Free The Evening News by Tony Ardizzone Page A

pencil is fairly long and the point is still sharp, that she didn’t get very far with her initial conception. I put it back, along with the eighteen bobby pins.
    The other pencil brought back a flood of unpleasant childhood memories, for either Marsha or Jo went to the same doctor I did. It is a very bright and colorful pencil, saying—allow me a moment to look— FROM YOUR DENTIST, FOR BEING A GOOD PATIENT .
    And it has a great many balloons on it, and four clown faces. I’m using it right now. I’d type, but my fingers are exhausted.
    In addition:
    Thirty-eight cents. I’ve appropriated it as partial reparation for the gross inconvenience of waiting. Of the coins, by far the most unusual is a 1943 LIBERTY In God We Indeed Do Trust dime. It’s a Lady-with-the-wings-coming-out-from-the-sides-of-her-head dime, and it frightened me because the tails side is—believe me now—blank. Are you listening?
    When I first pulled it out, I thought it was a slug. Then I felt the ridges on its side, and upon flipping it over was most amazed to see the Lady. My question to you is this: how did the blank side become blank?
    Is this dime one of those rare mistakes? If so, how many millions is it worth? Or is this counterfeit, the forgers having only enough time to imprint the one side? Or did somebody simply fuck it up? Excuse me, Sisters. Though I suspect that nobody is listening anyway. Hello, hello.
    My question: is this true or is this false? I’ll have to ask Marsha when she gets here. She’ll know. Yes, Marsha will know. Though she might doubt that I wrote this. She just might say: “Thaddeus, just where did this come from?”
    â€œWhatdya mean, where did this come from?” I’ll say. “It’s mine.”
    â€œAll of this, Thaddeus? All of this is yours?”
    â€œSure.” I feel very small. “Who do you think all this belongs to?”
    â€œThaddeus. Come in here for a moment.” She is calling. I feel even smaller. “Thaddeus? Do you hear me? Thaddeus?”
    â€œIt’s mine,” I say again.
    â€œWhere’s the fire, Sarah?” my father says.
    â€œLook. Here in your son’s closet. And here in his dresser drawer.”
    â€œHoly Moses, now there’s something.”
    â€œIt can’t be all his. Ask him where he got it.”
    â€œWhere’d you get this, Thaddeus?”
    â€œTha-dde-us?”
    â€œLook here, Sarah. In his jacket pockets too.”
    â€œWhere’d he go to? Thaddeus?”
    â€œAnd look here in his Sunday shoes.”
    â€œTha-dde-us?”
    â€œOh, gracious me, looky here. Tokens. So that’s why I’ve been short.”
    â€œThaddeus!”
    â€œAnd dimes even here in the cuffs of his pants.”
    â€œNow where’d he go to?”
    His cuffs were full too, I remember. I remember him coming home sitting in his big red chair next to the radio, and smiling and shining. His chest was shining, his number was 17381, and the stripes down the sides of his pants shone too, like they’d been polished, like the seat of his pants. He was a thin man, and he always had a smile and a rub on the head for his big boy. His cuffs, she would kneel before him and turn them out as he sipped his cup of coffee, and sipped, blew, his face red and his mustache laughing. She’d turn out his cuffs and he’d say looky at all those tonight, oh my, circles of paper,from his transfer punch. I would gather them, fill my two hands, save them in my dresser drawer, the bottom one, with all my coins, and in my closet a handful of each every day. I wanted to be like him. And at night sometimes I’d get behind him in his big red chair, the radio talking or singing, sometimes she sewing or writing on paper, or clucking her tongue at the table writing out bills, with paper, my fists full of paper, sneaking behind him, he sleeping, his head nodding, down on his newspaper, his tired glasses