It's Up to Charlie Hardin – eARC (5 page)

CHAPTER 5:

MINING THE DEPTHS

With the nation at war, most families recycled their paper and metals, and tended vegetables in tiny plots they called “victory gardens.” The garden behind Charlie’s home grew tomatoes, radishes, beets and cucumbers in a space the size of his bedroom. If no other work was needed on a given Saturday, Charlie weeded the plot in return for his weekly quarter. On this day he hurried through his task and received his quarter fully expecting to have the missing clippers safely back in place by midmorning.

So much for Charlie’s plans. At the castle wall, with a quick scratch to soothe doggy feelings, he sent Lint home. Then, just for practice, he scrambled up through the small oak improving his memory for handholds, across the dreaded wall, and down into the courtyard, running quickly to where he knew the clippers lay. Then he dropped to his knees and began to grapple in the weeds, slowly coming to realize that what he “knew” did not fit an awful fact: the clippers were not to be found.

At this point Charlie’s internal map of his day’s business fell apart like a rain-soaked newspaper. He climbed into the huge central oak as he had done the previous evening, then sat balanced above the scene of this disaster and carefully scanned the area. Still no clippers.

He swiftly reviewed a supply of remedies. He would run off and join a circus—but the circus, as everyone knew, lived in Florida, and Charlie did not have the price of a Trailways bus ticket. Moreover, he was strictly forbidden to hitchhike. Well then, he would buy another pair of clippers—after collecting a mountain of bottles, enough bottles to produce a sum so princely it made his head swim. Or he could do without the Lone Ranger for as many Saturdays as it took to accumulate the price of those confounded clippers. Or he might even sell the secrets of his highway to Jackie Rhett.

None of these fancy schemes seemed quite real even to Charlie. He knew the answer to his problem could be summed up in one word: money. Charlie knew boys who claimed to have earned scores of dollars with newspaper routes. But by some secluded rule that parents left unexplained, none of Charlie’s friends were allowed to have a paper route or any other job beyond the home. Charlie reasoned that a regular salary could make him much more independent. He had not figured out that, to his parents, a more independent Charlie would be as welcome as a Japanese air raid.

Presently, Charlie noticed a figure moving along the street a block away, coming nearer. A host of oak leaves prevented him from making certain, but by blowing familiar sad little hoots so hard that spots appeared before his eyes, he was rewarded. The walker paused; continued; paused again to listen; cupped his hands near his mouth. And the answering hoot told Charlie that the walker was Aaron.

Invisible on his perch, Charlie enjoyed his pal’s puzzlement as he hooted Aaron through the old gate, under the limbs of the mighty oak, and finally almost beneath the hidden hootist before Aaron knelt and fumbled in the tuft grass. When Aaron stood up, it was Charlie’s turn to be mystified.

“You found ’em,” Charlie exclaimed.

“Who chased you up there?” asked Aaron in surprise, holding the clippers as he stared aloft.

“Never mind,” said Charlie, hoping to keep his highway secret as he struggled lower to a safe height. He dropped to the ground, lost his balance, and found himself sitting at Aaron’s feet. “Gimme,” he said, and held his hand up. “Those are my mom’s.”

Aaron studied the tool. “What would your mom do with an old busted pair of snips?”

“Clippers,” said Charlie, rising. “And they’re not old; not busted either. You better gimme.”

“Take ’em,” Aaron said with disdain, and dropped the clippers on the ground. “No good for anything anyhow.”

A faint moan escaped Charlie as he examined the clippers. “Ohh, boy. You’ve done it now,” he said, hoping to share the blame. “You busted the little doodad on the end.”

“Me? I just got here. Tell me how I broke ’em before I ever found ’em.”

Something in Charlie seethed for release, anything to vent his misery. And here stood his best friend, squinting with hands on hips, ready for anything up to a yelling argument. In a flash of mixed memories Charlie realized this was a drama they had enacted a hundred times, and not once had it ever ended pleasantly for either of them.

