Spare Change (15 page)

“It wasn’t what you think,”
Scooter said defensively, “I was simply being kind to the woman, listening to
her problems…”

Emma gave him a hard glare
and went on. “That’s not the end of it.  Today, when I started to launder that
shirt you wore last night, I found blood all over it. Not little specks, such
as you’d get from a splash of meat, but a sizable amount. It didn’t make much
sense till Jack Mahoney brought the boy to the house and told me the story of
how Susanna had been killed and her husband beaten to a pulp. ‘It had to be a
monster of a man,’ Jack said.  A monster of a man…” 

“You can’t think it was me?”

“I don’t think—I know.”

“Good God, Emma! After all
the years we been together, you ought to realize I’d never do such a thing.”

“Really? You’re practically
a stranger to me now. At one time I might have known if you would do, or not
do, a thing. But now, I can’t begin to imagine the ungodly deeds you’re capable
of!”

“That’s great!” he
exclaimed. “Really great! You think I murdered the woman I was supposedly
having an affair with?”

“No,” she answered coolly,
“but I wouldn’t doubt you had something to do with the beating of her husband.”

Scooter looked visibly
shaken. “Is that what you told Jack Mahoney?” he asked.

“No.” She allowed the word
to hang in the air a long time before she spoke again. “But if you
ever
so much as glance at another woman again, I will.” She turned and picked up her
embroidery.

“You’re crazy, Emma,”
Scooter shouted, “crazy as a loon to think you can threaten me with a thing
such as that!”

“Perhaps…” she drawled,
slipping a thread of blue yarn through the eye of the needle, “I forgot to
mention that I never did get around to washing the shirt.”

Scooter narrowed his black
eyes and glared at Emma, but seeing the iron set look of determination on her
face, he bit down on his lip and wisely said nothing. When she went back to her
embroidery, he turned away and stomped up the stairs.

“Don’t you dare wake the
boy,” she called out before he was halfway to the landing, then she circled the
thread around her needle and eased a lovers knot into place. “He’s already been
through more than any child should have to endure.”  

Mumbling some belligerent
under-his-breath answer Scooter continued on.

“I’m warning you,” she said.

Although he was not
generally a man to be ordered around, he knew better than to cross Emma. Maybe
given some time, she’d simmer down and he’d find a way to convince her that such
suspicions were pure nonsense, but for now he wasn’t going to stick a single
toe over the line.  Of course, if the boy was still awake—he tiptoed up the
stairs and cracked open the door to what was now Ethan’s room, but the boy
appeared to be huddled under the comforter, sound asleep. 

Scooter returned to the second floor and climbed into
bed, making sure to position himself smack in the middle of the mattress. He
was still awake when Emma came to bed and for several hours afterward. Finally,
just minutes before the first ray of sun lit the horizon, he dropped into an
exhaustive sleep.           

I
t took Ethan almost two hours to walk from the Cobb
place back to his own house. It was a forty-five minute drive, but that was
following the road which circled around half the farms on the Eastern Shore.
Ethan boosted himself up and over the chain link fence at the far edge of the
Kramer farm, then he traveled as the crow flies, tromping through pitch black
cornfields and row after row of soybeans. He stayed back from the houses and
moved silently as a shadow. With any luck he’d get what he needed and be long
gone before Scooter Cobb discovered him missing. In the woods south of Miller’s
pond, Ethan heard the growl of something in the underbrush and took off
running. It was rumored that rabid wolves had been spotted in the area and any
other time Ethan would have turned back or gone off in another direction; but
on this night there was no time to waste. He’d seen what Scooter Cobb could do;
and it was a hell of a lot worse than any wolf—rabid or not. He zigzagged his
way through the Morgan’s overgrown orchard; then cut through a field of
cabbages which had been left to rot. Two minutes later he arrived at the place
that for the whole of his life had been home. The front door of Susanna’s car
was hanging open although Ethan Allen could swear he’d seen the policeman close
it.

