Spare Change

by Bette Lee Crosby

  He might have stayed hidden forever, but as a splinter of light edged its way into the sky, three black crows zoomed down from nowhere and began picking at Benjamin. Suddenly Ethan Allen was no longer held prisoner by the thought of Scooter’s return, he let go of Dog and bolted from beneath the bush hollering at the top of his voice and flapping his arms about wildly. He’d figured Benjamin to be in pretty rough shape, probably feeling meaner than he’d ever before felt, but when the boy saw his daddy’s faceless body sprawled across the yard, a sickness slithered from his stomach into his throat. A spew of thick yellow bile suddenly erupted from his mouth, it was more bitter than anything he had ever tasted. He wanted to scream and cry out for his mama to come, but there was no sound inside of him, just the mean yellow bitterness rising time and again.

  Once, years ago, he’d come across the bloody carcass of an animal torn apart by something bigger and stronger—a lone rat was chewing the last bit of gristle from what had once been a leg. For weeks on end the sight of such a thing haunted his dreams; sometimes the animal appeared as a fox, sometimes a dog, sometimes even a newborn calf skinned to the bone—but no matter what form it took, the cry was always the same. It was a sound so pitiful it woke him from his sleep night after night. All that summer he heard it; when the wind blew he heard it, when the night was still he heard it, right now he heard it louder than ever before. Ethan clapped his hands over his ears, then finally let go of the call for his mama. He wasn’t a boy given to fear, but yet he stood frozen in the spot, screaming for Susanna. “Mama,” he cried over and over again then when no one came, he turned and stumbled toward the house.

  She was still lying on the bed. “Wake up, Mama,” he shouted, grabbing onto her arm. Susanna’s skin, skin that always seemed silky soft, was cold to his touch; her arm incredibly heavy, with the weight of a crowbar attached to it. He held onto her for a moment then tried to pull his hand back, but he couldn’t, his fingers simply refused to let go. One by one he had to pry them loose. Once he had released his hold on her, Susanna’s arm dropped to the side of the bed.

  Ethan Allen had seen dead things before; not people, but calves, chickens and, worst of all, the mare that died giving birth to a foal. He knew when a living thing stopped breathing that was the end of it; you either buried it in the ground or carved it up for eating. Although he could see Susanna had the same blank-eyed stare as the mare he raised his fist and brought it down hard against her chest, “God-dammit, Mama,” he shouted, “Wake up!” He pounded his fist against her chest again and again until his arm ached and his hand swelled to the size of one that had been bee-stung. “Wake up,” he screamed, “Wake up, God damn you, wake up!”

  Susanna never moved. “Son-of-a-bitch!” Ethan finally screamed and started kicking at the sideboard of the bed, then the dresser, after that the chifferobe. He whacked a table lamp to the floor then heaved the wedding photo of Susanna and Benjamin across the room with such force that it gouged a chunk of plaster from the far wall. “Lousy, son-of-a-bitch, bastard!” he screamed as loud as he could; then he connected a string of obscenities and shouted them over and over again. It was the way he always came back at the unfairness of life—he cussed and screamed until he couldn’t cuss or scream anymore, until the words grew dry and bitter-tasting in his throat.

  It’s said that a single tear falls with more weight than a boulder, so when Ethan Allen lowered his head to Susanna’s bosom and sobbed “Why, Mama, why?” it was possible that a passerby at the far edge of the field might have heard the boy’s heart crack open. He stayed there for a long time and cried tears enough to soak her halter through, but nothing changed. Nothing ever changed. Life was what it was—shit, lousy, awful. When he finally gave up on crying the sun was high in the sky. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he said; the crack in his heart pushed itself shut and his face once again took on that rock hard look of resignation. He picked up the lamp, set it back on the nightstand, then stumbled to the telephone and asked the operator to ring up the Sheriff.

  “Does your mama know you’re bothering the Sheriff?” Carolyn Stiles, one of the switchboard operators who knew Susanna from the diner asked.

  “My mama’s dead.”

  “Don’t you go smart-mouthing me, Ethan Allen.”

