Spare Change

by Bette Lee Crosby

  Jack swiveled around, stepped down from the stool and walked outside. “Excuse me,” he called across the parking lot, “You Butch Wheeler?”

  “Sure am.” Butch saw the badge clipped to Mahoney’s jacket and gave the kind of wide open grin only a man with a clear conscience is capable of. “Am I in trouble with the law?” he asked laughingly.

  “Nah,” Mahoney replied, “I’m looking for a runaway boy and Tom Behrens over at the ESSO station thought you’d be able to help.”

  “I had a feeling,” Wheeler said.

  “Had a feeling?”

  “Yep. Jack Mahoney, that wasn’t the boy’s name, was it?”

  Mahoney shook his head, “No sir,” he said, “that’s my name.”

  “You’re Jack Mahoney?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Whoo-ee. That kid has brass ones, stealing a policeman’s name.”

  “I wouldn’t say he stole it,” Jack replied, “more like fell back on it, so he’d have somebody to be. His real name’s Ethan Allen Doyle. That ring any bells?”

  Wheeler shook his head. “Can’t say it does.”

  “Anyway, he was supposedly headed over to the mainland to find his grandpa—do you recall where you dropped him off?”

  “Right in front of the building; even waited to make sure he got in safe.”

  “You remember the address?”

  “Wyattsville; I can’t recall the address...” Butch scrunched his forehead into a washboard of wrinkles; “But, I could tell you how to get there.”

  “Good enough,” Jack answered with a smile.

  Once he had a fix on where Ethan Allen had gone, Jack couldn’t wait to get to Wyattsville. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became—the boy had a story to tell; a story that quite possibly could get told, if Sam Cobb wasn’t doing the asking. Still, a promise was a promise and he’d promised Cobb that he could handle the interrogations. Of course, if Cobb happened to be unavailable…

  Had Jack Mahoney not agreed to be sitting in the front row when his daughter performed in the school play that evening, he would have started for the mainland immediately; but he’d promised, and he’d already broken too many such promises so the trip would have to wait until the following day. Wednesday, he reasoned, was more often than not a slow day, and the likelihood was that Sam wouldn’t get back to work before the end of the week.

  Wednesday, a good hour before dawn, on the road running smack through the center of town, a gasoline truck headed north jackknifed—turning itself into a fireball and setting five of the stores on the western side of the street ablaze. By the time Jack got to the station house, the duty officer was handing out assignments to officers not even scheduled for work that day.

  Despite the hullabaloo, Jack didn’t slow down as he whizzed past the front desk. “I’ve got a solid lead on the Doyle boy,” he told the Captain who was standing at the water cooler swallowing down some aspirin, “so, if you’ve no objections, I’m gonna shoot over to Wyattsville and check it out.”

  “Not today,” the Captain answered. “I need every man I’ve got.”

  For the next two days, Jack was assigned to investigating a number of vandalisms that occurred around the business area where several stores were left wide open because their front windows had been knocked out by fire hoses. When he was finished with that, there was a mountain of paperwork to attend to and he didn’t get clearance for the trip to Wyattsville until four days later, by then Sam Cobb was back at work.

  “I don’t think this kid’s gonna talk to you,” Mahoney told Cobb as they sat waiting for the ferry to the mainland. “Maybe you ought to wait in the car and let me handle the questioning.”

  Cobb, who by now had a severe case of hemorrhoids and was in a worse than usual mood, grumbled, “Bullshit!”

  Olivia

  It’s strange how a thought that’s been cemented inside your head for a lifetime can all of a sudden disappear. I used to pity poor Francine Burnam because of her having those five kids. With one of them always wanting something, she never seemed to have a minute to call her own. But, thinking back, I can remember how I’d be beside myself because the kids were romping around like a herd of wild buffalo; but she’d just sit there with the most contented smile on her face.

