It's Up to Charlie Hardin – eARC (15 page)

CHAPTER 15:

FINDERS KEEPERS

The greatest arguments fester around the grubbiest details. Charlie’s first impression of those bills was that they were real, and worth what the numbers said, so he held fast to that position. But Aaron, instantly favoring the idea that Charlie had placed the bills there, maintained that they must be worthless play money, part of some infernal plot of Charlie’s.

The discussion was soon marked by claims so loud they vibrated in the storm drain. “Even if it’s like Monopoly money, somebody else put it there,” Charlie said at last. “And it looks real. Half real, anyhow.” He turned the better of the two bills over to study its blank side, then made a hopeful guess. “Maybe it’s worth half of what it says. Ten bucks, prob’ly.”

By this time they sat side by side, loud arguments being preferable to wrestling around in the shrubbery. “How about this one, then?” Aaron said, squinting at the other bill. Most of it looked genuine but perhaps a fourth of it was badly smeared.

“One end’s just crud. I wouldn’t give you more’n five or six bucks for that sorry excuse for money,” said Charlie.

“You wouldn’t give me a penny for it,” Aaron countered, “’cause you know it’s not real.”

“Wait a minute.” When Charlie shifted down to a studious tone it suggested a new line of reasoning. “My mom found some money in my dad’s pants once in the washing. And when she dried it out it was still good. Play money would, I dunno, fade or rub out or get all gooshy or something. Wouldn’t it?”

“How would I know, you’re the play-money expert. Why not try wetting it in the creek?” Aaron began to doubt his plot theory the moment Charlie nodded and limped down to the ankle-deep stream that was Shoal Creek. Aaron followed, reflecting that Charlie’s willingness to test the bills might mean he was not scheming but truly curious.

After squatting to dunk the bill, Charlie rubbed it and eyed it closely. Next he repeated the experiment, rubbed some more, then glanced up to his pal with a vexed expression. “It doesn’t run or fade, but it kinda peels a little. Real money’s more like cloth, I think.”

“I thought so. Play money,” said Aaron. “Where’d you get it, anyhow?”

“For the last time,” Charlie began, standing up, his face stormy.

Aaron waved his hands before him, discarding the last of his theory. “Okay, I take it back; they weren’t yours. So they’ve gotta be from whoever owns that bank you were gonna rob.”

“I never!”

“Well, you woulda gone down in there if I hadn’t stopped you,” Aaron amended, stepping away to prepare an escape.

But Charlie stubbornly continued to use logic. He limped back to their cozy bower under the fig. “Going down there, yeah. That’s a durn sight different.” Aaron’s tiny snort conveyed more argument, so Charlie demanded, “Is taking a look the same as robbing? Is your bike the same as a Greyhound bus? Nuh-uh. If I robbed an actual bank my dad would skin me.”

“You mean, after you got outa the jail he put you in,” Aaron reminded him, settling his rump, forearms resting on knees.

They stared gloomily at the wrinkled mysteries on display at their feet, so deep in thought that the buzz of locusts went unnoticed. Finally Charlie said, “Banks are supposed to look like banks, right? But if you stand in the street outside and look across the front yard from the curb, you don’t see a bank. It’s just that ol’ gray haunted house nobody lives in with the sign in the yard. Who would have a secret bank?”

“We would, that’s who,” said Aaron. “Maybe some banker downtown makes all their money here.”

Charlie considered this. “He sure makes some trashy stuff,” he said, then brightened. “I bet that’s it. When he bakes up a bad batch, the guy just throws it away. Like this.”

“They don’t bake it,” said Aaron, and saw the urge to argue rise in his pal again. “Awright, maybe they do. And if a person found their trash and spent it, like a special sale, why would they care?”

“Yeah. They’re rich,” Charlie said. “It’s not like it was costing them anything.” A pause, as their eyes met. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yep, if you’re thinking we didn’t go into their basement so we didn’t do anything wrong. If it’s not on their property, you said yourself, finders keepers.”

The boys were nodding in unison now. Charlie smoothed out the two bills, folded and pocketed them. “Only thing is, we need to find out if this is worth something. My dad would prob’ly know. Or yours.”

