Free Spare Change by Bette Lee Crosby Page B

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.”
    Benjamin began crying and pleading like a man afraid for his life, “It
wasn’t my fault,” he sobbed, “it was her…she was the one…always saying she was
gonna leave…always talking about how she was going to New York…”
    Perhaps it was the mention of New York, perhaps it was knowing that Susanna
was leaving to spend the rest of her life with him; there’s no telling what finally
caused Scooter to snap—but he suddenly lifted Susanna’s husband into the air
and hurled him through the plate glass window. Not even the sight of Benjamin
lying on the front lawn, a spear of glass rammed through his shoulder and his
face covered in blood, was enough to quell Scooter’s rage. He stormed outside
like an angry bull and stomped on the man’s head, time and time and time again
until the left side of Benjamin’s skull cracked open and his face was no longer
recognizable. Scooter Cobb then got into his white Cadillac and drove off.
    Ethan saw it all. He heard the screams and cries. He tasted blood
trickling down his own throat, the same as his daddy. He felt a stream of urine
run down his leg; yet through it all, he stood there