The Old Thief

This story takes place in another place, and another time. There was a town, and in this town, there was an old man who had spent his entire life making his living by stealing. Because of this, he was known as the Old Thief. He was good at his craft, never took more than he needed, and had never been caught. It is important to note that stealing comes from the same root as stealth, which is the way of getting what you want when overt strength and power are either not available or not desirable. It is the way of Elders, and has been called the left handed way.

On this particular day, for whatever reason, when the Old Thief went to the market and went to steal the food he needed for dinner, the shop owner saw him take his wares and cried out in alarm. The police came running, and when they saw who had been caught, they were very happy. They hated the Old Thief, thinking that he had been laughing at them all of these years as he got away with stealing so many things, so when they arrested him they did it with a great deal of enthusiasm. They didn’t take him to the regular court—they took him to the highest court in the realm. They told the judge what they had caught the Old Thief doing, and explained that, while that act alone was not so serious, he had gotten away with breaking the law over and over for many years, and now this was time for him to pay.

The judge went to his chambers and considered what he should do, and after a period of time, came back to the court to announce his decision. He said that, several years back, the legislators had decided to get tough on crime and had come up with a new law, “Three strikes and you are out.” The next year they decided that this was not punitive enough, and came up with another law, “Two strikes and you are out.” To deal with the present situation, it seemed clear that they would need to come up with a special law just for the Old Thief: “One strike and you are out.” He then levied a fine on the Old Thief that was so large that no one could pay it off in a lifetime, and sentenced him to three consecutive life sentences in the maximum security prison at the edge of town.

The guards took the Old Thief across town to the prison. Word of his sentence had already made it to the warden, and he was waiting at the door when they arrived. He took possession of the Old Thief, handed him to his guards, and then slammed the door to the prison closed. “You will never go through this door again until you leave in a casket,” he said to the Old Thief. He then turned him over to his guards. They took him down the hall, and at the end of the hall they began to descend the stairs. As they went deeper, the light began to fade and the air began to get colder and damper. Being a man of stealth, the Old Thief kept his eyes open for any opportunity to escape, such as a window, or a door left unlocked, but there was nothing. At the bottom of the stairs was a locked gate, which, when unlocked, creaked and groaned as it was opened. It had been that long since anyone had been there.

The guards lead him down the corridor and stopped in front of the darkest cell. They unlocked this door and threw the Old Thief onto the floor, slamming and locking the door behind him. There he lay in the moldy damp straw, in the dark, hearing nothing but the distant dripping of water and the scratching of the rats’ claws as they scampered about.

He soon got up and spent the next several days exploring his cell inch by inch, checking to see if there were loose stones, rusted bars which might be worked loose, or any other opportunity to win his freedom, but he found nothing. He then spend several more days trying to imagine a way to trick his way out, perhaps by hiding behind the door when the guards came in with his meal and overpowering them, or by pretending to be really sick so that they would take him to the infirmary, from which he might escape. None of these sounded credible. Finally, he moved to the center of his cell and just sat there. Some people say that he meditated. Some people say that he contemplated. And some people say that while he sat there he began to remember all of the times in his life when he had felt happy, when he had felt alone, when he had felt loved . . . and that eventually he came to the point where he had remembered all of his life and there was no more to remember. He then just sat there in the dark and waited.

After a period of time he got up, went to the door and began to yell for the guard to come. When the guard arrived, he was angry, yelling at the Old Thief that he was going to be here for the rest of his life and what could possibly be so urgent that it justified calling him over. The Old Thief said that he had found something in his cell that was so valuable that only the King deserved it, so the guard needed to take him to the Kind forthwith. The guard laughed at him, asking how could he have possibly found anything of value in a prison cell. The Old Thief was skilled not only in stealth, but in persuasive speech, so eventually the guard decided to at least bring the request to the warden. The warden heard him out, and even though it sounded like an unlikely story, he thought that if it was true perhaps the King would reward him with a higher position within the Kingdom—he had never really liked running a prison. So, he and the guard went down to the Old Thief’s cell and unlocked it. The warden told the Old Thief that this was his lucky day. He said he would take him to the King, but to be aware that if he did not have something valuable to present to the King, he would surely lose his head.

The guard and the warden lead him to the end of the corridor and unlocked the gate, then began to ascend the stairs. As they walked up, the air grew progressively warmer and drier, and it began to get lighter. At the top of the stairs they unlocked the door, then led him down that hallway to the front door, the very one that the warden had told him he would never pass through again. This too was unlocked and opened, and the Old Thief stepped out into the sunlight.

The guard, the warden and the Old Thief made their way across the town to the palace in which the King lived. As they made their way into the audience hall, they could see that everyone who was anyone had gathered there to see what the Old Thief had brought to give the King. The Old Thief walked across the hall and knelt in front of the King. He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a dirty, wadded up bandana which had been wrapped around something small. He held this out to the King and offered it to him. He said “King, I have brought this treasure to you, for certainly no one else is worthy of it!” The King took it and began to unwrap it. He removed several layers of fabric until the item inside was revealed.

He said to the Old Thief “Have you really wasted my time by bringing me this plum pit?”

The Old Thief replied “Well, King, you are partially right. It IS a plum pit, but not just any plum pit. This one, planted in fertile soil, will immediately sprout into the trunk of a tree, and from that trunk will sprout branches, and from those branches, leaves. From the middle of these leaves will come flowers, and from the flowers, fruit of pure gold will quickly form. As quickly as you pluck one of these golden fruits, another will grow to replace it.”

The King was very happy to hear this, as the federal deficit had been growing and this could be the answer to that problem.

“Hold on a minute,” said the King. “If you have had this magic plum pit, then why haven’t you planted it instead of spending your life stealing what you need?”

“Oh, did I forget to mention that the pit will only grow into a tree that produces gold fruit when planted by an honest person?” asked the Old Thief. “If a person has lied, or stolen, or cheated someone, the plum pit will not grow when they plant it. Obviously, if I planted it nothing would happen.”

Well, the King was just then thinking about all of the lies he had told in the last election, about weapons of mass destruction and such, so he thought maybe he should let the Queen plant it. She was 9

thinking about all of the back-room deals which she knew about and had never said anything about, so she handed it to the Secretary of Defense, who was contemplating the lies that had justified the most recent war with the neighboring Kingdom, and he handed the plum pit to the Secretary of State, who was thinking about the fact that diplomacy is the art of lies skillfully told.

The plum pit was passed from person to person, all around the room, until it was finally handed back to the Old Thief.

The King then stood up and spoke. “Old Thief, you have just taught all of us a valuable lesson, about the folly of judging others by standards that we ourselves don’t follow. Also about the responsibility that those of us who have much have to those with little or nothing. So, as King, I will pay your fine myself, and I commute your three life sentences. You are a free man.”

So off went the Old Thief. He lived many more years, mostly happy. Every once in a while someone would stop him and say “So, tell me. Was that really a magic plum pit or did you trick the King?”

The Old Thief would always answer the same way. “When all answers to a question could be true, then the only answer to give is ‘YES’.”