Spare Change

by Bette Lee Crosby

  Ethan shuffled the deck a number of times, then turned to her with a sly glimmer in his eyes. “You know how to play poker?” he asked.

  “Not very well,” Olivia answered.

  “But good enough to maybe get by?”

  “I suppose.” She shooed the dog from her chair and sat down, ready for the start of The Red Skelton Show. It was her very favorite hour of television, because his antics usually had her laughing so hard, tears slid from her eyes. It was virtually impossible for a person to think sorrowful thoughts when they were watching Clem Kiddlehopper.

  “How about we play a few hands?” the boy asked.

  “Play cards? Now?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, “It’d keep me from dwelling on how I been orphaned.”

  Olivia, under any other circumstance, would have flatly refused, but the boy seemed to be so needy that, without complaining, she walked over and snapped off the television set. “Okay,” she sighed, “you want to deal?”

  Ethan nodded, his grin stretched out wide as could be, “Penny a point?” he asked.

  Olivia agreed, and before she could change her mind, there were five cards lying in front of her. “Looks like you’ve played this game before,” she said.

  “I used to play with Mama. She was good as they come—even if she was holding a royal flush, you couldn’t know by the look on her face.”

  “Royal flush? What exactly is that?”

  “How about we up it to two cents a point?”

  Olivia shrugged, “Okay, if while we’re playing, you tell me a bit about yourself.”

  “I reckon that’s okay,” he said begrudgingly, “but, don’t ask me no questions about Mama or Daddy’s murder, ‘cause I done told you I didn’t see nothing.”

  “Not a word about that,” she crisscrossed her heart.

  After an hour of playing, Ethan had won ninety-eight cents, but Olivia had learned almost nothing of any significance—certainly nothing about his having any other relatives. What she did learn was that his mama had a fine voice and high hopes of one day becoming a Radio City Rockette. “You ever been to New York City?” he asked; when Olivia answered she hadn’t, he simply shrugged and said, “Me neither.”

  It didn’t take a terribly astute person to see the boy was hiding something—he’d start out talking about one thing or another; rethink it, then stop in the middle of a sentence. He did that most every time Olivia hit upon questions about his mama and daddy’s relationship. “Were they real happy together?” she’d asked and for a moment it seemed he was on the verge of letting go of something; then he smacked the cards down and snarled some comment about how he was tired of the game.

  Olivia started wishing she’d held back a few of the peppercorns given to her by Canasta Jones—one or two of those in a bowl of okra soup and Ethan Allen might get to feeling better.

  That night Olivia tossed and turned until the sheets were tangled into a knot and the blanket slid off the bed. Every time she closed her eyes and settled into a comfortable spot—there it was, the image of Charlie walking hand-in-hand with this miniature look-alike. There was no wondering whether or not the boy was actually related; they both had eyes sloped down at the corner and colored the shade of blue that drifts across the sky just minutes before nightfall. Long about three o’clock in the morning, Olivia, badgered by the voice of her conscience, decided that she owed it to Charlie to look out for the boy. Minutes later she bolted upright, wondering if she’d lost her mind entirely. For the remainder of the night, she was haunted by a picture of herself looking like Francine Burnam—A dozen Ethan Allen look-alikes dangling from her arms and legs like the ornaments on a Christmas tree. Still, she kept telling herself, she owed it to Charlie to do something.

  By morning, Olivia had come to a somewhat shaky decision; she would watch over the boy—not forever, but until she could find a place where he truly belonged. As soon as they’d finished breakfast, which was cereal for her and potato chips for him, she loaded both boy and dog into the car and headed for Clairmore—a town nine miles from Wyattsville, a town where there’d be less chance of being spotted by someone on the building’s Rules Committee. “We need to get you some clothes,” she told Ethan, “you can’t go around wearing the same thing day in and day out.”

  “Why not?” he answered, then said he’d prefer to have a new ball seeing as how his Spaulding had disappeared through the kitchen window.

  “You shouldn’t be playing ball inside the house,” Olivia replied without taking her eyes from the road.

