it. I saw it sitting there, fresh and new as a baby, and just put my hand on it like it belonged to me, and walked off with it.
I hadn’t taken but ten steps before there was a hand on my shoulder and the law and the military were standing all around.
“Where’d you get that?” one of them said.
I started to eat the bread because I was goddamned if I was going to go to prison and be punished and all the rest for something I hadn’t even enjoyed.
“What are you doing there?” said a second one.
I kept cramming the bread into my mouth, all new and sweet and soft, and thought: whatever comes now, whatever else happens, it’s been worth it.
“Cut that out, you. That’s stolen property you’ve got there,” said the first one.
I kept on eating.
“Leave go, I said,” the first one told me.
They began to push. I got my face into the bread and had my elbows working, but in the end it was more of a fight than I could manage without my fists and anyway they kicked the remainder out of my hands. About half the bread was left; during the scuffling they stepped all over it till it flattened out into the ground.
They punched me in the head just as routine procedure and kicked me a couple of times the way I’ve seen them do to other people, and took me off. Theft, resisting arrest, and striking an officer in the pursuit of his duty. They told me the charge on the way. The younger one seemed very impressed by the sound of it. He kept jerking my arm up behind me while they dragged me along, and saying, “Oh, you’re in trouble. Are you in trouble. Are you ever.”
They took me all the way into the center of town. First they made me wait while they talked over what they were going to do with me. I think that lasted about an hour but I’m not sure, because it was like I gave up time as soon as I knew it was all really happening and jail at the end of it. Then one of them said, “All right, that’s it,” and they took me outside again and to the prison.
It was one of the old-fashioned kind, going all the way down into the ground below floor-level. Some of the building consisted of the original solid rock. And they put me down, under ground, into a room where the cells were hewn right out of the stone. No windows, only a view through bars into the center of the place where the jailer and a friend sat at a table and threw dice.
The first person I noticed when they brought me in was Jake. He didn’t say anything, so I gave no sign and was glad I’d told them a false name.
There were six cells in all. Two big high-ceilinged ones on either side of the entrance, then two on each of the side walls. It was really a triangle-shaped place; the side walls came together in a point of rock and the roof sloped down at the join. The ceiling was also stone and gave you the feeling that at one time the whole thing had been a big natural cave with hollows. Jake was in one of the small end cells and they stuck me in the other one, so we were next to each other but almost close enough to touch, and because of being at the triangle-point where the side walls met, we could see each other’s faces.
It wasn’t too bad. High enough so the top just cleared my head when I stood up straight, though it was smaller and lower near the far wall, with hardly room for your head if you were sitting down.
The jailer went back to the entrance where he stood around talking to the soldiers. His friend followed after, lingered for a time, and then went out. I had a feeling he was supposed to be on duty someplace else and was making a retreat while the jailer kept the others busy. They were all in uniform, the jailer and his friend, too.
“Did you give your right name?” Jake said.
“No.”
“That’s the style.”
“What did they get you for?”
“Stole a horse.”
“A whole horse? What for?”
“Not to eat, you fool. To plow. One of the horses they were using for crowd control. I had a buyer lined up and everything. Had it walking behind me quiet as you please when that fake beggar on the corner—you know, by the fruit-juice stand—”
“I know him. Paid informer.”
“Oh, I know that. I been paying him too. But it looks like yesterday the military priced him out of my range, because he was the one pointed me out.”
It sounded like small-time stuff, not the kind of thing Jake would let happen. But I know he still picks things up now and then just to keep his hand in, he says, and for fun.
“Bad luck,” I said.
“He’ll think so if I get out.”
“What do you mean if?”
He tapped his foot against the wall.
“This place feels damn solid. Looks like some kind of security prison. Four armed men standing behind the jailer when he opens up to give you your provisions. Not so easy. Not so easy at all. I never been in one like this before.”
“But they’ll have to take us out to be tried.”
“Tie us hand and foot, like as not.”
“Do they usually do that? I thought you said these boys were pretty easy-going.”
“Not any more.” He kicked the wall again.
“Hell, all I did was steal a little bit of bread.”
“Bread? Caught out for lifting a hunk of bread? Oh, Seth, goddamn. You fool, you.”
