Fools' Gold

by Dolores Hitchens

  “But you know it’s there.”

  “Mrs. Havermann thinks it’s there.”

  “Thinks?” Skip jerked himself indignantly up on one elbow. “Now wait a minute. What is this? You expect us to go ahead on just what the old woman thinks?”

  “What do you mean, go ahead?” Her tone was scared, a scared whisper.

  “Why, what we were talking about, how to get hold of some of that dough for ourselves,” Skip said, maddeningly offhand. Eddie recognized the trick since Skip had played it a thousand times on him: delivering a jolt as if you were supposed to know all about it.

  Karen seemed to huddle in the coat, shrinking down inside it. “You must be crazy, Skip. Just as crazy as can be.”

  Skip was bolt upright now, his manner angry and astounded. “You mean you’ve been feeding me a bunch of lies? It’s all something you’ve made up in your head?”

  He had confused her now. She said pleadingly, “You mistook what I said for something else. The money belongs to Mr. Stolz. He keeps it at Mrs. Havermann’s place on account of some tax business.”

  “He’s cheating the government,” Skip pointed out nastily, “and he deserves to be cheated a little himself.” It was infantile reasoning, but Skip put heat and conviction into it. “He’s a crook. I ought to turn him in to the income-tax cops.”

  “Oh, don’t do that!”

  “I’m not going to. I just said I ought to. I’m going to help myself to some of the money; I’ll let him pay me for keeping my mouth shut.”

  She sat so still, like a crouched animal, not saying anything, that Eddie knew she was afraid to have the conversation go on. She was afraid of what Skip would say next. At the same time she must have been doing some agonizing recapitulation, trying to recall all she had told him.

  “We’ve got to make plans.” Skip circled his knees with his arms, leaned his head on them as if thinking. “You’ll have to find out exactly where the money is. Does he keep his room locked?”

  “No, but I’m not supposed to ever go in there!” she cried.

  “Where is his room?” He waited, and she said nothing, and Skip went on: “Upstairs? Near where you sleep?”

  “No. Downstairs, next to the library. Oh, Skip, don’t do this crazy thing!”

  “Crazy, crazy, is that all you’ve got in your head?” He reached for her, pulled her nearer; she almost sprawled on her face. “It’s up to you, this first part of it, finding the money and seeing how much it is, or a rough guess, and making sure we hit the place just after he’s gone and when he won’t be coming back for a while very soon. You get it?”

  “I couldn’t do it!”

  “Chick, you’ve already done the main job, fingering the guy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Letting somebody know who can use the information.”

  “I was just . . . talking. Passing time.”

  “Not with me you weren’t.” Her head was bent close and Skip was stroking her hair; Eddie could see the movement of his hand against her head. He heard crying, too. Karen was crying in desperate entreaty. “I like you a lot and you like me, and we can pull this off with Eddie here to help——”

  “I’d have to leave home!” she wept.

  “For Chrissakes, don’t you want to? You want to live with that old dame, taking her charity, all your life?”

  She hung there in silence, as if on the point of some terrible decision. “She’s been awfully——”

  “Good to you?” Skip mocked. “Treated you like a daughter?”

  Skip’s tone told Eddie this much: Skip knew Karen hadn’t been treated as a daughter. For all that Skip had some sort of blind spot, unable to see himself, he could always pounce unerringly on the flaws in anyone else. Now he grabbed for Karen suddenly, pulled her over so that she lay across his knees, her shoulders against his chest. He looked at Eddie and said, “I’ll meet you at the car.”

  Eddie got up and went quickly down through the trees. He felt an immense relief. There had been a moment when he had thought the girl wasn’t going to co-operate, and he’d been afraid of what Skip might do to her. She was a kind of nice girl. Young and inexperienced. More than that, worse than that—ignorant. The girl was just ignorant enough to think Skip was interested in her instead of the money.

  Eddie got into the car and put his head back and shut his eyes. He was half asleep when Skip came back alone. The girl had gone home by herself through the trees.

