The Good Thief (30 page)

At the mention of Benjamin Ren felt a wave of disappointment. “I don’t think so,” he mumbled.

McGinty sat on the edge of the desk, stretched his legs out, then crossed them, one over the other. “He was probably going ta sell yah.”

“He said I wasn’t worth anything.”

McGinty gave him a sharp look. “Yah think that’s true?”

“No,” said Ren.

“Yah betta believe it. My sistah did.”

Ren thought of the initials on his collar, the fine linen and indigo thread. Even though she hadn’t finished, Margaret had meant the stitches to last. She had meant to name him. And if she named him that meant he was supposed to be found.

“How did she die?”

McGinty glared at him. Then he walked over to the stool, pulled it closer to the stove, and sank into the seat.

“Fevah. A few days aftah you were born.” He pressed his hands together. The fire lit him in shadow, flickering against the boxes stacked around the room. Ren took his toes out of the stirrups and set his feet on the ground.

“What was she like?”

McGinty lifted the poker and used it to open the grate on the stove. Inside, the mousetraps were burned down to ashes. “She had a birthmahk,” he said. “A small one. On tha sidda hah face. She always wore a bonnet pulled down ta covah it. She didn’t like people looking. It made hah feel different, like she’d been mahked fah something.

“Our fathah used ta call hah ugly, even though I’d heard ’im bothah hah at night. One day I came home and he was inta hah something awful. I was old enough then, and I put a stop ta it.” McGinty shoved the poker into the stove. “Aftahwahd I found hah down by tha rivah, barefoot, hah skirt hitched up, washing tha blood off, just pressing hah hands inta tha watah. She took my clothes and washed them too, and then we dragged tha body inta tha woods.

“Theah were good days aftah that,” he said. “Just tha two a us. I made enough from tha traps ta keep us going, and then enough ta open tha factory, and then enough ta buy hah all tha things she evah wanted. But Mahgret never took ta life in town. She’d walk fah miles inta tha forest and disappeah. I’d have ta send my men out looking fah hah.

“They brought hah home once aftah she’d been missing fah days. She told me she’d been down in tha mine. She’d found an old cave and crawled through, using a torch she made from a piece a hah dress. It was expensive, made a silk, and it killed me that she’d ruined it. All she could talk about were tha men she found theah, dead men, nothing but bones, all huddled togethah. They musta done it fah warmth, she kept saying. They musta found each othah, in tha dahk.

“Aftah that everything was different. I thought she’d finally come tah hah senses. She stahted going ta church. She stopped wandaring alone, and shopped every day in tha mahket. On Sundays she wore a coat with ribbons, and a special hat with feathahs, and a rabbit mufflah. She looked bettah than fine.

“Then outta nowhere she tries ta drown hahself. A buncha old men carry her back, all wet and crying like it was tha end a tha world. I kept thinking a hah as a child, washing hah hands in that rivah watah.” McGinty picked up the poker again. He gripped the handle so tightly that the cuts on his knuckles opened and began to bleed again. “She gave birth ta you a few months aftah that. She wouldn’t tell me who’d done it.”

Ren held the reins of the rocking horse. His seat was numb, but he dared not move, as if any slight change would stop McGinty from talking. The fire in the stove had died. There were only a few burning embers, the room fallen into darkness again, and it stretched out between them, along with McGinty’s silence, until Ren could see the man’s purpose.

There was a reason why he was locked in the storeroom. There was a reason for the candy and the horse.

He got off the saddle. “I don’t know who he is.”

McGinty wiped his nose. “You will.”

Ren held on to the horse’s mane. It felt dry and coarse, as if it hadn’t been attached to anything alive for years. “What happens if you find him?”

“He’ll ansah fah what he’s done.”

“And if you don’t?”

McGinty didn’t say anything, and the boy understood that if his father wasn’t found, then he would be the one doing the answering. All the possible ways this answering might be accomplished began to fill his mind. Ren thought of Margaret stepping into the river, feeling the current. Trying to drown them both before he was even born.

