A Season of Thieves

Chapter 1: The Man with the Clean Collar

The dust came in from the west that morning like a second dawn, brown and rolling, turning the September sky the color of old tea. Luther Sawyer stood on the porch of the Enid boardinghouse and watched it come, a handkerchief pressed over his mouth, his eyes narrowed to slits. He'd been in Oklahoma three weeks now and still hadn't gotten used to the way the land tried to swallow itself.

He was forty-one years old, lean as a fence rail, with hands that were too careful for the rough carpentry work he'd been doing. His fingernails were trimmed short and clean. His shirt, though patched at both elbows, was pressed. He'd heated the iron himself on the boardinghouse stove before anyone else was awake, because Luther Sawyer believed that a man who let himself go ragged on the outside would soon go ragged on the inside, and he'd seen enough of that to last him.

The boardinghouse was a two-story clapboard affair run by a widow named Mrs. Pettigrew, who charged thirty-five cents a night and didn't ask questions as long as you didn't track mud past the front parlor. Luther had been there four days, which was three days longer than he'd planned. He'd come to Enid because someone in Ponca City told him a church was looking for a man to rebuild its vestibule steps, but when he arrived, the church had already hired a local boy for half the price Luther would have charged.

So he'd stayed, picking up what work he could. He'd fixed a barn door for a feed merchant. He'd reframed a window for a woman whose husband was away looking for work in Tulsa. He'd earned two dollars and sixty cents in four days, which was enough to keep his room and buy two meals a day at the diner on Grand Avenue, but not enough to get him any closer to California.

California was the idea. California was always the idea, the way it was for half the people he met on the road. He didn't have family there, didn't have prospects there, but it wasn't Oklahoma, and it wasn't Kansas, and it wasn't the memory of Della coughing blood into a handkerchief in a rented room in Wichita while he held her hand and the doctor shook his head.

That had been fourteen months ago. Some mornings he woke up and reached for her before he remembered.

He went inside, folded the handkerchief, and sat down at the small desk in his room. The desk was barely bigger than a breadbox, but it was enough for his ledger — a cloth-bound notebook in which he kept meticulous records of his earnings and expenditures. Every penny in, every penny out, dated and categorized. It was the habit of an accountant, which is what he'd been for eleven years before the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway had let him go in 1934 along with four hundred other men.

*September 14, 1936*, he wrote. *Balance: $4.15. Room: $0.35. Breakfast: $0.20. Remaining: $3.60.*

At this rate, he calculated, he could afford to stay in Enid for another ten days without working at all. But ten days of sitting still was ten days of going nowhere, and going nowhere was a luxury that belonged to men with homes.

He closed the ledger, tucked it into his suitcase, and went downstairs.

The boardinghouse dining room was a narrow space with four tables and a window that looked out onto the street. Mrs. Pettigrew served breakfast from six to seven-thirty — biscuits and gravy, or oatmeal if the biscuits ran out. Luther was late enough that he got oatmeal, which suited him fine. He sat at the table nearest the window and ate slowly, watching the street.

Enid was a town that had seen better days and knew it. The storefronts along Grand Avenue were about half occupied. A hardware store, a grocer, a barber, a druggist — the essentials held on, but the dress shop and the furniture store and the little place that used to sell radios had all gone dark, their windows soaped over or simply dusty. People moved along the sidewalks with their heads down, not because they were unfriendly but because the wind carried grit and looking up meant getting it in your eyes.

Luther noticed the man because the man didn't have his head down.

He was coming along the opposite sidewalk with a stride that suggested he owned it — not aggressive, but proprietary, as though the concrete had been poured specifically for his benefit. He was tall, maybe six-one, with a full head of white hair combed straight back from a broad forehead. He wore a dark suit that fit him well, a white shirt with a collar so clean it seemed to glow against the brown air, and a black string tie. He carried a leather valise in one hand and a Bible in the other.

Luther watched him cross the street and disappear from view. A moment later, the front door of the boardinghouse opened and closed, and Luther heard the man's voice in the hallway — a rich, unhurried baritone, the kind of voice that made you lean in rather than pull back.

"Good morning, ma'am. I wonder if you might have a room for a weary traveler. Just a night or two, while I attend to some business in your fine town."

Mrs. Pettigrew's reply was inaudible, but the tone was warm. People responded to that voice. Luther could tell already.

The man appeared in the dining room doorway, surveyed the room with the practiced ease of someone who'd walked into a thousand rooms and found them all manageable, and settled his gaze on Luther.

"Mind if I join you? I do hate eating alone. Makes a man feel like he's dining with his sins."

Luther gestured to the empty chair across from him. "Help yourself."

The man set his valise on the floor and his Bible on the table, pulled out the chair, and sat down with the deliberate grace of a much younger man. Up close, Luther could see he was older than he'd first guessed — sixty, maybe sixty-five, with deep lines around his eyes and a nose that had been broken at least once. But his eyes were sharp and blue and full of something Luther couldn't quite name. Amusement, maybe. Or appetite.

"Archie Doggett," the man said, extending his hand. "Formerly of Little Rock, currently of wherever the Lord sees fit to set me down."

Luther shook the hand. The grip was firm and dry. "Luther Sawyer."

"Luther. A fine name. A reformer's name." Archie smiled, showing teeth that were too white and too even for a man his age. "What brings you to Enid, Luther?"

"Work."

"And have you found any?"

"Some."

"But not enough."

It wasn't a question. Luther looked at the man and said nothing.

Archie flagged down Mrs. Pettigrew, who had appeared with a fresh pot of coffee, and ordered biscuits and gravy with the air of a man ordering steak at the Waldorf. When she'd gone, he turned back to Luther and folded his hands on the table.