“All right, all ri
ght. They got you too, didn’t they?”
“Why didn’t you wait till I was with you? A beginner’s trick like that. I don’t suppose you even thought of going up to it with your coat over your arm.”
“No, I never thought of that,” I said. “I’ll remember.”
“You do that. And you can remember never try it alone, too. Not till you got somebody to show you how. Lord, whatever possessed you?”
“I was just hungry as hell.”
“Why didn’t you ask me for a loan?”
“Cut it out.”
“Why not? We’ve got plenty.”
I didn’t want to go into all that again. We’ve borrowed enough off him already. Sure, he’s got plenty till they catch him for getting it. And the more he gives away, the more he’s got to go against the law.
I said, “Listen, Jake, what with the last time I paid any taxes and what you gave us after the fire, that’s more than any man should be asked to lend.”
“I’m not any man. I’m kin. You should have asked me.”
Sure. The way things stood I wouldn’t be able to pay back what he’d already given us. Not for years. Maybe never.
“Let’s stop talking about it. It makes me sick to think about it.”
“And what about Maddie? And the kids? Maddie says—”
“What?”
His face changed and he shut his mouth. So she’d asked him. She never told me.
“Well,” I said, “how much is it now?”
“She didn’t want you to know. Don’t tell her I said anything. I’m glad to give it, Seth. Honest. I worry about you.”
“I’m all right.”
“No you are not.”
“You’re right, I’m not.”
“A long time ago somebody told you honesty’s the best policy. And you been sticking to it a long time after you figured out honesty’s the fastest way to starvation.”
“And dishonesty lands you in jail.”
“Only if you get caught.”
“Well?” I said. “Well?”
I grabbed hold of the bars and gave them a shake. Built for keeps. They were solid as a mountain wall.
One of the soldiers out beyond the entrance laughed. I could just see them around the corner. They were drinking together and the jailer appeared to be telling them a tall tale of some sort, acting out the different voices as the story went on. One of the men wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said something that made the rest of them laugh too. They weren’t looking in our direction.
“Do they beat you up or anything?”
“Not yet. I don’t think it’s likely. The jailer’s all right. He’s a good man.”
“He looks like some kind of a clown.”
“He is,” Jake said, “but he’s all right.”
I began to wonder what would happen to Maddie; whether she’d have enough to live on, whether she’d guess what had happened to me, or think I’d been killed, or maybe think I’d left her. She couldn’t be thinking that.
“Listen, Jake. If I try to get word to Maddie, they’ll find out my name, won’t they?”
“That’s all right. You just leave it. Sam, you know Sam, he saw me when the law came on the scene. He’ll tell Annie. She’ll come over here and she’ll see you, then she’ll tell Maddie.”
“You think she’ll be all right?”
“Sure, Annie will see she’s all right. She’ll look after them.”
“I just wish I could see her, right now. They’ll let her come see me?”
“Sure. It’ll take a while for the word to go around.”
I thought of her sitting at home in the evening, waiting for me to come back from work. I imagined the kids asking questions when it began to get later and later and still I didn’t come. And what her face would look like when Annie told her, what she’d say: not this on top of everything else. And when she finally came to visit me, looking through the bars, any other woman would say: How could you, how could you be so foolish or so selfish or so cruel to us, as if we didn’t have enough trouble already. But she would ask me if I was all right, if I was well.
“I don’t know if I can face her,” I said.
“Well, what do you want? First you’re scared she won’t be able to come, then you don’t think you can face it.”
He told me I never should have taken up crime in my old age, you had to start young while you still had a sense of humor. He was smiling, the way I’d seen him look at Annie when she sulked, but harder.
“I bet the job’s gone,” I said. “Bet somebody else is doing my work right now.”
“Most likely.”
“I never missed a day in nine years. Not even when I was sick.”
“That was your trouble.”
Outside the entrance it sounded as though the group of men was beginning to break up. Two of them went down the hall and the jailer leaned around the corner and gave Jake a friendly kind of look. Jake nodded to him and started to talk again, but he dropped his voice.
“Tell you the truth, Seth, most of these jailhouse shacks you can bust through the wall with your thumbnail, but this one is over my head. I tell you, I never seen one like this before, not even the military cells. And I don’t like it. I think something’s going on. You been listening to the news lately?”
