As a Thief in the Night

by Chuck Crabbe

  He did not want her to go. His crimes now dominated his thoughts, and she became his only hope for solace. But she was gone, and he began to weep, and then to sob. As quickly as his dream would allow, he ran back and forth along the edge of the vines hoping to see her again. He searched for some clue of her between the trellises and plants, a piece of clothing, her footprint on the soil. Something in him was certain that if he could find her, then she could be his again. He could breathe her back to life, restore the beat of her heart, and put out the fire that had taken her. If only he could see her again, and she him, his hands would pull apart the woven pattern of fate and fashion it again according to his need. Ezra yelled across the vineyard to her, but heard no word that was not his own.

  He found himself sitting up in the tree. Below, the swings were still moving back and forth. The house, the vineyard, and barns were silent and still. Only the leaves playing back and forth in the breeze could be heard. The sound comforted him.

  "Whattcha be doin' up there, boy?" The voice was familiar to him. It came with a mix of menace and good-humored scorn. Ezra looked through the branches and saw the old black woman. "Well? Come on down now, stupid boy. Ya want ole Tituba to be getting' in trouble with the boss again, do ya?"

  Past her the tree's roots, gnarled and twisted, came out of the ground, like snakes with hidden heads and tails, then disappeared again into the earth. Their shape and pattern made him remember the witch's hand, the one from the tree at the Walpurgis Church that had reached up out of the ground and grabbed at him. He leaned back on the branch he was on and saw where the lightning had split the upper part of the trunk. Disoriented, he looked round to make sure his dream had not taken him to the Walpurgis churchyard and away from his mother. The shade on the walls of the house, the sprawling field of vines, and the sky all stood still in the declining light. Tituba hit the tree's trunk with her walking stick to gain his attention again.

  "Do ya hear me, boy?"

  "Yes," he said, "but I don't want to come down."

  "Tituba sees. Tituba sees, boy. Ya feel safe up in your tree."

  "Yes."

  "But that's one thing that it can't let ya go on with, boy. Nah, it won't have ya sittin' there safe. It's gone and told Tituba, boy, and it would tell ya too, but you're too stupid for it." The old woman placed the end of her walking stick against the tree's trunk, and without effort began to shake the tree. Ezra fell forward and threw his hands out to brace himself against the upper part of the trunk. The wood under his palm felt strange, and he lifted his hand to see why. Words he could not make out were carved into it. They were faded with weather and age and he brought his eyes closer to them. The only words he could make out were: Rex Ivdaeorvm. She poked him sharply with her stick. He pulled back in pain. "Fool boy, enough now! What he done wrote, he done wrote. What will ya do for yourself now?"

  Her walking stick had now grown to three or four times its original size. There was no way she was going to let him be. He was sure she would climb up and drag him down if she had to. Gathering his courage, he grabbed the branch he'd been sitting on and swung down to the one beneath it.

  "That's it now," she said. "Come down and Tituba will give ya the way now. Step onto the stick now. That's it!" She held her long staff up and gestured for him to step onto its rounded end. Then, as if they were a pair of acrobats, he reached out, first with one foot, then with the other, and stood easily, without struggling for his balance, on the end of the long staff. She carried him away from the tree, standing alone now in the twilight sky, across the yard, to the place where the shallow property line between the grass and vines was dug. She lowered the staff toward the ground at an angle, in the same way a clock's hand would fall from twelve o'clock to nine o'clock, and he stepped off and stood at the edge of the field of ripe grapes as if before a forbidding ocean.

  "Get ya goin' now, boy."

  "But I don't want to go..."

  "It's not you doin' the choosin'." She hit him on the back with the staff and he suddenly found himself among the vines.