  “It’s not a house,” he grumbled.

  “Okay then, you shouldn’t be playing ball inside the apartment.”

  “There’s nothing else to do.”

  “There is too,” Olivia said. But after watching television, she was hard pressed to come up with a second suggestion; which is why she ended up purchasing five comic books, a set of checkers, a Monopoly game and a jigsaw puzzle picturing the entire Baltimore Orioles Baseball Team, in addition to a selection of underwear, tee-shirts and dungarees. At first she’d thought the comic books, mostly about monsters and superheroes, were somewhat unnecessary, but then she remembered games required a partner’s participation.

  When the clerk finished tallying the cost of everything, which was more than Olivia had planned on spending, she turned and saw the boy balancing himself on a bright red Schwinn bicycle. “Now this,” he said, “is something I could really use.”

  She took a peek at the price tag and shook her head.

  “But,” he reasoned, “if I had this bike, I’d be riding it morning till night. I’d never be inside dirtying up the house.”

  Although such a prospect was tempting, Olivia shook her head again. She led the boy out of the shop and across the street to the luncheonette. After lunch they made one last stop; at the pet shop she bought a small bag of dog food, some flea control shampoo, a leash and a harness. “You could of saved your money,” Ethan Allen said, “cause he hates baths and really hates being tied down.”

  Within days of his arrival, the boy and his dog became the best kept secret at Wyattsville Arms. Everyone knew but no one uttered a whisper, lest the Rules Committee catch wind of it. Residents who spotted a shaggy-haired dog darting down the back staircase would hold the door open, then signal when the coast was clear. People on the seventh floor began to discreetly pluck loose dog hair from the hall carpet and carefully dispose of it in their own waste basket. Others began stopping by to bring some silly thing Olivia would never in a million years have need of. First it was Bessie Porter, who came trotting in with a sack of Hershey bars that she supposedly brought just in case Olivia was to have a craving for sweets. Next Harry Hornsby dropped off a baseball mitt his grandson no longer used. Fred McGinty, who found it in his heart to forgive the boy for thinking of him as a dead man, brought over eight cans of dog food then stayed for hours playing checkers with Ethan. “He’s a fine lad,” Fred whispered into Olivia’s ear, “why, anybody would enjoy having him around.”

  “Maybe so,” Olivia sighed, in a way that had questionable undertones. “But remember, his being here is temporary. Once I’ve located his real family, he’s sure to be moving on.”

  Fred shook his head. “That’s unfortunate,” he said, “losing a lad like this, what a shame.” Olivia, however, remained blank-faced and voiced no opinion.

  True, she’d noticed the way the boy had made an effort to cut back on his cussing and spoon up some cereal for breakfast, but that didn’t change the fact that he was eleven! Not just eleven, but also attached to a scraggly looking dog which, likely as not, would get her evicted. Olivia could name a thousand reasons why it was better for the boy to move on, but although she never once mentioned it aloud, the number one reason was the nightmare that kept recurring. It was a painful thing to imagine you could turn into Francine Burnam, and even worse when the thought haunted you all night long and caused you to wake up gasping for breath.

  In an effort to speed up the finding of Etha
n’s true family, Olivia began spending more time with the boy. Night after night they’d sit together and play poker or work on fitting pieces into the picture puzzle he had spread across the dining room table. “This looks like Hoot Evers’ ear Ethan would say, and while he was fixing that piece in place, Olivia would start asking about his mama and daddy.

  “Did your mama ever mention wanting to go to some special place?” she asked, “Her hometown, maybe?”

  “New York City,” Ethan Allen answered, as he rummaged through a pile of pieces in search of Brooks Robinson’s nose.

  “New York; was that where your mama was from?”

  “Uh-uh,” he answered, shaking his head but focusing his concentration on the finding of a foot. “That’s where she wanted to go.”

  “She ever mention any cousins? Distant cousins maybe?”

