Path of Thieves

by Sunniva Dee

  —Little rat, submit that FAFSA. We want you out of Newbark.

  —I’m saving for a plane ticket for you, baby boy. I’d be so happy to watch you eat homemade Georgia peach pie while you apply for jobs here in Rigita.

  —Honey, I miss you. I wish we could live in the same city.

  —Maybe we could set you up with us in Las Vegas. We could get a bed for the storage room. As long as your sister stops worrying about you.

  Pressure, so much of it. I’m in the kitchen, the bridge of my nose steadied between my fingers. Step-Cynth sashays in wearing hot pants and turning her back as she scours the entrails of the fridge. She tips her head up. “Did you grab the leftover hotcakes?”

  I nod into my hand; the plate is in front of me, a big bottle of syrup a telltale sign of my intentions. “Yeah. You want them?”

  “No, I was going to pull them out for you because you need to eat more.”

  “Cynthia.” I want to say that she’s not my mother, but she isn’t all that horrible and I don’t want to make her feel bad. After all, her main infraction is that she got hitched to Dad. And lives with us. Unless I count the lingerie she drops all over the house when it’s the last thing I need—

  “You’re not my mother.”

  “No, I know.” She plops down in front of me, elbows flat against the surface and gaze open. “So...”

  I eye her warily.

  “Your father is going shopping tonight.”

  “Right.” The pain starts at my ankles and seeps up like quicksilver until it stops below my knees. Discreetly, I flex a foot in an effort to alleviate the tension. Cynthia’s sigh leaks out. It’s worried, and I’d rather not hear it from someone I care about. “Why? Has he said anything?”

  “No, not really.” From her expression, she’s not finished, but right there is when it registers with me that he hasn’t asked me in a few days. Has he given up? The thought makes me lightheaded.

  “Toeffel and Oliver are putting the screws in him, Cugs. Rent is coming up, and I don’t know how much he’s got in his jar, but by his mood, we might be in trouble.”

  I don’t want to ask. I do anyway. “How are they pressuring him?”

  She lifts her shoulders, stretching that too-tight tank top. “They’ve secured a buyer who’s paying a killer price for a hundred hand weapons in two weeks. Oliver and Toeffel can’t cover what the buyer needs. They’ve got other shoppers too, but you and your father are their best sellers.”

  Best sellers.

  Bestsellers.

  “They’re looking for new people, hungrier shoppers, and if your father can’t deliver, they won’t buy all kinds from him anymore, they say.”

  There are a lot of firsts for me lately. Today, I lift my stare and hold Step-Cynth’s when I ask, “Don’t you wish your husband had another job?”

  My father is pacing.

  Pacing, pacing, pacing.

  I only came home to sleep, but he can smell when I’ve snuck into the house and into my room. The last three days I’ve been low on sleeping, on showering, on eating. It’s better to be sleepy and dirty and hungry than to face my father and say no again.

  But here I am. I’ve caved in and returned to the prefab, because there are limits to how long a person can occupy other people’s couches.

  “Stop this nonsense.” He rakes his hand through his hair before he looks up and stares hard. “Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg.”

  I shake my head and raise my palms to him. There’s nothing I want less than my father begging. He’s desperate. He doesn’t heed me.

  “Please. Please come along and do this with me. I’ve done all the research. It’ll be easy, I promise. We’re only hitting four houses, and they’re within ten miles of each other. The owners are away, out of state at the same gun conference. It’ll be like stealing a lollipop from a kid.”

  I don’t want to steal lollipops from kids.

  What’s on my tongue bursts free. “How did it come to this? Why?”

  His face falls like he can’t believe it did either. Dad takes a break to inhale, but then he straightens and gathers himself. “Please?”

  It’s not just electronics, cash, jewelry. It’s guns. The only gun we’ve ever touched is the one Dad bought from Toeffel. “Just for safety,” he said back then. He’s been adamant about that limit.

  “Once you start relying upon shopping weapons for a living,” he commented on other burglars having gone that route. Then he’d leave it at that, shaking his head.

