As a Thief in the Night

by Chuck Crabbe

  The knife was to cut through the wall. There was only one locked door between them and the money. Alex had scoped it out and thought it through. At Sunday service with his family he had knocked on the drywall that separated the office and the big meeting room. From the sound it made when he hit it, he believed it was hollow. Instead of breaking down the door or picking the lock, he had come up with the idea of cutting a hole in the drywall and then crawling through it into the church offices.

  The unlocked door, the one they would use to get in, was at the back of the church next to the children's playground. They didn't want to be seen in the lights that shone on the front lawn so they walked around to the back, along the border of an empty farmer's field, to get to the door. The field was muddy and wet and they paid close attention so as not to step in the muck.

  If the door had been locked, then they would have turned round and gone home, but it was not. Alex pressed down on the steel button atop the handle and the door clicked open. It was warm and dry inside, and they were glad to be out of the cold. Ezra started to cough; the other boys looked at him angrily. "Sorry, I couldn't help it."

  For a minute they stood in silence, just inside the entrance, and listened to make sure no one else was inside the church. There had been no cars in the parking lot. Once they were sure they were alone, they went up the steps to the main level and entered the sanctuary through the side door. It was dark and hard to see and they stood still again and waited for their eyes to adjust. They walked slowly and carefully along the back of the large, sparse room trying not to bang into anything. Ezra ran his hand along the tops of the last row of chairs to feel his way. The church sat its congregation in chairs one would expect to find in the waiting room of a doctor's office; pews were considered to be impractical, unnecessary ornamentation, as were all devices of ceremony. The doors to the main hallway were propped open with jams, and each followed the other out of the sanctuary. The cross, the one Ezra had attached such importance to when he'd considered the crime he was about to commit, was lit the way it always was, the only light in the room in fact, but he passed it without really noticing anything other than the utility of its light in the darkness. In the wide hall, which was attached by an open entranceway to the cloakroom, Alex pulled the big knife out of his backpack. He had probably stolen it from his mother's kitchen, Ezra thought to himself.

  "Okay, somebody's got to stand at the window and watch the parking lot while I start cutting," said Alex.

  Ezra and Adam looked blankly at each other. Now that they were inside they were both afraid to act. "I'll watch first," Ezra said finally. He stood beside the window, careful to avoid the little bit of light coming in from the lamp over the front doors. Two cars drove by on the road in front of the church. People were always speeding on that road. He heard Alex drive the knife into the wall. Making a sawing motion with the knife, he began to cut through the drywall. After a minute he hit one of the studs and started sawing downwards. White dust from the drywall sprayed out all over his clothes and onto the floor. He didn't seem to care or notice and only moved the knife back and forth more violently. Soon he had cut a small circle into the wall.

  "Adam, you cut now."

  Adam looked fearfully at the knife. "Hell no!"

  "Come on, I'm tired."

  "This is your thing Alex."

  "So you're not going to take any of the money then?"

  "Keep it all, if you want."

  Alex shook his head and stabbed the knife into the other side of the drywall. He sawed through quickly but stopped before he had cut the piece all the way around. He lay down on his back, cocked one foot back, and kicked it out into the office. Spinning round, he stuck his head through the hole to the other side and then pulled it back out quickly. "Let's go," he said.

  "I'm staying here," Adam said firmly.

  "Take Ezra's place at the window then. Ezra," he called quietly, "we're through."

  Adam took Ezra's place as lookout and Ezra came into the hallway just in time to see Alex's feet disappear through the hole in the wall.

  Ariadne held Olyvia's arm to steady her as they walked up the path to the front porch. At the door, Olyvia searched through her purse for the keys. "Isn't Ted home?" Ariadne asked. She had worked with Ted at the theatre before he had accepted the position at Stratford.

  "No," Olyvia answered, tightening up a little from the pain in her stomach, "Ted's never home anymore."

  "Right...the new job. Has he been working a lot?"