“Politics, you mean?”
“We got them on the run, looks like. Arrests going on in batches, in bundles. All this week they’ve been clamping down. All along the line. And it’s started up at the top somewheres. Scared stiff. I don’t believe there’s one empty jail in town.”
“You think they put us in here just because they don’t have room anyplace else?”
“Could be. I hope that’s why. Hope it ain’t because they think we’re special. You haven’t been joining any of those freedom organizations, have you?”
“You asked me that once before already.”
“I wonder maybe did somebody burn you out because you joined something or other. I wondered at the time.”
“Because I didn’t join, maybe. They asked me.”
“Oh, my Lord. And you refused. So that’s it. What did you tell them?”
“Just told them to go to hell.”
“I see. Did you ever hear from them again?”
“Nope. They had somebody follow me a while back, about five months ago, but he never spoke to me and at least nobody was hanging around the kids or Maddie, which really would’ve had me scared. He just used to dog me around the place, him and a friend. They didn’t even stick very close except in crowds, so they wouldn’t lose me. And then they quit all of a sudden, about five months back, like I say.”
“Sounds all right. Makes sense.”
“You don’t think there’s a connection, do you? That they were just waiting to arrest me?”
“No, not any more. Not if that’s all there was to it. I was just thinking about the time element. No, you’re in the clear there. They’ve got better things on their minds by now, I expect.”
Worse things, I’d say. I’ve seen some of those men around town. In the crowds. All last week and the week before, when there’s that feeling in the crowd, sort of agitated but just waiting, like kindling about to go up, I’ve spotted them.
He said, “Something’s happening for sure. I mean something more than what I know already. A lot of people are keeping their mouths shut that never used to.”
From the entrance I heard steps and the sound of something being moved, maybe a table. The jailer came in and walked over to us. He was a stumpy gingery man, going bald at the front; large in the shoulder and walked with a bit of a limp and a funny rolling, like he might have been a navy man. He rubbed his hands together and gave me a big smile through the bars.
“Hungry?” he shouted. “Food!”
I couldn’t believe it. I thought it might be the beginning of one of those mental tortures you hear about.
“You no want? No hungry today?”
“Yes, sure. I’m hungry.”
He said it all in one breath and he had a funny way of talking, like he was putting on an accent or something. He smiled again and thumped his chest.
“Homer, that’s me. Foreigner. My mother she is Greek, but I been citizen a long time now—fully qualified reliable citizen, keep the law. But I know, you know—before. Before I’m so respectable, I been on the other side of the bars, your friend Adam can tell you.”
“Adam?”
“Oh, so sorry, I think you friends already.” He jerked his thumb at Jake. “Adam,” he said, and then nodded his head at me and said, “Abe.”
“How do,” Jake muttered, and glared at me.
“I hear you talking and I think you know each other already.”
“Just passing the time of day,” Jake said.
“Yes, is good. So I put you next door. Is sad, it make you worry behind bars when you get nobody to talk to. Is true, yes? Me, I talk all the time.”
“It’s the poet in him,” Jake said. “Tells me he’s got poetic ancestors, ain’t that right?”
“My name,” said the jailer. “Is name of greatest poet of Greece. Homer. You know Homer?”
“Can’t say as I do,” I said, “but I never been out of the country. This Homer a big man over there in Greece?”
“Biggest. Biggest poet we got. But he is dead a long time. He lived hundreds of years before now, centuries before now. We got other poets, but Homer he is the best. You got poets too?”
“I expect. Fraid I don’t know much about it.”
“Sure,” Jake said. “Everybody’s got poets. But it’s always the same story—the good ones died a long time ago and the ones we got now aren’t any good. Five hundred years from now people will say somebody was the poet of his time today and it’ll be some poor fool you never heard of. Must be a hard life living five hundred years faster than everybody else. I’d just as soon leave it alone.”
“Ah but the glory!” says Homer.
“Sure. You figure it out. These poets and people don’t begin to live till they’re dead. So think about it: who’s got all this glory? Dead men. Right? You can keep that. Besides, all the best poets are anonymous anyhow.”
Theft Page 2