  I back against the window in my room. It’s low, the sill reaching the bend of my knees where it cuts into my skin. My arms cross by themselves as I tell him what he knows. “I’m trying not to do this anymore.”

  “Cugs, we’ve talked about this.” He follows. Stops in front of me. Dad can’t loom anymore because I’m taller than him. Still, I lower into the corner of my window and let my gaze float over the pane, thinking how nice it would be if the hinges weren’t painted shut.

  “One last time, son. For old time’s sake.” Why are his eyes glossy when my father is hardcore?

  “For old time’s sake or for money’s sake?” I mix grief with it’s-overs.

  “I don’t like this lifestyle any more than you do, but we have to work for a living. At the moment, you’re just messing around at the hardware store. Even if Al gave you an actual position, you’d only get minimum wage. You think you can sustain yourself on that? It’s not how the world works.”

  “You’ve gotta start somewhere. Most start with a minimum-wage job.”

  “No, that’s where you’re wrong. They do not. People are just lucky and entitled and start out at a level that’s way above ours. To maintain a home and a family someday, you’ve got to have work that pays real money.”

  “Like lawyers and nurses?” I ask bitterly.

  Dad doesn’t understand. “Exactly. The rest of us who aren’t fit for that stuff, we need to jump in and take what we can.”

  And so I inhale. I feel the muscles tense in my calves as if I’m steeling myself for an attack on the battlefield.

  “I disagree,” I say. “What you’re saying sounds a whole lot like I should go to college.”

  I feel foreign in the car to Melbourne Beach. A stranger, an alien, someone who acts like me but isn’t. One should feel connected to oneself, to one’s past and present.

  “You won’t regret it, son.” The night sky is milder than my father. Why am I doing this? His eyes. They were glossy with despair.

  “Who’s calling you?”

  “None of your goddamn business.” Me saying this is appropriate. “I’m doing it for you. Doesn’t mean I’m changing my plans.”

  “It’s not what I’m saying.” He sounds subdued. It surprises me, but it doesn’t melt the Alaskan winter of my feelings for him. I’d avoided the situation I’m in for weeks now. I guess I thought I was done.

  The highway lights flash in and out of the darkness. It shouldn’t disguise what I need to do all over again.

  “Father.”

  His foot on the pedal eases at the name I never use for him.

  “Hmm?” Dad’s fingers go to the radio. Swivel the dial so that old-timey rock fades and blends with the hum of the motor.

  I wait until he meets my eyes—he has to see my conviction. I never want to relive the past again, so I tell him, “I need to leave Newbark.”

  He sucks in a breath like my words are a surprise, like it’s the first time he’s considered me being unhappy in the hellhole he chose for me.

  “No need for that. We’ll figure something out. Cynthia loves you and wants the best for you too. She’s pleased to have you around the house.”

  “It’s not a life for me.”

  “Everyone needs family around them.”

  “Dad. It’s beyond that for me.”

  My
phone buzzes. Nadine. I pick up while my father’s attention returns to the highway.

  “Hi baby,” she murmurs. It’s late where she is. It’s late here too, but here it’s time to break into other people’s homes.

  “Hey. What’re you doing?”

  My girl reads my voice. “Where are you?”

  “Out with my father.” She gets it. Dad doesn’t.

  “Cugs! You said you were quitting.”

  “I did. I’m—” My intestines roar. Am I hungry? It’s either that, or I need the restroom. “Dad and I are doing a little road trip.”

  The old song on the radio has morphed into something sung by a woman with a too sweet voice. I have a brick in my stomach. “So anyway, we’ve got one last little outing together, and then I’m off to good stuff.”

  “What good stuff?” Nadine is ready for promises. I meet my father’s gaze at the traffic light. Darker than the sky, his doesn’t waver. It keeps my attention hostage, reminding me of younger years in strangers’ houses.

  This isn’t the first time I wish I could read the future and commit to actions based on their outcome.

