The Good Thief (10 page)

Benjamin stopped, his hand on the door. A small vein pulsed just beneath the skin of his temple. Ren thought for a moment that he might lose his temper, but instead a cool smile slid across his face. “You’re a comedian.”

“It’s interesting you should say that,” said Bowers. “I am known for my sense of humor, particularly among members of the American Society of Dental Surgeons.”

“Is that how you got that shiner?” Tom asked.

Bowers’s hand reached up and touched the swollen edge of his black eye. He seemed surprised that it was still there. “Oh, no,” he said. “That was simply a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding of what?”

“Of a bicuspid and an incisor,” said Bowers. He waited for the men to laugh. Benjamin shot Tom a look, and they did their best. Ren tried to laugh too, but it came out sounding more like a cough. All the same, the dentist seemed to appreciate the effort and looked at them with a much more generous countenance than before.

“In this case, however, I’m being quite serious,” said Bowers. “The sailors here, they fashion all kinds of tools for their missing limbs. There’s a place on the wharf that makes wooden hands, quite lifelike. Wooden legs, too. I know the man that carves them—he’s done some teeth for me.”

Bowers walked over to the glass cabinet and opened it. Inside were rows and rows of dentures—some ivory, some porcelain, some made from animal bones, some carved and painted wood. Each pair was held together with wire, bonded to a piece of thin metal, with a set of springs on the end to allow them to open and close. Bowers took out a set that looked like a small wooden trap. Ren could see where the paint had dried across the perfectly straight and flattened teeth. They seemed much too large to fit inside anyone’s mouth.

“That’s nice work,” said Benjamin.

Bowers nodded, then reached inside the cabinet again and took out another set of dentures. It was clear, in an instant, that this set was made from real teeth. The color and shape were uneven, but the effect was much more natural-looking. “Beautiful, aren’t they? I have an arrangement with a man at a teaching hospital near North Umbrage.”

“North Umbrage.” Benjamin said the name as if he had been kicked in the chest. Ren knew at once that something was wrong. Bowers continued to chatter even as Benjamin stepped away, his face dimming.

“He sends me what’s left when they’re through with the dissections. Of course, these are much more expensive.”

Tom gave Benjamin a glance. “Why is that?”

“The doctor has to pay the resurrection men. I believe the going rate is a hundred dollars a corpse.”

“A hundred dollars!” cried Tom.

“It’s risky work.” Bowers put the dentures back in the case and shut the door. “But you look like the kind that wouldn’t mind a little danger.”

“For the right price,” said Tom.

Benjamin shook his head. “That kind of job’s not worth the trouble.”

“It’s a lot of money, Benji,” said Tom.

“Not enough.”

Tom seemed bewildered. “What are you afraid of?”

Benjamin glanced at Ren. He pressed his fingers against the tip of his nose, as if he were holding in a sneeze.

“The doctor needs someone reliable,” said Bowers. “Someone who will make good choices and check the teeth first. A good body is always reflected in the teeth.”

Tom pulled Benjamin aside and began whispering furiously in his ear, but Benjamin paid no attention. He turned to the window and the sky outside—steel gray, threatening rain. He scratched the side of his face and Ren could read the hidden emotion there, something unfixed and undone.

Bowers was busy collecting the teeth again. He tied them up in the handkerchief and held them out in the air. Ren waited, and when no one else came forward, he snatched them from the dentist’s hand.

“I can put you in touch with the doctor,” said Bowers, “if you’re interested.”

Benjamin turned away from the window. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and kept an eye on Ren, as if the boy would somehow decide things. “We’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think too long.” The dentist took his place in the examination chair, pulled the table close, and removed the napkin from the remains of his breakfast. He lifted the bread and made a gesture, offering Ren a bite.

