Thieves I've Known by Tom Kealey Page B

started thinking about that picture in Merrill’s room. I listened to the music, and I was buzzing pretty good. I thought I might just close my eyes if I could get warm enough.
    â€œI had a mule when I was a kid,” said Merrill. “An old blind mule. His name was Albert.”
    â€œNo it wasn’t,” said Albert.
    â€œThink what you like,” she said. “But I used to take care of him. He’d follow me around in the fields. We were picking apples. And he’d eat the hell out of those apples. I’d have to keep them from him, or else he’d get sick if he ate too many. I had him for years. When I first got him they were like ‘he won’t last a year,’ but he just went on and on.”
    â€œWhat was his real name?” I said.
    â€œOh, I don’t know. What was your duck’s name?”
    I didn’t say anything.
    â€œGood,” she said. “That’s yours to keep.”
    She took up the brush then, and she took up Albert’s hair and began pulling it back. She worked out the tangles. He curled his arm under his cheek.
    She brushed his hair straight. She hummed to the radio while she was working, and I watched her. She took a lot of care with it, I thought. I was about ready to close my eyes.
    When she was done with the brush, she reached over to a drawer and took out a pair of scissors. She ran her thumb down the blade.
    â€œYou sure about this?” she said.
    â€œYes,” said Albert, a whisper.
    I sat up from the chair. “No.”
    Albert opened one eye and looked at me. “I’ve been thinking about it. This isn’t spur of the moment.”
    â€œIt’ll take you years to grow back,” I said.
    â€œIt’s time to let go of things,” he said.
    He closed the eye and set his head against the pillow. Merrill watched me for a while, and then she slipped some hair between her fingers and cut off a few strands. She set them across his face.
    â€œLast chance,” she said.
    â€œI told you,” Albert said.
    She looked at me and waited. She snipped the scissors a few times in the air, waited for something from either of us. I was drunk. I looked over at Albert, and he didn’t move. I decided I wouldn’t say anything else. He seemed to me at peace there, as much as I’d seen him. Merrill moved to the music again, and she began to cut his hair. “It’s a long, long way to the moon,” she sang, though there weren’t any voices on the radio.
    Merrill brought the candle over and pulled a chair up next to me. She had Albert’s hair in her fist, and we sat there for a while and watched him sleep. His face was slack and silent, and it seemed to me that he was without dreams. It put me in mind of my grandfather again, and I could see us—me, Granddad, and Albert—years before, down in the sunflowers in Indiana. There were grasshoppers popping over us. Just a few at first, then more, then a hundred it seemed. Like they’d arrived just behind us. We were picking them off our shirts, or we’d flick them at each other, and they’d leave some spit behind. There wasn’t any shade, and the sun was warm and it dried our clothes. We’d been caught out in the rain, in the back of a stranger’s pickup that morning. We were on our way to St. Louis, to see about a basketball scholarship for Albert, though that hadn’t worked out. We could just reach up and grab as many grasshoppers as we liked. They’d sit on the tips of your fingers if you let them, their legs poking at you. I caught the most, and Granddad looked at my hands and said, “These flowers’ll be gone in a week now.”
    Merrill had brought out some spools of thread, and she set those on the table between us. She had a needle between her teeth, and she was digging around in a sewing kit for something.
    â€œWould you hold this for me?” she said, a mumble.
    I took Albert’s hair. I