The Dope Thief

by Dennis Tafoya

  Sherry met him at the door, small and pale under unwashed black hair, speed- rapping about how she couldn’t get him up and he was just so lazy and she thought about an ambulance but who was paying for that? He put her in a chair in front of the tele vi -sion, noticing the scattered potato chip wrappers, the empty beer cans on the table, the smell. The same smell he’d got off the bag Manny’d left at Theresa’s. Sherry chewed her nail and watched an infomercial with couples in Hawaii wearing flower print shirts and looking painted into the scenery, tapped her feet on the table, blinking.

  He made his way back to the bedroom where Manny was stretched out, blue and still. The orange sodium lamps on the street half lit the room, a salvage diver’s light illuminating a tiny wedge of a wreck in black water. He was facing up, naked to the waist, and Ray sat down next to him and touched an arm like cold putty. He got out his cell, called an ambulance, and waited. Heard Sherry muttering to herself about getting a dog, about money she was owed by her sister in Kutztown.

  Manny’s mom had died when they were in Juvie. Abducted from some bar in Bristol, left in plastic bags by the side of the road. When he heard the CO say it, Manny slugged him in the face and ran for the fence. Three guards brought him down, got him in a choke hold and threw him into Isolation, and Ray went that night, one of the female guards taking him back to the door to try to calm Manny down. Ray banged on the door, called out, and looked through the tiny, smudged window, seeing nothing. Finally he slid open the chute and stuck his arm through and grabbed Manny around his skinny bicep and just held on, feeling the muscle vibrate and hearing his friend’s ragged breath.

  On the nightstand he found Manny’s sunglasses and put them over his eyes, smoothed the hair away from his face. Fit his hand around Manny’s bicep and squeezed.

  HE STAYED UP all night, first emptying dope and guns out of the apartment and Manny’s car before the cops came through, then finding Sherry’s sister and getting her to come down to pick her up at the hospital where they took Manny. When he left Abington Memorial it was nearly dawn, so he drove up to the Eagle and got a cup of coffee and some toast. When he paid, he went outside and the sky was just starting to go blue at the edges.

  He’d have to get Sherry into rehab, have to watch her and take care of her, and it would probably all be for nothing, but that’s how it would go and there wasn’t anything to be done about it. He was starting to see an outline of the life in front of him. It was different than the one behind, harder to dope out, but he had to think it would be better. He had to believe in it, the way Theresa believed that prayers to St. Jude had brought him home safe from prison. Even if what he did never worked, if he was no good at it.

  It would be where the money went, where his days got used up. Taking care of all the fucked- up people around him. Maybe because he’d been given this other chance he never earned. Because somebody loved him and he never understood why. Because the alternative was endless black night and dope dreams and there wasn’t anything else he could do.

  AT DAWN HE took a bag into the garage at Theresa’s house. He went through Bart’s scarred wood worktable, pulling tools out of the drawers and laying them quietly on the floor. A hammer, a punch gone black with age. A speckled boning knife, still carry -ing a faint, vinegary tang.

  He dumped a dozen guns out on the floor, then knelt slowly, the cold from the cement grabbing at the bones in his knees. He looked at the guns a long time, picking up each one and putting it down. He held up the Colt, ejected the clip, worked the slide to spit a dull brass shell onto the floor. He worked methodically, re moving the barrel, the slide. Working the firing pin out with the punch, his fingers feeling thick and slow in the weak blue light from the window.

  He separated the parts into two piles, then centered each part in front of him in turn and covered it with a decaying terrycloth rag. He raised the hammer and smacked each piece a few times, denting the barrel, snapping the magazine spring with his fingers. He had to get up periodically and work his knees, flex at the hips to keep from getting locked up. As the sun came up he began to sweat, and his hands got slick and black with old gun oil and grit.

  He finally walked into the house and went into Theresa’s linen closet and got a bunch of pillowcases for his bed, moving quietly in the dark house.

  She called from the kitchen. “What are you going to do with those guns?”

