Spare Change Read online

  “Ethan Allen! I’m warning you!”

  “If Daddy was to know you showed your bare butt to Mister Scooter…”

  “Shut up!” Susanna raised her hand and whacked it across the boy’s face. “You don’t never talk about such a thing!”

  “I ain’t afraid of you!”

  “You might not be afraid of me, but you’d better be afraid of Scooter Cobb; his son’s a policeman who’ll toss your skinny little ass in jail.”

  “For what?”

  “For telling lies on people, that’s what!”

  “It ain’t no lie. I did see—”

  “You’re a kid, nobody’s gonna believe you! If that policeman says you’re telling lies on his daddy, then everybody’s gonna believe you’re telling lies!”

  “They don’t lock people up for telling lies.”

  “Oh no?” Susanna said looking square into the boy’s face. “Shows what you know. They might not put boys your age in jail; but they put them in reform school and keep them locked up until they’ve grown a long white beard.”

  “But, I didn’t do nothing!”

  “I know that and you know that, but everybody else is gonna think different,” Susanna let the corners of her mouth curl slightly. “That’s why,” she said, “it’s important for you not to say anything about this.”

  “I won’t, Mama, I swear I won’t,” he crisscrossed his heart, “hope to die.”

  “Okay, then. This’ll be our secret,” she said with a smile. “Now get your butt over here and give your mama a big hug.”

  That afternoon Susanna fixed macaroni with cheese for Ethan Allen’s lunch and gave him two dollars to buy the new basket he’d been needing for his bicycle. And, for weeks afterward, it seemed she always had enough spare change for him to go to the movies or buy some trinket that had caught hold of his eye. Their relationship suddenly turned noticeably better. First she came home with a new collar for Dog, then it was three brand new Superman comic books, after that it was a bicycle horn, something Ethan had been wanting for the longest time. you’re spoiling him,” Benjamin grumbled, “He skips doing homework and you reward him with presents—what kind of way is that to raise a kid?”

  “He’s just a boy,” Susanna answered; then she gave Ethan Allen a sly wink. Although she had put her foot down about him showing up at the diner all hours of the night; up until nine o’clock he was still allowed to come for free pies and cakes. “Not one minute later!” she’d said with a no-nonsense tone to her voice.

  Ethan Allen started coming in right after school, ordering hamburgers, barbecue sandwiches with extra sauce, grilled cheese platters, milk shakes and on two different occasions, banana splits. He’d pass by the house and stay just long enough to lift Dog into the new basket hooked onto the handlebar of his bicycle, then off he’d pedal, thinking of what new thing he was gonna order up that day. He’d climb onto a stool at the end of the counter and tell Scooter he had a hankering for some God-awful thing such as chocolate cream pie with a double scoop of ice cream on the side—minutes later it would be sitting in front of him. When he’d eaten as much as he could hold, he’d want meat scraps for Dog. Although Scooter Cobb gave the boy everything he asked for and more, Ethan Allen had a genuine disliking for the man. He hated the look of Scooter’s fat fingers, hated the laugh that rippled first one fold of chin and then the other, but most of all, he hated the thought of his mama stretching her arms around that great paunch of stomach.

  Once, just days after he’d seen Scooter grab hold of his mama’s butt in full view of everyone, Ethan Allen asked, “Mama, are you gonna leave us for Mister Scooter?”

  She was sitting on the porch at the time, giving her toenails a second coat of Cherry Blossom Pink. “Dear Lord,” she sighed and set the nail polish bottle aside. “Come on over here,” she pulled Ethan Allen up onto her lap as if he was still a baby. “I know there’s times when I’m not a real good mama,” she said, “but honey, I love you and your daddy. Why, I’d never run off from you, never ever, not long as you live.”

  Ethan Allen squeezed himself a bit closer. Susanna smiled and tightened her arms around him. At times his way of thinking seemed so grown up that it was possible for her to forget he was still a boy who needed his mama’s hugs. “Honey,” she sighed, “you simply got to understand this business with Mister Cobb don’t mean nothing. He’s my boss and I butter him up a bit so he’ll take a liking to me.”