“Oh, suuuure.” The reply was rich with sarcasm. “And then you get to explain where we got it, and you and me get to hang out with each other once a year. C’mon, guy, the only way we get to play at the creek is because everybody thinks we’re someplace else. If my mom had any idea you bullied me into that sewer pipe, dad would have to coax her down off the roof. And I don’t fib and neither do you, exactly.” Aaron’s “exactly” admitted the way they tiptoed around falsehoods, making sure they never made a foray along the creek without going elsewhere as well so that, if asked, they could always name another location.

“Well, we could just go downtown and ask a bank,” Charlie said.

This new point had to be thrashed to splinters in the usual way, until Aaron hit on a variation both simple and direct. “Okay, why not ask the bank people in the haunted house? I don’t give a rip what the sign in the front says, we know somebody’s there.”

To Charlie this idea had charm because it could be tested in moments. Its drawback was that somebody else had thought of it, but Charlie was prepared to be generous. “We have to make ’em promise not to tell our folks,” he said.

So it was agreed, and in another five minutes they had followed one of several footpaths worn up to the street by generations of boys.

Whoever first labeled the old stucco-clad house as haunted had done the owner a favor. Boys playing “tag” or “kick the can” tended to stay beyond its grounds while claiming a total lack of fear. On this late afternoon in a dazzle of sunlight, the place did not seem forbidding for the two boys. Together they marched up to the front porch past an untended yard where weeds fought for survival. A few of last year’s faded newspapers lay unclaimed near the door. Charlie sought a doorbell in vain, then knocked.

“Banks aren’t locked in daytime,” Aaron said, tried the doorknob, then shrugged.

“That’s all you know,” said Charlie, and knocked harder with the same result.

Next they peered through the one front window that lacked a fully drawn shade, seeing only a few old magazines and footprints in the dust of a floor without furniture or carpet. “Heck of a bank this is,” Charlie grumped.

“Kinda late. Maybe they went home,” Aaron said, turning his head westward for a quick judgment of the sun’s position, their usual timepiece. “Hey, I gotta go home too, pretty soon. Mom wanted me to go to the store before dinner.” And he started placing his goods on the porch, reserving a few cents for a pocket. Charlie followed suit. Their problem of the moment, too well-understood to need conversation, was bulging pockets; both boys were convinced that their mothers had the eyes of hawks. To avoid questions they squatted on the porch and unfolded a yellowed copy of the daily
Austin American Statesman,
wrapping bundles that Charlie would be obliged to smuggle home somehow. In the process, they agreed to return in midmorning when they expected that bankers would all be hard at work printing money.

Charlie found more cause to grumble while walking the last blocks home alone carrying an assortment of stuff he would not have wanted to explain. He had half-decided to hide it all in someone’s shrubbery before he arrived home, when he remembered that he had made that mistake once before with a pair of yellow organic hand grenades. He might never learn when Roy Kinney had found those terrifying eggs, but the Kinney boy had a troubling habit when he played alone: he would sit concealed by whatever was handy and watch the world do whatever worlds do. For all Charlie knew, instead of hiding indoors after the Runaway Tire Experiment the smaller boy might be somewhere nearby, hunkered down like a toad, watching him at that very moment.

Presently a squirrel scooted across the street, and as he reflected on the banking practices of these furry little rogues, Charlie’s frown softened. His face became tranquil, then began to show signs of downright pleasure. It would suit him just fine if Roy was spying because the more Roy longed to swipe this stuff, the more he would be frustrated by a place he was too small to reach.

Charlie squeezed between the bars of the castle courtyard and made a final inspection of descending branches from the huge live oak to assure himself that Roy was not tall enough to imitate him. Then, with a parcel stuffed into his shirt, he made his way high into the tree and chose a crotch near its center. Needing two trips, he made his deposits in the tree and minutes later as he strolled within sight of home, he whistled for Lint.

Charlie often wondered where the terrier roamed when left to his own dog-gone affairs. Often as not the dog would be away on some solitary business, but beyond doubt, if Lint knew Charlie’s whereabouts he would try to be there too. Lint was an outdoor dog, not because he or Charlie wanted it so, but because Willa Hardin’s rules applied inside the house. If she’d had her way the Hardins might have had an indoor dog instead, one of those pocket-sized trembling, snapping, yapping mites unfit for real live weather, with long yellow fur sticking out as if its nose is stuck in a light socket.