  He jumped and banged the cane against the doorjamb. “Jesus Christ, don’t you sleep?”

  “Not anymore.” She came to the hallway and handed him a mug of coffee.

  He shook his head. “I’m getting rid of them. I smashed them up, so no one can find them and get hurt.”

  “Come in when you’re done, sit down like a person and have some coffee.” She reached into the closet, straightened the mess he’d made. “Sneaking around the house in the middle of the night. You’re lucky Idon’t have a gun.”

  “Old habits.” He smiled, and she rolled her eyes.

  THREE WEEKS AFTER Manny’s funeral, Ray stood at the store’s counter, sorting through invoices. Michelle sat cross- legged on the floor in a storm of packing material and bright paper, her new laptop open. She had them selling books online. It more than doubled their income but meant shipping and tracking and dealing with people over the phone, which Ray left to her. He loved her openness to the new world but felt he couldn’t be much help and just admired the work from a distance. He told her they had gotten far out of his commercial comfort zone, which was sticking a gun in someone’s face and demanding money.

  The shop was doing good, she said, and he trusted her to be right. He felt himself being drawn forward into life, and some days that was good and some days he’d pull back against it. He’d smell dope on Stevie and instead of giving him crap about it, he’d want to get high. Or a customer would get in his shit and he’d have to leave the store, drive around and listen to music and let the tide in his blood shift until he was drawn home again to find Michelle waiting for him, and when he tried to apologize or explain she’d shake her head and hold him and he’d believe in it again.

  Theresa crouched in the back pawing the new romances before they went out onto the shelves, pulling each one to her face to squint at the covers, thumbing them open and mouthing a few words.

  Michelle smiled. “Finding everything, Theresa?”

  “I’m an old lady, hearts and flowers don’t do it for me. I like the ones where they get laid.”

  Ray said, “ We should get you some little stars to put on the ones where they get their cookies. We won’t be able to keep them on the shelves. The little old ladies who come down from the shrine after mass’ll clean us out.” He looked outside, saw Andy launching herself up the stairs, one hand around her belly. She pushed through the door hard, the noise scaring Michelle, who ran to the front.

  The girl was sobbing. “Has Lynch been here? Is he here?” Michelle put her arm around the girl, but she slid away to stand in the corner, her head swiveling. “Get him out here.”

  “He’s not here, Andy.” Ray held up his hands. “What’s going on?” The girl was hugely pregnant now, her belly projecting over the small hand she kept on the waistband of the oversized jeans Michelle had helped her pick out. They had been trying to figure out her living situation, which seemed to be on- and off- again at home and occasionally in the basements of friends. They had even tried to get her into a cheap rental, but Lynch just waved them off and shrugged, and the girl volunteered nothing, though the bruises that occasionally appeared on her face made Michelle drop her eyes and shake her head.

  They were standing there, Ray at the counter, Michelle hovering in the empty space between the door and the register, her arms outstretched as if Andy were a cat she was trying to coax off the windowsill, when Lynch ran up the street and into the store, Stevie a few steps behind him, the two of them out of breath.

  The door banged on the wall, and Theresa got up and slapped the stack of books with an open hand. “Jesus Christ, can’t anyone open and
close a door?”

  Stevie bent over, wheezing, and hit his knees with his fist. Lynch put his arms around Andy, his back to the room, and she stood still and white. Ray could see the boy’s hands were shaking.

  “What’s going on?” Ray looked from one to the other. Michelle touched Stevie’s arm and he jumped, his eyes moving wild in his head.

  Theresa said, “Is it the baby? We need to call an ambulance?”

  Stevie shook his head, pointed at his friend. “Man.”

  Lynch turned, and they saw he was crying and there was a fine spray of blood across his eyes. Michelle sucked in a breath and stood up straight. They were all still for a moment. There were muted traffic sounds and a distant siren, and Andy, quiet now, turned to look at the street.

  Lynch made a motion with his upper body, flexing his arms as if the sleeves of his thin jacket were too small. He smeared at his face with his hand, looked into his palm, but the blood had dried to rust. “I told that fucker. I told him he fucked with Andy again . . .”

