Ursula Vernon - The Tomato Thief

She wrapped herself up in a quilt that night and sat in the rocking chair on the back porch. “We’ll see what kind of rat bastard steals an old lady’s tomatoes,” she grumbled.

(Grandma Harken thought of herself as an old lady, because she was one. That she was tougher than tree roots and barbed wire did not matter. You did not steal an old lady’s tomatoes. It was rude, and also, she would destroy you.)

She leaned her shotgun up against the porch railing in easy reach. Probably she wouldn’t need it, but there was no telling how low a body would sink once they’d started down the road of tomato theft. Murder was not out of the question.

Though I’ll try to aim for the legs, she thought, and grinned fiercely to herself.

The sun sank and the sky blazed redder than a ripe tomato. The herb leaves rustled and the bean plants whispered to each other farther down in the garden. The great sprawling squash had not yet set fruit, but they were sending questioning tendrils out in all directions, and the peppers were the size of Grandma’s thumb. All around her, the garden whispered, a slow exhale after the heat of the day.

Grandma Harken leaned back in the rocking chair and fixed her eyes on her tomatoes.

She woke in the morning with dew collecting on the quilt. Her back was stiff and two more tomatoes were missing.

She shot out of the rocking chair fast enough to knock it over on its runners and cussed the air briefly blue.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” she said, when she’d run out of swear words and turned back to religion. “This ain’t funny anymore!”

She stomped down and found a nearly ripe tomato, which she yanked off the vine and took inside. It sat on the counter. A day or two and it would be almost as good as the others.

Almost.

She was angry now at herself as well as the thief. Falling asleep when she was supposed to be standing guard—what was that? Was she really that doddering an old woman?

“Not tonight,” she said grimly. “Not tonight.”

She watered the garden by hand and did the laundry, just to keep herself moving. She napped all afternoon, which Spook-cat quite enjoyed.

Then, as evening fell, she brewed herself up a pot of cowboy coffee, with the grounds still in the pot.

It cost more than blood these days, but that was life. Salt, flour, coffee, and sugar were the only things Grandma Harken bought at the store, and the store could only get them in because Father Gutierrez was on good terms with the train-priests.

It didn’t matter how good the terms you were on, though, they were expensive as the devil. Most of the time she got by with tea and honey and cornmeal, same as everybody else.

Still, didn’t matter how strong you brewed it, tea was no substitute for coffee.

“I’ll be up half the night drinking and the other half peeing,” she said. “Not a chance I’ll fall asleep this time.”

She sat down in the rocking chair with the coffee mug in one hand and prepared to wait.

In the small hours of the night, Grandma Harken woke up because her bladder was killing her.

Her first thought was that she’d fallen asleep again, and damnit, she wasn’t that old.

Her second was that the thief was less than ten feet away.

It was a mockingbird.

Grandma Harken stared.

It glowed like silver under the moon—really glowed, every feather edged in white fire. When it shifted, it threw light across the prickly tomato leaves and left sharp-edged shadows across the ground.

The bird perched on top of the tomato cage for nearly a minute. Occasionally it would flick its tail and set the shadows dancing.

It might have sat there all night, except that Grandma Harken’s bladder was making its displeasure known. She squirmed in her chair and the rockers creaked on the porch.

The white patches on the mockingbird’s wings blazed up and it flew.

She shot out of her chair, bladder be damned, and charged down the steps. She could see the mockingbird flying, the sagebrush casting fantastic shadows, the saguaros briefly silver instead of black—and then it was a distant spark dwindling into the desert.

Grandma Harken watched it vanish against the sky.

“Mockingbirds,” she said aloud, stomping toward the outhouse. “Mockingbirds stealing my damn tomatoes.”

She knew mockingbirds eat fruit if they can get it, but she had to admit, she would not have expected one to make off with a full-sized tomato. Cherry or grape tomatoes, sure, but one of my big ones?

She was up and down three more times that night, as the cowboy coffee made itself felt, but she was hardly sleeping anyway.

Mockingbirds also don’t leave human footprints. And generally they do not glow like foxfire.

“Shapechanger,” she said to Spook-cat, who slept in a small orange puddle atop the pillow. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Again.”

The next night, she didn’t bother with coffee. She cleaned up the house and shooed Eva off when she looked inclined to stay late.

“I don’t need you fussing over me,” she told her daughter. “I ain’t gonna change and it’s just gonna make us both snappish.”

Eva was weak-eyed, mild-mannered, and had a disposition as yielding as a featherbed. It was hard to imagine her being snappish about anything.

But she’d also known her mother for a very long time, and she recognized make us both snappish as an olive branch. She stood looking down at the dishcloth in her hands, and said finally, “I’m worried about Brandon, that’s all.”

“He’s back east,” said Grandma Harken. “With your father’s kin. He’ll be fine.”

“Do you think so?” asked Eva.

Grandma Harken was sharpening her garden shears. Her hands slowed on the file and she said finally, “He’ll get in trouble and he’ll figure it out. Best to do it without us standing over him. It’s the only way anybody ever learns to clean up after themselves.”

“He’s been so upset since the girl—”

Grandma Harken threw down the shears. “He did a damn fool thing, and I cleaned up the mess for him. He should be upset. I’d be more afraid if he wasn’t.”

She exhaled and picked up the shears again. There was a burr in the edge of one blade and she set to work on it with the file. “Not your fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t yell. But see what I mean? I’m not fit for company now.”

Eva looked at her.

“I ain’t been sleeping well.” Grandma held that out like a peace offering, because her daughter was sweet, not stupid.

Eva nodded. She threaded the dishtowel through the ring by the little sink. “Can I do anything?” she asked.

“Let me stew in my own juices for a day or two,” said Grandma Harken. “Go fuss over someone who’ll appreciate it.”

Eva smiled faintly. “You’re the one I worry about.”

“I’m not dead yet,” said her mother. “And I’ve still got a trick or two left to play.”

She made an effort to be pleasant for the rest of the evening, and even let Eva extract a promise that she’d try to sleep more.

It ain’t a lie exactly. I’ll try to sleep more once I’ve stood off my tomato thief. Whatever they might be under the feathers.

As soon as her daughter had left, her whole demeanor changed. She laced on her good boots, in case she had to run, and locked Spook-cat in the bedroom. She put her garden shears in her apron pocket and made sure that her shotgun was loaded up with rock salt.

Grandma Harken knew more about shapechangers than anyone in town would have guessed, and that meant that she knew enough to be careful.

Mockingbirds are cousins to ravens, and that’s a bad game to get mixed up in. Never had any patience for riddles.