  Although he’d eased off the snippiness of his answers, Ethan Allen still claimed to have no knowledge whatsoever of any other relatives; which exasperated Olivia to no end. Finally, after running out of questions relating to the life of his mama, Olivia asked how exactly her death had come about. The boy turned red-faced and bolted from the chair like he’d been charged through with electricity. Before Olivia had time to think, he swept his arm across the table and sent the pieces of the puzzle they’d been working on for almost a week, flying to the floor. “Just leave it be!” he screamed. “I was sound asleep when it happened, and I don’t know nothing! Nothing!” He turned on his heel and slammed out the door, leaving Dog behind.

  Tom Behrens

  I sure hope little Jack Mahoney got hold of his grandpa in time to get help for his mama. It’s an awful thing, seeing a boy small as him, saddled with more worry than a grown man ought to have.

  I can still remember back when my own Mama died. I was the same as that kid. There wasn’t a single soul to look out for me, not even a grasshopper to care whether I lived or died. It ain’t right for a boy to go through such a thing, it ain’t even the littlest bit right.

  Human beings ought to look out for one another. If I was a decent sort, I’d do something to help that boy out.

  Maybe, by God, I will.

  Righting a Wrong

  After Tom Behrens watched the boy ride off in the chicken truck, he returned to the ESSO station. That afternoon he swept the office floor five times without recalling he’d done it before; then he opened up a second case of oil cans, figuring to stack them in a display rack which he’d already filled. Tom thought he had forgotten that summer when his life took such a terrible turn; but now, here it was—back again, haunting him with a slew of memories bitter as hardpan kale.

  Even now, some twenty-two years later, he regretted not running his daddy through with a pitchfork. Tom moved a stack of tires from one side of the doorway to the other, all the while wondering if he would have been able to do it. At the time, he was taller and more filled out than this boy, but still a kid. Tommy, his mama had said, wiping the tears from her eyes, you’re the man of the house now—but such a responsibility should never have been shoved onto a kid’s shoulders. What, he wondered, did she expect from a thirteen year old boy? What could he do? Nothing, that’s what!

  Tom Behrens turned to wiping down the front window of the station; oblivious to the sound of sloshing water and the squeak of the squeegee as it slid from the top of the glass to the bottom. The memories were pricking pins at his brain, and the only thing he could hear were the moans of his mama—lying in bed day after day, her color growing pastier, her breath more shallow. When it got near the end, he’d have to lower his ear to her face to determine if she was breathing at all. “You want a pill, mama?” he’d ask nervously; then he’d try to steady her trembling hands as she lifted the glass of water to swallow it down.

  For several hours Tom fiddled around, moving things from one side of the station to the other, straightening storage cabinets and cleaning things that didn’t need cleaning. Long about four o’clock his fingers began twitching like he had an itch to play the piano, so he hung a ‘closed’ sign on the door of the station and grabbed hold of his fishing pole.

  Alongside of a creek with the sound of water splashing against rocks was the one place a person could go for clear-headed thinking. Tom Behrens knew that as well as anybody did; it had been his salvation, even though it was also the very same spot his Daddy had let go of the fact he’d be leaving. It was an August afternoon when the sun was a ball of fire that would blister your face if you turned to look at it, but still they’d gone fishing. Tom remembered his mama saying it was too hot for such a thing, but nonetheless his daddy loaded him into the truck and headed for Donnigan’s Creek—a place thick with weeping willows and cypress trees, a place so quiet you could hear the chipmunks breathing. They sat together on a rocky overhang, Tom lying on his back watching a family of squirrels scamper up and down the tree, his daddy drinking beer after beer. Without any conversation whatsoever, his daddy stretched his legs toward the edge of the rock and dropped a line in the water, even though he knew it had been a summer when the fish were too lazy to bite. They sat there all afternoon without speaking a word to each other, but on the drive home his daddy grumbled, you gotta understand, it ain’t my way to stick around and watch what’s happening to your mama.

  At the time, Tom gave the statement little attention, figuring it to be what his mama called a man feeling sorry about his lot. But, the very next morning when he got up there were two twenty dollar bills on the kitchen table and his daddy was gone as gone could be. There was never even so much as a postcard after that.

