Theft

by Rachel Ingalls

  “Just don’t listen,” he said. “Now he knows he can get a rise out of you, he’ll try it again.”

  I turned my head away and began to cry. Maddie smoothed her hand over my neck and said, “Oh Seth, oh Seth.”

  Homer came in then and said what was the trouble, what had happened.

  ‘That crazy son of a bitch, insulting my wife.”

  Homer went over to his cell and the nut pulled his foot in and gave him a short lecture in his trumpet voice. Homer stood there without saying anything, and the nut slouched off into one of the far corners and sat down.

  Maddie said, “Oh Seth, putting you in with horrible people like that.”

  I told her again not to worry, and touched her face and took her hand in through the bars and kissed that. She did the same with mine and Homer made a sign from the entranceway that it was time for her to go. She looked back as she went, and I thought: if that other one makes a remark or does anything at all, even coughs when she gets up close—But he didn’t look at her and she went out with Homer.

  Later in the night the guards came and took the homicide out of his cell. He’d stopped crying but he went with them blank-faced. I wondered if they were taking him to trial. Homer had quit work for the night. Before he went he’d promised us to remember about looking up the day records. The man who took over was one I hadn’t seen before, very thin and grey-haired and sullen. All night long they were changing men in the middle cells, taking out the ones who were there and replacing them with others. I didn’t think they could be rioters, only a few of them looked like they’d been in a fight. The rest were all ordinary looking men, some young and some older. They tried to sleep when they came in, but hardly had time because the guards were moving them so fast. I guessed finally that they were all being held for questioning about something. Jake said he was going to sleep. Over by the entrance the religious nut was rolled up in a ball in a corner of his cell. I was tired, but it had been so dark in the place for so long that I didn’t think I could sleep. I lay down and kept watching the people going in and out.

  Finally I thought I would sleep after all and make myself a dream. Maddie said once she didn’t dream, she said she supposed that meant she didn’t have any imagination, and looked embarrassed. I told her all it means is that she forgets them when she wakes up. I’m always talking about them since it means a lot to me. Some people don’t care about it or don’t like the thought of dreaming, or are scared by it, by the thought that they go someplace away from the body. Jake says you don’t, it only seems that way, like being able to remember a face, you can close your eyes and call it up by thinking, and you don’t truly leave. Maybe Maddie has dreams she doesn’t want to remember; I’d want to remember even the bad ones.

  When we were kids we used to compare. Annie dreams in black and white and repeats dreams and remembers what people say in them. Jake’s are in color, like mine, and people in them talk but you don’t remember what they’ve said, only maybe a word once in a while. Same with mine. But he dreams about people he knows and I don’t usually unless they are far away. My little girl Mary is the strangest one—she’s dreamed some things that have happened afterwards. She dreamed about the fire before it happened, and about Maddie’s grandfather dying. Last week she said she had a dream about me, she dreamed I was in a big parade or some kind of celebration and we were all going somewhere to do something important. She said it scared her but afterwards she thought it must be all right because though she didn’t see the end, the dream finished halfway, when I was in it I was looking happy.

  I closed my eyes and tried for a good dream. I like planning them out just before you go under. Then they take over and change, of course, and the real dreaming begins.

  When I woke up I didn’t know where I was and then remembered and knew the dream had been a bad one. I’d had a feeling in the dream that I was all bent down and weak and couldn’t move very well, and people I’d met a long time ago kept asking me what had happened to me. And the trouble was I was old, about a hundred years old with a long white beard. But I’d felt it in my body, withered up and broken and too feeble even to say what was wrong with me.

  Jake looked like he was still asleep. The cell where the weeping man had been now had about six men in it, all asleep on the floor. The grey-haired man was also asleep, at the table, and the middle cells as far as I could see were empty with the doors closed. I thought I remembered Homer unlocking the empty cells earlier in the day and I wondered if that was a safety precaution, to add time in case somebody got hold of the keys and tried to lock the jailer in. Or maybe I’d misremembered and he hadn’t really used the keys. I had that feeling you sometimes get after a bad dream, that you don’t want to go to sleep again right away.

