Spare Change (13 page)

“How come? Don’t she usually
work on Friday?”

Ethan Allen shrugged. “She
stayed home ‘cause I was feeling sick.”

“I thought you said you went
to bed early last night.”

“Yeah,” Ethan Allen’s
fingers suddenly got so fidgety, he had to stuff his hands into his pockets,
“but it was ‘cause I didn’t feel good.”

“So, you just went to bed
and slept through what must’ve been one hell of a commotion going on out
here?”   

“I told you, I didn’t hear
nothing; I didn’t see nothing. I was asleep.”

“Let’s take a look at where
you were sleeping so soundly,” Cobb said. He followed Ethan into a small alcove
adjacent to the living room. “This is where you were doing all that sleeping?”
he asked, eyeing a bed with several empty cartons and a stack of towels piled
on top of it. 

“Yes sir.”

“Close as this is, you
didn’t hear a thing?”

“No sir.”

“No arguing? No fighting?”

The boy shook his head side
to side, but his heart was thumping so hard he thought for sure Cobb would hear
it. “I done told you,” he said, “Ten times I told you, I didn’t hear nothing;
and for certain didn’t see nothing!”

“That’s what you
told
me,” Cobb replied, pushing the cartons aside and folding back the coverlet,
“but, I got a hunch it ain’t the full and honest truth. The way this stuff is
piled up here, makes me wonder if this bed’s even been slept in.” 

Ethan Allen just stood there
staring down at his feet. 

“Leave the boy be,” Mahoney
finally said, “he don’t know nothing.”

“I ain’t so sure,” Cobb
replied, as he turned toward the back bedroom. 

When the crime scene
detectives arrived, they tromped back and forth through the house, checking
every piece of overturned furniture, marking spots where the tiniest droplet of
blood had fallen, looking in every crack and corner for some smidgen of
evidence as to what had taken place and taking picture after picture. Mahoney
and Cobb continued to question Ethan Allen. “Your mama or daddy have enemies?”
Mahoney asked, “Anybody who might want to do them harm?”

“Your daddy owe anybody
money?” Cobb, who was himself itching to make detective, added. “How about your
mama?”

“Why you asking me?” Ethan
Allen said, “I’m a
kid
. I don’t know nothing!”

“That new tractor, where’d
your daddy get the money for such an expensive thing?” 

“How about your mama and
daddy, did they get along?”

As they pummeled him with
question after question, Ethan Allen’s resolve grew stronger; his answers
switched over to nothing more than a shrug or shake of the head. The boy knew
how it would go—one whisper of what Scooter Cobb had done, then
he’d
be
the one punished. Lies, they’d say, made up stories; and off he’d go to reform
school. No sir, that wasn’t gonna happen. They could drag him from the house,
strip him buck naked and hang him up by his thumbs, but he’d
never
admit
he knew the truth of what went on.

Late in the afternoon, as he
stood on the front porch and watched the two men from the coroner’s office
carry off his mama, Ethan Allen felt the crack in his heart pushing open again.
Never before had anything hurt as much as this, not all the forgotten birthdays
in the world, not a bushel basket of broken promises, not even his daddy
smacking him clear across the room. At least then he had somebody; now he was
alone, more alone than anybody else on earth. A string of tears rolled down the
boy’s face as he watched the truck disappear down the driveway. “You just had
to tell him, didn’t you, Mama?” he sobbed, “You just
had
to tell Daddy
we was going to New York.”

“What’s that about New
York?” Mahoney, who had come up behind the boy, asked.

“It ain’t nothing,” Ethan
answered. “Mama and me was gonna go there on vacation, but I guess we ain’t
gonna go now.”                

“You got folks in New York?”

“Nope. We was just going for
vacation.”

“What about relatives? Is
there somebody who can take you in?”

Ethan Allen shook his head.
For nearly four hours he’d managed to say almost nothing at all, certainly
nothing of any significance. He wasn’t about to start blabbing now. The less
they knew, the better. Start talking and they’d try to worm the truth out of
you, he was wise to that game. “Don’t let the cat out of the bag,” was one of
the last things Susanna said, and it was advice to live by.

“Nobody?” Mahoney said
solemnly.

