Heroes & Villains

by Jon Scieszka

  HOW MY MOTHER WAS ARRESTED FOR MURDER

  BY JACK GANTOS

  The old Florida bungalow kept stinking of cooking gas. Dad had checked the pilot lights on the stove, and the pipe connections running from the stove to the big silver gas tank out back. But he could not locate a leak. We sniffed around the kitchen like bloodhounds, but only found decaying bugs, mold in the corners, and bits of cruddy food that had been left behind by a hundred years of renters. After our sniffing, all we could agree upon was that the smell was stronger in the afternoon.

  One evening it was especially bad, and Mom was worried that if Dad lit a cigarette, the house would explode like a bomb, so she made him smoke and drink his beer out on the front porch while she opened the windows and turned on all the ceiling fans. He grumbled about being sent outside, but he went, which to me meant that he thought there was something seriously wrong. I needed some fresh air so I joined him.

  Dad sat quietly in a wicker porch chair and blew smoke rings up toward the ceiling light fixture. When he finished his beer he said, “Listen up. I have a few thoughts to share.”

  I looked toward him like a loyal dog.

  “A house filled with gas,” he began, “can be set off in a lot of ways. You don’t need a match to blow up this place. The way it happens is simple. Suppose the house is filled with gas, and you come home from school. What’s the first thing you do?”

  I tried hard to come up with the right answer. “When I come home,” I answered carefully, “I open the door.”

  Dad nodded. “What’s the next thing you do?”

  “I turn on the lights,” I replied.

  “And next?”

  “I walk down to the kitchen.”

  “Next?”

  “I turn on the radio.”

  Dad leaned forward and dropped his cigarette into his empty beer can and shook it around. “You’d be dead at least three different times,” he said, holding up three fingers. “First, as soon as you turn on the lights, the spark from the switch would set the place off. Kaboom! But let’s say you didn’t turn on the lights. So, you walk down the hall. The little metal cleats or nails on the bottoms of your shoes might give off a spark on the tile floor, and kaboom! You are dead again. But let’s say you were wearing sneakers. Then when you turned on the radio, kaboom! Switching on any electrical appliance gives off a spark, and you are burned toast.”

  “Can I use a flashlight?” I asked. I wanted to read at night without blowing myself up.

  “Yeah, a flashlight is okay,” he figured. “Just don’t drop it and break the little bulb, because the red-hot filament could set off the gas.”

  “What if the fillings in my teeth rubbed together in my sleep and made a spark?” I asked in an attempt to make a joke.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “Honestly, I hope you don’t say stupid things like that in public and embarrass yourself.”

  Somehow I never knew when he would slip out of a good mood and into a bad mood and put me in my place with a harsh remark. He was unpredictable. To end the conversation, he turned his face toward the ceiling and lit another cigarette.

  Just then, Mom stepped onto the porch with her hands on her hips and a worried look on her face. She was still dressed in her blue-and-gray bank teller uniform. “This gas problem makes me nervous,” she said, “especially with the baby at home, breathing it in all day. I’ll have to ask the sitter to make sure he gets lots of fresh air.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dad replied. “I’ll call the gas company tomorrow and tell them to come out.”

  I took off my shoes and flipped them over to look for nail heads that might kick off a spark. The gas problem was making us all very edgy.

  Mom was the one who solved the mystery. The next day, she came home unexpectedly early from work to wait for the gas inspector. When she walked in through the back kitchen door, she surprised the new babysitter, Missy, who had a grip on the back of the baby’s head and was holding his little face down over an unlit gas burner as she sang him a lullaby. It was time for the baby’s afternoon nap, and Missy was gassing him to sleep and must have been doing so for the weeks she had been taking care of him.

  Mom screamed. Missy jumped back from the stove. “I’m not doin’ anything wrong,” she squealed. “He’s colicky, and a little gas settles him down.”

  Mom dashed forward and snatched the baby out of her arms. “Wait till my husband gets his hands on you,” she said with authority. “He’ll have you thrown in jail.”

  Missy turned and ran out the front door and up the driveway and down the road toward the bus stop.

  When we all came home and were gathered around the dinner table, Mom blurted out the whole story about Missy, the baby, and the gas. “I swear,” she said in a fury. “If I ever see her again . . . I’ll do something drastic.”

  “What could you do about it?” asked Betsy, my older sister.

  My mother paused and gave the question a moment’s thought. “I’m not sure what I could do. But I’ll tell you this,” she replied in a firm voice. “I was so angry, if I’d had a gun, I’d have shot her dead on the spot.”

  I had never heard my mother say something that violent before, and I didn’t know exactly how to feel about it. But since we didn’t have a gun in the house, I figured it was just an expression of her anger.

  Mom continued. “And who knows, the baby may have brain damage,” she said nervously, holding the baby close to her face and kissing his forehead. She gently pressed his little belly, as if he were a squeeze toy, while she sniffed his mouth and nose for any escaping gas.

  “Oh, he’s okay,” Dad remarked, making light of her concern as he lit a cigarette. “He’s one of our kids, so he’s brain damaged already.”