“Well, they weren’t busted when I dropped ’em,” Charlie said.

Aaron’s gaze measured the distance to Charlie’s lofty perch. “When you dropped ’em,” he echoed. “Gee, what does that tell us?”

What it told Charlie, he admitted, was that he expected serious trouble unless he could buy new clippers. Charlie’s punishments tended to fit his crimes, and this combined the crime of breaking a prized tool with the crime of borrowing it without asking.

“Get your money yet?” Aaron asked suddenly.

“Boy, don’t I wish,” said Charlie. “We oughta talk about that. All I got is my quarter.”

“That’s what I meant. I was on my way to your house. Got an extra dime, so we could go buy a zoom plane before the movie.” Small balsa gliders with “zoom” lettered across the wing were more fun between two boys than a baseball because the flights were unpredictable. “You ready?”

Moments later the boys were trotting toward Congress Avenue, once a main trail for cattle drives, still a hundred yards wide and now Austin’s central traffic artery. Theaters such as the State and Paramount shared Congress Avenue frontage with the less ritzy Queen and “dime” stores like Woolworth’s and Kress’s, where a boy might shop for model airplane kits, candy and marbles. At Scarborough Hardware they priced a pair of clippers and walked more slowly afterward, agreeing that $2.49 was an outrageous price for anything so easily broken.

At Kress’s, Aaron bought his zoom plane and assembled it on the spot. To cheer Charlie he pointed out that the Lone Ranger would not be
Hi-Yo
ing on the screen for more than an hour. The block-wide park between the governor’s mansion and the state capitol building was four blocks up Congress, usually an ample space for a zoom plane. Aaron mimed tossing the glider. “Wanta?”

Because a public hug for a pal was unthinkable, Charlie responded with a grin and a gentle fist against Aaron’s upper arm. In another five minutes, free from any trees big enough to steal a boy’s toy, they were adjusting the little balsa craft for longer flights. After another ten minutes one of Aaron’s tosses ran afoul of an unexpected breeze, and in moments the model had soared to a height they had thought impossible.

“Whoa, you’re gonna lose it,” Charlie called, marveling.

“Your turn! You’re supposed to get it,” cried Aaron, who was no more a slouch than Charlie at dodging blame. Both boys set off together, the glider a tantalizing wisp that flew at a sprinter’s pace. As the model began to settle far beyond them, it crossed the street and bounced merrily at the curb, vulnerable to anything on wheels.

Charlie and Aaron might have waited for traffic to clear but Aaron, thinking more about tactics than about Charlie’s safety, remembered a phrase that was only an inch from magic. “It’s up to you, Charlie,” he said, and saw the fire of the fanatic kindle in Charlie’s eyes.

Charlie darted across one lane ahead of a sedan, adjusted his path to avoid being collected by a coupe in the second lane, then realized a car in the third lane was moving in the opposing direction. Charlie stopped dead on the center stripe but the driver of the approaching car, suddenly alerted, swerved into the adjoining lane as he skidded to a halt. Since that lane was occupied by another car, a brief symphony of squalling rubber, car horns and Word-laden yells serenaded Charlie as he sped to the far curb and snatched his balsa prize up, then continued on at top speed to the lawn of the state capitol grounds.

Nor did he stop then, seeing two drivers exit cars that stood crosswise and immobile while other traffic began to clog the street behind them. The capitol grounds provided Charlie with several screens of shrubbery, and he used them to abandon the scene, finally taking refuge behind a young couple, both sightseeing in uniform, who took no notice of the boy.

By the time Charlie took advantage of bushes to squat and look for pursuers, the street traffic was moving again though Aaron was nowhere to be seen. Charlie moved to the broad central walkway leading to the capitol building, a massive pile of rosy granite that dominated the skyline. He waited for strollers to clear the area near him, then gave Aaron’s balsa bird an easy toss knowing that it would be a beacon for Aaron the way a pigeon draws a hawk. A few more modest flights proved that he was right, when Aaron appeared from distant bushes and raced to compete with Charlie in chasing down his toy.