  In September, when the other boys his age were lined up in Miss Brannigan’s sixth grade classroom, Tom was missing. He was at home, watching over his mama and fearing at any moment she would take her last breath; which didn’t happen until the day before Christmas. He could still envision the look of sadness that settled in around his eyes that year; a look of worry far beyond what any boy should know. On the day they planted his mama in the ground, Tom caught a glimpse of himself as he passed by a mirror. Any resemblance to the boy he had been was gone; the person looking back was an old man, a man well-acquainted with misery.

  Tom could still picture that reflection; it had a bitter, rock hard look, the same sort of look he’d seen on the face of the boy—Jack Mahoney.

  Tom fished for three days straight; leaving the door to the gas station locked tight and pushing aside thoughts of customers who’d be standing at the pump waiting to purchase fuel for their automobile. He sat alongside the creek and dangled his line in the water—all the time remembering that summer when he’d been the most miserable boy on the face of the earth. Every so often a silvery bass swallowed down the bait and started yanking on the line, but Tom was interested in thinking, not catching, so he’d cut the fish free and send it on its way. He kept reminding himself that he’d been just thirteen—what more could a boy of that age have done for a mama that was dying?

  On the fourth day, Tom returned to the gas station with a ball of resolve pushing up against his chest. As a boy he’d had no choice but to stand there and watch his mama slip away. But, he wasn’t a boy anymore; he was a man now and he could sure as hell do something about the sorrowful condition of Jack Mahoney’s mama.

  Tom wished he had asked where the boy came from, or what his mama’s Christian name was—but he hadn’t, so that was that. All he knew about the boy was that his last name was Mahoney and he’d traveled south along the Eastern Shore headed for the mainland, which probably meant his mama lived somewhere on the island. Unfortunately, nine different counties ran end-to-end along the narrow peninsula, and each one had their own telephone directory. Tom, scooping up every loose dime in the cash register, positioned himself at the pay telephone on the outside wall of the gas station, the telephone stood alongside a rack of directories. He opened the first book—Flaubert County—dropped in a dime and dialed the number listed for Albert Mahoney. Albert, who answered on the first ring, claimed he had no knowledge of a boy named Jack
, nor a Mahoney woman who might be lying on her deathbed. Tom thanked the man, hung up, and tracked his finger down to the next name. He dropped in another dime and dialed Allen Mahoney; after that it was Anna then Charles, then Daniel, and, he continued on until one by one he had called every Mahoney in Flaubert Country.

  At eight-thirty, after a number of people had complained he’d interrupted their dinner, he stopped calling. He had gone through three counties, but so far no one knew anything about a boy named Jack Mahoney.

  The next morning he was back at the telephone a full two hours before the gas station was scheduled to open. Eugenia Mahoney was the first call. She answered on the second ring, her voice registering the sound of a sob ready to follow, “hello.”

  “Good morning,” Tom said cheerfully, “I hate to be a bother, but I’m looking to find the mama of a boy named Jack Mahoney—”

  “How dare you!” the woman angrily screamed into the receiver, “how dare you wake a sound asleep person and make them think somebody’s died!”

  “I’m real sorry,” Tom mumbled, “I surely had no intention—”

  “No intention? No intention?” Eugenia, it seemed, had a tendency to repeat herself with the second go around being considerably louder than the first. “What else,” she screamed, “is a person supposed to think when the telephone starts jangling off the hook in the middle of the night?”

  “Actually, it’s six-fifteen.”

  “Are you some sort of a wise guy? Is that it? Well,” she snapped, “you’re barking up the wrong tree, because I’ll get the law down on you, that’s what—”

  Tom quietly slid the telephone receiver back into its cradle and ended the conversation. He’d be better off, he decided, waiting till eight or nine o’clock to resume his search. He walked back inside the station and set a pot of coffee to brew.

  When Clifford Pence stopped by to fill his truck with gasoline, Tom asked if he knew anything of a boy, “Nine or ten, maybe,” he said, “got himself a wiry-haired brown dog, you know anybody like that?”