It's Up to Charlie Hardin – eARC (19 page)

CHAPTER 19:

PROBABLY A RUNAWAY

Given his druthers, Charlie would have listened to favorite radio programs in his room all evening, but the approaching storm had contrary ideas. Radio waves of that time could be turned to hash by nature’s big static discharges. When mighty lightnings flickered across Texas in 1944, constant outbursts of static snarling out of a radio speaker made every program sound like a fight between two cats yowling in a gunnysack. Charlie shrugged and turned to the pages of
Boy’s Life
.

But later, because he read quietly, Charlie heard his dad answer the telephone. The conversation was brief and businesslike. Then husband and wife spoke hurriedly in low tones. Though Charlie did not usually overhear details of a juvenile officer’s work, he knew his mother was sometimes told.

The discussion became clearer as it moved to the kitchen. “Boy’s grandmother called the station,” said Coleman Hardin between hurried rustlings of his raincoat. “Redmon gave me the address, it’s not far. She insisted the boy never stays out this late without telling her. It’s an even bet we’ll find him at the Greyhound terminal.”

Charlie missed his mom’s next words but not his dad’s reply. “Because I know his family situation, if you can call it that, and he’s probably a runaway. That old lady’s no lady.”

Moments later the back door banged and the Plymouth thrummed off into the dusk leaving Charlie to wonder at the mysteries of his father’s work. But the mystery and the wondering fled when he left his room and saw the hall light fall on the telephone note pad. Imprints of familiar handwriting had left shadows on the blank page, and Charlie knew that surname, and his mind leaped to connect the day’s events. In an instant he knew that his father lacked some important facts.

When he announced that he was going “out back,” Charlie knew his mother expected that he would be continuing some project in the garage, which was nowhere near as “out back” as he really intended to go. To support her impression he turned the workbench light on before he left at a run without a jacket, forbidding Lint to follow.

He
tootle-de-oot
ed from the eaves outside Aaron’s bedroom until he was dizzy, but at length his pal raised the window a few inches. As the patter of rain increased they did not need to speak in whispers. The last piece of Charlie’s bulletin was, “And you know he’d never hide from his gram; shoot, Aaron, she’s the one that hides him. You know why he swipes things. He’s like he is ’cause he’s like
she
is.”

“And you had to go blab everything to him, like a dummy,” said Aaron, disgusted.

“Not everything. In fact, I left a lot out.”

“I know you, guy, and it’s just like you to stick a barrel of made-up stuff in, like a dummy.”

“Will you quit saying that?” Charlie begged.

“I will when you quit doing it,” was the reply. “Does your mom know you’re here?”

“I’m supposed to be in our garage. And I bet I know where Jackie is, and it’s in a nice dry basement next to a sewer pipe. But I’m not going in there again.” Charlie shivered, though the stormy breeze was not chill. During the past few seconds a distant clamor had drawn nearer from up the street, loud enough now to compete with a heavy sprinkle of rain. Charlie put up a hand for silence. “Hey. You hear that?”

Both boys listened with gazes locked while the siren of a speeding police car told them, as clearly as if in words, what it was doing. It slowed through that block and stopped not far beyond, as the whine of its siren subsided to a gurgle.

The distance from Aaron’s home to the Ice House was exactly one and a half blocks. “Uh-oh,” said the boys in unison.

Jackie’s gram had wondered out loud why a juvenile officer was lallygagging around on her porch when he should be combing the city, and she said so, in colorful language. Coleman Hardin thanked her and drove to his office at the police station, then sent a pair of plainclothes officers to check the rail and bus stations.

Moments later he learned that his friend, police lieutenant “Cotton” Redmon, had taken a call only minutes before from a Mr. Yansen concerning boys and a drunken counterfeiter. Police radios fared little better than commercial programs in such troublesome weather, but the police dispatcher had Yansen’s address. Hardin could see at a glance that all this sudden muddle of police business was not far from his own neighborhood. Was it possible that young Jackie Rhett was involved? He could settle it one way or the other if he followed Cotton Redmon.