"I don't mean to presume," he said. "But I've been on the road long enough to recognize a fellow pilgrim. You've got the look of a man who's been careful his whole life and gotten nothing but trouble for it."

Luther sipped his coffee. "You got all that from sitting down?"

"I got it from your shirt. Pressed this morning, patched twice, and not a spot on it. A man who takes that kind of care with a shirt that old is a man with standards. And a man with standards in times like these is usually a man who's suffering, because the world isn't meeting him where he stands."

Luther set down his cup. "That's a lot of philosophy for breakfast."

Archie laughed — a genuine, full-throated sound that seemed to fill the room and make it warmer. "You're right. Forgive an old man his sermonizing. Tell me about yourself, Luther. What's your trade?"

"Carpentry, mostly. I was an accountant before."

"An accountant." Archie's eyes brightened. "Railroad?"

"Rock Island line. Eleven years."

"And they let you go."

"They let a lot of people go."

"That they did. That they did." Archie shook his head slowly, as though contemplating the injustice of it all. "And now here you are, a man who can balance a ledger to the penny, swinging a hammer for nickels and dimes. It's a waste, Luther. A criminal waste."

Mrs. Pettigrew brought his biscuits. Archie ate with relish, dabbing his mouth with the napkin after every bite. He didn't speak again until the plate was clean.

"I have a proposition for you," he said.

"I'm not interested in propositions."

"You haven't heard it yet."

"I've been on the road long enough to know that when a stranger buys you breakfast and calls you by your first name, he wants something."

"You bought your own breakfast. I'm merely sitting at your table." Archie leaned back and studied Luther with those sharp blue eyes. "But you're right. I do want something. I want a partner. A man with a head for numbers and a face that people trust. And you, Luther Sawyer, have both."

"Partner in what?"

Archie glanced around the dining room. They were alone — the other boarders had eaten and gone. He leaned forward.

"Have you heard of the Federal Farm Recovery Initiative?"

"No."

"That's because it doesn't exist. Not yet, anyway. Not officially." Archie smiled. "But it will, in every town we visit. And the farmers who sign up for it will be grateful. And they will pay a small processing fee for the privilege of being first in line for government relief loans. And those fees, Luther, will add up to a very comfortable living for two men who know how to present themselves."

Luther stared at him. "You're talking about a swindle."

"I'm talking about an opportunity."

"You're talking about stealing money from people who don't have any."

Archie held up a finger. "I'm talking about collecting modest fees from people who are going to lose their farms regardless. The banks will take them. The dust will take them. The government will eventually relocate them. We're not changing anyone's fate, Luther. We're simply collecting a small toll on a road that leads to the same destination no matter what."

Luther pushed back his chair and stood up. "Find someone else."

He walked out of the dining room, up the stairs, and into his room. He sat on the bed and looked at his hands — the calluses from carpentry work overlaying the softer skin of an accountant — and felt a slow burn of anger in his chest. Not at Archie Doggett, though the man deserved it. At the world that had brought him to a place where a man like Archie Doggett thought he was a reasonable mark.

He stayed in his room for the rest of the morning, going over his ledger, calculating routes to California. If he could get to Amarillo, he could pick up Route 66 and work his way west. But Amarillo was two hundred miles away, and two hundred miles cost money — bus fare, meals, a place to sleep. He had three dollars and sixty cents. He needed at least fifteen to make the trip with any margin for the unexpected.

At noon, he went out to look for work. He tried the feed merchant again, but the man had nothing. He tried the druggist, the barber, the grocer. Nothing, nothing, nothing. He walked to the edge of town and asked at two farms. One man looked at him with hollow eyes and said he couldn't afford to feed his own children, let alone hire help. The other wasn't home.

He came back to the boardinghouse at dusk, footsore and empty-handed. Archie Doggett was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, reading his Bible by the last of the daylight.

"Productive day?" Archie asked.

Luther didn't answer. He went inside, washed his face, and came back to the porch because his room was stifling and the evening air had cooled enough to be bearable.

They sat in silence for a while. The street was quiet. A dog barked somewhere. A truck rumbled past, its headlights cutting yellow tunnels through the dust haze.

"I know about Leavenworth," Archie said.

Luther went very still.

"I know about the two years you served for forgery. Nineteen nineteen to nineteen twenty-one. You were twenty-four years old. You altered a bank draft for a man named Pollard, who ran a grain operation out of Topeka. You got caught, you did your time, and you've been clean ever since."

Luther's mouth was dry. "How do you know that?"

"I make it my business to know things about the people I approach. I don't walk into a room blind, Luther. I walked into that dining room this morning knowing exactly who you were, what you'd done, and what you'd lost. Your wife. Your job. Your good name — or at least the name you built on top of the one you'd buried."

Luther gripped the arms of his chair. "What do you want?"

"I told you what I want. A partner. A man with a head for numbers and a face that people trust. But now I'm adding a condition. You work with me for one week. Seven days. We visit four, maybe five towns. At the end of the week, you take your share — and it will be enough to get you to California and then some — and we go our separate ways. In exchange, your past stays buried. Nobody needs to know about Leavenworth."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I suppose the good people of Enid will learn that the quiet carpenter in their midst is a convicted forger. And the people of the next town, and the next. Word travels fast in small communities, Luther. Especially bad word."

Luther sat in the darkening porch and felt the trap close around him. He thought about Della, who had known about Leavenworth — she was the only person who had — and who had loved him anyway and never once thrown it in his face. He thought about the eleven clean years at the railroad, the careful rebuilding of a life, the slow accumulation of respectability that had been swept away by forces beyond his control.

He thought about three dollars and sixty cents and two hundred miles of dust.

"One week," he said. "And then I'm done."

Archie Doggett smiled in the darkness. "One week," he agreed. "That's all I ask."