“She must have hated me.”

McGinty set the poker on the floor. He rolled down his sleeves, put his collar straight, and slipped a button that had come loose through its hole. He was ready for business again. He took the key from his pocket.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “But I did.”

T
he fire burned down to a low flame, and then, one by one, the embers went out. The boy stuffed paper into his coat to keep warm and pulled one of the ledgers over his shoulders, the pages open to a design that involved razor wires and springs. He had spent most of the evening listening to the mice scurry across the floor and thinking of all that he had learned, set out before him like strikes of the days marked against a wall.

He had a mother—who was dead. He had an uncle—who hated him. Now that he knew the truth, all of the stories about having a family that he’d entertained over the years and held on to were gone. He was not royalty. He was not the result of a union between a nun and a priest. He was not the son of frontiersmen murdered by Indians. He was not any of the things he’d once thought he could be.

All his life he’d been waiting for this secret to reveal itself. Now here it was, and he was surprised that he didn’t feel any different. It hadn’t made him stronger or more courageous, or given him peace of mind. He was the same boy that he had always been, only now his chances of a different life were gone. He wished that he could erase the steps that had brought him here, that he could walk backward down the hall, through McGinty’s office, past the factory floor, and end heels first, full of possibility again, on the sidewalk.

Ren pulled the book closer. The weight of it pressed against his chest and his mind returned to his friends. He began making promises to God that he would go back and search for Dolly, that he would be nicer to the twins, that he would find Benjamin and forgive him. These thoughts pinched Ren inside, over and over, until his whole body ached. He looked out into the darkness, and he did not sleep.

After midnight Ren heard the sound of a key once more and lifted his head. The hinges creaked and a sliver of light came through. He blinked, expecting to see McGinty again, his stomach filling with dread. Instead the shadow of a figure peeked into the room, and when his eyes adjusted he saw the Harelip standing in the doorway.

She was still in her mousetrap uniform, her apron askew, her boots hastily tied. At her waist she clutched a small bundle. The girl darted inside and closed the door, then stood with her back against it. She took in the piles of boxes, the candy spread across the room, the tiny rocking horse, and Ren sprawled on the desk, the book on his lap.

“Living the good life?”

“What are you doing here?” Ren whispered.

“I’ve come to get you out.” She threw the bundle on the floor. “Not that it matters to me.”

Ren scrambled down from the desk and opened the package she’d brought. It was a navy blue dress. A mousetrap uniform.

“I can’t wear this.”

“Stay, then,” said the Harelip, “if you’re so happy here.” She went back and put her hand on the knob. But she did not turn it.

On the other side of the door came the sound of footsteps. The Harelip froze as they slowed outside. Ren and the girl stared at each other, barely breathing, and he realized how much she had risked to come to him. The footsteps stopped for a moment, then continued down the hall. The Harelip kept her hand on the knob until they were gone. Her fingers were trembling when they slipped off, but when she turned to Ren, her face was triumphant. For a moment she was almost not ugly, Ren thought, and he pulled the dress over his head.

The Harelip worked on the buttons. The uniform was small and nearly split across Ren’s back. Together they managed to slip the bloomers over his pants. When he was dressed, she pulled the bonnet down so that it covered his face, then draped the shawl across his shoulders.

“Why are you helping me?”

The Harelip leaned against the desk, as if she were simply there killing time. She did her best to grin with her ruined mouth. “Benjamin asked me to marry him.”

Ren doubted this.

“He did,” she said. “We’re waiting until I turn eighteen. It’s only one year to go.”

“You’re not even fifteen.”

The Harelip glared at him, and Ren felt his cheeks flush. No one would ever marry her.

