As a Thief in the Night Read online

  As a Thief in the Night

  CHUCK CRABBE

  Published by Open Books

  Copyright © 2014 by Chuck Crabbe

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For the multimedia reader's guide to As a Thief in the Night visit www.chuckcrabbe.com

  Cover image "My Field Secrets"

  Copyright © Silvena Nikolova

  To learn more about the artist, visit http://beyondtheskies.deviantart.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 0615955851

  ISBN-13: 978-0615955858

  For my mother and father

  For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

  —1 Thessalonians 5:2

  "Adolf Bastian, a German anthropologist, has meant a great deal to me with just this main idea. The common themes that come out of the collective unconscious he calls elementary ideas.... In India, in art criticism, the elementary ideas are called 'marga', the path. Marga is from a root word 'mrg', which refers to the footprints left by an animal, and you follow that animal. The animal you are trying to follow is your own spiritual self. And the path is indicated by mythological images. Follow the tracks of the animal and you will be led to the animal's home. Who is the animal? The animal is the human spirit. So, following the elementary ideas, you are led to your own deepest spiritual source."

  —Joseph Campbell

  marga

  How long would the flame whisper to him? The pupils of his plain blue eyes contracted as the fire bent to his hand. The scent of sulfur rose from the match as a fallen leaf, fall-stained red and yellow, trembled as he held it at eye level between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He brought the flame to the leaf's curved edge and watched the fire draw its edges together and consume it. Unblinking, his rapt gaze followed the smoke's path as it moved through the autumn dusk, and as heaven laid claim to the fading cloud, a soft sigh escaped his slightly opened mouth. Ezra Mignon was eleven years old.

  Not long after dusk he began to make his way through the high weeds of the field toward the forest. He walked across the roughly paved country road and leaped the wide ditch filled with stagnant water. Climbing the rotting driftwood and rusted wire fence he caught and tore his Luke Skywalker t-shirt. Small drops of blood showed through the white cotton. He had scratched his side.

  Moving past the first line of trees, he looked back in the direction of his aunt and uncle's house. He had lived there since his mother's death. Walking slowly, he stared at the rising moon. Stopping to pick the mint leaves that grew in patches around the small streams that meandered through the field, he stuffed some into the zippered pockets of his Kangaroo running shoes along with the money he'd found underneath the couch cushions. He plucked a leaf from a green stem and placed it on his tongue, walking on and replacing it when the flavor had faded. His uncle had taught him that. Looking back, he nervously eyed the path of tall grass he had flattened as he walked. Things like that bothered him, but he did not know why.

  Turning back in the direction he was heading, his eyes moved across the treetops. They swayed against the canvas of the October sky. A movement to the left, in the tall grass, drew his attention. Three deer, not twenty feet away, stood in front of the tall pine trees. Two were bucks. They moved slowly in the long grass, ignoring him. Their antlers moved in and out of sight as the deer dipped their large heads, proud and gentle, to nibble at the foliage.

  The third, standing between them, was a female. She stared at him with large, dark eyes, no longer bothering with the world around her, or her companions. He thought his presence would frighten her, but it did not. She looked at him evenly, and everything about her was calm, even familiar. Her dark eyes reached out and lightly touched his memory.

  Once the deer had moved away, Ezra headed off in the same direction from which they had disappeared. The pine branches were still brushed back and matted together where they had entered the tree line. It had rained that morning and the wet green needles stuck to his gray Kangaroos. His feet sunk into the muddy forest floor. As he walked his eyes shifted from the tangled branches in front of him to the soft ground beneath his feet. Here and there, on the bare patches of ground, he saw the imprints left behind by their hooves. The sound of running water, audible only when he stopped moving, could be heard in the distance.

  He came to a narrow clearing. Foliage and branches crowded in on him from overhead and on both sides as he made his way. Around a slight bend he found an old wooden bridge that crossed over a shallow stream. Parts of it were rotten, the wood dark and decayed, and several footboards were missing. The water ran clear and slow over its bed of scattered stones, sand, and green plants that swayed in the stream's easy current. Weeds on the muddy banks whistled a soft melody as the sun's last light angled through the canopy of leaves overhead and shone off the water's surface in a broken reflection.

  Stepping over spaces between the missing boards he made his way across to the arch of the bridge. Looking down, leaning on the old hand rail, he watched the water pass beneath him. Ezra sat down and let his legs hang over the edge of the bridge. He pulled out the sketchbook he had with him and drew a rough picture of the bridge and stream. The scratch of the pencil on the paper seemed louder to him than it should have. The image fell off the side of the paper as he drew; the edges could not contain what he saw in a way that satisfied him, and he frowned at what he had drawn. He wrote his name on the corner of one of the pages, ripped the small piece off, dropped it into the stream, and watched as the water carried it away.

