Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(20)

“Get the hell out of here!” Benjamin snarled.

“No!” Ethan Allen answered defiantly. “Something’s wrong with Mama!”

“She’s sleeping. Nothing’s wrong.”

“You blind, Daddy? She’s bleeding!”

“A bonk on the head, that’s all. Now, get.”

“It ain’t no bonk on the head, she’s bad hurt; can’t you see?”

“Enough!” Benjamin grabbed hold of Ethan’s arm and dragged him across the living room to the door. “You’re gonna be hurting a lot worse than your mama, if you don’t get the hell out of here!” He pushed the boy out the doorway with a shove that propelled him halfway to the gate.

“Shithead!” Ethan Allen screamed as the door slammed shut. He scrambled to his feet and headed back to the bedroom window, but by the time he got there, the shade had been pulled tight against the sill and it was impossible to see a thing. “Damn you, Daddy!” he yelled, “Damn you anyway!”

Ethan Allen turned and walked back through the trees. He couldn’t shake the image of Susanna from his mind—she wasn’t sleeping, he was almost sure she wasn’t. Her eyes were wide open. He tried telling himself everything was okay, but it didn’t feel okay. It was true enough that Benjamin had a mean streak wide as the Chesapeake Bay, but Ethan knew his mama was tough and could take care of herself. She’d done it before and she’d do it again. He thought back to the time she stayed gone for two whole days then when she finally did get home, ended up with a broken arm. And there was another time, when Benjamin blackened her eye for coming home stinking of whiskey. Even after she’d been knocked flat on her back, Mama always got up. She’d say she was real sorry for carrying on in such a manner; then things were alright. Mama had that way about her; no matter how mad a person might get, they’d end up forgiving her and laughing like they couldn’t ever remember being mad.

Edging through the open corner of the tarpaulin, Ethan Allen crawled back inside his fort. Dog was still asleep. The game was over and Wild Joe Bonomo was telling listeners that Jimmy Piersall’s ninth inning home run had been a lousy break for the birds. Ethan snapped off the radio, he didn’t much care if the Orioles lost another game, “The hell with you,” he grumbled and curled up alongside Dog. Although he would have sworn he wasn’t the least bit sleepy, Ethan’s eyelids drifted shut. Before long they were at Yankee Stadium, him and Susanna, Mickey Mantle at the plate. With a count of two and two, Mickey swung and sent a home run ball rocketing into the stands; just as it was about to land in Ethan’s fielder’s mitt, he woke to the sound of a car. Still half-asleep, his first thought was that his mama had got to feeling better and headed off to the diner.

Ethan pushed back the tarpaulin, and saw a flash of light in the distance. With his hand latched onto Dog’s collar, he slipped through the trees for a look. The house was still dark as a coal mine, but in the whiteness of a full moon, he could see Susanna’s car right where it had been earlier, the door still hanging open. Only now, there was a big white Cadillac pulled up behind it, a car exactly like the one that belonged to Scooter Cobb. Given his daddy’s already foul mood, Ethan felt sure this was gonna mean more trouble.

Scooter Cobb climbed from the car; there was no mistaking him, he was a man the size of a standing grizzly. “Susanna!” he shouted, “Susanna, you in there?” He walked to the front of the house and began pounding a fist against the door.

A low growl rumbled in Dog’s throat, but the boy quickly put his finger to his mouth and made a shushing sound. They silently worked their way from the edge of the tree line to a spot behind the wisteria. After several minutes, the porch light came on and Benjamin cracked open the door. “Susanna’s sick,” he said, sticking his nose through the narrow slit. “She ain’t coming to work.”

“Sick?” Cobb repeated dubiously.

“Yeah, sick!”

Cobb slapped his huge paw against the door and pushed it open. “Funny,” he said, “she was feeling fine this afternoon.”

“She ain’t now.”

“Suppose you let her tell me that.”

“She’s sleeping.”

“How about I see for myself!” Scooter Cobb pushed Benjamin aside, left the front door hanging open and tromped into the house. He switched on the living room lamp then continued through to the bedroom like a man familiar with where he was headed. In the darkness, it first appeared Susanna was sleeping, but when Scooter went to her, he saw the pool of blood beneath her head. With him not being a terribly quick-witted man, it took the better part of a minute before he came to understand she was dead. Once he knew that the woman who brought his blood to a boil and caused the hair on his neck to rise up was lost to him forever, he let out such an agonizing cry that it rattled the walls and made the floors tremble. He turned back to the living room and grabbed hold of Benjamin’s shoulders, “What have you done?” he screamed, “What in God’s name have you done?”

“Not me,” Benjamin stuttered as he was lifted from the floor. “It wasn’t my fault. She made me—”

“You killed her, you stupid son of a bitch! You killed her!” Scooter shook Benjamin so violently that his head ping-ponged back and forth and a spurt of blood shot from his nose. Over and over again he moaned, “You killed her, you killed her.”