  The music seemed to come from the distant hills that rolled up out of the earth just beyond a small group of trees. As he walked towards the goat's song, he crushed fallen grapes underfoot and they bled willingly into the soil. That song is one I have heard before, he thought to himself in that foggy yet lucid way one does when something one has dreamed before is dreamt again. But the animal's song had sweetened, and it no longer frightened him. In fact, he was not even sure it was the animal singing and thought he might be listening to a woman's voice. A woman's voice, but not hers, he knew hers as if it had been a beautiful flavor once tasted as a boy and searched for ever since but never again found, through all the pains and winter loneliness of his strained growth. No, it was not her singing, but he knew she was there, out among the hills with the music.

  Ezra heard footsteps as he walked into the trees. Two men walked past him. Long rifles rested on their shoulders. They were hunters, dark, bearded men, and they did not notice him as they walked past. Large colored leaves floated down from the treetops above him. Still, the steady song tainted the air.

  He walked out of the trees and up onto the hills toward the music. The grass was long and wet, and young, timid trees grew where they could. Ezra followed the music to an area of high weeds just to the side of the hilltop. The goat lay there on its side, as if wounded, upon the long matted grass. It looked up at him as he approached, and the song trailed out of its throat. Ezra knelt beside it and placed his hand upon its head. When he saw the blood he jerked his hand away quickly and fell backwards. The grass underneath the animal's stomach was stained red, and as his heart and hands shook at the sight of it, he knew. He knew why he had been seduced and summoned to this place, and what his seductress wanted from him.

  Everything in him pulled away from it, but still the music dragged him through the terrifying mire of his fear towards the goat. As its breathing became rapid and panicked he was raised onto his knees in front of it, as if forced into pagan prayer. "Ah hands! Do not act against me!" And yet they did. As if it were not his own, his left hand reached out and rested upon the goat's wounded belly. He pushed his fingers into the wound, into the blood, and the music then surrounded him with its menace. Slowly, he pulled at the flesh and felt it tearing in his hands. Hot blood splattered onto his face and clothes as the animal's hide finally gave way and its belly tore open. As she could be only in a dream—a willful vision that cares nothing for the symmetry and logic of the waking world—his mother lay with her skin and hair slick and painted in blood inside the goat's silenced body.

  He awoke as the police car came to a stop. It felt like early morning already, and his neck hurt. They lead him inside and he was photographed and fingerprinted. Without giving him a chance to wash the ink off his hands, they led him to his cell. Everything was very much the way he had seen it depicted in the movies. Dark steel bars, a small single cot with a thin mattress and starched, stiff sheets, and a stainless steel toilet stood alone against the wall. They led Ezra inside and removed the handcuffs from his wrists. He listened to the cell door slam shut behind the officer, and he was alone in jail. He lay down on the cot and stared up at the ceiling. In a lot of movies he had seen prisoners doing push-ups and sit-ups in their cells, so he got down on the floor and did forty of each, then felt stupid for having done so. Crawling back onto the cot, he listened to the cops shuffling papers in the office and wished that he had his radio to listen to the music he listened to at home. He wished that he was in his bed, the only one still awake, and that Gord and Elsie and Layne were all asleep in their rooms. Knowing that everyone was sleeping and safe had always made him feel peaceful.

  He kept his eyes closed, pretending to still be asleep, when Elsie's sobs woke him the next morning. She was outside his cell and he was thankful that he had fallen asleep facing away from the bars. He hoped that she could not see his face. She would know he was awake if she saw it. It was too much for him to look at her with
prison bars between them. Everything that had happened the night before rushed back at him, and he remembered Gord's shoes sliding across the floor toward him. He heard Gord trying to comfort his wife and guessed that he was probably standing behind her and holding her shoulders. She yelled at the police officers down the hall through her sobs.

  "Take him out of there!"

  One of them, a well-built black man, stepped into the doorway. "Miss—"

  "You can't tell me that this is necessary for a sixteen-year-old boy."

  "Elsie," Gord said calmly, "it's not up to them." She slapped his hands off of her. "Come on, let's go. It's no good for us to be here." Elsie only cried harder. Gord had not wanted to bring her, but she had insisted. "Elsie, let's go." She gathered her pride and wiped her eyes.