  I lay there and waited and tried not to think about anything particular. Things from the past started to go through my head, like before at the beginning of the afternoon, making me go back to when we were all kids, as though I had to say goodbye to it.

  I saw Homer come through the entranceway. He didn’t make enough noise to wake the other man or the other prisoners, but Jake was suddenly up on his feet. I stayed where I was and half-closed my eyes.

  “It’s like I am afraid,” he said. “They try you together.”

  “When?” Jake said.

  “Now.”

  “In our absence?”

  “Yes. It is going on now, is what I hear. Rumors everywhere, but that is mainly what I hear, and I think is reliable. Also I hear out of all arrest made yesterday only one or two come on any list at all. There was no time. Nobody is going to bother, it’s either let them go or try them quick and the charge the same for all, sedition, incitement to violence, treason. You know.”

  “Both of us together?”

  Homer flashed his hand out and said, “All of you, all in here right now. Seven, eight, nine, ten, they do it by the block.”

  “But we must all be in for different things.”

  “That’s all I know, what I hear.”

  “Listen,” Jake said. “You know we didn’t exactly give our right names. I think they’ve got us mixed up with somebody else.”

  “Oh, I suspect that, is not that, is not because of any names.”

  “But the charge is straight theft, isn’t it?”

  “They don’t say. I will tell you soon as I hear more.”

  He left and Jake sat down. He stayed like that, waiting, and I kept the way I was.

  I slept again. Some dreams I have places I go to with fields and mountains, sometimes the sea. And in some dreams I have cities that I’ve never been to before. But the dream I had this time was just countryside, nothing particular, and I was walking in it and don’t remember anything happening.

  Jake was sitting the way he’d been before.

  “Any idea what time it is?” I said.

  “Sun-up, I imagine. It’s hard to tell in here.”

  The other jailer was gone, and the other prisoners still asleep. I felt ghostly and cramped. Jake stretched and did kneebends and told me to do the same, but I couldn’t face it. We waited. It began to get lighter and some of the men in the big cell by the entrance stood up and stretched. sat up or lay down again. The light grew, and time dragged.

  Then there was some noise outside and people moving around, it sounded like a lot of them, talking and walking through the passageways outside. Once I caught sight of some lumber being carried by some of the military and jailhouse guards, down the corridor and past the entranceway.

  “Barricades for another riot, I suppose,” I said.

  Jake held onto the bars and looked at me. Sometimes I’ve seen him go like that, looking steady as if he’s looking straight through the world and out the other side, and it seems to be a face I’ve never met before but would never forget.

  “What?” I said.

  “Start doing those bends, Seth. And remember to make the break when I give you the sign.”

  “I don’t see the use—”

  “J
ust do what I say.”

  Homer came back while I was holding onto the bars and swinging my feet around. Seeing him from the side and then the back when he turned, he looked old and tired, like a different person, not like a man who would enjoy clowning around and laughing. He went over to Jake’s cell.

  “They decide,” he said. Jake nodded.

  I stood still to listen and it was so silent I could hear my eyelids creak when I blinked.

  “Death,” said Homer.

  Over his shoulder I saw Jake’s face, looking as though he’d known.

  “The whole bunch of us?”

  “Yes. It is martial law, for all of you.”

  “How’s it going to be?” Jake asked. And Homer told us.

  “I send for your families already,” he said, and went out again. He hadn’t looked at me.

  I shut my eyes and swallowed, and heard it loud in my throat and in my ears.

  “What martial law?” I said. “They couldn’t have proclaimed it or anything till the riots started, that was hours after they caught us. I can’t believe—”

  “Hush. It’s like he says. You remember what I told you, we’ll make the break when they get us in the streets.”