“Mama,” he shouted and
darted across the yard. For a split second, he’d slipped back to yesterday or
the day before or possibly some time weeks ago, and imagined she’d be there,
sitting behind the wheel, ready to twist the key in the ignition and head off
to work.  Then that moment of thought disappeared and he remembered how the men
from coroner’s office had carried Susanna away in a black plastic bag. Ethan
Allen didn’t want to cry; he didn’t have time to cry—but that didn’t stop the
tears from coming. He slid into the driver’s seat of his mama’s car, then
leaned forward and banged his head against the steering wheel over and over
again. Sitting there and remembering back on how Susanna had said she’d drive
all the way to New York City if she had to, he came up with the idea for a new
plan.   

Ethan knew how to drive, at
least he sort of knew how. He’d done it sitting in Susanna’s lap a dozen times,
maybe more. Okay, there was the problem of his feet falling short of the
pedals, but if he scooted forward far enough, well then… The new plan was
formulating itself inside his head.  He’d headed home with every intention of
putting Dog in his bicycle basket and pedaling all the way to Wyattsville, but
driving
would
make considerably more sense. For one thing, it was
faster. Before sunup he could be clear to the ferry, maybe even to Norfolk. By
noon he could be in Wyattsville. On the other hand, there was the chance he’d
run into some policeman who’d arrest him for being too young to drive a car. Ethan
sat there for five minutes, wrinkling his brow, scratching his head and
twisting his mouth first to one side and then the other. Finally he stiffened
his back and jutted his chin forward in a way that made him look remarkably
like his mama, and came to a decision. Of course, before he went anywhere,
there were things he had to get hold of—the cookie jar money, Mister Charles
Doyle’s address and the ignition key.

As the boy started toward
the house, the dog suddenly trotted out of the woods and followed along at his
heels. “Good thing you came back,” Ethan said, “else, I’d leave you behind.”
Despite his words, Ethan knew he had no intention of doing such a thing, Dog
was all he had. Dog, and a grandpa he hadn’t heard from in over a year. A
grandpa who apparently figured a boy of eleven didn’t need a dollar, because
this year he hadn’t sent a card for Ethan’s birthday or Christmas. A grandpa
who, according to Susanna, had no use for his own son; a grandpa who Ethan
hoped would feel more kindly about having a grandson.

A police order telling
people to keep out was posted on the door of the house, the same door Ethan had
banged in and out of millions of times. “Like hell,” he grumbled. He took hold
of the knob and tried to turn it, but the door was locked tight. And, the key
his mama kept under the geranium pot for just such an occasion was gone. He
gave the door an angry kick then stomped around to the back. That door was also
locked. “Damn,” he moaned. He then tried window after window, but every one of
them was locked. Luckily the sky had remained cloudless and a white moon was
shinning down brighter than ever. Ethan supposed it could be midnight, perhaps
later; but he was running out of time. In a few hours they’d discover he was
gone and come looking for him—likely as not it would be Officer Cobb, possibly
even Scooter. A trickle of sweat rolled down his back as he thought, maybe they
already know. Maybe they’d checked the bed and found nothing but a rolled up
bunch of clothes. Maybe they were right now rounding the bend at Klausner’s
Corner, maybe they’d be
here
in a matter of minutes! Ethan scooped up a
rock and hurled it through his bedroom window. The sound of breaking glass
crashed through the night, louder than he figured possible, loud enough to maybe
be heard for miles.   For the third time that evening, he began calling for the
Lord to lend a hand. “Please, God,” he prayed, “let me get gone before Scooter
comes.”  He didn’t allow the praying to slow him down as he climbed onto the
sill and went through the window feet first. The sweater he’d taken from Sam
Cobb’s closet caught on the jagged edges of glass, but Ethan slid out of it and
kept moving. 

With the moon bright as it
was, there was no need to switch on a light. Still, he moved slowly and stuck
close to the walls, just in case somebody was watching. Twice he thought he
heard the sound of pounding at the door, but it turned out to be only the
thumping of his heart. He took the cookie jar from the top shelf of the china
closet and emptied it onto the table—nine dollars and sixty-six cents. He
crammed the money into his right pocket then moved on to Susanna’s room. His
mama had two sets of car keys; Ethan knew that for a fact. She was a person
given to locking her keys in the car, then calling home for somebody to come
rescue her. Three times, Ethan himself had bicycled down to the diner with her
car key jingling in his pocket. He could remember the last time; “Ethan Allen,”
she’d cooed across the telephone line, “be a sweetie and bring me my other set
of car keys.” He could hear the sugary sound of her voice, but, with the way
she was always switching hiding spots to keep Benjamin from finding her secret
stuff, he plain out couldn’t fix his memory on where that last place had
been.   

