It's Up to Charlie Hardin

by Dean Ing

  “Banks aren’t locked in daytime,” Aaron said, tried the doorknob, then shrugged.

  “That’s all you know,” said Charlie, and knocked harder with the same result.

  Next they peered through the one front window that lacked a fully drawn shade, seeing only a few old magazines and footprints in the dust of a floor without furniture or carpet. “Heck of a bank this is,” Charlie grumped.

  “Kinda late. Maybe they went home,” Aaron said, turning his head westward for a quick judgment of the sun’s position, their usual timepiece. “Hey, I gotta go home too, pretty soon. Mom wanted me to go to the store before dinner.” And he started placing his goods on the porch, reserving a few cents for a pocket. Charlie followed suit. Their problem of the moment, too well-understood to need conversation, was bulging pockets; both boys were convinced that their mothers had the eyes of hawks. To avoid questions they squatted on the porch and unfolded a yellowed copy of the daily Austin American Statesman, wrapping bundles that Charlie would be obliged to smuggle home somehow. In the process, they agreed to return in midmorning when they expected that bankers would all be hard at work printing money.

  Charlie found more cause to grumble while walking the last blocks home alone carrying an assortment of stuff he would not have wanted to explain. He had half-decided to hide it all in someone’s shrubbery before he arrived home, when he remembered that he had made that mistake once before with a pair of yellow organic hand grenades. He might never learn when Roy Kinney had found those terrifying eggs, but the Kinney boy had a troubling habit when he played alone: he would sit concealed by whatever was handy and watch the world do whatever worlds do. For all Charlie knew, instead of hiding indoors after the Runaway Tire Experiment the smaller boy might be somewhere nearby, hunkered down like a toad, watching him at that very moment.

  Presently a squirrel scooted across the street, and as he reflected on the banking practices of these furry little rogues, Charlie’s frown softened. His face became tranquil, then began to show signs of downright pleasure. It would suit him just fine if Roy was spying because the more Roy longed to swipe this stuff, the more he would be frustrated by a place he was too small to reach.

  Charlie squeezed between the bars of the castle courtyard and made a final inspection of descending branches from the huge live oak to assure himself that Roy was not tall enough to imitate him. Then, with a parcel stuffed into his shirt, he made his way high into the tree and chose a crotch near its center. Needing two trips, he made his deposits in the tree and minutes later as he strolled within sight of home, he whistled for Lint.

  Charlie often wondered where the terrier roamed when left to his own dog-gone affairs. Often as not the dog would be away on some solitary business, but beyond doubt, if Lint knew Charlie’s whereabouts he would try to be there too. Lint was an outdoor dog, not because he or Charlie wanted it so, but because Willa Hardin’s rules applied inside the house. If she’d had her way the Hardins might have had an indoor dog instead, one of those pocket-sized trembling, snapping, yapping mites unfit for real live weather, with long yellow fur sticking out as if its nose is stuck in a light socket.

  Lint had been accepted because Coleman Hardin, raised with farm dogs, could not abide a pooch that cringes from kittens and looks like a muff on legs. In comparison to such a joke of a dog, Coleman felt, Lint was a regular fellow eligible for an occasional headscratch. To Charlie’s dad, Lint might have been welcome inside the house if not on Charlie’s bed. Yet Mrs. Hardin had a horror of fleas, and she had noticed that Lint could usually scratch up one or two when he needed them for company. While he was only a pup Lint had found the need to add Willa Hardin’s “shoo!” to his vocabulary.

  So in fairness to all, Charlie and his dad put an outside doghouse together from scrap lumber and old shingles, adding a decrepit remnant of carpet for its floor. When the weather turned wet or frigid Lint might be found inside, nose poking out, eyes bright with hopes of entertainment.

  Long after midnight, Charlie’s eyes snapped open. If a dream prompted him, it was one he could not recall, but whatever the cause, he was instantly alert, responding to alarms that clanged in his head. Every detail of the situation might as well have had searchlights trained on it. He had been so amused, so proud of himself for being as smart as a two-pound acorn thief, making sure that even if sneaky little Roy were watching him establish his hiding place, Roy could not climb up to burgle it.