The girl read the thought on his face. She grabbed his arm and turned his wrist behind his back so fast that Ren bit his tongue. A slap came next, once, twice, hard on his ear till it was ringing. Then she leaned over and kissed where she’d hit him, her lip sucking his ear, leaving a horrible, slimy wetness. Ren struggled to get away, his arm stinging, the skirt bunched around his waist. The Harelip shoved him across the room, then watched with a smirk as he frantically tried to wipe her kiss from his face.

“I’m going to open this door now,” she said.

The hallway was full of shadows and smelled of grease. They turned a corner and passed room after room filled with crates. The Top Hat leaned in one of the doorways, smoking a thin brown cigarette. He eyed them as they walked by. Ren kept his bonnet turned to the ground. The Harelip flipped hers in the direction of the Top Hat, who started to whistle and then stopped short when he saw her face.

The rows on the factory floor were lit by dim overhead lamps. The Harelip led Ren into the darkest corner and put him in place right beside her, with the rest of the girls in the line, stacking the wood and leaning the pieces into the revolving saw.

“Don’t look up,” she whispered. “No matter what happens.” A few girls glanced over, then fell to their stations. They did not acknowledge Ren, but he could tell that they knew. They kept their heads down and moved their fingers quickly and continued making their traps, as if the floor manager were standing by their shoulders and not sleeping under his coat on the other side of the room.

An hour passed like this. And then another. Ren kept his scar hidden and stayed close to the Harelip, imitating her every move, terrified all the while that he would be discovered. Grease covered his fingers, the boards screamed as they were cut, and a thin layer of sawdust fell down like a mist upon his face. His hand slipped once without his stump to steady the wood and the piece snapped, splinters spraying out across the table. The Harelip reached forward and quickly replaced it. The floor manager lifted his head for a moment, then leaned back and closed his eyes.

Ren’s shoulders began to ache. But the longer he stood by the Harelip and understood what every day was like for her, the noise and the grime of the mousetrap factory, the more he felt a softening toward the girl. Ren watched how diligently she cut and stacked the pieces before her. Saving him, he realized, was how she hoped to win a way out for herself. He did not have the heart to tell her that Benjamin was already gone.

When the factory whistle sounded, the Harelip quickly tidied her area, then grabbed Ren’s hand. Her palm was slick with sweat. The other workers backed away from their places and formed a circle around them. They stepped so close that Ren could smell the oil on their dresses, the sawdust in their hair, their cheap perfume and powder.

The girls moved as a group, with Ren at the center. To leave, they would have to go by the floor manager. Ren could see the man up ahead, picking his nose and counting the workers as they flowed in and out the door. The Harelip squeezed Ren’s fingers, and the mousetrap girls pressed closer. Ren was sure that he would be found out in an instant. He willed himself not to run.

They were nearly in front of the floor manager when one of the girls from the boardinghouse, the one with the gap in her teeth, broke apart from the group. She stepped up to the man and engaged him in conversation, pulling open the collar of her uniform and giggling, just as Ren walked past.

The mousetrap workers stayed close together through the main door and out into the street, chattering loudly and lifting their shawls over their heads as they passed a group of hat boys milling about the entrance. Ren copied the girls’ movements, pulling the heavy wool across his face. When he had finished, the Harelip gripped his hand again, and together they passed through the crowd as if riding a wave, all the while feeling the factory behind them. At last they turned the corner. The Harelip whispered, “Now,” and broke loose, yanking Ren out of the group and into an alley.

Ren and the Harelip leaned against the wall, breathing hard. Over their heads were clotheslines, connecting one building to the next. Clean sheets and towels and long pants and underwear, resplendent as flags.

“I don’t know your name,” said Ren.

“It’s Jenny,” said the Harelip. She pulled her hand from Ren’s fingers, but he snatched it again and brought it to his lips, his bonnet touching her wrist, his mouth warm against her open palm. Then he threw her hand away from him, embarrassed at what he had done. The girl tried to sneer, but her face crumpled instead. She closed her hand around where he had kissed her, and said, “Don’t ever come back.”