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

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.
    “Who you talking to?”
    “I’m not talking to nobody!”
    “Well then, quit making such a racket, you’ll wake the boy.”
    “That sorry little shit will wish I’d woken him when I finally
get hold of his ass!” Susanna mumbled as she trudged off to the bedroom.
    In the morning, Ethan Allen ate a handful of pretzels for breakfast
then bicycled off to school wearing the same shirt and pants as the day before.
After school, he went back to the fort and waited until he saw Susanna’s car
leaving, then he returned to the house. He followed the same routine for two
days, before she finally caught up to him.
    “No you don’t,” she said, grabbing at the back of his shirt as he tried
to make off with a package of honey buns. “We’ve got some talking to do!”
    “Why? I didn’t do nothing!”
    “You’re supposed to be home on a school night. You’re supposed to be
studying, not jackassing yourself into town for free pie!”
    “I was hungry.”
    “I don’t give a crap if your stomach was turned inside out, you got no
business—”
    “You’re just yelling at me cause I seen you waving your naked butt
around!”
    “Don’t give me none of your sass!”
    “I ain’t to blame. You was the one.”
    “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