Thieves I've Known Read Free Page B

rooster.”
    â€œHmm.”
    In the distance, the headlights of a pickup truck appeared through the fog. The woman stood up from the crate and shook out her umbrella, but the men stayed seated, looked out through the rain. Phillip unfolded the rooster, set the paper flat on his knee again, tore slits along some of the folds. They listened to a dog bark in the distance.
    When the truck entered the park, they could see three men already in the back huddled against the wooden slats and a driver, sitting alone, in the cab. Rainwater kicked from the tires. Phillip folded and refoldedas the truck approached the collection of crates and the window rolled down. A bearded man peered out into the rain.
    â€œI got work for four. Bring you back around eight.”
    â€œHow much?” said the woman.
    â€œFifty.”
    â€œWhat’re we to do?” she said.
    He pointed his thumb at her. “Not you then. I’ll take three of you men and the boy. Decide and get in.”
    The woman sat back down on the crate, gave the man a look, although there’d likely be other trucks to come along. The old man and two others shook out their ponchos and umbrellas and climbed into the back of the truck. One of the men remaining lit a cigarette.
    â€œYou give my friend a lift?” said Phillip. “Wherever we’re going?”
    â€œGoing where I always take you,” the man said. “I said I’d pay for four, now get in or get out.”
    â€œNo pay,” said Phillip. “Just a lift.”
    The man shifted the truck into gear. “If there’s room,” he said. The window rolled up.
    In the back of the truck, Shelby and Phillip stood against the cab, tried to hold the plastic bag against the wind as the truck made its way up the road. The backs of their shirts were wet through their jackets, and they shivered with the cold. In the gray wood, previous workers had carved their initials or nicknames. A few hearts were scattered here and there between the cracks, an etching of an airplane. Next to Shelby’s head, an inscription read
Tony hates Eloise
.
    â€œHey,” Phillip said to the man with the coffee mug. “You got any kids?”
    The man looked up out of his poncho. “What’s that to you?”
    Phillip took out the piece of folded paper, handed it down. The man took it with the tips of his fingers, turned it over in his hands, examined it.
    â€œBrontosaurus,” he said.
    â€œSure.”
    â€œThey’re likely to swallow it,” the man said, but he slipped the paper into his shirt pocket.
    During the ride, Shelby imagined a truck much like this, one in her future perhaps, a warmer ride even in Alaska. It would be summertime, and she’d be headed west from the train station in Anchorage, to work the fish lines in a small harbor town. She’d picked some of these towns out on a map, names that she liked: Kasilof, Ninilchik, Port Graham; and she’d read a slim book by a woman who’d done what Shelby hoped to do: worked the lines in the summers, saved her money in the winters, invested in a boat after that—the woman, like Shelby, was no fisher-woman, she’d had others work for her—made her fortune and was making more. The woman, like Shelby, liked the water. Phillip thought it a strange, unlikely wish.
    â€œThis woman made it,” Shelby’d said.
    â€œMake sure you read about the ones that didn’t,” he’d said.
    They rode the seven miles toward Bremerton, caught a glimpse of the bay during one stretch, the vessels making their way down Saratoga Pass. The rain fell harder the closer they came. Eventually the men made some room and the two teenagers knelt against the cab, covered their heads with the plastic, watched the raindrops through the thin black covering. The light of the sky was becoming a brighter gray.
    In Bremerton, they jumped out at a traffic stop, waved back at the men in the truck, who stared dully