  Not by himself, no. But Jackie could. And Roy was often so lacking in wit and so desperate for companionship, he would attach himself to bad company. While Charlie lazed at home, and later slept the sleep of innocence, what was to prevent Roy from teaming up with Jackie in the crime of the century? Judging from his everyday habits, Jackie had scribbled “finders keepers” across the inside of his skull.

  It did not occur to Charlie that Roy thought he had reason, at least temporarily, to avoid moving within arm’s reach of his criminal mastermind. Or that neither of these larval criminals had any idea whether Charlie’s hiding place held anything worth taking. Or that even if Jackie took up such an expedition he would be a raving lunatic to do it after dark, and if he had done it in daylight, nothing could be done about it now.

  What did occur to Charlie was the nagging fear that, if Gene Carpenter could extract a bazillion golf balls from a creekside alone in the dead of night, some other boy might climb the great-granddaddy of all oaks in darkness for more valuable stuff. Would Jackie do such a thing? He might. Would Aaron? Too careful. Would Charlie? He might have saved himself the effort of asking because two things made the answer obvious. Any legal risk Jackie Rhett might take, Charlie felt required to take. And if that tree-crotch held goods that were Aaron’s property—for which Charlie was responsible—no doubt remained. So . . .

  It was up to Charlie Hardin.

  As soon as summery weather allowed, Charlie always shoved his bed so near his bedroom window that, with the window fully raised, he could push his pillow onto the windowsill and sleep with his head touching the wire screen. The screen was kept from swinging out only by a hook-and-eye arrangement, and the flowerbed below it could be reached without jumping. Charlie had never thought it useful to unhook the screen. Until now. To tiptoe outside through the kitchen meant certain arrest because between his bed and the kitchen door lay at least three floorboards guaranteed to creak a symphony of parent-alerts.

  Short pants and a T-shirt lay at the foot of his bed. With the first “snick” of the screen hook a faint growl sounded somewhere near, but the sentry investigated in silence and as Charlie slid out past the sill headfirst, his cheeks were bathed in canine kisses. Neighborhood porch lights were rarely lit in the wee hours. The glow of the nearest streetlight was distant, with trees providing shadowy cover for a small person in a hurry.

  The night was so still Charlie could hear the padding of his own bare feet and the nails of Lint’s paws as they scuffed a curb en route to the castle. Something rustled in a flowerbed and Lint made a rough comment but stayed at his master’s feet. Something else hurried across the street in a noiseless glide, a temptation Lint resisted with a repressed whine. The tune Charlie hummed was intended to bolster his dog’s spirit but it worked just as well for the hummer. The car that sped down Nueces avenue did not catch boy or dog in its headlights because the stealthy pair had passed between iron bars into the castle courtyard seconds earlier.

  The night sky of a small city has a glow of its own, created by commercial lighting. But in Austin, a unique kind of false moonlight added to the luster. Decades before, celebrating the coming of the Twentieth Century, city fathers had decided on modern street lights—and yes, by jingo, Texas-sized lights while they were at it. As the capital city of a state gifted with more money than good sense, Austin could have spidery steel “moonlight towers” if it wanted them.

  It did want them, dozens of them spaced across the city, each with six lamps hanging a hundred and sixty feet in the sky. By now, Austin children who visited oth
er cities often felt uneasy in places that lacked a swarm of moons above their horizon all night, every night.

  Before this Charlie had always thought of his city’s perpetual moonlight in a friendly way, but as a slinker through the night he now saw it was a treacherous guide, casting shadows that made ordinary objects seem undependable. The first time he missed a handhold in the tree, Charlie nearly fell. The second time was worse; this time he slid sideways while straddling a limb as thick as his waist, and regained his balance with enough struggle-and-grunt that Lint, on sentry duty twenty feet below, sent whines of concern his way.

  And that was where Charlie stopped.