  Stevie spoke to the floor. “You told him. But man, Lynch.”

  “No, I told him, he touched her again.”

  Michelle pulled her arms around her as if she were cold. “You have to tell us what happened. Andy, what happened?”

  The young girl moved closer to the window, breathed on it. She traced something no one else could see onto the window in the fine mist from her breath, watched it evaporate. Ray thought it might have been a heart.

  Stevie said, “Andy’s old man was wailing on her again. He kicked her in the stomach.”

  “Jesus.” Ray covered his face with his hands and spat out the words. “Jesus.”

  He heard a rustling, and when he opened his eyes Lynch had produced a pistol from his oversized thrift store parka. It was comically large, a long barrel like something from a western.

  Michelle said, “Bradley.” It was the boy’s first name, and Ray had never heard her say it out loud before. Lynch turned to her and his eyes were dull. “Honey, put that away.”

  Ray came from around the counter. Theresa was standing, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. He moved deliberately, slowly, imagining each terrible way this could play out. He put himself in front of Michelle and backed up, moving her into the aisles and toward the rear of the store. Then he stepped forward, one arm extended.

  Michelle’s eyes filled with tears and she grabbed at a bookshelf, her knuckles showing up white against her dark skin. She said, “Andrea, honey, come stand by me,” but her voice was strange, rounded and hoarse.

  “Lynch, man, you are among friends.” He turned to Michelle, who reached past him and grabbed Stevie by the sleeve and pulled him and Theresa toward the back door. “Think, kid, you don’t want a gun around Andy or the baby.”

  Lynch turned and looked at Andy, who sighed as if she were bored by an argument she had heard before and stared out at the street.

  She said, “Lynch, we have to go.”

  “We need money.” He lifted the pistol and pointed it at Ray, who put up his hands. Behind him he heard Michelle stifle a scream, clapping her hand over her mouth. He turned and smiled at her, or thought he did, watching through the rear window at Theresa stumbling across the parking lot toward the borough hall and the sign that said police.

  “I know, man, you can have what ever you need, we just have to talk about what’s going to happen, and you need for Christ’s sake to put away the gun.”

  The pistol went off then, always a different sound than Ray expected, not that resonant bang they dub into the movies but a concussive pop that slapped at his head and made his ears ring. The bullet cracked a display case behind him that showered glass onto the floor. Michelle jumped forward into the room, scuffling with Stevie, who was panting and trying to pull her back out to the parking lot.

  Andy sighed again, and Lynch said, “I shot her old man. I told him and told him, but he was such a dumb- ass. You can’t keep beating on people. You can’t.”

  Ray dropped his head. “Lynch.”

  “Don’t fuck with us. Just give us some money and we’ll get out of here.”

  “You don’t have to do this. Tell me what happened.”

  “I just fucking told you.”

  “No, I mean everything, everything, the whole story. He was hitting her, right?” Ray had only glimpses of their lives, Stevie and Lynch and Andrea. Drug abuse and alcoholism, suicide and abandonment and rage that chased the kids into the street to live in alleys and abandoned cars, camp in the woods, or cling to each other in wet sleeping bags in half- built houses and vanish into the forest like deer when the Mexican and Guatemalan construction crews came to work in the morning.

  “I don’t have time to tell you no story. Me and Andy are going to Idaho. We’re going to do comics. Andy can draw. Man, she draws everything, and no one knows it but me.”

  Ray’s head snapped up as Nelson appeared on the porch, and he turned behind him to see another cop, this one in a uniform, muscle past Michelle in the rear of the store and stand rigid. He saw Nel-son, Glock in hand, take up a position just outside the front door. He heard the cop behind him draw his gun, the creak of the leather holster. Through the window he could see people on the street. A couple stopped in front of the building, pulling apart a soft pretzel from the place across the street, the man feeding the woman the soft white flesh with the tips of his fingers while she laughed.