  “But, Mama…”

  “Uh-uh,” she put her finger to his lips. “No buts. Mama knows what she’s doing and me working for Scooter Cobb is what’s gonna get us to New York City.”

  Ethan Allen gave her a wide smile. He’d been listening to stories of New York City for as long as he could remember and never tired of hearing them. He never grew bored of watching his mama’s eyes sparkle as she talked about how the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall could kick their legs higher than a man’s head. While other toddlers were listening to stories of Peter Rabbit, he heard about how the women in New York were paid hundreds of dollars every week, just for singing and dancing.

  “You’re gonna love New York,” Susanna said, “It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. More lights than a downtown Christmas tree and the partying—why, it goes on all night long.” She smiled and waited for him to ask the question he always asked. It was a game they played; she wove tales of fame and fortune, he urged her on, hoping to prolong those moments of intimacy.

  “Are we really gonna move to New York?” he said with a grin.

  “You betcha boots! Mama’s gonna get a job singing, maybe even on the radio, then we’re gonna move into a fine apartment building with an elevator that carries people up and down anytime of the day or night they’ve a mind to go.”

  “What about Dog?”

  “He’ll come with us. We’ll get him a fancy rhinestone collar and let him poop right out in the middle of Fifth Avenue.”

  For a few minutes Ethan Allen was laughing like a kid; then the overly mature look of worry slipped back onto his face. “Is Mister Scooter going with us?”

  Susanna shook her head. “Of course not,” she answered. “It’s gonna be just the three of us—you, me and your daddy.”

  “Good!”

  “Good?”

  “Yeah; I don’t like Mister Scooter. He’s too fat and he grabs hold of your boobies in front of everybody.”

  “He don’t mean nothing by that, it’s his way of acting a fool. He’s been real good to you Ethan, and he’s good to me too. Why, he’s paying me twice as much money as they did at the five and dime.” She started to tickle his belly. “Besides,” she said, “I get lots of tips and you get all that free pie!”

  “I wouldn’t care if I didn’t get no more free pie,” he answered.

  “Well, I’d care if I didn’t get that tip money!” She smiled proudly, “Do you know I’ve got almost one thousand dollars saved up already. Come summer, we’re off to New York City—and, that, my little man, is a promise!”

  Susanna Doyle

  There are times when I can say with absolute honesty, I hate Benjamin Doyle. Because of him, I got no life whatsoever. If I didn’t have my waitressing job I’d probably go stark raving mad. At least with working I got a reason to get out of the house, but let me come home the teeniest bit late and he starts carrying on like I been dancing naked in the town square.

  It’s true enough that I got a good body, the kind that attracts men; but if Benjamin would of taken me to New York like he said he was gonna, I likely as not wouldn’t be looking for other means of entertainment.

  Our kid, Ethan Allen, he’s sort of like me. He knows how to make the best of situations. He thinks I don’t know he steals money out of the cookie jar—but I do. I figure a kid’s gotta have some fun, and there sure as hell ain’t no fun out here on this rat trap farm. One of these days, I’m gonna get loose of this place, and when I do, I’m taking the kid with me—he deserves at least that.

  Summer of Rage

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nbsp; The year Ethan Allen became eleven was when things between Benjamin and Susanna turned rancid as a week old pork chop. It had been a summer of one-hundred-degree days with hardly a drop of rain. Morning after morning, the sun came up hotter than a fireball threatening to blister any foolhardy soul who dared venture outside. Housewives kept their window shades pulled down and refused to fetch laundry that had been hanging on the clothesline for weeks. Men, accustomed to spending their days in the field, stood in front of their refrigerator gasping bits of cool air. “Why bother,” they’d tell their wives, “The corn’s too puny to bring to market.”

  There was not a single person on all of the Eastern Shore who was not irritable and out of sorts, but Benjamin was by far the worst. Not only was he dealing with a crop of soy beans that wouldn’t take root, but the tractor had suddenly taken to acting temperamental. He was in the barn, replacing a rubber belt that had become drier than a dinosaur bone, when Susanna walked in and announced it was time for them to start thinking about that trip to New York City. “Don’t bother me with such nonsense,” he answered, “You see I’ve got problems with the tractor.”

