Stealing


 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Title Page
 Dedication
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 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 Also by Margaret Verble
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 
 
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 Guide
 
 Cover
 Contents
 1
 
 
 
 
 Dedication
 
 
 For my cousin, Leisha, with love
 
 
 
 
 
 1
 
 I thought the cabin was still empty until I saw the red rooster out in the road. He was really flame orange, but people call
 those roosters red, and he had a big, bright green feather curling over the top of his tail. I had on my sneakers and was
 walking in a smooth gully the rain had created. So I wasn’t kicking gravel or making any kind of noise, and he didn’t look
 up from his pecking until I was close on him. Then, he cocked his head to the side and looked me over, slit-eyed. It was March.
 I hadn’t been down that road since fall. And by the tilt of the rooster’s head, it was clear to me he’d been around some time,
 maybe all winter. He owned that territory, or at least he owned the chicken part of it, and he wasn’t going to give ground
 scared, or even in a huff. He lifted a foot, held it up in a claw for only a second, and then he walked off like he had business
 in the weeds he’d been meaning to get to all morning. I admired him for that.
 
 
 Mama always called the cabin “the cabin.” It was really more like a shack, but “shack” isn’t a good word to describe where people live, particularly if they happen to be your kin. So when my great uncle Joe lived there, Mama said it was Uncle Joe’s cabin. And when he was killed, I still said it was Uncle Joe’s cabin for a while, because I didn’t forget him just because he was dead. Every time Mama and I visited Uncle Joe he gave me a new and interesting rock to play with. He called them river stones and said that the Arkansas River had made them smooth and shined them up. But I never actually saw Uncle Joe go down to the river. He spent most of his time sitting in a rocker on his front porch. Next to his rocker on one side was a spit can and on the other side was a brown paper bag with his bottle in it. 
 
 Uncle Joe was sort of watery in the eyes, and he was black-headed and dark, like most of Mama’s people. But he was the only
 one of them who lived close to us. I don’t know why we lived off away from the rest of our family, but we did. And Mama told
 me, “Kit, this is my uncle, your grandmother’s brother” more than once. I guess she did that because I was so young she was
 afraid I’d forget it. She knew she was dying and probably wanted me to know who I belonged to before she left. Or, maybe,
 she had a feeling for the future and hoped Uncle Joe would rescue me and take me to her parents and sisters. He probably would
 have, too, if he could’ve stayed sober and alive.
 
 
 The rooster wasn’t the only new sign of life at the cabin, just the first, him being out in the road. When I got closer, I
 could tell somebody was living in there. The door was open, its hole covered only by a screen with a tear in it. And I heard
 a noise from inside. It was somebody humming. I craned my neck as I walked past, thinking maybe I could see who’d moved in
 there. But I couldn’t see anything except the outline of a refrigerator inside the door in exactly the spot Uncle Joe had
 kept his refrigerator in.
 
 
 So there was only the humming and the refrigerator, and then, past the cabin in the ruts of the lane forking off to the east, some chickens and a couple of black and white spotted guineas. One of