  Not by intention. It was not part of his master plan to twist and turn and scrabble and strain and fight and cuss and squint and discover that a thumb-sized oak stub had somehow snuck through one of the empty belt loops in the back of his pants to hook him firmly on his perch, but by the time he tired himself out he had discovered that the most masterful plan can go wrong. To Lint’s encouraging whine he could only reply with hoarse whispers and resume his struggle. If he could see the wooden culprit clearly, he might slide around enough to slip away. If he could tear that sturdy belt loop loose, he might at least climb back down. If he could unbutton his pants and climb out of them, he might be on the way to success in his birthday suit—but none of these things was possible. In a city known for producing dusk all night, Charlie had trapped himself in a tree that furnished deep shadow. His only hope, short of shouting for help, was sunlight, and in late June the dawn would come early enough that a boy snared by his own muddleheadedness might speed home before anyone missed him.

  So for several years—or roughly three hours as adults would measure—Charlie straddled his branch and first, to avoid dying of boredom, composed explanations that might come in handy if he had to yell for help. Then a taxi raced down Nueces at breakneck speed, its identity light flickering, and Charlie invented tales to explain its hurry. Later he was slumped almost asleep, held upright by a hundred leafy twigs, when distant sirens began to warble on another street, to strengthen with roars of laboring engines, and finally to fade away to provide him with more fables.

  At some point, he realized that this twilight imprisonment had its own romance. The paper boy on a bicycle with a single powerful headlight never stopped, but he had a big leaguer’s arm and the smack of morning papers against porches along the street suggested he had done this many times. A milkman’s chugging old vehicle must have stopped a dozen times while in view and took that many minutes to do it, but when he was gone, Charlie sort of missed him. The most peculiar passage, though, was one Charlie had heard about, though never seen. A shadowy figure of his own height led a goat by a cord, both almost trotting, in the direction of West Avenue where Mexican families lived along the opposite side of the creek where Charlie and his pals played.

  Charlie knew there was little grass in the Latino neighborhood, and no parks there. Plenty of forage for a goat in the little parks near the center of town, though. Some Tex-Mex teenager was grazing the family milk-ewe through the city’s small hours. Shortly afterward, he heard the first sleepy chirps from neighborhood sparrows. Dawn crept into his leafy prison as Lint remained on guard.

  Renewing his struggle to escape that stub branch, Charlie gained only a crick in his neck until, at last, he was able to see that the stub wasn’t projecting in the direction he had imagined. When his belt loop popped loose he almost fell, so exhausted and gritty-eyed by now that every step was painful while he retrieved the treasures he had come for. With Lint trotting beside him Charlie scurried home composing excuses, slumping in relief when he discovered that the Hardin household still echoed a duet of snores.

  He hid his valuables in the garage. A quick hug for his companion, a slow climb past the windowsill, weary exertions to latch the screen and slip from his clothes, and Charlie lay once again on a cool cotton sheet over a friendly mattress. He was asleep in seconds and didn’t stir for hours.

  CHAPTER 16:

  A WAY TO PASS THE BUCKS

  It was Charlie’s habit in summertime to be up and buzzing before the cicadas, so his mother worried when she had to rouse him at midmorning. “I swear, sleepyhead, you’d think this was a school day,” she said fondly, and laid her palm across his forehead to check him for fever.

  Charlie managed a grunt but not much else, eyes still closed as he relished the cool of his mother’s fingers. His ankle hurt a little and his neck was stiff as rawhide, but even half-asleep he knew better than to complain about either. During the school year he would have made a life or death issue of his stiff neck, and Willa Hardin would have just as surely evicted him from bed, with a splash of cold water down his back if the situation required. Summer ailments were another matter. She valued a school-year pain at one-tenth its value to Charlie, and a summer pain at ten times its Charlie-value. So he yawned and blinked with no sign of discomfort as those soothing fingers touseled his hair.

  When the fingers withdrew, they held something that made Charlie’s blood freeze like a popsicle. It was an oak twig, a pair of tiny leaves spread winglike from it. “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” his mother said softly, sitting down on his bed, “what are we going to do about you?”

  Three Charlies in a row made it serious. Because it would hurt his neck to shrug, he murmured, “I dunno,” and waited to be slathered in guilt for sneaking out and accidentally spending the night in a tree. His dad tended to aim thunder and lightning in his direction but spiced the mix with sarcasm. His mother’s punishments submerged him in a syrup of loving disappointment that was worse.