  "I'm sure he has." She was still searching. "But that's not why he's never home."

  "What do you mean?" The younger woman stepped out of the light to allow Olyiva to see.

  "He left me."

  "What? When?"

  "Six weeks ago," she said without looking back. Olyvia found the keys and opened the door. She turned on the lights and Ariadne saw her face was still uneasy with pain. Without taking off her shoes she went right to the couch and lay down. As soon as she did she had another attack. Before she had felt it in one concentrated spot, but now the pain had spread all over her stomach. She pressed down on her abdomen with one of her hands to try and relieve some of the pressure, and as she did, her shirt came up a bit and Ariadne noticed the small lion tattoo she had on her stomach. But now was not the time to ask. Olyvia lay there and did not attend to the blood she had found in the parking lot, nor did she check for more. The midwife knelt down beside her and lightly brushed the hair off her forehead.

  He was nervous and something within him knew that if he went through the hole that DaLivre had cut in the wall, then nothing would ever be the same again. Tentatively, like an animal beginning to trespass in an underground burrow that did not belong to it, he lowered himself to the floor and pushed his head through the opening. The other side was much darker and Ezra searched blindly for the other boy, but the office had no windows, and so no light from the street or parking lot eased the blackness.

  "What's that humming sound?" he asked Alex without knowing exactly where he was.

  "It's just the humidifier. They must have left it on." The voice came from closer than he expected it to. "Come on through. I wanna get out of here," Alex rushed him.

  Ezra pulled his head back out and tried to make his way through by putting his arms in first, as if he were diving. Halfway in, about as far as his hips, he suddenly got stuck and had another coughing fit. For a moment he was terrified that he had become trapped. He coughed violently and then spit up phlegm all over the office floor. "Jesus, are you alright?" Alex asked.

  "Yeah, I'm okay." And with one final bit of resolve he slipped all the way inside.

  As soon as he hit the floor he began to change. Ezra started putting on weight, and growing. An unusual sensation, one that felt like growth, moved through his joints and muscles like electricity. Dumb with the tremors of change, he heard Alex moving quickly around the office. Drawers opened and slammed shut, papers were moved about, and the wheels on the chair creaked as it was pushed away, but all the noise was in fact peripheral to his experience. Ezra's hair grew and fell over his eyes. He put his hand on Alex's shoulder to quiet him.

  "Do you hear that?" Ezra asked.

  "Hear what?"

  "Someone's talking outside."

  Alex was quiet and listened carefully for a long minute. "I don't hear anything. What was it?"

  "A man and a woman were talking."

  Alex listened again. "There's nothing. Don't scare me like that. Stop standing around and help me." Alex felt his shoulder in the spot where Ezra had put his hand. "Why are you all wet?"

  "What?"

  "Your hand, it's all wet."

  "I don't know. It's from the humidifier."

  "Then why am I still dry?"

  The two of them, now with an urgent sense of time and pressure, tore through the rest of the dark office. "I've got it!" Alex knelt by the hole in the wall and held up the lock box he had found. "This is it. Let's go." And then he was through the hole as quickly as he ha
d come in. "Come on Ezra!" he whispered from outside.

  Alone now inside the office he looked around at where he had been, and from where there was no turning back. A flash of white in the far corner that he had not seen before startled him. Ezra heard Alex hurrying him from the other side of the wall but ignored him and walked toward whatever it was that the big white sheet was covering. Slowly he moved closer, and now he knew what it was. Sometime long before Ezra had met The Bird Man or come to the youth group or heard the congregation speaking in strange tongues, an old woman who had belonged to the congregation had donated a large porcelain replica of the Christ the Redeemer statue to the church. Underneath the white sheet, arms outstretched, it looked like a little child dressed up as a ghost on Halloween saying, "Boo!" to everyone who passed. Ezra looked at the specter for a second then pulled away the sheet.