  Skip got into the car, started the motor. He was grinning in the light from the dash, and his air was satisfied. The dog, he told Eddie, was a new arrival. Mrs. Havermann had taken it off the hands of a friend. It was just a pet, Karen said. “I think there’s more to it,” Skip concluded, “even if Karen doesn’t know it. The old woman’s nervous over all that money in the house. Bound to be.”

  They turned from the hillside roads into lower and shabbier streets, heading for home.

  “It must be like sitting on a bomb,” Skip said all at once, amused. “Yeah. Mrs. Havermann must feel that way.” He drove as if musing over it. Eddie knew then that Skip was thinking of the old woman and her fear and of what sort of reaction she’d have on learning that someone else knew about the money and had come to get it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Eddie let himself in quietly at the back door. The smells of the house swept over him, garlic and chili spices and stale coffee and an undefinable aroma of ingrained dirt. He stood still in the kitchen and listened. By now his dad should be asleep, fogged out on wine, but his mother might be up, reading or telling her beads. He had noted a light in the front room as he had come into the yard.

  When he heard no sound, he went into the tiny hall and then on into the living room. His mother sat asleep in a chair, a magazine on her lap. She was a short, heavy woman, her neck thickened by a goiter, her gray hair thin and straggling. Her mouth had fallen open, and Eddie could see the gold tooth shining, the tooth put in in Mexico when she had been a girl.

  As if his presence had signaled her sleeping mind, her eyes came open. They were large brown eyes, as gentle as a doe’s; and Eddie never saw his mother’s eyes without a recognition of the goodness, the loving charity within. She said sleepily, “Well, you’re home now. Class was late a little?”

  “A little.” Eddie moved around the room to the door of his own room and stood awkwardly, wanting to go on in.

  “Sit down, son.”

  There was a chair beside the door. It was springless, the arms mended with twined wire, a cushion covering the hole in its seat. “Yes, Mama, what is it?”

  “I want to know about the class, how you’re doing in it, what the teacher thinks of you.” Her glance was pleased and eager.

  “Oh, I’m doing all right. The teacher says I’m coming along.”

  “Today your father was talking to Mr. Arnold in the metal shop. Maybe you could go to work there, Eddie. Maybe the other thing, the trouble you’ve had, wouldn’t stand in your way if you didn’t mention it.”

  “Does Mr. Arnold know about my record?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “He’d find out,” Eddie said without bitterness.

  “Well, it’s a while yet before you finish the classes, isn’t it? Maybe Mr. Arnold would let you help around the shop, not paying anything, until the class is done, and then he’d know what a good boy you are and he’d think the trouble didn’t matter.”

  His mother was always planning these schemes for Eddie; he rejected this one without heat. Without hope, either. “Mama, the railroad doesn’t let people come and work without paying them. And they don’t take men with a police record, either. Dad’s wasting his time talking to Arnold. Tell him to leave Arnold alone.”

  Her glance dropped from Eddie’s face, settling on the magazine in her lap. “It seemed like such a fine idea.”

  “I know, Mama.” E
ddie avoided looking at his mother now. He knew that her life, hard as it was, and exposed to the violence of his father’s drunkenness as it was, still protected her from many of the common cruelties and frustrations. She could not conceive of a few mistakes—as she thought of them, tolerantly—barring her son from a multitude of jobs. “We’ll talk about it some other time. Maybe I’ll come up with something of my own.”

  She spread her work-knotted hands on the cover of the magazine. “Yes. We’ll think of something, you and I.” She smiled gently. “You are too fine a boy not to have a fine job, Eddie.” The glance she gave him was full of love. “Go to bed now. Don’t worry, don’t lie awake thinking about your troubles.”

  Eddie lay awake but briefly in the small overcrowded room. In those moments of wakefulness he thought of Skip and Skip’s plan to rob the Havermann house of its store of money. Skip had talked of nothing else for more than a week. Karen seemed to be under his control now. Eddie allowed himself a brief wishful glimpse of riches, of buying a car for himself and something nice for his mother. A necklace, a nice dress, a big plastic purse like those in the fancy shopwindows. Maybe something for the house, too. To Eddie the house was familiar, its shabbiness acceptable; but he knew from remarks dropped now and then by his mother that she wanted the place fixed up. A new rug and a couple of chairs would bring a glow of joy to her brown eyes.

