Weed had very little awareness as he struggled and tripped after Smoke through dark woods and ended up at the adult bookstore, hiding behind cars until the coast was clear, then jumping inside the Escort and speeding away. Weed was beginning to think that things weren’t too bad when Smoke stopped on a dark street corner in Westover Hills. He reached in back and pulled out two dark blue pillowcases. One was empty, the other filled with things that clanked and clacked together.
‘Get out and keep your fucking mouth shut,’ Smoke said. ‘Don’t make a fucking sound.’
Weed barely breathed as he followed Smoke along
Clarence Street to a simple white frame house surrounded by a picket fence that leaned this way and that and had uneven spaces between the boards. The redwood deck listed as if sailing into a stiff wind, and the big add-on garage was out of proportion to the rest of the house. An old Chevy Cavalier wagon was in the drive, lights were on in several rooms of the house and a dog was baying in its pen.
‘Do exactly what I do,’ Smoke whispered.
‘What about the dog?’ Weed said.
‘Shut up.’
Smoke scanned the empty street, bent close to the ground and darted across the yard, ducking behind trees and finally crouching around the corner from the shut garage door. Weed was right behind him, his heart hammering as Smoke reached inside the pillowcase and pulled out a handful of remote controls. He tried one after another.
‘Fuck,’ he whispered as nothing happened.
On the eighth try, he got his reward. The Sears home-installed garage door cranked up slowly and sounded ill. No other lights went on inside, the dog barking and barking. Weed thought of running and Smoke seemed to know it because he grabbed him by the collar.
‘Don’t fuck with me,” he snarled in Weed’s ear.
Smoke slid a small Mag-Lite out of a pocket. He looked around. The same windows in the house were lit up. There was no sign of motion.
‘Follow me,’ Smoke whispered.
Weed’s brain was sliding around inside his skull like an egg yolk. His vision was blurred. He grabbed Smoke’s shirttail and crept along behind him, catching his toe on concrete, lurching inside the garage. Smoke stopped. He scanned, breathing hard, listening. He turned on the flashlight and the bright finger probed hundreds of shiny saws, drills, hammers and other tools Weed didn’t recognize.
Tucking unbelievable,’ Smoke whispered. ‘The asshole can’t even hammer a nail straight and look at all this shit.’
He shone the light on a tall cabinet with a padlock that promised treasure inside. He didn’t bother with the bolt cutters in the pillowcase because there was a better pair hanging on the peg rack. Smoke lifted it off the hooks and opened and closed the cruel steel beaks. He seemed pleased. He snapped through the lock as if it were soft lead and it pinged into the darkness, clanking against the floor.
Smoke quietly opened the doors. He ran the light over shelves of camouflage, targets, boxes of ammunition, revolvers, pistols, rifles and shotguns. His hands flew as he stuffed everything he could into the pillowcases Weed held open for him. Smoke filled the pockets of his relaxed-leg jeans, tucked handguns into his waistband. He snapped open a black plastic thirty-gallon bag and stuffed it and handed it to Weed. Smoke slung the bulging pillowcases over his shoulder like Santa Claus making the rounds for the NRA.
‘Run!’ Smoke whispered to Weed.
They clanked and banged across the yard and along the street, not going anywhere fast. They were sweating and miserable. They were slowing down when Smoke spotted a thick boxwood hedge and stashed the bags out of sight. Light of foot, they ran back to the Escort.
They jumped in and drove back to Clarence Street and parked by the hedge. The loot was where they’d left it. Smoke emptied his pockets and shut everything he had stolen inside the trunk. Not a single car passed. Nothing stirred. Bubba’s dog barked the way it always did.
Smoke started laughing hysterically as he drove off. Weed had no idea where they were going. He had never broken the law in his life except for the time he drew a disrespectful picture of a teacher he didn’t like and was sent to in-school suspension for two days.