  Out in the passage somebody started hammering. Soldiers came in and stood around the doorway. Homer came back in once more and talked to the others, the seven men on the right, and the religious nut. The men got up on their feet but the nut didn’t seem to have taken anything in. He stood leaning against the bars, looking mopey. The other men began to talk, low and scared. One of them shouted out something just once and afterwards they went back to the same uneasy mutterings.

  Guards came in and some of the soldiers were called away. The hammering went on and a sound of chopping, and then a group of people, women, came in and rushed for the right-hand cell. All hell broke loose then: screaming and crying. But I still couldn’t believe it.

  Two more guards came in, and Maddie and Annie with them. Maddie was running.

  She reached me, saying, “They can’t do it, Seth, they can’t do it,” and beat her head against the bars. That was when I believed it; when I held her face up, I saw it there in her eyes and believed it for the first time.

  The place was loud as a storm now, it was hard to hear anyone. I said, “Listen, Maddie, we’re going to try for a break in the street. But I don’t want you there, you hear? You stay away. I specially don’t want you there if it won’t work. Promise me. It’s important. Promise me you’ll stay away.” I’ve seen it, mouth open, body twisted out of shape, swollen, suffocated.

  “If it happens,” I said, “come for the body after.”

  “Oh no, oh no, no, no,” she said, “they can’t do it to you, you didn’t do anything.”

  “Promise, Maddie. Nothing’s certain, it can go either way whether we get away or not. You stay away, please, I ask it.”

  “I promise,” she said, and cried. A guard came to take her away but she wouldn’t go. He lifted her away like a child and she looked back at me all the way. They were taking the other women out, too. One of the guards came for Annie, she was the last, and she hadn’t made a sound yet, but when they touched her on the shoulder she crumpled to the floor, sobbing, and put her hands through the bars, holding onto Jake’s legs. They carried her out. She was crying like the man who’d killed his wife, and didn’t see me when her face was turned in my direction and looking at me.

  “How’s it going?” Jake said.

  “I don’t know. My throat’s all tight. I got the jitters. I don’t know if I’ll be much use when it comes time.”

  “That’s all right. Wait for me. Take it easy all the way till I give the sign. Then give it everything you’ve got for as long as you can. If it don’t work out make sure they have to beat the life out of you to stop you getting away. It’s better than letting them get us there.”

  Homer came back and asked Jake if there was anything he wanted done for Annie.

  “I say it just in case, because I am married and father and so on. You try to break, yes? There’s ten of you, is a chance.”

  “Don’t miss much, do you?”

  “Just in case, I keep an eye on her if you want.”

  “Don’t he have any kin?” Jake said, looking over at the religious nut. “Nobody say goodbye to him?”

  “I ask him but he keep saying he is the son of God and nobody else.”

  “Lord, not even a friend. What happened to the man that killed his wife?”

  “They take him out in the night.”

  “Is he being tried quick, like he wanted?” I said.

  “No, he is transferred.”

  “He was arrested after us, wasn’t he?”

  Homer said yes. “They don’t need a trial for that one, he has another knife on him.”

  “You let him keep a knife on him?” Jake said.

  “I see he does not get too close, to me or to the others. He wants the knife, he can keep it.”

  Jake looked over his head and saw the last of the guards go out the door. The hammering outside had stopped and it was quiet.

  “Homer,” he said, suddenly, softly, “unlock it. Now.”

  He looked into Jake’s face for a long while. I felt the sweat coming down in floods and thought it must be possible to hear my breathing clear across the floor to the street outside. Homer walked to the table and got his keys and started back to Jake’s cell.

  He had the key out in his hand when four soldiers and two of the guards walked in through the entranceway. The guards sat down at the table and one of the soldiers called Homer by name.

  “Coming,” he said. More came in and stood up against the bars of the empty cells.