“I don’t need nobody.”

“You’ll have to go
somewhere.”

“I’m staying here.”

Mahoney wrapped his arm
around the boy’s shoulder. “I’m afraid we can’t let you do that, son. You’ve
got to be in the care of an adult.”

Ethan Allen didn’t answer
right away; he just stood there watching the road like he expected his mama to
come walking back. “I got a Grandpa,” he finally said, “He’ll come stay with
me.”

“I thought you said you
didn’t have any kin.”

“I meant any kin
other
than Grandpa.” He was starting to sweat again.

Mahoney, who’d raised five
youngsters of his own, gave a knowing smile. “Why don’t you give me your
grandpa’s telephone number,” he said, “that way, I can give him a call and make
sure
he’s coming.”

“Grandpa don’t talk to no
strangers.” 

“Oh, he don’t huh? Well,
that’s too bad, because you can’t stay here unless I’m certain you got somebody
to look after you. The law don’t allow little kids to be living alone.”

“You don’t believe me?”
Ethan Allen challenged, “You think I’m lying?”

“Hard to say. Anyway, it’s
against the law for me to leave you out here without somebody to watch over you.
So, if you don’t give me your grandpa’s telephone number, I’ve got no choice
but to take you out to the children’s home until we can locate a relative.”
Mahoney draped a kindly arm around Ethan’s shoulder and smiled in an easy sort
of way. “That’s not what either of us want son, so how about helping out here?”

The truth was Ethan didn’t
have a telephone number. The only thing he’d ever known of his grandfather was
the name and return address he’d seen written on the back of an envelope. Every
year he’d receive a birthday card with a dollar bill folded inside—no message
other than the words
Love, Grandpa.
A number of times the boy had asked
Susanna why a Grandpa who bothered to send a dollar didn’t come to visit. “It’s
the fault of your daddy,” she’d answered, with no further explanation.
Apparently words couldn’t account for why Benjamin’s own kin wanted nothing to
do with him. 

For a brief moment Ethan
Allen considered telling Detective Mahoney that Charles Doyle was his grandpa’s
name, but luckily he remembered how truth-giving could backfire on you and he
kept his lips locked. Ethan knew that the littlest things could spin out of control;
his mama was proof of it. She’d still be alive if she hadn’t flared up and told
Benjamin the truth about going to New York. Un-uh, he thought, the less said,
the better.  

 After a considerable amount
of back and forth arguing, the two officers bundled the boy into the patrol
car, leaving the dog, who’d been impossible to catch, behind. Cobb drove,
Mahoney sat in the passenger seat. Ethan Allen was alone in the back seat, his
heart dangerously close to cracking open again, but his mind fixed on holding
back the tears. 

When they were a mile or so
from the house, Cobb eyed the boy in the rearview mirror and asked, “You
hungry, kid?”

“No,” Ethan Allen answered,
snuffling the word back into his nose.

“I sure am,” Mahoney said,
turning to smile at the boy. “What say we stop at the diner and get ourselves a
sandwich, maybe even some pie?”

“I told you, I ain’t the
least hungry.” The thought of coming face-to-face with Scooter set Ethan
Allen’s lower lip to trembling and regardless of his intention, a stream of
tears let loose down his face. Ethan figured Sam Cobb was already suspicious; the
next thing would be for him to tell his daddy. Scooter wasn’t a man to go easy
on someone, not even a kid.  One word from Policeman Sam and Scooter would come
back to finish the job. Ethan remembered how time after time he’d taken a
heaped-high plate of pie from the same hands that left his daddy’s head looking
like a scrambled up egg. He felt a swell rising in his throat. “You better pull
over,” he said, “I think I gotta puke.”

“You’re probably hungry,” Mahoney
said in a kindly way, “You’d feel a lot better if you had something in your
stomach.”

“I ain’t eating no damn
pie!” Ethan shouted angrily. “It’s made outta shit and maggots! I ain’t never
eating it never again; never!”

Cobb turned with an angry
glare, “Watch your mouth!” he growled.

Mahoney broke in, “Leave him
be,” he said, “The boy’s scared, and he’s got a right. Ain’t that so Ethan
Allen?” He glanced back and saw the boy swiping at the tears overflowing his
eyes. “Still,” Mahoney said, “You ought to eat. A bowl of soup, maybe?  Or a
dish of ice cream?”