  It’s an unexplainable thing, but having a youngster around makes a person feel they’ve got a more purposeful life. You wake up in the morning and instead of thinking… here I am stuck with another day to muddle through… you pop out of bed and start frying up an egg. After Charlie died, I worried about what would become of me; but now, I’m more worried about that boy—he’s downright foul-mouthed and skinny as a snake.

  You’ve got to wonder what kind of parents would let a child grow up cussing the way he does. Not me, that’s for sure! Every time he lets go of one of those words, I say, Ethan Allen, watch your mouth.

  The Youngest Resident

  Once the Rules Committee decreed that Ethan Allen could stay at Wyattsville Arms, he took to marching through the hallways like a man who was part-owner of the building. He rode the elevator up and down for the least little thing, a drink of water, a snack, a trip to the bathroom—sometimes he rode up and down just for the pure fun of doing it, pushing buttons for floors where he had no intention of getting off. When Mister Capolinsky frowned and said he ought not to be doing such a thing, Ethan replied that the Rules Committee had made allowances for him.

  “Just for living here,” Mister Capolinsky, who was rather crotchety, replied, “not for destroying private property.”

  After that Ethan held back from pushing the buttons for all twelve floors, except times when he found himself alone in the elevator—he figured a thing that was as much fun as an elevator, should be used for riding pleasure. He reasoned that if a person simply wanted to get in or out of the building, they’d use the back staircase like he’d been doing for the past two weeks.

  On the very first afternoon of his being allowed, Ethan Allen loaded both the bicycle and dog in the elevator, rode down to the lobby and strolled leisurely out the front door, nodding to folks he’d never before seen as he passed by. Missus Willoughby, who’d not yet heard the news of the Rules Committee’s decision, gasped aloud and wobbled as if she was about to fall into a faint. “It’s okay,” Ethan said proudly, “I’m allowed!” He wheeled his new bicycle to the sidewalk, lifted Dog into the basket and off he went. He rode round and round the building walkway for hours; so long in fact that residents started waving from their windows and counting the laps as he passed by. Afterward, he rode over to the park and then to the playground, which was locked because of it being a school day. Finally, having run out of places to go and tired of circling the building, he parked his bike in the lobby and went upstairs. “You need anything from the store?” he asked Olivia. “Bread, maybe? Milk?”

  “Well,” she answered, “I suppose I could use a bit more peanut butter.”

  “Okay,” he chirped cheerfully, and was out the door before she had time to mention they were also running a bit low on potato chips.

  When that errand was finished, he went by Clara’s apartment and asked the same question. She, it seemed, was short of buttermilk, so Ethan peddled back to the Piggly Wiggly and fetched it for her. Clara, pleased she wouldn’t have to make the trip herself, gave Ethan a nickel for his trouble. After that, Mister Edwards sent him for the new issue of Life Magazine. Then it was a bag of onions for Hanna Michaels, a tube of toothpaste for Barbara Conklin, some sugar for Elsie Kurtz and a newspaper for Fred McGinty, who gave him a dime for fetching a newspaper that cost five cents. By suppertime, Ethan couldn’t make a move without hearing the sound of coins jingling in his pocket.

  “Where’d you get all that money,” Olivia asked as they sat down to eat.

  “Earned it,” he answered, his face bright as a Christmas tree, “doing errands.”

  Olivia couldn’t help but notice the way the boy’s mouth stretched into a smile—smaller, but angled exactly l
ike Charlie’s. “You’re not going around bothering folks, are you?” she asked, but that wasn’t really what she was thinking.

  Ethan shook his head, and reluctantly chomped down on a forkful of string beans which, along with a chunk of fatback, had simmered on Olivia’s stove for hours. “These is real good,” he said letting go of a smile. “They taste different than beans from a can.” He shoveled in another bite.