Ethan lifted the lid of the
jewelry box, but before he could do any searching, music began bing-bonging
like a brass band. He instantly slammed the lid closed; she’d never hide the
keys there anyway—too obvious. Still trying to recall his mama’s words, the boy
rummaged through drawer after drawer with no luck. He fished under the bed far
as he could reach, still nothing. He squeezed his fingers into the toe of every
shoe, checked the zipper pouch of an old grey pocketbook and shook eight lacy
brassieres hoping the keys would fall out. He was on the verge of tears when
his mama’s voice came to him. “Sugar, get my car keys, and bring them to me,”
she’d said, “…they’re hidden in the pocket of my blue audition dress.”

Ethan went tearing out the
front door—her audition dress was one thing Susanna would
never
leave
without—sure enough, in the back seat of the car was her suitcase. He snapped
it open and right there on top was the blue sequined dress, a set of car keys
in the pocket. He needed just one more thing and knew exactly where it was.

For years he’d saved those
cards, envelope and all, it seemed somehow nice to think he had a grandpa.
Ethan would carry the folded dollar bill in his pocket for months on end,
without spending it. With the dollar bill in his pocket, he could imagine a
grandpa who might one Christmas Eve show up with an armload of presents, or a
pony— sometimes he could even imagine a grandma who roasted turkeys and smelled
of chocolate chip cookies. Ethan dug down to the bottom of his baseball card
box and hauled up the greeting cards signed, love Grandpa. On the back flap of
every envelope was a carefully written return address.  No telephone number,
but he didn’t need one. He stuffed the cards into his left pocket and walked
out the door, leaving it to swing open behind him.

Ethan lifted the dog into
his mama’s car then slid behind the wheel.  He sat for a moment then stuck the
key in the ignition. Inching forward in the seat, he stretched his toe toward
the clutch pedal. He could barely reach it. The other times he’d driven,
Susanna had been behind him, he’d leaned his back against her and easily enough
reached the pedals. He scooted up to the front edge of the seat, where he could
lay his foot flat on the pedal. At first it seemed to work; but the car had a
heavy clutch that had to be pressed clear to the floor before the transmission
would slide from one gear to the next, so when he tried to push down on the
clutch, he slid back to his original position. Three times he gave it a go;
then he got out of the car, took hold of Susanna’s valise and wedged it up against
the back of the driver’s seat. It was a boxy thing, which didn’t leave a whole
lot of room for his body, but once he’d squeezed behind the wheel, he knew for
sure he wouldn’t be sliding back. He tried again. With a grunt, he pushed the
pedal to the floor; he turned the key and mumbling, “Thanks, Mama,” shifted
into reverse. 

Once Ethan was out of the
driveway, he slid the gearshift into first, then second, then third and was on
his way—him, his mama’s suitcase, and Dog. With the moon bright as it was, he
could see well enough to drive without lights, which meant there was less
likelihood of someone spotting the slow-moving car as it crossed over the back
roads and headed toward the old towpath. It was a dirt road that ran alongside
the canal and stretched clear to the end of the island. Best of all, no one
ever used it; so he wasn’t gonna encounter some wise-ass policeman asking if he
wasn’t a tad young to be driving a car. Ethan thumped down the Miller’s tractor
run for almost two miles then he spotted the towpath and turned onto it. The
towpath ran behind a stretch of farms, farms where people might be on the
lookout for an escaped kid Ethan figured, so he continued to drive without
lights. He sat small behind the wheel and had to stretch his nose to keep an
eye on where he was headed, but he was moving, putting distance between himself
and Scooter Cobb. After several hours, once he believed himself to be out of
the county and far enough away to be safe, he began feeling hungry and took to
wishing he’d brought along a snack. A sandwich maybe; and some dog food.
Probably even his third baseman’s mitt. “Shit-fire!” Ethan grumbled, thinking
back on all the things he’d stupidly left behind.