  Testing the pillars and crossbeams that supported the bridge, first with part of his weight, then with all of it, he climbed down the lowest crossbeam into the cool water. As his feet hit the streambed a cloud of hazy smoke gathered around his legs. He watched it conceal his ankles and feet. Sitting upon a rock that protruded from the water, he thought of the icebergs he had learned about in school and how only a small portion is visible to the eye while the greater portion remains a mystery unless examined by special means.

  He had to pee. In other waters, those that went above the waist, he had just gone in the water, looking around nonchalantly while all the other swimmers went past him unsuspecting. Now, he sat in the water and relieved himself. All around him, but at a distance, he saw fish swimming. Trying to draw them closer, he sat very still, hoping to appear as if he was a part of the streambed. The trick struck him as clever and he smiled to himself. Soon they were swimming close to him, even brushing up against his legs. Two Rainbow Trout swam around his ankles, courting each other. They came face to face, looking to him as if they were about to collide, but passed seamlessly by and circled each other. He watched the creases they made on the stream's surface then followed them as they disappeared under the glare of the water's mirror.

  A stirring in the bushes upstream drew his attention. Just before the bend in the stream, amongst the reeds, he saw a deer drinking at the water's edge. It was the doe again. For a moment she continued to lap at the cool water then, feeling his eyes, met his gaze for only a moment, and then, in one graceful bound, disappeared into the trees.

  We have missed the dance, but we come in time to witness the first stirrings of alchemy. They dance in the fall, usually in mid-October, in the small lagar to the side of the old schoolhouse. There, with old spe
akers on the front porch playing, on this occasion Peter Gabriel's Security album, the grapes are tread by the sisters. And then they make the wine.

  Walpurgis, Ontario is a small town with a population of just over two thousand just seventy-five kilometers southwest of Toronto. Gord and Elsie's house is over a hundred years old, which is rare in Canada, a country where the words architecture and home can be applied, in truth, almost nowhere. It is surrounded by two acres of property that slope slightly to the east.

  One of the bedrooms has a large window, divided into nine panes, that looks onto the road, fields, and forest across from it. Beside the window is a Y-shaped trellis that has recently planted Boston Ivy growing up it. At the side of the house is a large covered porch, painted gray. The roof is in rough shape; its shingles are crumbling, but a new roof is expensive, and Gord and Elsie are working class people with two adopted children to feed.

  Sitting quietly at the kitchen table and doing his homework, Ezra watches his aunts as they move the grapes picked that morning into the wine press. His body aches from the football game he played the day before. Despite being born prematurely at seven months, and the early threats this had posed to his health, he is tall for his age, though thin. Puberty has not yet set in and his facial features retain a fine, childish, even feminine quality. His hair falls about his blue eyes in loose, light brown curls. He always waits until Sunday to do his homework, and Sundays, particularly Sunday nights, have always seemed a sad time to him.

  "And the way he used to follow you around!" Sarah laughed. She continued in a mock Spanish accent, "So shy...and he had that voice!" Sarah's Border Collie Sirius rose up on his hind legs and put his paws on the counter.

  "Ah! Enough now, he was a nice boy." Elsie paused thoughtfully. "He never said a single thing to me, you know—not for three months."

  "It seems to me that that night in the rain outside the house the two of you were doing a little more than talking. Come to think of it—" Elsie slapped Olyvia on the arm and motioned towards Ezra with a turn of her head and scolding eyes. The sisters laughed again. Ezra blushed, pretending not to have heard, and stared out the window.

  "Olyvia, take a look around..." Elsie's voice trailed off as she looked away. "That was the night he told me he was sick, you know. It was the last time we spoke. It was raining."

  Ezra's eyes traced the slightly faded, serpentine, ivy tattoo that ran up Olyvia's ankle all the way to her lower calf. It peaked out from under her long, thin summer skirt as she stirred the must with a long wooden stick. The stick had a strange looking pinecone stuck on its end. His little brother Layne was playing Atari in the living room and cursing at the screen.

  "Do you ever think about them? I mean all the people that used to work for dad on the island? Especially John and Tituba. Sometimes it seems strange to me that we used to be so close to them all, working and eating together and everything, and now we don't talk to any of them."

  "Some were closer than others," Olyvia said as she nudged her sister with her hip.

  Elsie kissed her teeth and shook her head: "No, really; you never think about them?"

  "Elsie, why did my dad leave us?" Ezra interrupted abruptly.

  Elsie and Olyvia exchanged a knowing glance.

  "Mom said there was a storm that night, that there was lightning and that it split the oak tree in the church yard..." His voice trailed off. The video game in the background made exploding sounds as Layne blew apart asteroids.

  Elsie looked at him softly. "There was no storm, Ezra. No thunder, or lightning, or rain," she said before he could ask. The routine was not new, but it was one he liked to replay. She wasn't sure that it was a good idea to indulge him. Putting her hand upon his shoulder, she bent down beside him and said, "Take a little break and go play with your brother. We'll talk after, okay?"

