The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

nearly finished with his chicken pox, the last scabs peeling off his skin, the schoolteacher had opened a flask of whiskey to celebrate and asked Ren what he wanted to be when he grew up.
     
    “I don’t know,” said Ren, looking over from his book.
     
    “You’ve never thought about it? Not once?” Tom asked. “What about a fisherman, like those fellows you met at the bar?”
     
    Benjamin was cleaning his boots at the table. He smeared a streak of black polish across a toe, then rubbed it in. “Leave him alone.”
     
    “Don’t you think the little monster needs a profession?” Tom took another sip of whiskey. “Maybe he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life living in a basement.”
     
    “We won’t be pulling these kinds of jobs forever.”
     
    “You keep saying that,” said Tom, flicking away a bit of scab. “But what we need is something to tide us over for a few years instead of a couple of months.”
     
    This conversation was one they’d had before. But this time Benjamin stopped what he was doing and gazed at his half-polished shoes. They were old boots, the heels cracked and in need of repair. He looked at Ren. He looked at his shoes again. Then he walked across the floor in his socks and spent the afternoon sharing Tom’s whiskey. Every once in a while he would turn to Ren in the corner, and each time the boy glanced back, Benjamin’s face was more troubled.
     
    When Ren woke the next day Benjamin was gone. He returned later that evening, smelling of tobacco, and said that he’d changed his mind about North Umbrage. The men began to make their plans, and Benjamin stopped going to the tavern. Instead he spent most of his time counting out figures, and visiting graveyards, and taking notes in a small black book he kept in his pocket. He disappeared for days from the basement, and when asked of his whereabouts answered simply, “Research.” Ren had followed him once, crossing street after street through the marketplace before he saw him slip into a lawyer’s office. When Benjamin came out, he was biting his nails, and then he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and laughed, as if he’d just been told something he couldn’t believe.
     
    Ren watched him now, holding the reins tight, steering their cart around the ruts ahead. He kept his eyes forward and his pipe set firmly between his lips, puffs of smoke trailing behind them on the road.
     
    Soon they came upon a valley between two hills, the pastures surrounding it covered with sheep. White-and brown-and black-faced animals stretched across the landscape. The wagon passed a group of farmers, washing their herds in the river to prepare them for shearing. The men gave directions to a nearby town. There the group found an inn, where they paid for a room with the last of their money. Inside, the floors were covered with dust, the beds stained with tobacco burns. Tom settled himself at the table and Benjamin began unpacking the trunk.
     
    Ren sat quietly in a corner, rereading the last pages of his book. Deerslayer was refusing Judith Hutter’s proposal of marriage. She had done all she could to make him love her, but it hadn’t been enough. Ren had read the ending many times, and he still felt terrible about it. Hawkeye spent the entire novel fighting Indians and righting wrongs, but when he left Judith to her lonely fate, he always seemed less of a hero.
     
    “There’ll be a crowd tomorrow at the shearing.” Benjamin opened the wooden case and took out one of the brown bottles of Doctor Faust’s Medical Salts for Pleasant Dreams.
     
    “Someone might recognize us,” said Tom.
     
    “Recognize me, you mean.”
     
    “Does it matter?” Tom took off his coat and flung it onto the bed.
     
    “We’re out of money. And I’ve got an idea for using the boy.”
     
    “You should leave him out of it.”
     
    “He wants to do it. Don’t you, Ren?”
     
    Ren looked up from his book. He could see that Benjamin was itching for