  Olivia smiled. She knew the taste of canned string beans only too well; she’d been eating them for over thirty years. Canned string beans, a single pork chop, one leg of a chicken—that was the way a single woman had to cook; anything more would have been wasteful. But, after a lifetime of canned goods and ready-made foods from the downtown delicatessen, she was ready for some home cooking. She’d planned to do it for Charlie, not just planned, eagerly anticipated, even gathered up a whole collection of recipes, then… Olivia gazed across the table at the boy with twilight blue eyes and a curled up grin, and saw him as a miniature of his grandfather. “Close enough,” she sighed.

  After supper, while Ethan Allen was sitting at the table counting up his money for the fourth time, Olivia brought up the subject of school. “You’ve got to go,” she said, “or else the truant officer will come looking for you.”

  Ethan Allen felt quite comfortable with the amount of schooling he already had so he said, “How can he come looking for me, when he don’t even know I’m here?”

  “The truant officer rides around town looking for kids who are out playing at times they ought to be in school.”

  “I ain’t playing. I’m running errands!”

  “All the same,” she said, “you’ve got to go to school.” That was her final word on the subject. “Tomorrow,” she told him, “we’ll get you registered and you can start on Monday.”

  When she turned back to washing the dishes, Ethan thumbed his nose at her back.

  On Monday morning Olivia was up at the first light of dawn; she set a skillet of sausages to sizzling and mixed up a bowl of pancake batter with fresh blueberries thrown in for good measure; then she woke the boy. “Get up, Ethan,” she whispered, giving his shoulder a gentle shake, “it’s time to get ready for school.”

  “Do I have to?” he moaned, wrapping himself in a tighter ball of drowsiness.

  “Yes,” she tugged the blanket loose from his grip. Once he was up and headed for the bathroom, she returned to the kitchen and set about fixing chicken sandwiches to pack in the Superman lunch box. After a considerable amount of time, he arrived at the breakfast table, looking more reluctant than ever. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” he mumbled.

  “Nonsense.” Olivia placed a plate of pancakes in front of him. “Now, hurry up and eat your breakfast,” she said, trying to sound cheerful, “You’re going to love school, I’m sure of it. You’ll meet new friends—”

  “I already got friends.”

  “Honey,” Olivia knelt beside him, “…I know you consider the folks in this building your friends, but we’re a bunch of old fogeys, you need to meet some kids so you can play with boys your own age.”

  “No I don’t.”

  Olivia knew by the look of determination in his eyes, she could argue the point till the moon settled on top of the mountain and it wouldn’t change his mind. She also knew that if he rode his bike to school, he’d end up elsewhere—which is why she insisted on driving him that first day. Had he ridden the bike, he might have arrived home earlier; he might have already been off on some errand to the Piggly Wiggly, or upstairs with his eyes glued to the television—but, with the walk home taking considerably longer, he turned into the building walkway just as Sam Cobb stepped from the car. “Holy shit!” the boy gasped, then took off running like a scared rabbit. He went around the building through the back entrance and up the stairwell. He burst through the apartment door a full minute before Mahoney and Cobb arrived. “Say I ain’t here!” he screamed before Olivia could ask how his day at school had gone.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, following him into the bedroom.

  “Please,” he begged, “tell those policeman you ain’t seen hide nor hair of me!” He rolled under the bed, and just then there was a knock at the door.

  When Olivia opened the door Mahoney said, “Afternoon, ma’am.” He smiled, showed his badge, then introduced both himself and Sam Cobb. “We’d like a word with Ethan Allen Doyle,” he said rather pleasantly.

  Olivia could feel a swell of conscience rising up into her throat—it might be excusable to tell a little white lie when you had cause; but to do what Ethan Allen asked, was flat out lying to the law. Once she’d told an officer her speedometer read forty miles per hour, when in truth it had been waggling somewhere between fifty-five and sixty—it didn’t work out very well that time and she was reluctant to try again. Olivia hesitated for a minute, then without perjuring herself as to whether or not the boy was there, asked, “What business do you have with my grandson?”