The old Dane had finally mustered his courage enough to call the authorities, but found himself tongue-tied when a uniformed police lieutenant showed up with siren wailing. The combination of his Danish accent, the growing fireworks of the storm, and the old fellow’s case of nervous hesitation when facing a uniform, stole most of his English and tested the officer’s patience to the limit. When Coleman Hardin arrived a few minutes later in a business suit under his raincoat, Mr. Yansen recognized him as a customer and then the facts practically tumbled out. In truth, the facts poured forth in such a heap they needed sorting out like soiled laundry.

Before disappearing from home Jackie had paused long enough to promise Mrs. Rhett a considerable sum of “new money.” Now, Hardin asked whether it was, perhaps, counterfeit money? Yansen could not vouch for any names, but he recognized the description of Jackie. Neh, he said, not dat thieving scamp. But he declared that the bills he had glimpsed were false beyond any possible doubt; practically parodies of money.

The two boys, said Yansen, were often together, sometimes with a small dog of forgettable features. At this, Redmon glanced at his companion. “Coleman, doesn’t your boy have a dog?”

“A joke of a dog,” Hardin replied, smiling. “Not a snarl in him. The one that stood fast against a reeling drunkard sounds more like a bull terrier. I expect Lint is at home hiding from all this thunder about now.”

Yansen had been sitting thoughtfully, drawing now and then on his pipe, but now he perked up. “Lint? Yah, de only name I heard.”

As the men exchanged blinks, lightning struck so near that its blast of thunder began with the air-ripping flutter of an artillery shell.

Redmon spoke first: “The house can’t be far off, but we’ll need more men for a search.”

Hardin sighed. “That radio in your car might as well be a tin can and a string, Cotton. Mr. Yansen, can we use your phone?”

* * *

Aaron needed ten seconds to solve the immediate problem, sliding out his window and leading Charlie to the Fischer garage. He located his old Cub Scout tent, a rectangle of canvas that would barely cover two boys, and helped Charlie drag it up to branches of the backyard hackberry tree. In the long ago of second grade, high up that tree, they had fashioned their crow’s nest. Its one virtue was that a boy perched higher than any neighborhood roof could see halfway to Mars—or at any rate, well beyond the Ice House. The little store was near enough that patrons might be identified from that rickety perch. But short lengths of two-by-fours nailed to branches by children had not served them for more than a season, and no one had monkeyed up that flint-barked tree for years.

Aaron struggled up inside the canvas next to Charlie and took a death-grip on a branch the thickness of his thumb. He would have refused to plant his rump on this flexible swaying contraption now except for one fact: the hackberry was on Fischer property, sort of. Aaron could honestly face his parents and claim he had not left home at night in such weather. Also, he could not deny that this demented notion had been his own idea.

As a Plymouth sedan pulled up beside the distant police car, Aaron stiffened. “Charlie, is that your dad?”

“Shut up,” Charlie advised. “I’m thinking.”

“Better late than never,” said Aaron.

“You’re hogging the tent,” said Charlie.

“You want me to get wet?”

“Poor you, and tell me who thunk this up. Listen, they’re gonna find us drowned up here anyway,” was the reply. “So if you’re so durn smart, what are we supposed to do up here?”

“Watch, I guess.”

“You mean watch which one of us gets blown down from here first?” The storm’s answer was a thunderclap.

Aaron’s was almost as loud. “Maybe! I believe I remember somebody all out of ideas, two minutes ago, sneaking up outside my window and hoo-hooing for help.”

“Yeah, so you brung me out here up a tree in a cloudburst. Closer to the lightning. Thanks a bunch, guy,” Charlie shouted back.

“You’re free to leave any time, Charlie Hardin.”

“Not ’til you let go of my belt,” Charlie said.

Doing his best to sit erect high in a wet swaying tree, Aaron saw in lightning flashes that the most secure thing for him to hang onto was Charlie. He found another branch to grasp but Charlie remained firmly planted. After a moment Aaron said, “I have to go.”

Charlie, scornful: “What; you have homework or something?”

Aaron: “No, I mean I have to—you know—
go
.” A lightning flash lit the heavens near enough that the boys heard its artillery shell imitation.

A numbing thunderclap, and a pause from Charlie. Then, “Well, if that didn’t do it, I reckon you can hold it awhile.”