  “We try to keep track of your needs, we really do,” she said, idly untwisting ends of the sheet that had coiled around his feet. “Your father is a good provider. You don’t lack for clean sturdy clothes. Coleman insisted that you have a room of your own, and I try to see that your meals match the appetite of a growing boy.”

  She turned a sorrowing gaze on him and Charlie gazed back, in full agreement with all she said, more ashamed of his failings with every passing moment. He waited to hear her reveal her deduction that he had been adventuring while she slept. “We take an interest in your schooling; we don’t ignore the kinds of playmates you choose. You even have an allowance.”

  Now he saw the moisture in her eyes and forgave her for the skull-rattling blunder she had made so recently by setting him loose in the care of a seemingly presentable outlaw genius like Eugene Carpenter. This was not the moment to bring up such things, and he could only nod. At that instant his feet appeared from his bedding and seeing them in the full Technicolor of dirt, grass stains, street tar, tree sap and shreds of bark between his toes, she gasped in dismay, still holding the oak twig in her free hand. “But this is how I let you go to bed, like a wild Indian waif without a parent in this world,” she finished, leaning down to take him in her embrace. “Forgive me, Charlie.” And she began to sniffle.

  Charlie needed a few seconds while understanding flooded into his noggin. He had been prepared for this catalogue of parenting virtues to be followed by a list of the ways that he had failed them. Instead, his mother had ended with—could it be?—a confession of her imaginary sin!

  Charlie patted her shoulder. “Aw, Mom,” he said, pulling an offending foot back under the sheet.

  But she was not to be denied. “Donald Charles Hardin, don’t you hide my flaws under that sheet for another second,” she said, abruptly recovering now that she had hit on a remedy. “You’re going to take that hot bath I should have made you take last night. Be sure to get the shrubs out of your hair when you wash it. Meanwhile your lazy mother will change your bedding and fix you a decent breakfast.”

  She pulled away the covers, noticing the scratches on his hide, accepting them as reproaches to her mothering. Charlie scrambled from his bed before she could count all his new blemishes, hurrying to the bathroom with what might have been suspicious speed in a boy who wasn’t overly fond of hot baths.

  His long soak in h
ot water did wonders for his neck. Afterward, while mouth-watering fragrances floated out from the kitchen, he found a fresh pair of knee-length khaki pants and a hated short-sleeved shirt of the ironed-for-Sunday variety laid out on his bed, and something told him that on this one day he would be wise to wear whatever his mom had chosen for him.

  Sure enough, a single place-setting waited for him in the breakfast nook and the ruins of three oranges in the sink promised freshly squeezed juice, a treat he had last enjoyed at his birthday breakfast. Two fried eggs and a stack of miniature pancakes shared his plate with fingers of pork sausage—his favorites, and a rarity. He used too much butter and far too much molasses and knew his mom watched him do it without protest, and he considered asking for a quarter to spend on a toy but relented out of a sense of fair play. It was likely, after all, that he had recently accumulated more wealth than her purse held.

  He cleared the table himself to prove his gratitude, sealed it with a kiss on her cheek, and took its twin in return. By this time Charlie felt like the rascal he was, brimful of breakfast and topped off with guilt. He hurried off with the disclosure that he “might see Aaron at the playground,” to leave the impression that the schoolground was his goal. In his mind this wasn’t perjury; Charlie was sure to see Aaron, and almost every other boy he knew, at the school playground—sometime during the next few months, anyway.

  His first thought was to seek Aaron at home but found out, en route, that Jackie had already made peace with Roy. The two knelt down the street by a curb in full view of the giant oak that had held Charlie prisoner, and they were entertaining red ants with a magnifying glass. Charlie declined the older boy’s offer to take the glass and “touch one up” because Jackie declared it was worth a nickel to see one of the hated half-inch stinging demons shrivel to a cinder in the glass’s bright pinpoint of sunlight. When that bid failed, Jackie floated the idea that Charlie might at least pay a penny to watch someone else punish the ants. Yet he saw something in Charlie’s eye—or heard it in his refusal—that he often met in older boys. It was a mix of patience and scorn, and it sent Jackie back to the big sandy circle the ants had cleared of all vegetation. A circle of utterly bare dirt as wide as a truck tire, with a pencil-sized hole in its center, was the signature of an active red-ant bed.