  Members of the congregation had complained when it had been placed inside the church. They said that God's children no longer required idols to pray to, that placing the image inside the rectory was a return to the more archaic, superstitious follies of the Catholics (all the Pentecostal idols are mental ones). But the old woman had not requested any permission or sought out anyone else's input before she had purchased it, she'd simply had it made and delivered. The delivery truck had pulled up to the church's front doors, with her in tow, and she had presented it to the unprepared pastors, who were in no position to turn away such a generous gift. Though it was against Pentecostal practice, the statue was hesitantly placed in the rectory as a concession to the woman's generosity. However, when the old woman had died the pastors had moved the statue into the office and covered it appropriately with the sheet.

  Ezra looked closely at the face of the Redeemer in the dark. Something stirred, and then rose slowly in him as he looked over the countenance of the Son. It was simple and kind and forgiving, and he hated it. Ezra's timid heart flooded like a dark river in front of their God, it burned for revenge and the fire made it bold. Revenge? Revenge for whom? What had this God done to him that turned his fear and reverence into hate and a lust for destruction? He did not know, and did not think, but lived for that moment on only the emotion that instructed him. And it told him plenty. He removed his gloves, slid the black opal ring from his finger, the one the scholar had given him after mass, and placed it on the left hand of Christ. Then Ezra made an angry fist with his left hand and used it to shatter the idol's head. It broke in ten thousand pieces all over the wall behind it. The small bits of white porcelain fell soundlessly to the carpet. All the fear that had plagued him since the first time Alex had brought up his plan was gone and, instead, he felt pleasure and sated lust. Yes, the thought came to him, "I am a destroyer, and I have enjoyed destroying." The figure of the Redeemer stood there before him, headless, its new ring on the left hand. The sound of his blood dripping on his boot woke him. He looked down and saw it all over his foot, all over the floor, and the bits of white porcelain around him. He put his glove back on to try to soak it up.

  "What did you do that for?" Alex was staring, wide-eyed, through the hole in the wall.

  Ezra didn't answer him. "Let's go!" Alex called.

  "I think I'm too big." He had put on nine pounds, eight ounces in the last few minutes. "I don't think I can fit."

  "Stop fucking around. You got in okay."

  "I don't feel well."

  "Just put your head and arms through and I'll pull you inside."

  Ezra sucked in his breath to make himself skinnier, and then stuck his arms and head through the hole in the wall.

  The two women were quiet and so was the schoolhouse. Olyvia lay still with eyes closed. Ariadne knelt beside her and admired the softness of her face. But then, as if she had been stabbed or struck, Olyvia arched her back, her hands tightened into fists, and she cried out violently. The pressure mounted then gave way to an even more intense burning sensation.

  "I'm calling an ambulance." Ariadne headed for the phone.

  "No, I think I'll be fine now." Her assessment came as a progressively peaceful whisper that signaled the arrival of sleep.

  Frustrated by the woman's denial of action that clearly needed to be taken, Ariadne felt Olyvia's forehead to see if the fever had worsened. Convinced that it had not, she sat on the big armchair on the other side of the room to watch over her friend. She picked up a vineyard magazine from the coffee table and leafed through it. A few minutes later she heard Olyvia's breath slow and deepen.

  Soon Ariadne was tired. She took a blanket from the closet and curled up underneath it on the chair. A thread on the corner of the crisscrossed quilt was loose. She wound it idly around her finger until her eyes closed, and she too was asleep.

  Ezra struggled to push himself through. Unable to hold his breath any longer, he gasped and his stomach expanded against the drywall. Alex grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled.

  "Use your feet," Alex said. "Push off the floor with them." He could tell from how hard he had pulled that it was a very tight fit, and he wasn't sure that Ezra was going to be able to make it out. Ezra planted his feet on the ground and dug his toes in to push. He pawed the ground, trying to struggle forward, while Alex continued to pull on his shoulders. "Come on. Push, push."

  Ezra inched forward, his legs churning, his feet giving way and then finding the carpet again.

  "Come on Ezra. Push!"