  Susanna, certain she’d never get to New York if she took into account every negative thing Benjamin had to say, continued; “I’m thinking maybe late August, early September.”

  “Well, I’m thinking a year or two down the road,” he growled back.

  “I ain’t waiting no year or two! I got enough money saved to go now.”

  “When are you gonna give this up, Susanna?” Benjamin dropped the wrench he’d been holding and glared at her in the most hateful way imaginable. “You’re a grown woman now; it’s high time you forgot about such foolishness.”

  “Foolishness?” she answered. “Thinking I can be somebody is foolish? In case you haven’t noticed, I got a real good singing voice, everybody says so. ‘Susanna,’ they say, ‘you ought to be singing on the radio.’ But no,” she rambled on, “you want to keep me stuck on this farm, where I ain’t got the chance of a snowball in hell of being discovered.”

  “You know what you got? Big tits.” He picked up the wrench and turned back to the tractor. “Big tits and not a speck of talent. I ain’t interested in going to New York to watch you parade around and make a jackass out of yourself.”

  “You think you’re so smart don’t you, Benjamin? Well, you’re not. You’re stupider than me. Stupid and blind. If you wasn’t so blind, you’d see my singing is a way for us to get a better life, have more money, and live in an apartment building that ain’t run over with ground hogs and crickets!”

  Benjamin twisted loose a bolt he’d been working on and said nothing.

  “Well, I’m going to New York! Me and Ethan Allen, we’re going to New York and I don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not you come!” Susanna whirled on her heel and tromped out of the barn. She didn’t hear Benjamin mumble that such a thing would only happen over his dead body.

  The very next day Susanna began making plans for the trip. “You start getting ready,” she told Ethan Allen, “Because we’re leaving here the first week of September.” Every morning when she got home from work, hours before the sun came up hot enough to burn a hole in a person’s head, she’d wake the boy and they’d swish back and forth on the porch swing, talking about what they were going to do in New York City.

  “Can we climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty?” Ethan Allen would ask, “Ride the subway? Maybe go to Yankee Stadium?”

  “We’ll do all those things and more!” Susanna answered gleefully. “Of course, I’ll have to get some auditions, first. But once I get a singing job, we’ll go hog wild, paint the town from one end to the other, do whatever we want!”

  “You think maybe I could get Mickey Mantle’s autograph?”

  “Sweetie, I’d bet on it!”

  Such talk infuriated Benjamin and he turned nastier than ever. When the tractor broke down for the ninth time and refused to budge regardless of how many parts he replaced, it certainly didn’t help matters. Three weeks before they were to leave, on the very same day Susanna came home with the sequined dress she was planning to wear for auditions, he discovered the tiller was rusted through. “That’s it!” he screamed and kicked over the toolbox. Although it was well before noon, he marched himself into the house and sat down at the kitchen table with a full glass of whiskey.

  “Ain’t it a bit early?” Susanna asked.

  Benjamin glared at her like a man thinking of murder and poured himself another.

  “Even if you could get the tractor fixed,” she said, “this heat’s already burnt those soy beans to a crisp.”

  He drained the whiskey glass and then refilled it.

  “Just give it up and come to New York with me and Ethan,” Susanna said, not noticing the way Benjamin’s left eye was twitching. “We’re gonna have the time of our lives! And, once I’ve got a singing job…”

  Without a word of warning, Benjamin’s hand flew up and whacked Susanna across the face so hard she tumbled to the floor.

  “No, Daddy!” Ethan Allen shouted and grabbed hold of his daddy’s arm.

  “You thinking you can stop me, boy?” Benjamin growled as he shook his arm free. “Try it, and I’ll split your head open.”

  “I didn’t mean nothing by it, Daddy. Mama didn’t neither. She was just hoping you’d come to New York with us.”

  “Ain’t nobody going to New York—not me, not you, and most of all, not your mama!” Benjamin turned and stomped out the door.

