Ethan Westley, who was my mentor of sorts, had just the one rule: don’t touch the box. He had a bunch of suggestions, like “don’t steal from anyone with a weapon” and “be careful who you steal from” and “don’t steal from someone with a weapon,” yeah. (He also had a white bullet scar about the size of a dime on the back of his hand, and when he suggested stuff he’d cross his arms and grip em hard so the scar stood out rippled and bright against the muscle lines.) But there was just the one rule, which was “don’t touch the box”.

I got the stealin part alright. Ethan, you see, didn’t expect me or order me to steal nothing for him, even as a mentor… but he knew that every dirty street kid still had that urge in them when their stomach got empty, like an old shard of rock jabbin out when the tides fell back. So he gave me those real powerful suggestions, and I in return never got killt, and that was all fine.

The box, though, that haunted me.

It was a little silvery snuffbox about the size of a lighter and nearabouts as shiny. It had a ship carved into it, real elegant, surrounded by a pretty border of little loops and swirls and feathers that probably used to be gold but was now kind of an ugly rust-orange. The rounded edges were all flecked brown-gray, sort of, probably because when he got nervous Ethan’d run it around and around in his big gritty hands until he’d worn out the silver and filled the wears with dirt. Like he didn’t even notice how much it could’ve been worth if polished up nice.

He didn’t keep it real safe, either! That box wandered about as much as we did. It ended up sometimes on a shelf in a rented apartment, sometimes on the floorboards of a luggage car, and all the times showing up right when I’d just about managed to finally put it out of my mind. I think Ethan did it on purpose, like a test. I’d be sitting there in a freight car, wind howling overhead and the tracks thudding bruises into my ass, just about to nod off… and bam! Whammo! There the box was, glittering like a gem in the corner, buried under the stink of old hay and dust.

Good silver can get you a lot of nice things, these days. More if it’s got some nice carves in it. Every-time I got sick and wanted a medicine, every-time I got hungry and wanted food, every-time I got cold and wanted a hotel room to stay in for the night… I’d look over and I’d see my hobo-mentor sitting around, rubbing his calloused fingers across the box like a lover. Every-day he ground more hand-dirt into its little curls and dips and wore more dark into the edges, and every-day I’d huddle down in my ratty old blanket and kind of quietly hate him a bit more.

It didn’t make sense! Y’know? Drifters didn’t have anything, that’s why they’re drifters. Him sitting there with that box was like a bum flossin his teeth with a diamond.  I wanted to scream at him.

But I didn’t, because he was my mentor and even when I was fourteen, which is when you still sort of think you’re invincible even with the world after you, I knew he was one of the big things standing between me and getting kill’t.

And besides, every drifter had somethin small and special to them. Somethin taken from home or what they want home to be like, what gives them hope or reminds them of when things were better. I had my rucksack, so worn out and torn up that I’d lost more things to it than I’d ever even stolen, and Ethan had his box, and I guessed that’d have to be okay.

A few days later, though, I broke the weapon rule. I didn’t mean to, it just happened like that. The trains had stopped for a while in town, and I started wandering on my own, like I usually did. Drifters are like cats—we don’t mingle long. We just sorta end up back together at the end of the day when the trains leave again.

I was hungry, was the thing. Most towns had outdoor stalls with fruits and meats and all kinds of nice things to snag, but it was nearing winter and just about everything was all closed up tight against the cold. Normally I’d be able to work around that anyway, but my mind kept drifting back to that box and how much I could buy with its weight in silver. I was mad and I was hungry and that made me madder and by the time I actually ran into another living person I was nearabouts ready to deck him in the face.

He glared at me, looking about as ratty as the rest of us, but with that mean sort of look in his eye that some of them get when they get screwed over too often. Drifters are like dogs, that way. You get some that are loyal and cheery until the end, and that’s Ethan, and then you get some that end up hard and mean and yappy when food gets scarce. I immediately didn’t like this guy, and cause I was in the mood for a fight, I let him know it.

I told him to get bent. He said ‘scuse me. I said you heard me, mutt. He said…

…Well. I don’t remember what he said. I remember that he hit me in the gut, hard. He screamed or I screamed or something screamed, anyway. The birds took off overhead and he followed suit, the holes in his jacket fluttering like a surrender flag fulla bullet-holes. I saw a glint, though, and for a second I thought of Ethan’s silver snuffbox and wondered if I should’ve snagged it before the guy popped me.

Then my legs stopped working all of the sudden and I sagged against a wall and put my hands to my stomach and came away with a cupful of dark red syrup that smelled like pennies and felt like warm oil. Looking at it was like looking at one of those illusions, in that it made me feel all dizzy and dis-orientated and next thing I knew I was flat on my back and didn’t the sky look pretty today. It couldn’t have been a snuffbox, then, I figured, ‘cause snuffboxes weren’t sharp and didn’t sink into your gut like jelly and didn’t leave you glassy-eyed and staring up at clouds.

They didn’t leave you staring up at clouds for a long long time.

Ethan came and got me, after a while, I think. He must have, because I blinked and when I opened my eyes again I was looking up at a gray-white paneled roof, with fluorescent lights all buzzing in a dull chorus. My side felt tightly wrapped, and for a second I almost understood what being a Victorian lady in a corset must’ve been like before I realized they were bandages.

I looked left. I was lying in a bed, one in all pearly whites with a silvery bar on the end. Beyond the bar was a pole with little bags hanging from it like prisoners from a noose, one full of clear stuff and the other full of dark red stuff. There was a stink of something chemical in the air, mixed with pine that smelled too strong to be anything other than fake.

I looked right. Ethan was sitting there by the bed, his bulky frame perched on a little chair like a bird. His long hair flopped in front of his face in greasy strands, but I could still see his stern look as he rubbed his calloused fingers together, grinding dirt into empty air like embers off a fire.

“…Where’m?” I asked.

Ethan flinched, startled, then turned and gave me a smile full of crooked yellow teeth.

“Hell. I give you one suggestion. Just one, kid,” he said. The words lost all their spite around that crooked grin. Ethan wasn’t the type to actually get mad. He didn’t have meanness in him.

“Ishospiddle?” I groaned and shook my head. “Can’t ‘fford hospiddle.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He shifted, going right back to rubbing those two fingers together. The scar on his hand stood out white and bright, like the walls.

He looked at me, then, and it was weird. He looked a little troubled, like he was weighing something in his mind, but not really, ‘cause he didn’t have to think about it for even a second before he smiled again and the look was gone.

“I had an emergency fund.”