  He felt his body lurch forward all at once. The drywall underneath him ripped open and he fell through to the floor on the other side. Bits of drywall stuck to his wet clothing. He slowly got to his knees, his wits barely about him, and tried to brush it off.

  "Someone's here!" Adam yelled from the window. Moving headlights rolled through the cloakroom and onto the wall beside them. Ezra heard the sound of car tires on loose gravel outside.

  "Let's get out of here!" Alex yelled over his shoulder. He was already through the doors and into the sanctuary. All three ran hard but clumsily in the dark, and as they stumbled and knocked over chairs Ezra thought he heard the sound of a key turning in the front door latch. No, he could not have heard it; he was too far away. They jumped down the small flight of steps in one bound and left by the same door from which they had entered.

  Without looking back they ran as fast as they could through the farmer's field. Each ran on his own, unsure of where the others were. When one stumbled on the uneven ground, the others continued their terror-driven escape. They ran and ran and Ezra's lungs burned. At first he thought that they were being chased, and he had not dared to look back. But they were not being chased, and once they were far enough away that the church was out of sight, Alex slid down one side of a deep ditch near the railway tracks and came to rest at the bottom of it. Ezra and then Adam followed behind him. All three boys, their pants and shoes muddy and wet from the field, crouched breathlessly in the ravine.

  "Who was it?" Alex asked Adam when he could talk again.

  "I don't know. I just saw the car and the headlights."

  "What kind of car was it?"

  "I'm not sure. It was black, I think."

  "Good thing I got through the wall when I did," Ezra said. The reality of what they had just done, and that it had been discovered, was beginning to take on meaning for him. "Do you think they'll call the cops?"

  "Of course they'll call the cops," Alex answered. "If they're not there already, then they're on the way. But why did you do that to the statue, Ezra? We went there for money, and you smashed a statue of God."

  "What do you mean?" Adam asked.

  "That white statue of Jesus that they keep in the office, this kid broke it with his fist."

  "I went there for the money," Ezra said absently.

  "Let's keep moving." Alex grabbed Ezra by the jacket and pulled him up to his feet.

  They scampered up the other side of the ditch and onto the railroad tracks then walked together in the dark. Whenever they saw headlights they ducked down amongst the weeds and hid. Alex held onto the moneybox, and when he tried to pass i
t to either of the other two, they refused out of fear.

  Behind one of the railway sheds he tried to pry the box open with the knife. He stuck the blade underneath the lid and stabbed at the lock. When that didn't work he tried to use the blade as a lever, and it snapped in two. They had no idea how much money was inside, no idea how much the congregation had sacrificed from dinner tables and birthday gifts in the name of Christ. Further down the tracks, at the end of a long property with a house set far back from the road that ran beside them, they came across an unlocked wooden shed and helped themselves to a large spade. Alex aimed it at the crack just under the box's keyhole, and stabbed down hard. It split open the first time he hit it. Coins spilled out all over the railway ties, and amongst the stones between them. There was a big stack of bills, too. They hid in the weeds to count the cash: it totaled $3,396 dollars. Ezra did the math and they split the money evenly, $1,132 dollars each.

  It was almost ten o'clock. Alex's parents, seeing that he was up to his old ways (ways that both of them had an extensive personal history of), had imposed a ten o'clock curfew on him during the week, and he was already pushing his limit. He stopped when the track reached the cross street that led to his house. Looking at both Adam and Ezra, he shook their hands, as if some formal occasion were coming to a close. Ezra and Adam walked on together.

  They heard the engine as the car sped up and it was almost beside them by the time they realized it was a police car. Two officers, one tall and thin with a moustache, the other heavier, but also tall, opened the doors simultaneously, in such a way that if one had been looking from overhead, the vehicle might have appeared, for a moment, like a white bird that had just spread its wings. The one with the moustache turned his flashlight on Ezra. Then he shifted the light from Ezra to Adam. "Where's all the mud from guys?"