  "I'll see you at the court house, Ezra."

  Keeping his eyes closed, he felt the shadows shift behind him. His parents had left.

  The three of them were moved, in police cars again, to the Windsor Court House, where they would be arraigned. Ezra and Alex were put in a cell with about seven or eight other boys. Adam Nayeve was eighteen, so he was incarcerated with the men.

  The other boys in the cell looked like they had been in the same clothes for days. Their hair stuck up in all directions from the night before, and some of them were still asleep on the concrete benches along the walls. Ezra did not speak with them, but Alex did. He compared crimes with the others and hinted at the possibility of revenge against people that had crossed him. Once more Ezra looked carefully for some sign that Alex knew who had given the police his name, or that he was implying that he intended to exact this revenge on him, but there was none. No one had told him.

  One of the boys walked up to the big steel door and slammed his fist against it. A big cop with a shaved head came and opened it. "What is it?"

  "I want to speak to my lawyer."

  "No."

  "I need to talk to her about my other charges before I go into court."

  "Step away from the door." The cop hammered the boy hard in the chest with his fist, and the boy staggered backwards. "Don't touch the door again."

  They were put in another cage just outside the courtroom. Adam was moved too, and Ezra could see him in the crowded cell across from them. All of the men looked bigger and crueler than Adam, and Ezra felt sorry because Adam had known the least, and was the most innocent, and still his consequence, as an adult, would be the most severe. He would not have gone if Ezra hadn't.

  The public defender, a young and almost pretty woman dressed in pants and a blazer, instructed them as to what was about to happen in court. First the charges would be read. They were charged with break, enter, and theft. Did they understand that? Yes. Then, because none of them had any previous charges, conditions would be set for their release. They would have to agree out loud to the conditions. "Okay," she said, as if one more thing could be crossed off her 'to do' list, and then quickly disappeared out the door and back into the courtroom.

  They went into the courtroom and took their seats in the prisoner's box. A piece of plexi-glass separated them from the public. On the other side he saw Gord and Elsie sitting together. He looked at them quickly then looked away because he couldn't bear it. Elsie was still crying; her cheeks were red and stained with her tears. Alex's mother was there too, but his father was not. Pastor Mark sat beside her instead. His face was serious but not angry, and Ezra could not understand why he was there. Perhaps as the victim of their theft—or at least the earthly representative of their victim—he had to give information about the crime.

  But Pastor Mark was not there as any sort of victim. He had already forgiven them.

  After they had agreed to the conditions for their release—a curfew, not to associate with each other, $5,000 bond, and a promise to appear in court as required—they were led out of the room by a bailiff. Ezra, Gord, and Elsie were led to an office where papers were signed and where a few of Ezra's things, those that would not be entered into evidence, were returned to him.

  The morning was cold and sunny. Without speaking, Ezra got into the van with his aunt. They sat inside, very still, and nothing was said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw she had begun to cry again. He felt he might drown in her disappointment and sadness before they arrived home. It was several minutes before she finally spoke.

  "Are you hungry Ezra?" Her voice cracked a little. He looked at her painfully, but she kept her eyes focused on the road.

  "Uh, yeah," he answered. She drove on without saying anything else. After a few minutes she pulled into the McDonald's drive-thru.

  "What do you want to eat?"

  "I don't know. Whatever," he said quietly.

  She ordered him some food and a drink, paid for it, and then headed back towards Belle River on the highway.

  "I don't know what to say to you, Ezra," she said as if she had finally summoned enough resolve to deal with him.

  "I don't know either," he answered meekly.

  "What have you done to us?"

  He started to cry. "Something awful! Something so awful," he said, his voice breaking.

  "Kids make mistakes, Ezra, but this...a church. People gave their money to that church, people who live around us, people that I know. And the statue in the office, the police said it was you who destroyed it."

  He sobbed loudly, crying into his hands. "Who do you know there?" he asked stupidly, as if her not being able to name anyone would have made things better.