The purple jam shone on top. It smelled like berries and sugar, wonderful and sticky, but Ren shook his head and shrank back. Bowers seemed pleased and looked at Ren keenly with his blackened eye, as if he were making great plans for him. Then he tore the piece of toast in half, stuffed it into his mouth, and began to chew it apart. His dentures mashed together, as if they had their own mind.

“Teeth want to be lost,” he said. “Don’t give them an excuse to leave you.”

A
nor’easter came through Granston a few weeks later. The harbor froze several feet deep, hard enough to walk across. The fishermen came out each morning and broke their boats free with pickaxes, then raised their sails in the snow and cast their nets and pulled their lobster traps from the water.

Ren spent most of his time in the basement, rereading The Deerslayer . Tom and Benjamin played cards or went out to the local saloon. In the middle of January Tom came down with the chicken pox. Ren had caught it years before at Saint Anthony’s, and Benjamin said he had had it as a child, so Tom spent a month alone in bed, itching and moaning. Ren was glad of this, for Benjamin took him to the saloon instead, and taught him how to smoke a pipe, and gave him ale to drink, and together they would have a comfortable supper, and afterward Benjamin would tell stories.

Benjamin liked to talk about his supposed life as a sailor and all the places he’d traveled to over the years. He said that he’d crossed mighty rivers and deserts, volcanoes and mountains. And in these places he’d seen lizards and monkeys, cows with hairy udders and fish with three eyes. He spoke of the time he’d been sold as a slave in Morocco, and nearly eaten by cannibals in the South Seas, and how once he’d visited the harem of a Turkish prince and seen a thousand women dressed in solid gold.

Ren watched the other men in the bar, their mouths open, shifting their chairs closer to hear. They were mostly local fishermen and had tales of their own, about strange creatures they’d seen out on the water, and men cut in half by their own rigging. They displayed scars where hooks had gone through their bodies. And it was always at that point in the evening when Benjamin would call Ren forward and ask him to show the missing hand.

Sometimes Benjamin repeated the story of their mother and the Indian. Other times it was a lion who’d eaten Ren’s hand, or a snapping turtle as he dangled his fingers in a stream. The fishermen did not seem to care which story was being told. They only laughed and passed Ren around the room so they could see. A few had their own missing parts—an ear gone from frostbite, a leg lost to a shark. An old weathered captain had a wooden hand, just as Mister Bowers had described, and he let Ren try it on, tying the straps across his shoulder. It was three times too big and hung heavy and strange at the end of Ren’s arm, the fingers open and curved, ready to receive a shake.

When the stories were finished, the bartender would buy a round of drinks. Toasts were made. Ren’s scar was celebrated. He held it up and the fishermen cheered. Across the room Benjamin raised his glass and smiled. The smile was different from the one he’d used on Father John and the farmer. His mouth was more relaxed, his eyes merry behind the grin. If Ren did not know any better, he would have believed that Benjamin had meant it.

By the time the winter was over and the snow had melted, Granston was soggy and damp, the streets full of mud. The snowdrops pushed their tiny white flowers from the ground and then the cherry trees blossomed in all their glory. The money from the stolen jewelry had been exhausted, and Benjamin said it was time to move on.

They followed the river out of town the following day. It was hard work for the mare. They’d found a stable close by to keep her for the winter, but she had not been exercised much. Ren had visited her every week, making sure she was fed properly and when he felt brave enough resting his head against her flank, listening to her giant heart. Now she toiled in front of the wagon on the warm spring day, carrying three people uphill. They rode all afternoon, stopping to eat in a field, then napping in the shade of the trees. It would be another day before they reached North Umbrage.

It had taken some time for Benjamin to change his mind about Mister Bowers’s offer. Ren had heard the men whispering at night, Tom pressing for them to take the job, but Benjamin only said that North Umbrage was a place he would never go back to again. And then one afternoon in the basement, when Tom was nearly finished with his chicken pox, the last scabs peeling off his skin, the schoolteacher had opened a flask of whiskey to celebrate and asked Ren what he wanted to be when he grew up.