  “Lynch, man, listen to me.”

  “Drop your weapon, son.” The cop in uniform edged forward, his arms locked, the pistol a few feet from Ray’s head.

  Ray circled, his arms wide. “Wait a minute, will you fucking please?” He watched the door swing slowly behind Lynch, Nelson holding his blocky automatic, his face transfixed, hard. Ray shook his head, held his hand out, palm up, at first the boy, then the cops each in turn.

  “It’s all okay, right? This is just okay, all right?” He swallowed, his brain firing and his sinuses full of a strange ozone smell as his heart hammered and sweat began to form in a line on his back. “There’s a story here. You have to know the story. It’s not, you know. This is not,” he said, but Lynch raised the pistol and Michelle screamed and Ray didn’t know what to do and he was launching himself at the boy, his arms wide, crossing the floor without being conscious of moving his legs as if he were pulled on a wire.

  There were shots, pop, pop, pop, loud, and glass breaking, and later Ray could never be sure of the order of things as he gathered Bradley Lynch in his arms and they went over together, everything happening at once, blood pouring onto the floor, following the cracks in the hardwood, eddying in hollow scuff marks. Michelle screaming, and Stevie yelling his friend’s name, and Andy giving one long banshee shriek that sounded like she had been saving it her whole life. Ray’s cheek was against the floor, and he saw the blood as a dark tide that came to carry him away to drown. When he lifted his head, his face was dripping, and he looked down at Lynch, his coat open and his T-shirt wound around his thin chest, and saw the boy’s white flank torn open, shattered like glass.

  The room around him exploded into more screaming and shout ed orders, and he saw movement and lights out of the corners of his eyes. He looked over at Andy. She was hunched in the corner, her mouth working soundlessly, her arms around her belly and her jeans stained with dark water and flecked with foam.

  He put his hands over the wound in Lynch’s side and pressed, put his blood- painted face inches from the boy’s and tried to hold his gaze, and he was screaming something but he never knew what it was, holding the boy’s eyes with his and willing him to stay in the room, stay connected, pushing hard on Lynch’s frail chest, as if he could hold his life in by force, hold him together, keep him alive.

  August

  It was a long drive into the hills, out past Valley Forge and through quiet towns where no one stirred on the street, and when they finally got out of the van everyone stretched and squinted, pulling at themselves in the heat like athletes before a long run. They started acr
oss a long stretch of grass, and small insects opened white wings and vaulted ahead of them.

  It took a while to get them all in, Ray and Michelle taking turns holding the baby while Andy and Stevie signed the visitation forms and passing each other the mealy, lopsided bread that Andy had made herself the day before and an unwieldy bowl of peppery chicken salad. Theresa’s offering, though she herself was down with a cold and propped up in bed with a stack of romances, some DVDs of a cop show she liked, and a carton of cigarettes, which she claimed were necessary to keep her throat clear.

  They put everything out on a long table in the visiting room, shyly watching the other families. They were black and white and other colors and nationalities that Ray couldn’t guess, clustered in knots, heads together, voices quiet except for the occasional murmuring cry from a baby or screech from two kids roughhous-ing in front of the vending machines.

  Lynch was buzzed into the visiting room in his blue DOC jumpsuit, his arms out for his son, and they clustered around him and touched his shoulders, which were getting broad. Andy fingered his thin growth of beard while Lynch held his head up, his teeth showing and his bright eyes flicking back and forth between Andy and the baby, who observed everything with a wry and satisfied look. He reached for his father’s bright lapel and worked it in the minute and impossible fingers Ray could never stop looking at.

  Michelle, hovering, organized plates of food and went into the diaper bag for a bottle. Ray caught Stevie checking out her ass and gave him yard eyes that had mellowed sufficiently to make the boy lift one shoulder and smile. The room was hot and close with bodies, but through the long windows they could see bright grass divided by rolling coils of wire and beyond that the Pennsylvania hills. They sat to eat, Lynch holding the baby across his lap and watching his son work his mouth and blink his eyes.