  “Good stuff,” I repeat. The impulse decision in my head would make Nadine excited. It could also sever all bonds with my father.

  Do I need these bonds?

  “Yeah, the good stuff is that I might be going to college.” This isn’t news. I’m not making Nadine happy, and I’m not severing any bonds with my father by saying it. I could have told her I’ve applied for student loans. That I’ve applied for grants. I could have told them both that there’s a spot I still haven’t declined at the University of Florida.

  “That’s good,” Nadine says, not asking where I might go. Her voice is flat, and I wish it wasn’t. “Your dad’s right next to you, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  She hung up so quietly. Nadine’s disappointment sieved through the phone line and made the night even darker. She didn’t answer when I asked if we could talk later.

  Tonight it’s particularly disgusting to break into houses. The anxiety, the stress, my father waving me forward and pointing at alarms. Me with my tools. It’s the last time, I remind myself, but haven’t I said that before?

  These mansions. It could have been a friend’s home, Markeston’s, Nadine’s parents’ all over again. As I work, gaze flicking around me for signs of life, the food in my stomach turns, begging to be chucked up. There’s no use in talking about right and wrong with my father, not now, not ever again. This is it. The door gives to me, silent, easy, ready for me.

  Dad waves me in first. I go, my heart heavier than my stomach and meeting it in the middle. I’m the weight on my shoulders. I press myself down as I move inside. Still, I’m stealthy.

  The gun cabinet is upstairs. We’ve got tools for that too. Dad juts his chin at it, mouthing, What are you waiting for? and I don’t know what I’m waiting for except a miracle. The cabinet swings open—it’s not locked—why don’t they lock a cabinet packed with firearms?

  “Wow, that’s a miracle.” Dad’s grin is as wide as the door to the guns. But he’s wrong. The miracle would be if his grin wasn’t a grin but a gentle smile while he told me he’s decided we’re leaving without the loot. A miracle would be if no bonds had to be severed and my father became my father and not my boss, my accomplice, my teacher in transgressions.

  Barking dogs we’ve run into before, even big ones with drool foaming around their mouths. The house was supposed to be empty. It is too, with the exception of a single Rottweiler protecting the upstairs with his life.

  This dog knows. He doesn’t barge down the stairs for us. Terrified yet faking dangerous, he’s just a pet untrained for a toxic job.

  My father unholsters the gun from his hip. I know his mindset. He won’t fire it, because by doing so, he’d wake the neighbors. But in this house, the weapons are upstairs, and he’s not going to leave without them.

  Dad rotates the gun shaft up, lifts it high, and slowly, he eases up the stairs.

  “No,” I hiss. He might be morally corrupt, but even Dad loves animals. “What are you doing?”

  There’s a growl in the dog’s throat, a warning to stay off his domain. We’re in his house already. He’ll at least protect his master’s sleeping quarters.

  “It’s the only way. A quick smack to the skull, and he’ll be out of commission.”

  Another step. One more. His grip around the barrel tightens as he ascends. The dog holds his ground. God, those big yellow eyes. All he wants is for us to leave.

  “Dad, we’re not sinking this low. Let’s just move on to the other houses.”

  “Oh no, this is the motherload. The owner has at least a dozen firearms upstairs. It’s got to be done.”

  I don’t think. I grab his shoulder in an effort to hold him back. He curses and shakes me off. Above us, the dog crouches, body quivering with purpose, a fearful call for us to leave peacefully.

  Dad ignores me, his focus returning to the dog. He murmurs fake encouragements meant to soothe. It’s painful. Can’t have it anymore. I lunge and seize him by the arms.

  “What the hell, Cugs? It’ll be over in thirty seconds.”

  “Yeah, it will.” Force. I’m using force on my father. He yanks, incredulous, but adrenaline shoots through my veins and I am stronger than him.

  Conviction and courage shine from the animal’s eyes.

  I can be courageous too.

  Despite my better judgment, I came on this trip. Despite wishes and promises to myself and to Nadine. Yeah, it was a mistake, but I’m not making another. For once, I see into the future, and I know for a fact that my father isn’t killing an innocent animal tonight.