  He woke in the early dawning, hearing his father pounding out to the kitchen, the rattle of glassware and the rush of water from the faucet. His father always downed about a pint of water before taking a pickup. Then he was ready for coffee, a couple of doughnuts, a second pickup, and so off to the job at the roundhouse.

  Eddie’s mother glanced in at him. She was huge inside the shapeless flannel gown, the gray hair tied up in skimpy braids, her enormous, bulbous throat hanging over the neck of the gown. “Cover up, Eddie. It’s cool this morning.”

  He grunted, burrowing into the pillow. He went back to sleep. There was nothing to get up for. He’d given up hunting a job, even a temporary job to fill in until he was through the metalwork class, a long time ago.

  Skip awoke in the room above the garage, raised himself on an elbow, and looked out at the morning. It was foggy, overcast, and a dull gray light lay over the neighborhood. Next to the garage was a big bank of shrubbery, then a plot of flowers, then the paved tennis court and the high brick wall surrounding the house next door. It was a district of once-exclusive homes now mostly broken up into housekeeping apartments and rooms-for-rent. Only a few of the original owners still lived here, among them Mr. Chilworth, who owned the big house at the front of the lot.

  Skip sat up and rubbed the hair out of his eyes, yawned, put his bare feet on the floor. His uncle was already gone. He had made his bed on the other side of the room; it was neat and square under the white cotton counterpane. His uncle was probably already in the house now, cooking Mr. Chilworth’s breakfast. After cooking, and washing up the dishes, he’d start cleaning the house. In the afternoons his uncle worked in the garden. Mr. Chilworth was a bachelor, eighty-six years old, still hating women so badly he refused to keep a cleaning woman on the place. Skip’s uncle performed as cook, maid, gardener, and chauffeur; and because Mr. Chilworth was practically impoverished now, the wages were poor, but Mr. Chilworth was broad-minded about a man with a prison record, and Skip’s uncle had one. A long one.

  Mr. Chilworth’s charitable attitude was based in part upon the fact that there was nothing around worth stealing.

  Skip went to the tiny bathroom and showered, brushed his teeth, shaved. He then looked over his uncle’s shirts in the bureau drawer and chose one that he disliked less than the rest. His uncle was about his size, a slim wiry little man; he had Skip’s foxy expression, though it was much subdued. He had learned to keep his eyes down. He walked with a shuffle. Mr. Chilworth’s one complaint about his man of all work was that he came upon you silently, without warning. At first, seven months ago, Mr. Chilworth had found it annoying.

  When Skip was through dressing, he went down the outer staircase to the yard, through the yard to the rear door of the big house. Here was a large screened porch, on it some of the overflow from the kitchen, boxes of pots and pans no longer needed, cases of health food and vegetable juices, an old refrigerator minus its door where Mr. Chilworth kept oranges and grapefruit. Skip went through to the enormous kitchen. His uncle Willy was sitting at a breadboard pulled out from the cabinet, drinking coffee and reading a racing sheet. Uncle Willy nodded without speaking. His gaze lingered for a moment on his shirt.

  “How’s for breakfast?” said Skip, the usual greeting.

  Skip’s uncle rose and went to the stove and lit a fire under a skillet. It had already been used for Mr. Chilworth’s meal and had some scraps of egg in the bottom. Uncle Willy broke two eggs in a bowl, beat them with a fork, grated some cheese over them, added a dollop of cream, dumped the whole into the pan. “Watch it,” he said, going back to his stool by the breadboard.

  Skip whistled between his teeth, stirring the eggs with the fork with which Uncle Willy had beaten them. When the mass congealed, he pushed it out upon a plate, salted it, took it to the sinkboard near his uncle. His uncle meanwhile had shoved a piece of bread in the toaster and poured a second cup full of coffee. Skip ate standing. “What looks good today?”