Lint had been accepted because Coleman Hardin, raised with farm dogs, could not abide a pooch that cringes from kittens and looks like a muff on legs. In comparison to such a joke of a dog, Coleman felt, Lint was a regular fellow eligible for an occasional headscratch. To Charlie’s dad, Lint might have been welcome inside the house if not on Charlie’s bed. Yet Mrs. Hardin had a horror of fleas, and she had noticed that Lint could usually scratch up one or two when he needed them for company. While he was only a pup Lint had found the need to add Willa Hardin’s
“shoo!”
to his vocabulary.

So in fairness to all, Charlie and his dad put an outside doghouse together from scrap lumber and old shingles, adding a decrepit remnant of carpet for its floor. When the weather turned wet or frigid Lint might be found inside, nose poking out, eyes bright with hopes of entertainment.

Long after midnight, Charlie’s eyes snapped open. If a dream prompted him, it was one he could not recall, but whatever the cause, he was instantly alert, responding to alarms that clanged in his head. Every detail of the situation might as well have had searchlights trained on it. He had been so amused, so proud of himself for being as smart as a two-pound acorn thief, making sure that even if sneaky little Roy were watching him establish his hiding place, Roy could not climb up to burgle it.

Not by himself, no.
But Jackie could.
And Roy was often so lacking in wit and so desperate for companionship, he would attach himself to bad company. While Charlie lazed at home, and later slept the sleep of innocence, what was to prevent Roy from teaming up with Jackie in the crime of the century? Judging from his everyday habits, Jackie had scribbled “finders keepers” across the inside of his skull.

It did not occur to Charlie that Roy thought he had reason, at least temporarily, to avoid moving within arm’s reach of his criminal mastermind. Or that neither of these larval criminals had any idea whether Charlie’s hiding place held anything worth taking. Or that even if Jackie took up such an expedition he would be a raving lunatic to do it after dark, and if he had done it in daylight, nothing could be done about it now.

What did occur to Charlie was the nagging fear that, if Gene Carpenter could extract a bazillion golf balls from a creekside alone in the dead of night, some other boy might climb the great-granddaddy of all oaks in darkness for more valuable stuff. Would Jackie do such a thing? He might. Would Aaron? Too careful. Would Charlie? He might have saved himself the effort of asking because two things made the answer obvious. Any legal risk Jackie Rhett might take, Charlie felt required to take. And if that tree-crotch held goods that were Aaron’s property—
for which Charlie was responsible—
no doubt remained. So . . .

It was up to Charlie Hardin.

As soon as summery weather allowed, Charlie always shoved his bed so near his bedroom window that, with the window fully raised, he could push his pillow onto the windowsill and sleep with his head touching the wire screen. The screen was kept from swinging out only by a hook-and-eye arrangement, and the flowerbed below it could be reached without jumping. Charlie had never thought it useful to unhook the screen. Until now. To tiptoe outside through the kitchen meant certain arrest because between his bed and the kitchen door lay at least three floorboards guaranteed to creak a symphony of parent-alerts.

Short pants and a T-shirt lay at the foot of his bed. With the first “snick” of the screen hook a faint growl sounded somewhere near, but the sentry investigated in silence and as Charlie slid out past the sill headfirst, his cheeks were bathed in canine kisses. Neighborhood porch lights were rarely lit in the wee hours. The glow of the nearest streetlight was distant, with trees providing shadowy cover for a small person in a hurry.

The night was so still Charlie could hear the padding of his own bare feet and the nails of Lint’s paws as they scuffed a curb en route to the castle. Something rustled in a flowerbed and Lint made a rough comment but stayed at his master’s feet. Something else hurried across the street in a noiseless glide, a temptation Lint resisted with a repressed whine. The tune Charlie hummed was intended to bolster his dog’s spirit but it worked just as well for the hummer. The car that sped down Nueces avenue did not catch boy or dog in its headlights because the stealthy pair had passed between iron bars into the castle courtyard seconds earlier.

The night sky of a small city has a glow of its own, created by commercial lighting. But in Austin, a unique kind of false moonlight added to the luster. Decades before, celebrating the coming of the Twentieth Century, city fathers had decided on modern street lights—and yes, by jingo, Texas-sized lights while they were at it. As the capital city of a state gifted with more money than good sense, Austin could have spidery steel “moonlight towers” if it wanted them.