Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(28)

He might have stayed hidden forever, but as a splinter of light edged its way into the sky, three black crows zoomed down from nowhere and began picking at Benjamin. Suddenly Ethan Allen was no longer held prisoner by the thought of Scooter’s return, he let go of Dog and bolted from beneath the bush hollering at the top of his voice and flapping his arms about wildly. He’d figured Benjamin to be in pretty rough shape, probably feeling meaner than he’d ever before felt, but when the boy saw his daddy’s faceless body sprawled across the yard, a sickness slithered from his stomach into his throat. A spew of thick yellow bile suddenly erupted from his mouth, it was more bitter than anything he had ever tasted. He wanted to scream and cry out for his mama to come, but there was no sound inside of him, just the mean yellow bitterness rising time and again.

Once, years ago, he’d come across the bloody carcass of an animal torn apart by something bigger and stronger—a lone rat was chewing the last bit of gristle from what had once been a leg. For weeks on end the sight of such a thing haunted his dreams; sometimes the animal appeared as a fox, sometimes a dog, sometimes even a newborn calf skinned to the bone—but no matter what form it took, the cry was always the same. It was a sound so pitiful it woke him from his sleep night after night. All that summer he heard it; when the wind blew he heard it, when the night was still he heard it, right now he heard it louder than ever before. Ethan clapped his hands over his ears, then finally let go of the call for his mama. He wasn’t a boy given to fear, but yet he stood frozen in the spot, screaming for Susanna. “Mama,” he cried over and over again then when no one came, he turned and stumbled toward the house.

She was still lying on the bed. “Wake up, Mama,” he shouted, grabbing onto her arm. Susanna’s skin, skin that always seemed silky soft, was cold to his touch; her arm incredibly heavy, with the weight of a crowbar attached to it. He held onto her for a moment then tried to pull his hand back, but he couldn’t, his fingers simply refused to let go. One by one he had to pry them loose. Once he had released his hold on her, Susanna’s arm dropped to the side of the bed.

Ethan Allen had seen dead things before; not people, but calves, chickens and, worst of all, the mare that died giving birth to a foal. He knew when a living thing stopped breathing that was the end of it; you either buried it in the ground or carved it up for eating. Although he could see Susanna had the same blank-eyed stare as the mare he raised his fist and brought it down hard against her chest, “God-dammit, Mama,” he shouted, “Wake up!” He pounded his fist against her chest again and again until his arm ached and his hand swelled to the size of one that had been bee-stung. “Wake up,” he screamed, “Wake up, God damn you, wake up!”

Susanna never moved. “Son-of-a-bitch!” Ethan finally screamed and started kicking at the sideboard of the bed, then the dresser, after that the chifferobe. He whacked a table lamp to the floor then heaved the wedding photo of Susanna and Benjamin across the room with such force that it gouged a chunk of plaster from the far wall. “Lousy, son-of-a-bitch, bastard!” he screamed as loud as he could; then he connected a string of obscenities and shouted them over and over again. It was the way he always came back at the unfairness of life—he cussed and screamed until he couldn’t cuss or scream anymore, until the words grew dry and bitter-tasting in his throat.

It’s said that a single tear falls with more weight than a boulder, so when Ethan Allen lowered his head to Susanna’s bosom and sobbed “Why, Mama, why?” it was possible that a passerby at the far edge of the field might have heard the boy’s heart crack open. He stayed there for a long time and cried tears enough to soak her halter through, but nothing changed. Nothing ever changed. Life was what it was—shit, lousy, awful. When he finally gave up on crying the sun was high in the sky. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he said; the crack in his heart pushed itself shut and his face once again took on that rock hard look of resignation. He picked up the lamp, set it back on the nightstand, then stumbled to the telephone and asked the operator to ring up the Sheriff.

“Does your mama know you’re bothering the Sheriff?” Carolyn Stiles, one of the switchboard operators who knew Susanna from the diner asked.

“My mama’s dead.”

“Don’t you go smart-mouthing me, Ethan Allen.”

“I ain’t,” he answered, his voice black and heavy as an iron skillet. “It’s the truth, Mama got killed.”

Given the sorrowful sound of his words, Carolyn quickly realized this was not another of Ethan Allen’s pranks. “Lord God Almighty!” she gasped, “What happened? Where’s your daddy? Is he there with you?”

“Daddy’s dead too,” Ethan mumbled through another choke of words.

“Your mama and daddy’s both dead?” she gasped. “What happened honey? Are you okay? You hurt?”

Ethan didn’t answer any of her questions, he just stood there holding the telephone to his ear and listening as Carolyn called out for someone to have the Sheriff’s office send a man out to the Doyle place on the double cause there’d been some kind of tragedy.

“What happened to your mama and daddy, honey? You can tell me,” Carolyn said. “Was it an accident? A burglar? I got a deputy on his way, but sweetie, you can go right ahead and tell me what happened.”

When grown-ups started asking questions in such a way, Ethan Allen knew from experience, they were after something he’d be better off claiming to know nothing about. “I got no idea,” he finally answered, “…it must’ve happened while I was asleep.”