“I don’t know,” said Ren, looking over from his book.

“You’ve never thought about it? Not once?” Tom asked. “What about a fisherman, like those fellows you met at the bar?”

Benjamin was cleaning his boots at the table. He smeared a streak of black polish across a toe, then rubbed it in. “Leave him alone.”

“Don’t you think the little monster needs a profession?” Tom took another sip of whiskey. “Maybe he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life living in a basement.”

“We won’t be pulling these kinds of jobs forever.”

“You keep saying that,” said Tom, flicking away a bit of scab. “But what we need is something to tide us over for a few years instead of a couple of months.”

This conversation was one they’d had before. But this time Benjamin stopped what he was doing and gazed at his half-polished shoes. They were old boots, the heels cracked and in need of repair. He looked at Ren. He looked at his shoes again. Then he walked across the floor in his socks and spent the afternoon sharing Tom’s whiskey. Every once in a while he would turn to Ren in the corner, and each time the boy glanced back, Benjamin’s face was more troubled.

When Ren woke the next day Benjamin was gone. He returned later that evening, smelling of tobacco, and said that he’d changed his mind about North Umbrage. The men began to make their plans, and Benjamin stopped going to the tavern. Instead he spent most of his time counting out figures, and visiting graveyards, and taking notes in a small black book he kept in his pocket. He disappeared for days from the basement, and when asked of his whereabouts answered simply, “Research.” Ren had followed him once, crossing street after street through the marketplace before he saw him slip into a lawyer’s office. When Benjamin came out, he was biting his nails, and then he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and laughed, as if he’d just been told something he couldn’t believe.

Ren watched him now, holding the reins tight, steering their cart around the ruts ahead. He kept his eyes forward and his pipe set firmly between his lips, puffs of smoke trailing behind them on the road.

Soon they came upon a valley between two hills, the pastures surrounding it covered with sheep. White-and brown-and black-faced animals stretched across the landscape. The wagon passed a group of farmers, washing their herds in the river to prepare them for shearing. The men gave directions to a nearby town. There the group found an inn, where they paid for a room with the last of their money. Inside, the floors were covered with dust, the beds stained with tobacco burns. Tom settled himself at the table and Benjamin began unpacking the trunk.

Ren sat quietly in a corner, rereading the last pages of his book. Deerslayer was refusing Judith Hutter’s proposal of marriage. She had done all she could to make him love her, but it hadn’t been enough. Ren had read the ending many times, and he still felt terrible about it. Hawkeye spent the entire novel fighting Indians and righting wrongs, but when he left Judith to her lonely fate, he always seemed less of a hero.

“There’ll be a crowd tomorrow at the shearing.” Benjamin opened the wooden case and took out one of the brown bottles of Doctor Faust’s Medical Salts for Pleasant Dreams.

“Someone might recognize us,” said Tom.

“Recognize me, you mean.”

“Does it matter?” Tom took off his coat and flung it onto the bed.

“We’re out of money. And I’ve got an idea for using the boy.”

“You should leave him out of it.”

“He wants to do it. Don’t you, Ren?”

Ren looked up from his book. He could see that Benjamin was itching for something new. Over the winter he’d told Ren about the jobs he’d pulled: impersonating sea captains, doctors, and men of the cloth; selling items from a catalog that would never arrive; forging wills and false deeds. They all followed a similar pattern: winning over the mark, a fast exchange of property, and then leaving town as quickly as possible. When they needed to stay in one place for a while, Benjamin and Tom turned to the graveyards, where the marks were more agreeable and did not take pains to pursue them.

Ren closed his book. “I want to do it.”

Tom looked worried. “I don’t think he’s ready for this.”

“Nonsense,” said Benjamin.

“He’s only a child. He’s going to get us caught.”

Benjamin sat down on the mattress, leaned back, and pulled the blankets over him. He closed his eyes and let out a puff of air. “Not yet.”