  “I ain’t,” he answered, his voice black and heavy as an iron skillet. “It’s the truth, Mama got killed.”

  Given the sorrowful sound of his words, Carolyn quickly realized this was not another of Ethan Allen’s pranks. “Lord God Almighty!” she gasped, “What happened? Where’s your daddy? Is he there with you?”

  “Daddy’s dead too,” Ethan mumbled through another choke of words.

  “Your mama and daddy’s both dead?” she gasped. “What happened honey? Are you okay? You hurt?”

  Ethan didn’t answer any of her questions, he just stood there holding the telephone to his ear and listening as Carolyn called out for someone to have the Sheriff’s office send a man out to the Doyle place on the double cause there’d been some kind of tragedy.

  “What happened to your mama and daddy, honey? You can tell me,” Carolyn said. “Was it an accident? A burglar? I got a deputy on his way, but sweetie, you can go right ahead and tell me what happened.”

  When grown-ups started asking questions in such a way, Ethan Allen knew from experience, they were after something he’d be better off claiming to know nothing about. “I got no idea,” he finally answered, “…it must’ve happened while I was asleep.”

  “Asleep? This late in the day?”

  “I might’ve been up a while, but…”

  “Well, how exactly did your mama and daddy die?”

  “I don’t know. They was dead when I found them.”

  “Where’d you find them?”

  “Right where they died.” It went on like that, question after question, meaningless answer after meaningless answer until he heard the police car screeching to a stop in the front yard. Ethan Allen hung up the telephone then watched from behind the screen door as two policemen climbed from the car. Jack Mahoney, the short light-haired detective, he’d seen at the diner. But the other one, the one wearing a blue uniform with a silver badge shined up brighter than an automobile headlight, the one nearly the size of Scooter Cobb, he was someone Ethan Allen had never before seen; not at the diner and not around town.

  “Boy,” the big one called out, “you know what happened here?”

  “No sir,” Ethan answered, stepping outside the door. “I must’ve been sleeping.” He’d swallowed down the last word because he’d looked up and read the policeman’s badge. Samuel Cobb. Scooter’s boy—the policeman his mother said would claim he was telling lies on people and quick as a wink toss him into reform school for a thousand years. “I sleep real sound,” Ethan added, “Mama used to say a shotgun blast couldn’t wake me!”

  “Is that so?” Cobb answered. “I suppose then you didn’t hear a bit of whatever scuffle took place in this here yard?”

  “No sir. Not me. Not last night. I was sound asleep ‘fore my head hit the pillow.”

  Officer Cobb took note of how the boy kept his eyes to the ground and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Asleep, huh?”

  Ethan Allen nodded.

  “A fight such as this, and you didn’t hear nothing? No hollering? No breaking glass?” Cobb gave a dubious frown.

  Susanna always claimed she knew when a boy was lying and now Ethan Allen began to worry Scooter’s son was gifted with the same ability. The boy nervously shook his head side to side, his eyes turned away. He was afraid to look up. One wrong move and Cobb might see straight through to where the truth was hidden. Ethan felt something dreadful wriggling along his back, it was probably what his mama always said would happen—a lying snake had come to call on its kin.

  “Seems when that window broke you would’ve heard it,” Cobb said.

  “I done told you, I didn’t hear nothing.” Ethan was suddenly starting to feel sicker than ever—Cobb knew he was lying, he w
as certain of it.

  “You sure you’re telling me the truth?”

  “Me? Yes sir.” Ethan wiped a line of sweat from his forehead.

  “Good. Because if I thought you was lying, I’d have to arrest you. Not telling what you know is concealing evidence.”

  “I ain’t lying! You keep asking me all these questions but I done told you, I don’t know nothing. I was asleep. I swear.”

  “Oh, really? And, exactly what time did you go to bed?”

  “Before dark. Seven, seven-thirty, maybe.”

  Mahoney, who up until that moment had been busy securing the ground area around Benjamin’s body and calling for a unit of crime scene investigation detectives to be sent out, said, “Ain’t that a bit early? Most nights you’re hanging around the diner till ten or eleven.”

  “Yeah, but my mama wasn’t working last night.”

  “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, leavi
ng 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!”