Excerpt from Stealing by Margaret Verble, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The fish were biting that day. I caught three catfish, each about a foot long. They were so same in size that I decided they were brothers and had come from the same litter. They were mud cats, dirty brown in color. I've heard here at Ashley Lordard that some people won't eat catfish at all, and I know some people won't eat mud cats in particular. But their meat is white and tender, and everybody I knew then—which wasn't a lot of people, true—all thought mud cats were delicious. So I was pretty happy with my catch, and on my way back down the lane I thought about going up to the door and offering the third catfish to the hummer who had moved into Uncle Joe's cabin. Daddy and I would only eat one fish each. And usually I would've stopped fishing at two that size, because there's no use wasting food you can leave for another day. But probably somewhere back in my mind I had already formed a thought about catching another fish to give away.

When the time came, I chickened out. Because just as I was coming upon the cabin, the front door shut. I saw it, but I heard it more. And after that, it seemed like I couldn't walk up onto the front porch and knock and hold out a fish. People close doors for reasons. Not that I thought the door closing had anything to do with me. I think it was just a coincidence. But it was a bad one for my purposes, so I kept the fish.

That night at supper, Daddy pointed at the spare fish with his fork and said, "Save that for breakfast." He never talked much during meals, so I took that as a chance, and said, "There's somebody in Uncle Joe's cabin."

Daddy belched.

I figured that was because he was eating fried food. He'd had trouble with his stomach for as long as I could remember. So I waited for the gas to pass, hoping he knew, and would tell me, who was in the cabin. But he just got up, went into the living room and turned on the radio. I washed the dishes no wiser and hearing a baseball announcer talk about statistics and players and all the things they yap about before the game actually starts. Then, when I was through, I went into the living room and sat on the floor at the table in front of the couch. Daddy is a Cardinals fan, so that's what we always listened to. The Cardinals and the Pirates. I never could get too worked up about baseball. But I liked Daddy's company and I mostly played solitaire.

2

It was spring, so school was still going. I didn't go fishing all that next week because the bus didn't get me home until about 4:30. We lived so far out in the country that I was the first kid to get picked up in the morning and the last one to get dropped off in the afternoon. That made for a long day and some boring time on the bus. I tried making friends with the driver, but he didn't like children, and nobody really wants to be known as the school bus driver's pet, so I didn't try very hard. Mostly, I just sat at a window and watched the fields go by. There were always the cows to count. One day, my top one, I counted thirty-six.

When I lived at home, school was okay. Everybody was mostly nice to me. The upper-grade town kids ran the place, and even down in the third grade I could tell that was the way it had always been and would be forever. The country kids stayed in one group. We were out-numbered, and we didn't have the clothes and lunch boxes the town kids had. I know that mattered to some, but it was okay with me. I wasn't very outgoing or friendly. Mama died when I was still in the first grade. And she'd spit up blood long before that. The first thing I ever remember knowing her by was her cough.

But I did hope that someday, when I could get to feeling better, I could make everybody like me. I studied the popular girls while I waited for that day to come. But I wasn't an outcast or anything like that. I just had troubles. All the other kids knew what they were, and that there was no fixing them. So everybody just tried to be nice and sort of let me be.

Excerpted from Stealing by Margaret Verble. Copyright © 2023 by Margaret Verble. Excerpted by permission of Mariner Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.