  Mom managed a strained smile. “I’ll call the doctor,” she replied.

  “Don’t you think we should call the police?” Betsy asked. “I mean, what the sitter did was like a Nazi war crime.”

  “It would just be your mom’s word against hers,” Dad replied with a shrug. “But, if anything should be done, I’ll take care of it myself. Do you know where she lives?”

  Mom pretended not to hear him. I knew she didn’t want him to fly off the handle and go to Missy’s house and do something he’d regret. “Well,” she said calmly, trying to settle things down. “Let’s not get mixed up in it. Let’s just be happy that we’re all fine.”

  But Dad did not feel fine. The next evening he came home late from work. We were finishing dinner when he sat down and took his place. Mom leaned forward to serve him, but he waved her off. “I ate already,” he said, which meant he had gone to his club with his drinking buddies before coming home. Then from the inside pocket of his canvas work jacket, he pulled out a crumpled brown paper bag, which contained something no larger than his hand. He extended his arm across the table and lowered it with a clunk on Mom’s dinner plate.

  “What’s this?” Mom asked.

  “A little gift for you,” he replied slyly. His eyes were twinkling in the same cheery way they did when he handed out the gifts from under the Christmas tree.

  Mom reached into the bag. “Oh my God,” she uttered, and when she removed her hand, there was a small revolver in her grip. “What’s this for?” she asked, a bit shocked. Her hand was shaking.

  “You said,” Dad replied smoothly, “that if you had a gun, you would have shot that woman. Well, now you have the correct piece of equipment in your hand, and if that little babysitter issue ever occurs again, you can take care of business.”

  I stared at the revolver and leaned back in my chair. It scared me to look at it, and when Mom swung it to my side of the table, I ducked down.

  “Tell me this is a toy,” she said sternly, aiming her words directly at my dad. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

  “It’s just a .25-caliber revolver,” he said casually. “A proper lady’s model. You can keep it in your purse.”

  “I’d rather not take the law into our own h
ands,” Betsy said bravely, and shook her head in disapproval. “Remember, those who live by the sword die by the sword.”

  “I, for one, will sleep a lot easier with a gun in the house,” Dad replied, and thumped himself on the chest. “There is a lot of crime out there. Why, just down the street, a guy was stabbed in the leg.”

  “By his wife,” Betsy added, “because she was defending herself.”

  “Shush, you two,” Mom said, and she looked across the table at Dad. “The last thing we need in this house is a handgun. I just don’t think they are safe, especially with kids around.”

  “Believe me,” Dad replied, “the only reason to be afraid of a firearm is if you don’t know how to use it. Let me give you a shooting lesson,” he suggested. “Afterward, I bet you’ll feel a lot more comfortable with it. Plus, when I travel for business, I’ll always know you have my back and can protect the kids.”

  “Well, I’ve never fired a revolver before, just rifles,” she said, sounding like she’d give it a chance.

  “There’s nothing to it,” Dad said. “You just point and shoot.”

  A little later, after the dinner table was cleared, he pulled a box of ammunition out of a bag and sat down with her and showed her how to load the six small bullets into the revolver’s cylinder. When the sun went down, he drove her out to the Western Glades horse track. It was a moonless night. The racing season was over, and the track was the biggest stretch of unlit land where Mom could safely shoot.

  When she came home, she didn’t seem so concerned about having the little revolver in the house.

  “How’d it go?” I asked, since she returned in an upbeat mood.

  “Not bad,” she replied. “I just pointed it out into the night and kept pulling the trigger until it was empty. It was more like firecrackers going off.”

  “Did you hit anything?” I asked.

  “Nah,” she replied as she unpinned her hair. “It was too dark.”

  The next morning I woke up when Mom screamed out, “Oh my God!”

  I scrambled out of bed and ran into the hall, where I bumped into Betsy as we raced into the kitchen. Mom was standing with her hands pressed over her mouth. She seemed frozen as she stared at the newspaper, which had dropped to the floor.

  Dad was standing behind her with his hands kneading her shoulders. “It means nothing,” he insisted. “Nothing.”

  “What means nothing?” Betsy demanded.

  Dad nodded toward the newspaper. The headline read, “Man Found Shot Dead at Racetrack.”

  “But it wasn’t her,” Dad said. “Couldn’t have been.”

  “Of course it was me,” Mom cried out. “I was the only idiot out there in the night, firing off a handgun, and now there is a dead man.”

  “What if it was her?” Betsy asked. “What would we do?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dad replied. “Maybe we’d have to sneak her out of the country.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Mom asked.

  “It was just a suggestion,” he replied. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Yes, I do,” she replied directly. “I can call the police and tell them that I accidentally shot that poor man.”

  “What good will that do?” Dad asked. “The guy is dead. The police can’t bring him back to life.”

  Just then, the baby began to cry. Betsy trotted up the hall. When she returned, Mom reached for him.