“Nope, but I can reach my buttons right here. But if you ever tell anybody, guy—”

Thunder rumbled a reply. Charlie snickered. “You’re gonna let ’er rip up here? Okay, so will I; shoot, nobody can see us anyhow.” And the boys tended to their trouser buttons, and other needs, with sighs of relief as they made their contributions to the rain.

Charlie was buttoning up when he saw headlights go on near the Ice House, and spotted his dad hurrying back into the Plymouth. The two cars swung parallel, motionless, long enough for a brief exchange before the police car parked at the corner with a red spotlight shining upward. The Plymouth moved away into the neighborhood scarcely faster than a walking pace, its big spotlight spearing into front yards as it went.

The city had not installed a police radio in the Hardin Plymouth, and it had never occurred to Charlie why his father had made such a point of having the handle of that clear-lensed spotlight set into the Plymouth’s door. Now, for the first time, he realized that though Coleman Hardin did not own a handgun, the handcuffs in his coat pocket suggested that his job sometimes became actual real-life police work. Charlie imagined his dad searching front yards for the missing boy; knew that a spotlight from the street was not a tool likely to be of much use; and came to the conclusion a wiser Charlie would have reached long before this.

The downpour was stronger now, which made everything slicker and gave fair warning that one clumsy move could bring a person hurtling down out of that tree a whole lot faster than he had shinnied up it. But in a flash of clarity to match the lightning, he saw that he needed to be involved in some useful way, not hiding out in a crow’s nest built long ago by seven-year-olds.

Once again, it was up to Charlie Hardin. “I’m no sissy,” he shouted back at the thunder, and eased off the shared perch, and lost his balance. And fell.

And was snagged by the fork of a branch just below, painfully enough to make him gasp, but with both arms flailing he found a useful grip that led him to the tree trunk and then downward at a reckless pace.

Aaron’s descent was only a little slower and on his way down he called,

“Where are we going?”

“You don’t have to. He needs me,” Charlie called back.

Aaron: “Which he?”

Charlie thought of his dad, peering into rainy darkness, and of Jackie Rhett, probably shouting dirty words at a crazy man in an outlaw’s den. “Both
he
s,” he called. “You better go back inside.” And then he was pelting away through the downpour.

Only minutes passed before the Plymouth’s spotlight reflected from a rental sign, and Hardin made a cautious decision as he parked two houses away in a driveway masked by a hedge. If that darkened bungalow was really the lair of counterfeiters, a man whose badge was his only weapon would be foolish to inspect the house alone when armed officers were already on the way. He had left Charlie in his room not long before, and he had no reason to suspect his son had stirred from there. The police dispatcher might force a radio message through the storm giving this location to Redmon and others, but that message would have to begin with an ordinary telephone call. Unarmed, Hardin knew he would be cautioned to remain at that telephone and await further instructions. A knock at the nearest residence and a show of his badge would be his best move toward a telephone, and he made that move without hesitation.

No sensible dog would brave a rainy winter night when he had his own snug one-room apartment, but this was warm summer rain, worrisome only to fleas. Lint waited until no one could claim he was dogging Charlie’s footsteps, though he intended to do that very thing. Then he let boredom propel him away from home for a stroll while he cussed the booms of distant thunder. He knew his boy well, and sensed that any time Charlie set off at a run in such conditions as these, something very interesting must be afoot. The tangy odor of Charlie’s shoes was fresh in Lint’s nose but fading fast in the wash of raindrops. No matter; if Lint lost that familiar beloved scent, well, this was a route he knew by heart. At its other end lay Charlie’s second-best friend, Lint himself claiming the top position. And there was no hurry; it was not as if Lint had pressing business elsewhere.

Several blocks further as he trotted along a sidewalk, he was drawn to a familiar bulky shape half-hidden by a hedge and gave it a good sniffing-over. Between those irksome outbursts from the sky he could hear Charlie’s dad in that house talking with someone, but that someone was not Charlie so Lint filed it all under “boring” and resumed his stroll for a half-block. By this time the storm center had crept directly above the neighborhood. In spite of the rain’s warmth, increasing crashes of thunder had begun to set Lint’s teeth on edge. He was considering a return to his bed as he crossed the street and hopped a gutter stream that was fast becoming a creek now, and heard the rush of water as it dropped through an iron grating. The rushing water, and—something more.