  "I work with Mrs. Carraway. How am I going to face her at work again? My boy stole money from her church, money she gave to it. And you destroyed an image of Christ."

  "You should send me away."

  "Don't be stupid. You can't run away from this. You know that, don't you?"

  "I know, I know," he sobbed. "What am I going to do?"

  "I don't know what you're going to do." The word "you" as opposed to "we" made him more certain than ever before that he was now an orphan.

  "I know I'm just like him."

  "Like who?"

  "My father."

  She sat with the word for a minute. "That's a lousy excuse, Ezra. Don't try to use that so that you don't have to take responsibility for what you did."

  "I'm not. It's true."

  She slapped him across the face. "Don't say another word! You are your mother's child. And she would be ashamed of you."

  Choking, he thought that he might throw up. "I've ruined it. I've ruined it," he yelled at himself. Elsie had to resist trying to comfort him. They came to a stop at the end of the driveway. She took her key out of the ignition and picked up her purse. "You just may have," she said, her back turned toward him. Then she walked inside the house and left him alone in the van.

  When he finally came inside, exhausted and numb, he went directly to his bedroom. It felt foreign and strange to him, the way one's house does when one has been away from it for a long time. He picked up a few of his things, a football trophy he had won in Walpurgis, some comic books, and then sat on his bed and looked them over. He felt very tired. Elsie knocked on his door and he opened it.

  "I want you to clean up your room."

  "Okay."

  "And change your sheets. Olyvia and Sarah and the kids are coming tomorrow for the weekend."

  "Why?" he asked, sure for a second that it had something to do with what he had done.

  "For Easter Ezra. It's Easter weekend."

  "Oh, right... Are George and Ted coming?" he asked, trying to keep her with him a moment longer.

  "George is coming; Ted isn't."

  "Why not?"

  "He and Olyvia broke up," she said, and left him alone again.

  Ezra lay back on his bed. He thought about Elsie's dead little boy lying much like he was at that moment, but in a coffin, under the ground in the Walpurgis cemetery. Brother, make your tomb my own. Lost child, steal my breath and seat.

  THE UNCHAINED EARTH

  Elsie said grace for Easter dinner. His eyes were closed b
ut he was sure everyone else's were open and on him. He felt them burn into him with a sort of mocking voyeurism that wondered, with the same type of pleasure the masses derived at public hangings, if his legs would give out, or the earth would swallow him, at the mention of words like 'blessing', 'bounty', and 'gifts'. He imagined pointing fingers and cast stones pushing him back into the corner until he collapsed in twisted and endless repentance. No one spoke of what he had done, but they all knew, and Ezra felt the keen daggers of their knowledge. Elsie had probably told them on one of those long phone conversations she always had with her sisters in the evenings.

  Added to the problem of his arrest was the tension over Olyvia and Ted's split. Elsie had just heard about it the previous week. It was not so much that she was worried for Olyvia, who she knew had the emotional fortitude to bounce back from almost any fall, though she did feel badly for her, but it was more her vines and the house that she was worried about. Ted had taken well to the work, even had his own interest and pleasure in it as a physical counterpoint to his work in the theatre. Now Olyvia was on her own, and Elsie knew her well enough to know she would do whatever she had to in order to move on, even if that meant disappearing again. Would she and Gord still be able to pay the mortgage? Would it still be there for her to return to? She was not happy in their new home, and Ezra's recent crisis had only added to her dislike of the small town. She could not allow the distant light that Walpurgis still provided her to be extinguished.

  However, when Olyvia and Sarah arrived, and the three of them were together again, all of that went away. Gord watched as Elsie's two sisters, despite their differences in disposition, opinion, and path, went to work on this new trauma as if they were gifted nurses applying the balm of shared blood to a wound, or seamstresses weaving comforting new thread into a tear in the quilt that made up the past. Everything petty between them vanished and was set aside in the name of family.