  “Hey, let’s get to the real point,” Dad continued as he reached down and picked up the newspaper. “Accidental shootings happen all the time. Once,” he continued, “on New Year’s Eve, Gooz Youski went out onto his back porch and fired off a clip from his deer rifle. Next day they found an unlucky guy in Hecla shot dead through the head with a deer slug. Same caliber bullet. We figured it was Gooz, but nobody said anything. It was an accident. Nobody could reverse what had happened, so why make it worse by sending Gooz to the slammer? Besides, we were all a little impressed with Gooz, because he had never hit a moving target before in his life.” Dad smiled at his attempt to make a joke until he noticed we were all staring back at him as if he were insane.

  “Well, I’m no Gooz Youski,” Mom countered, growing more indignant. “And I’m not keeping my mouth shut. If I shot that poor man, I’ll pay the price. Besides, it’s my stupid fault for agreeing to let that gun into this house in the first place. In my gut I knew it would lead to trouble.”

  “Hey, it’s not the gun’s fault,” Dad quickly replied.

  “You’re right,” Mom snapped back. “It’s my fault, pure and simple, and now I’m going to try to make up for the mistake by telling the truth.” She tightened her arms around the baby and marched down the hall.

  Dad raised his voice so she could still hear him. “Well, at best it would just be a manslaughter charge,” he hollered. “You couldn’t get much time for an accident—maybe a year or two.”

  Mom turned and stomped right back. She shifted the baby to one arm and stood nose to nose with Dad. With her free hand she pressed a finger against his chest. I was glad she didn’t have her gun just then. “Mister,” she said sternly as she gave him a poke. “Someone shot and killed an innocent man, and the evidence points to me. These children,” she said, turning toward us, “may lose their mother because she listened to you. Now don’t make light of this. It’s serious!”

  Dad gazed up at the ceiling and waved his hand in front of his face like he was shooing a fly. “No big deal,” he maintained. “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. You’ll see.”

  “Indeed we will,” Mom snapped. Then she retreated into the bedroom. We could hear her dial the telephone, and then she spoke quietly. When she hung up, Betsy, Dad, and I were still standing in the kitchen, like a stunned display of wax figures from a broken family.

  “I just spoke to a detective,” she announced down the hallway. “He said he would be right over.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t get mixed up in this,” Dad pleaded. “That guy could have been shot by anyone.”

  “I think not,” Mom replied. “But for now, let’s all get properly dressed. We don’t want to look like a bunch of criminals when the police arrive and reporters take our picture.”

  We were properly dressed and waiting on the front porch when Dad turned to Mom and asked, “Where is the revolver? The cops will need to examine it.”

  “I threw it down the old well in the backyard,” she said nervously.

  “That only makes you look guiltier,” he insisted, and pressed his hands over his face in frustration. When he lowered them, his skin was bright red, as if his hands had been hot towels.

  “I don’t know if I’m guilty,” she replied. “I’m scared. I just threw it down the well because I didn’t want to see it in the house anymore.”

  Just then, an unmarked police car pulled into our driveway and came to a stop. A plainclothes detective swung open his door and stepped out. He paused to take a good look at the five of us in our church clothes and then stepped forward.

  “Which one of you is Mrs. Gantos?” he asked, although he must have known.

  Before Mom could speak, Dad reached out to shake the detective’s hand and nervously said, “Heck, she couldn’t have shot that man. She can’t hit the broad side of a barn from ten feet away.”

  “I’m Detective Wilton,” he said in a humorless voice, “and I’m here to find out if that is true or not.”

  He then turned to Mom. “Where is the gun?” he asked.

  She told him.

  “I’ll send some men around for it,” he said. Then he hooked his arm out, as though he were asking her for a dance. Mom declined his arm. “I’ll have to take you down to headquarters,” he said politely.

  She handed the baby off to Betsy and then leaned forward and gave him a little kiss. She was being brave, but I saw her tears and felt my own gather.

  “If you have a lawyer,” the detective said to Dad, “you should call him.”

  Dad nodded to that advice as Mom walked to the de
tective’s car and opened the front door. With one hand she tucked her wide skirt behind her legs and then swung herself into the front passenger seat. Before the detective started the car, she leaned out the window and half shouted, “There is nothing to worry about. I want you kids to clean up your rooms. Do your homework, and if you go out to play, be home in time for dinner.”

  “Yes, Mom,” Betsy and I murmured. We were teetering like bowling pins about to fall over.

  “I’ll meet you there,” Dad called back, and his hand was already fishing in his pocket for his car keys.

  About an hour later a car with two uniformed police officers arrived. One of them removed a sledgehammer and an extension pole from the trunk. I showed them where the well was in the backyard. The opening had long ago been capped with a square concrete slab, but there was a crack across the top of it, wide enough to step through if you were not careful, or where you could drop a small handgun. I took a seat on the back porch steps and waited for the surprise they were going to get. When one of them took the sledgehammer and hit the cement slab a tornado of brown bats rose up. The police cried out and shied back, their faces tight with fright. I suppose I should have warned them about the bats, but it felt very good to watch them cower, because at that moment, I imagined the detective was scaring Mom.