Free Case Pending - Dell Shannon by Dell Shannon

because you get where you got to ask relief, they think they can
go nosing into ever'thing. Not as if I like to take charity—didn't
ask till I had to. Nobody in our family ever been on charity
before—comes hard to a respectable woman allus held her head up an'
took nothing from nobody. Way they act, you'd think I was doing
something wrong, ask for enough keep a roof over our heads 'n' food
in our mouths. Forty dollars a month!" She sat hunched in the
rocker, thin arms hugging her flat body. "County's got millions.
Come poking around with their questions before they let me have forty
dollars!"
    "He only ast four-five things, Ma—"
    "He ast four-five things too much! What business
is it of theirs? No, acourse, they won't find your dad, they'll never
find him." She said that with fear, with hope, with insistence.
"If your dad was minded go off like that, he'd be real careful
make it so's nobody'd ever find him, an'—an' it's seven-eight
months back he went, too."
    The boy was silent. He knew all sorts of things in
the dumb, vague way thirteen does know—hardly aware that he knew.
She made out she didn't mind Dad going off, except for the money, but
she did. She was afraid and making out she wasn't. He knew there were
things in her mind that for years she'd shut away somewhere, and now
they'd got out, they were shapeless unseen monsters, crowding in on
her and him both.
    "Don't you stay out later than six," she
said. "Six is supper like allus."
    Then, all of a sudden, he knew why he felt bad—why
he'd been feeling like this all the time since. In awful clarity it
came to him that things never stayed the same, or even got back to
what they'd been before. However bad things were, you were safe,
knowing what a day would be like, tomorrow and next week; but it
would change so you didn't ever know, and you couldn't stop it any
way. She wanted to, and she thought she had, and now she'd found
nobody ever could. One of the invisible monsters right here with them
now was the threat and promise of change to come.
    It was knowledge too big for thirteen, and he turned
blindly and ran out, and down the dark rickety stair into the rain.
    The rain was cold coming down but like mostly in
California when it rained it wasn't really cold, not cold like back
in Minnesota with the snow and all. The snow was kind of nice,
though—Dad said—Dad didn't like California much—maybe he'd gone
back east, and he stopped, breathless, and leaned on the window of
the drugstore on the corner there, as if he was looking at the
picture of the pretty girl saying Instant Protection, but he didn't
see anything in the window. Oh, Dad! he cried in silent agony.
    He'd lost Dad too, just then, and forever. It
wouldn't matter if Dad came back, things would never be like they
were, ever again.
    "Hi, kid," said Danny behind him.
    Marty turned, eager for companionship, for anybody to
talk to. "Hi, Danny, wh-what's new?" It came out kind of
squeaky-sounding, like a real little kid, and embarrassed him all the
more because of Danny being—well, Danny.
    "Nothin' much. Say, Marty—"
    Mr.  Cummings had already turned on the lights
in the drugstore, the rain made it so dark-it was getting dark
anyway, fast-and Marty could see their blurred reflections in the
glass of the window. They looked funny together, him and Danny Smith,
but maybe only to anybody knew them. Because he was so big beside
Danny, he'd grown so fast just this last year—Dad said their family
always did start to grow awful young-last month when all the kids got
measured for gym in school, he'd been sixty-eight inches and some
over, and that was only four inches shorter than Dad. In the glass
there, sideways, he saw himself looking man-size, looming alongside
of Danny—but it was the other way round inside them. Danny was like
a grown-up somehow, things he knew and said and did, not having to be
in any special time, and always having money, and sometimes he smoked
cigarettes. It wasn't just Marty, he