Spare Change by Bette Lee Crosby Read Free Book Online Page A

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