Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(13)

“You still harping on that?” Benjamin asked. “Shit, you passed the age of being a Rockette, ten years ago.”

“Maybe so, but I still got a real good singing voice.” If she wasn’t afraid he’d come after her with a butcher knife, Susanna would have told him that men still whistled when she walked by; that they’d sometimes follow her for blocks just to watch the swing of her hips and the toss of her head. Benjamin might think she was no longer capable of making men stop dead in their tracks, but she knew better. She knew that a man such as Scooter Cobb would give most anything for her favors—why, she already had a genuine gold necklace and a pearl ring hidden in the glove compartment of her car.

In the fall of the year, when you would expect a boy in the fifth grade to be slouched over the kitchen table doing his homework instead of bicycling into town for a free piece of pie, Ethan Allen showed up at the diner. “Where’s my mama?” he asked Bertha, the waitress who’d been working nights for the past fifteen years.

“Ain’t you supposed to be home doing your schoolwork?” she said, her mouth twisted off to one side. “Your mama told me you had arithmetic enough to keep you busy for a week or more.”

“I finished,” Ethan Allen said, even though he hadn’t cracked open the book.

“You did no such thing,” Bertha sneered. “With five kids of my own, I can tell right off when a boy’s lying!”

“Well, it might be I’ve got a bit more to do, but I figured a piece of pumpkin pie would get my mind working.”

“After you get a slice of pie, you’ll get on home and take care of that arithmetic?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ethan said with a smile, “I’d get to it faster even, if that pie had a fair bit of whipped cream atop it.”

Bertha raised an eyebrow like she thought she was being had, but she handed over the pumpkin pie mounded with whipped cream. He started in on it; then asked again, “Where’d you say Mama went to?”

“I didn’t say.”

“Daddy told me she was working tonight.”

“She is.” Bertha stood there, her arms folded across her chest, and watched him eat the pie. As he swallowed the last bite, she scooped the plate off the counter. “You’re finished up,” she said, “now, get on home.”

Ethan Allen went whistling out the door, but instead of heading straight home, he circled around to the back of the diner figuring to scout up a few soda bottles and turn them in for the deposit. He’d expected to find some Pepsi bottles, maybe even a beer bottle or two, but he never expected to come across his mama’s butt—buck naked and bouncing around like a ping pong ball in the back seat of Scooter Cobb’s big white Cadillac. “Well, shit my drawers!” he exclaimed.

“Holy shit!” Scooter hollered when he heard the sound of the boy’s voice.

Susanna bounced herself over and started tugging down the skirt of her pink uniform. “What in God’s Name are you doing here?” she shouted. “You’re supposed to be home with your daddy. I know you got homework to do!”

“I was hungry; I needed to get a slice of pie.”

“I’ll pie your ass! You get on home, tomorrow morning we’re gonna have us a nice long talk about this!”

“What? I didn’t do nothing.”

“Get home, I said!”

“Okay. Okay.” He climbed onto his bicycle and rode off, figuring there would no doubt be hell to pay. His mama would claim he’d been sneaking around, spying on her. She’d likely threaten if he didn’t mend his ways, he’d be shipped off to reform school; but once the fussing was over and done, knowledge such as this would be good for at least a dollar. When he got home, Benjamin, who had now taken to drinking beer after beer as he stared glassy-eyed at the television, called out, “That you, boy?”

“Yeah, Pa,”

“Didn’t your mama say you had homework to do?”

“It’s finished,” Ethan Allen answered. He grabbed a bag of pretzels, slipped out the back door and headed for the fort. He and Dog settled in for the night, something they’d done any number of times before—sleeping in the fort was a far better alternative when his mama was on the warpath. He switched on the radio and listened as Hoot Evers came to bat; it was the bottom of the eighth and the Orioles were down by three runs. “Looks like the birds are in trouble,” Chuck Thompson, the voice of the Orioles said.

“In trouble?” Ethan Allen answered back, “They plain out stink!” It was a discouraging thing to root for a team that always lost. He’d already decided, if his mama ever did haul ass for New York City, he’d start rooting for the Yankees. He rolled over on his side and curled up with Dog—they were both fast asleep when Brooks Robinson hit a bases loaded homer in the ninth inning and won the game.

It was close to dawn when Susanna came home and she was rip-roaring mad. “I’m gonna kill that kid,” she mumbled, as she crept through the house, calling his name in a whispered voice. “Ethan Allen, you’d better come out from wherever you’re hiding, right now!” she threatened, “or else, when I get hold of you…”

“Susanna, that you?” Benjamin hollered out from the bedroom.

“Yeah, it’s me,” she answered.