  “There are a few questions we’d like to ask,” Mahoney replied.

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Has the boy told you what happened to his parents?”

  Olivia nodded, “Somewhat,” she said, hoping they wouldn’t ask for further details.

  “Well, we think he might have actually seen what happened the night of the murders.”

  “And if he did?” Olivia snorted, “What then? You’d have him relive that horrible experience? You’d ask the child to suffer through it all over again?”

  “Our intent is nothing like that—”

  “Regardless of your intent, I refuse to allow you to badger the boy!” she said, cutting Mahoney off in the middle of his sentence. “There’s no justification—”

  “You’ve got no say in it!” Cobb, although he had been forewarned to hold back on his temper, stormed. “We can do whatever we—”

  “The devil you can!” Olivia snapped. She defiantly squared herself in the doorway to block any thought they might have of getting inside. “I’m Ethan Allen’s grandmother and I’m telling you right here and now—if the child doesn’t want to talk to you, he doesn’t have to!”

  Mahoney still trying to win her over to their way of thinking, said, “All we want to do is ask a few questions, we’ve no intention of pressuring him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Olivia said, looking only at Mahoney, “but, he doesn’t want—”

  Hell bent on being the lead interrogator, Cobb snarled, “Look, lady, you got nothing to say about it—the kid’s a runaway, we’ll get a warrant!”

  “Just you try it!” Olivia slammed the door with such force that a screw holding the hinge in place, popped loose and rolled across the carpet. Despite the boldness of her words, her heart was pounding like a Salvation Army kettle drum.

  After several minutes of waiting for her nerves to settle down, Olivia sucked in a deep breath, threw her shoulders back and marched into the bedroom calling out for Ethan Allen. At first there was no answer, not even the sound of his breathing—it was so quiet that she could have believed he had run off again; but when she stooped and peered beneath the bed she saw two wide open eyes looking back. “Come out from under there,” she said, “we need to do some talking.”

  “Are they gone,” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered, “but, I believe they’ll be back.”

  “I gotta get going,” Ethan Allen said, cautiously wriggling out from under the bed. “If I’m here when they get back…”

  Olivia found it surprising the boy would admit to being afraid of anything. He had a papery covering of bravado and a sassy mouth, but if you peeled away those things you’d find a scared little boy trying to act tough. Olivia knew all about such pretensions, she’d stuck her nose in the air and marched out of her daddy’s house as if she weren’t afraid of the devil himself but she’d been trembling inside. Once the boy scooted partway from beneath the bed, she reached down and took hold of his hand, “Don’t
worry, Ethan,” she said as she tugged him to his feet, “there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “That’s what you think!” he answered.

  “Police officers don’t harm children,” Olivia said in a voice meant to reassure the boy and do away with his unfounded fears. “They’re probably just following up, checking to see you’re okay and getting the proper care, that’s all.”

  “That ain’t all!” he shouted. “That policeman wants to slit my throat!”

  “Why on earth would he want to do such a thing?”

  “’Cause then, I can’t tell.”

  “Tell what?”

  “Nothing. Just trust me; I gotta get out of here before they get back.”

  Olivia took hold of the boy’s shoulders and twisted him around so that he was facing her. “No, Ethan,” she said, “…it’s time you trusted me. You have got to tell me the truth about why you’re so afraid of those policemen.”

  “You’re better off not knowing,” he warned. “Believe me, Miss Olivia, you’re much better off not knowing.”

  “Miss Olivia?” she echoed solemnly. The name took her aback. It somehow seemed so formal, proper in every aspect and meant to please, but with no affection attached—surely he’d made a mistake saying her name in such a way. Although she didn’t remember him ever before referring to her in that manner, neither did she recall him using any other name. Now that she thought back, she could picture the way he would wait until she was facing him to speak, he’d never once used a name. “Ethan,” she sighed, “don’t you think you should be calling me Grandma?”