  I jam in under his elbows, bending his arms backward, and the gun flies out of his grip.

  “Enough!” He wants to turn, but I don’t let him. Eyes narrowed, he glares from his twisted position.

  Dad shoves. It’s a violent shove meant to make me go down. I lose balance, my head hitting the banister. Still, I hold on tight, because without trust, without illusions, a person has nothing to lose.

  This time, I’m dragging him down with me.

  The dog leaps. I close my eyes, steeling myself for his teeth. A strangled oomph escapes Dad, and suddenly my grasp on him is gone.

  I peer out. Below me, he’s sprawled out with heavy paws pressed against his chest.

  I ease downward. Dad rolls out from beneath the animal. His eyes dart to the gun, but I know what he’s thinking and I am closer. I stretch, fingers trembling until they graze it, and there—

  There ah the gun is safe in my fist.

  “Give me that!” His focus swings between the dog and me. The Rottweiler’s stare doesn’t stray from Dad. I hoist up on an elbow, rubbing the back of my head where I hit wood.

  It’s the strangest thing to see my father rise to his hands and knees. When he prowls toward me with a gaze void of compassion, he is someone else.

  This dog knows, and he wedges his body in between us. His growl becomes a snarl, teeth snapping together in warning. His are loud claps meant to deter, and they do, they do.

  I rise to my feet. Watch my father retreat down the stairs. “You’ve got the gun. Go ahead, hit him. He’s not even looking at you anymore. It’s like stealing lollipops from toddlers.”

  No.

  Slowly, I descend, the dog regulating our advance and keeping me safe.

  “We’ve got thirty in the car. If we get the dozen upstairs, we can finish the job in a week. We don’t ever have to do guns again. Listen, we’re just securing my status with Oliver and Toeffel, that’s all. And this paycheck will make it so that I can meet a down payment for a house and stop renting. Come on, son.”

  “Stop talking.” I hate that he does this to me. A dog can’t keep me safe from my father’s manipulations, and I love him enough to want to see
him safe in a house of his own.

  “You want the best for Cynthia too, don’t you?”

  The dog’s snarl picks up, spit flying off his tongue. I should’ve had a dog all this time. The front door is right there. Twenty steps through the main living area and into the grand foyer. Freedom. So easy, right? What if.

  What if I—

  Gun in hand and with my father calling for me to stop, I exit. I stride down the street like I live here, like there are bus stops, people I know, an escape from this life.

  Above me the moon is full. It’s hope without a stick, no lollipop, no, no lollipop.

  Air wheezes out of my lungs.

  It’s the sound of release.

  “That’s not what I’m asking of you.”

  “No, but it’s the middle of the night, and you know no one in Melbourne Beach. Am I getting this straight?” Keyon’s voice is sleepy on the phone.

  “Sorry, man. I really wasn’t thinking. I...” Shit. What had I been thinking? Wah, wah, I’m alone. Someone come pick me up. “Never mind. There’s a railway station here, and I’ll get on a train home as soon as I can.”

  “To where? You’re at odds with Daddy Dearest.”

  “Sure, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go home. I need to pack anyway.”

  I sigh. Press two fingers against my eyes. Where do I go from here? The shock on Dad’s face when I slammed a fist into his face. The punch wasn’t premeditated, but I don’t regret it either.

  “What are you packing?”

  “My football gear.” As I say it, the truth hits me: my football gear is all I care about. I’d wave goodbye to the wrinkled posters on my wall, the old videogames, and the broken TV. There is nothing, nothing else I need in that place.

  “So...” Keyon drags the word out as if he’s too tired to think. He probably is. It’s three thirty in the morning, and it’s my fault that he’s not in dreamland. “No valuables, memorabilia, anything else up there in Newbark?”

  “Nope. We don’t keep that stuff. Mom gave me a picture of Paislee, her, and me, but I’ve got it in my wallet.”