  His uncle grunted, sucked his teeth with an air of disgust, folded the racing sheet, and tossed it over.

  “When’s he going to let you go out there?”

  Uncle Willy shrugged, implying that Mr. Chilworth hadn’t said when he might take an afternoon off for the races.

  “Well, when did you go last?” Skip asked.

  “Three weeks.”

  Skip considered. “You know, this isn’t much of a job you’ve got here, Unc. The wages are nothing. You scrub and wash, mow the lawn and dig crab grass, and he doesn’t even give you a day off for the races.”

  Uncle Willy waited for a moment before answering. “I’m eating. So are you,” he pointed out with a dry air.

  “So? It’s not hard to eat now. Times are pretty good. Even the panhandlers are fat. For what you do here, working your tail off from morning to night, you ought to do better.”

  “You know where I can do better?” Uncle Willy asked mildly.

  “An experienced man like you,” Skip added with a sidelong glance.

  An oddly quiet and attentive look came over his uncle. He put down the cup of coffee and regarded Skip for a moment in silence. The buzzing of a fly on the pane over the sink was the only sound in the room.

  Skip said, “How old are you now? Fifty? By now you must have caught on to a lot of angles.”

  “I might have.” Under the attentive expression was a sort of question.

  “What were you in for?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that, Skip. One thing I’ve learned here, learned from Mr. Chilworth, is that the past is as dead as you let it be. And I want mine to be really forgotten.”

  Skip nodded indifferently. “Sure. You’re right.” He seemed ready to abandon the line of conversation.

  “I made my mistakes, just as you did, Skip; but we both paid for them with time out of our lives. You’re lucky, you’re young, you haven’t lost all the middle years.” The tone had the air of sermon in it, but Uncle Willy’s eyes had taken on a certain sharpness. He studied Skip warily, prying at him with little glances.

  “Just blowing off my big mouth,” Skip said apologetically.

  “Nothing specific in mind?”

  “No, not a thing.”

  When he had finished eating Skip went back to the room above the garage, threw the bedding together, and flopped on the bed. He had some planning to do; he had to get to Las Vegas by the day after tomorrow, when Karen said that Stolz would probably return. His jalopp would never hold up for such a grind. He considered going by bus; but though the fare would only be
a little over fifteen dollars roundtrip, Skip had little hope of getting the amount out of his uncle. Karen either. Old lady Havermann kept her on nickels and dimes. The answer, obviously, was to hitchhike. Take a local bus for two bits, get as far out on the highway as possible, use his thumb. The prospect bored him, but getting to Las Vegas and checking on Stolz was a necessary precaution. Skip was innately suspicious.

  When Skip was fifteen he’d been arrested for the first time for driving a stolen car. The car had been loaned him by a school friend who had been positive it belonged to his old maid aunt, who didn’t mind who drove it. In this way Skip got his name in the police records, and he learned distrust. Before he did anything about the money in the Havermann house he intended to check its source.

  It was one thing to rob an old woman who would start screaming for the cops, and another to steal from a gambler hiding his dough from Uncle Whiskers and the tax collectors.

  He had also to think up an excuse to give to the typing teacher and the bookkeeping teacher for a two- or three-day absence. In spite of what he had told Karen, he had no intention of giving up the classes until the other thing had been accomplished and the money was in his possession. Uncle Willy only allowed him to stay here sharing Mr. Chilworth’s spare bounty because he was learning a trade.

  He decided to palm off a story on the teachers about his brother in Fresno, sick, wanted to see him. Skip had a brother who lived near Fresno, ran a vineyard, a winery and a fig orchard, and, sick or well, wouldn’t want anything further to do with him. He had a Presbyterian wife and three kids. The whole family was, in Skip’s opinion, fantastically law-abiding.

  Skip was digging in the closet for a zipper bag he recalled having seen there when he heard his uncle come softly up the stairs and into the room. “Skip? You in here?”