Ethan Allen shook his head.

“I’ll tell you what,”
Mahoney said, a gentle note of concern in his voice, “when we get to the diner,
you order anything you think you
might
want; if you feel up to eating
it, fine. If you’re still not hungry, we’ll get Bertha to pack it up for you.”

“Why do I gotta go in?”

“Officer Cobb and me have
been working all day, we need to get some supper and we can’t just leave you
sitting in the car now, can we?”

“Why not?”

“If you was to up and run
off, we’d be the ones held responsible.” 

Although precisely such a
thought had already crossed his mind, Ethan Allen said, “I’m just a kid,
where’s a kid gonna go?”

Mahoney gave the boy a
knowing grin.

By the time they pulled into
the diner parking lot, Ethan’s heart was about ready to explode. He could feel
it already stretched out to three times the normal size. “I ain’t feeling too
good,” he moaned, “if I was to eat one bite of anything I’d for sure puke.”
Mahoney clamped a firm hand onto his shoulder and hustled him inside. 

Scooter Cobb was hanging
over the counter with a sizeable piece of jelly donut crammed into his mouth
and a lump of, what could have been raspberry jelly or could have been a part
of Benjamin’s face, sliding down his right thumb. Ethan Allen, figuring it to
be the later, felt a rise of vomit in his throat. Scooter looked bigger than
ever; his head round as a basketball, his body mounded to the size of a
mountain, and his hands—big thick massive hands that could squash a boy’s head
with hardly trying. Ethan wanted to look away, he wanted not to see the hands,
he wanted to turn his eyes from the heavy-lidded face, but instead he stood
there and whimpered. It was a tiny sound that simply slid from his mouth—a dead
giveaway of his fear. If Scooter hadn’t known before, he surely knew now. 

Scooter Cobb lumbered from
behind the counter and grabbed hold of the boy. “Poor kid,” he moaned, pressing
Ethan Allen into the thick of his stomach. “It’s an awful thing what happened
to your mama…”  

There was no noticeable
mention of his daddy.

For what seemed to Ethan an
eternity, Scooter hugged and squeezed, at times pressing the boy’s nose so deep
into the greasy apron he could barely breathe. When Scooter finally let go,
Ethan swallowed down a gasp of air to clear away the smell of fried hamburgers
and meanness.

Mahoney moved to the far end
of the diner, he eased Ethan Allen into a booth and then slid in alongside of
him. Sam Cobb sat on the opposite side; Scooter next to him.

A short while later, Bertha,
a woman with her own share of troubles, dropped four menus on the table.
Bertha’s husband had lost four jobs in the last two months, her oldest boy was
about to be sent off to reform school and the bunion on her right foot throbbed
from morning till night, but still she mustered up a sad-eyed smile. “Sweetie,”
she said to Ethan Allen, “your mama was a well-meaning person, and she sure
deserved better than she got. I’m
real
sorry about what happened.” She
told the boy she’d be saying a prayer then switched over to asking what he
wanted to eat.

“Nothing,” Ethan answered,
locking his eyes onto a speckle of yellow mustard at the far end of the
tabletop. “I ain’t one bit hungry.”

“Even so,” Bertha winced a
bit and shifted her weight to the left leg, “…you ought to eat something. How
about I bring you some cherry pie, with ice cream on top?”    

Without looking up, Ethan
Allen shook his head

“Fix him a grilled cheese,”
Scooter said, “with home fries, and a slice of blueberry pie. Matter of fact,
bring two slices, I’m gonna have one too.”

Mahoney and Sam Cobb gave their
orders then Bertha limped off. As soon as she out of earshot, Scooter started
in with a barrage of questions about what had taken place at the Doyle farm.
“You got any suspicions as to who it was?” he asked eagerly. “What about clues?
Eye witnesses?”  When Bertha set the food down in front of them, Scooter
ignored the pie and gulped down the black coffee as he leaned in to hear every
last detail of how the investigation was progressing. When it seemed there was
no more to be told, he asked “What about the boy? What’s gonna happen to him?”