  He got up, seemingly satisfied, walked into the living room, and sat down in front of the television with Layne. Elsie watched him go, sighed to herself, and went back to work.

  "When can the three of us go to the Thebcams' about the new bottle labels?" Sarah asked. "They're trying to raise the price again, and you know what they're like. Don't be surprised if it turns into a genuine win or lose battle."

  "I'll set something up before next Sunday," Elsie said, her mind obviously elsewhere. She picked up another worn plastic bin full of grapes from the floor.

  "And with Padock?" Olyvia responded quickly. There was a hint of surprise in her voice, as if she had just been unexpectedly reminded of something.

  The grapes are crushed by foot, more for the purposes of ceremony than out of necessity. A celebration that the harvest has come, and that, even though it is on a small scale, they can still make wine, on their own, away from their father and his vineyard. It is a process that holds deep meaning for all. The smell of the grapes, the character of the soil, and all the tastes and textures of viticulture touch the hidden heart of their childhood. Indeed, it is a childhood that is now lost, but one in which the earth had whispered things to them, things that only young girls are capable of hearing.

  Elsie had planted an acre and a half of Cabernet Sauvignon vines after the death of her child, and with the progressively greater help of her husband and sisters, and the patient eye and instincts that were perhaps the only things she had in common with her father, this jewel of Bordeaux had blossomed far from its birth place. She had worried that spring frosts came too often, and that winter's first hints came too early for the necessary sugar levels to be reached. But just as great men flourish in and as a result of their inner storms, so too do the great fruits of viticulture flourish in their finest variations at the very extremes of the golden belt that runs around the globe and marks the borders where making wine is possible.

  A few select bottles were made from the grapes crushed by foot, and put away to age, while the majority of the grapes were crushed by the small vertical press that Elsie kept in the house at the back of the kitchen. In the wood on the top was an inscription:

  Heavy grapes shower

  Their sweet excesses

  Into the presses;

  In streams are flowing

  Wines that are glowing...

  They had only one customer, a Greek who owned a restaurant named Parnassos that sat upon a hill just off of the Walpurgis main square.

  "Did either of you hear that Kevorkian was present at the death of two more women?" Sarah asked without looking up from the Campden tablets she was crushing on the kitchen counter.

  "No. Was it on the news?"

  "The Detroit news. Dad told me about it."

  "When did you talk to Dad?" Olyvia asked.

  "Last night. He did it in a cabin near Lake Orion. One with lethal drugs and the other with carbon monoxide through a mask." She looked at Elsie over her shoulder. "They were saying that he's going to be charged."

  "Charged?" Elsie asked, "They're going on about that again, are they?"

  "Should they not be?"

  "Please, if I'm ever in that type of condition, don't hesitate."

  "But, if they are in that type of condition, then how can you say they're capable of making that decision?"

  "As far as I know most of them made their decision a long time before the good doctor helped them with it. If they were murdered by anything, it was by their circumstances."

  "I don't believe in circumstances," Sarah said.

  "That's a matter of privilege, not fact. There is no escaping some things."

  "Right... And isn't escaping exactly what these people are trying to do?"

  "Surrender is not the same as escape."

  "But Elsie, where do we draw the line then?"

  "We don't; the patients do."

  "That's where we're different, I suppose," said Sarah. "To me, who should live and who should die is God's matter. Do you really believe in what this guy is doing?"

  "I do."

  "Have you seen anything on him? On his medical career?"

  "No." Elsie shook her head
.

  "Another doctor with a god complex. Big surprise! His specialty is supposed to be pathology, of course, but his career is full of bizarre experiments, on the eyes of the dying and organ donation from people on death row just before they receive lethal injection. He thought it was a good idea for them to donate. How can we possibly assume that he's competent to decide who should live and who should die, or 'counselling'—and that is his word—the terminally ill and their families about the nature of death? After all, who's watching him?

  "Why does anyone need to watch him? People are coming to him and saying that they want to die. They're killing themselves."

  "By allowing him go on like this, we're placing a power in his hands that should only be granted to God."

  Olyvia, listening with her back turned as she removed wine from the bunghole of one the aged barrels with the thief, made a deep and audible sigh then looked up at the ceiling as if hoping for deliverance.

  Elsie pursed her lips, as she often did when she listened, and nodded slightly. "You are assuming that death is something awful. Are we really sure? Especially in the cases he's dealing with. Maybe it's liberation. I heard somewhere that swans sing beautiful songs right before they die. Is life to be clung to at any cost?"

  "Yes, it must be clung to. This life was given to us. We didn't create ourselves, Elsie. So how can we possibly know when we have served our purpose? No, I think it has to be played out, to the end, one way or another."

  Sarah turned towards Olyvia as if noticing for the first time that she was in the room. "What do you think, Lyv?" Olyvia looked at her plainly: "I think we're trying to understand the problem with eyes that can't see."

  "Really?" Sarah asked, obviously a bit offended. "And what eyes are those?"