  Susanna got to her feet and slid her arm across Ethan’s shoulder, “Don’t worry,” she said with a nervous smile, “when the time comes, we’ll slip off without him knowing.”

  After that incident, they avoided any outward talk of New York. Susanna whispered bits and pieces in Ethan Allen’s ear every so often and he kept imagining himself at Yankee Stadium, but other than that, very little was said. Benjamin remained in a foul mood for a week because of the broken tractor, then he finally went out and bought a brand new John Deere with four times the horsepower of his old tractor.

  “This baby can do twice the work in half the time,” he told Susanna. “Next year I’ll be able to put in an extra field of soy beans, maybe even a crop of radishes.”

  “Seems a man who can afford a new tractor, ought to be able to take his family to New York City,” she commented sarcastically; then she went back to thinking about whether or not she should buy a pair of silver shoes to wear with her sequined audition dress.

  Scooter Cobb, claiming that Susanna was one woman who deserved a nice vacation, slipped a fifty dollar bill into her brassiere the week before she planned to leave for New York. “Baby, you have yourself one helluva fling,” he said, “then get your butt back here, ‘cause I’m gonna be missing you something fierce!” In the past year Scooter had come to feel about Susanna as he did his arms and legs—he couldn’t do without a single one of them. When she smiled, his heart started doing jumping jacks and when she pressed her body up against his, he could no longer remember his wife’s name, or for that matter, the names of his children. If Susanna were willing, he would have walked off and left everything—his wife of thirty years, a house that no longer had a mortgage, even the diner. One nod from her and halfway through frying up an omelet he would have thrown down his apron and followed along, leaving the egg to turn black on the griddle.

  “Oh, Sweetie,” Susanna sighed, “you know how crazy I am about you, but I’ve got Ethan Allen to think about. Maybe when we get back from this vacation…” Not once did she mention she’d be looking for a singing job in New York, or that she’d be staying there forever if things worked out.

  The Friday before they planned to leave, Susanna drove into town to withdraw her trip money from the bank. So far, things were moving along without a hitch; Benjamin had grown so preoccupied with his new tractor, he’d stopped watching her every move and switched over to thoughts of planting some winter squash. He never once noticed the valise of travelling clothes pushed up und
er the bed, nor did he think to ask why Susanna had all of a sudden decided on having her hair permed. He paid no attention to the way she’d dance around the house belting out song after song; and when she drove off Monday morning to register Ethan Allen for the new school term, he wouldn’t think to question it. Susanna figured by the time he discovered they were gone, she and Ethan Allen would be halfway to New York, having their lunch served by a Pullman Porter in the dining car. She had only two more nights of working in the diner, then, she told herself, that’s the end of that! Of course, she’d miss Scooter; he was a man who truly appreciated the things she had to offer, but… Susanna parked in back of the Eastern Virginia Savings Bank and all but skipped in.

  Bernice Wilson was the teller on duty. Bernice had been working at the bank for eighteen years and took pride in her ability to remember every customer and the details of their account. But, when Susanna said she wanted to withdraw eleven hundred dollars from her savings account, Bernice stood there with the blankest look imaginable plastered across her face. “Excuse me?” she finally said, and Susanna repeated the request. Without any change of expression, Bernice slid open her customer card file and one by one flipped through the cards. When she got to the end of the drawer, she scrunched her nose, and reversed direction. Going back to front she rechecked every card in the drawer. After a good fifteen minutes, she looked up and said, “You don’t have an account with us.”

  Susanna laughed a nervous little twitter that sounded somewhat like a gasp, “Of course I do,” she said, “a joint account, with my husband Benjamin.”

  “Oh, Benjamin Doyle’s account!”

  Susanna breathed a sigh of relief.

  “He closed that out, a week ago last Tuesday.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I waited on him myself. Mister Doyle withdrew the money and said he didn’t see any reason for holding onto an empty account, so I closed it,” she pushed a small card beneath the bars of the teller window. “See, right there, that’s his signature.” The face of the card was stamped with bold black letters that read—account closed.