  “Is too late,” he said, and whispered to Jake. Then he said, “I get you fresh water,” and went to say something to the soldier, going out afterwards.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  Jake said, “Shut up.”

  We waited. The numbers kept changing in the room. It began to get hot. Finally more were leaving than were coming in, and when Homer came back there were only three left, leaning up against the entranceway, and all the rest were out in the passage, talking.

  He came over to us and handed Jake some water through the bars. Then he did the same for me, and I saw he was handing me something else, too: a knife. Then he reached inside his clothes and pulled out a fistful of what looked like leaves.

  “No chains, no tying up, I don’t think,” he said. “But maybe you can’t get your hands free. Take these, is for the pain, in case.”

  “What is that?” Jake said.

  “I know a friend get it for me,” Homer said, and left, to stop one of the guards who was about to walk over to us and say a word to him. Homer edged him back to the entrance and they talked there.

  “What is that?”

  “Looks like just leaves.” I began to chew them up. All the time I’d thought: don’t ever take that stuff, that’s the poor man’s grave, pretty soon you just live on dope and aren’t even hungry any more. Besides, they say it does things to your head, even when you stop and get over the craving for it, you’re never right in the head again. I always though it wasn’t worth the chance you took.

  “What are you doing? Holy God, Seth, it’s them African weeds. Don’t take it. How much did he give you? It’ll knock you right out.”

  “For the pain,” I said, and kept chewing, and wiped the juice off my mouth.

  “Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? Don’t take it, it’ll kill you, all that amount.” He turned around in his cell and slapped his hand against the wall.

  When I’d chewed up all the leaves I expected something to happen right away.

  “It’s all right,” I said, “I just feel sort of full and sleepy.”

  “You fool, you fool, you damn fool,” he said. “I’ll try my best. Homer says he’ll help as much as he can. Hide the knife. If you get your hands free, use it. And if it looks like they’ve got us for keeps, use it on yourself. Remem
ber.”

  “Sure,” I said, “I’ll remember. I feel fine, everything in working order.”

  He sort of laughed at me and put his hand up to his eyes. “Oh Seth, goddamn,” he said, and turned away.

  “What’s the matter? I’m just fine.”

  He turned back again and I saw the shine of where tears had been in his eyesockets. I’d never seen him cry before in my life.

  “What’s wrong, Jake? I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you’re going to have to leave me behind.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Want to say goodbye now?”

  “Not yet. Do you think you can fight?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I suppose, when time comes. But I feel fine. I’m not scared any more,”

  Homer came in and three of the military with him, with an officer in charge. “Those first,” the officer said, and Homer unlocked the big cell on the right, opened the door, and stood back beside it. The two soldiers moved the men out of the cell and more guards came in to hustle them along. One of the men didn’t want to leave and sat down on the floor, holding onto the bars. After they’d taken them all out Homer shut the door.

  “Not yet,” the officer said.

  Two more soldiers and two guards came in. Homer told one of the guards to be ready to take over, that he was going as an escort. Then we waited. The guard Homer had spoken to went out and another one came in to take his place.

  “I don’t think those leaves are all they’re made out to be,” I said. “Hey, Jake, I said I don’t think—”

  “I heard you. Take it easy.”

  We waited some more and then Homer unlocked the cell where the religious nut was. The two guards led him out and he walked quietly enough to the entrance and out. Then he came running in again, with both men holding onto him and his feet sticking out in all directions, it looked like, as they pulled him back and out. He was shouting, “Pharisees, blasphemers!”

  There was a lot of noise coming from the passageway, it sounded like there must be about thirty or forty people standing out there, and they laughed as the religious nut was taken through. Then it was our turn. Two soldiers and the officer walked in front and on the sides and Homer and another guard took up the rear. I’d forgotten what the passage looked like, I hadn’t noticed much when they’d brought me in. It was lined with soldiers from end to end. As we passed through, Homer handed his keys to the guard he’d spoken to.