Thieves I've Known

FROM BREMERTON

FROM BREMERTON Shelbywokebeforesunrise,dressed in her warmest clothes in the dark. In the kitchen, she packed her book bag with apples and bread, some peanut butter. She added a map of Seattle, a carton of cigarettes she’d hidden at the top of a cabinet, and then brewed some coffee on the stove. She walked barefoot in the trailer so as not to wake her sister and the boyfriend. It was still dark outside by the time she poured the coffee into her thermos, and out through the window she could see the dull yellow glow of a streetlamp at the edge of the trailer park. Rain fell in the lamp glow, and she could hear the drops clicking against the top of the trailer. She wished she were back in bed, but she’d made a promise the week before, to a boy that she was in love with, although she was not now sure if she was still in love. Lots of things—her love for the boy, her grades in school, her future, or what she hoped to be her future—were in doubt. Wisps of fog disappeared in the rain. Before leaving, and because it was her nature, she put away the beer cans and the pizza boxes from the night before, emptied the ashtrays, wiped down the counters. She slipped into her boots, pulled her woolen cap over her ears, and closed the door, quietly, on her way out. In the puddles of mud and slush outside she caught a blurred, distant reflection of her own gaze, a reflection that she liked: dark and small, without many features, a work in progress it seemed. She stepped around the puddles when she could, leaning over them, kicking a soda bottle across the park, listening to the rattle across rocks and broken glass. Outside Phillip’s trailer, she could see a light on in the kitchen. A cat, wet and muddy, eyed her from under a small porch as she made her way toward the light. f rom bremerton 11 She knocked, listened to a series of loud thumps from inside the trailer, entered when no one came to the door. Inside, Phillip knelt in a corner holding a shoe above his head. A dozen or so brown splotches— roaches—were scattered on the floor around him. The kitchen smelled of mold and baked chicken. Phillip turned as she slid a chair out from the table and sat down. His eyes were large, a little irregular, and his bony elbows and wrists seemed like knots on a straight line. He was not a good-looking boy, but Shelby—who was similarly thin, and who’d had painful acne since she was twelve—could find the beautiful parts of him when she put her mind to it. His hair, which was long and smelled of smoke and lemon soap, his lips, his neck and fingers. She liked all of these things, and liked him. Believed him to be good, if not good-looking. She felt a turn in her breathing as she sat watching his large eyes. The boy reached into his pocket, took out a roll of dollar bills, tossed them to her. “How much?” she said. “Enough to get us there.” Under the streetlamp, they sat on an overturned apple crate, watched the first blue-pink rays of the sun appear from across the water. The Olympic Mountains were snow-capped and gray. A half-dozen men and one woman sat on similar crates, on seats torn from old cars. One old man drank from a coffee mug, the steam fogging the man’s glasses each time he sipped. Nothing was said. They all watched the road that led from the trailer park, and those that had them shielded themselves from the rain with umbrellas. Others wore ponchos. Phillip and Shelby sat under a plastic trash bag cut lengthwise down the sides. Phillip slipped a square sheet of white paper from his pocket, unfolded it on his knee. He creased new lines as he refolded it in triangles from each corner, bent those folds inside out and down until he’d made what looked like a fisherman’s rain cap. The man with the coffee mug watched him. Phillip folded two opposite corners together, and then the remaining corners up, folded what was left in half, pressed his finger against the angles to keep the creases. He set the paper right side up and placed it...