Charlie won. Mindful of the outcome of Aaron’s last flight, he prepared to resume the game with a modest toss until Aaron, ready to be the retriever, teased, “Remember if it goes in the street, I’m not as big an idiot as you are.”

Charlie paused, his expression darkening. Was it fair for a guy to endanger his own property, urge a buddy to risk his neck for a heroic recovery, and then call the hero an idiot? The perfect accuracy of Aaron’s wisecrack only made it worse. “Not in the street,” he said, “but this one’s up to
you
, smart guy.” And with this, he sprinted across the lawn toward the nearby lily pond.

Aaron guessed his friend’s intention and gave chase two paces behind, panting, “No, nuh-uh, it’s a dime, a dime, a dime,” to no effect. He knew that if the glider became water-soaked it would be too heavy to fly again until it dried out. Charlie hurled the zoom plane straight across the broad, tree-shaded pond, narrowly avoided splashing into it over the low curb, and stopped to watch the result. The toy looped, seemed destined to settle on cement, but suddenly plopped down on one of the platter-sized lily pads that decorated the scummy pond like green doilies on a greener tablecloth. Weighing only an ounce, it might still be flown again and lay temptingly near, no more than ten feet from dry cement. “Your turn,” said Charlie, hiding his relief.

A whiskery old idler on a nearby bench laughed. “Look out for sharks, sprat.”

Aaron hugged himself, toes touching the curb, and sent a gloomy look toward his wayward property. With a headshake: “Might as well be in the river,” he said.

“Aw, it’s okay,” Charlie said. “I dare you to roll up your pants and wade over there.”

“Could be water moccasins,” Aaron rejoined, and folded his arms. “You did that on purpose. Dares go first.”

This was a common challenge; a boy who issued a dare must be willing to take the same risk. Charlie hesitated, searching the pond surface for any sign of poisonous water snakes, wondering how deep the pond might be, because the stagnant water, smelling of green scum, was not appealing. Then he saw the penny on the lily pad with the zoom plane.

Rarely has one cent brought more sweeping change. Twenty feet distant on a second pad lay another coin, one of the gray steel wartime pennies. And unless Charlie’s eye lied, a coin that might have been a buffalo nickel sat impudently on a pad, a silent dare more potent than anything Aaron could say. Visiting young servicemen were known to use such ponds as wishing wells, foolishly tossing small coins at lily pads to impress girls foolish enough to be impressed.

Charlie’s feet were already bare and as he rolled his pants as high as they would go, he said nothing about coins. Instead, he muttered about the danger, the genuinely icky smell of the pond, the unknown depths—and then sat on the low cement curb and eased his feet down in search of firm bottom.

The bottom was only knee-deep, and it was cement, and slimy. And as Charlie moved out toward his goal, gliding along slowly as if on skates to avoid sloshing or, worse, a headlong fall, he had a moment of skin-prickling, wonderful clarity. He realized that the pond had been visited not by a few coin-tossers but by hundreds of them, maybe thousands, maybe bazillions. And for every tosser whose coin had found a lily pad there had been countless others whose coins had dropped through murk to the bottom. And suddenly Charlie knew that he would have no trouble replacing his mother’s clippers. Because in the scummy slime under his toes lay more round metal discs than he could count, and each one was worth at least One Cent. He stopped, sweeping a foot experimentally to broom the coins together. But even if he managed to shove them to the edge of the pond, the man on the bench was chuckling his enjoyment. Who knew how the old codger might complicate this operation?

Aaron, because Charlie had stopped: “Getting deeper?”

Charlie: “Stinks. Real bad. I think I’m gonna throw up.” A pantomime of a dry heave thrust Charlie’s head forward. He turned, shuffling with both feet, and moved back to the low curb, seeming to ignore old Mr. Benchman while giving every sign that, at any moment, he might deposit his breakfast across the cement near the man’s feet.

“I don’t need this,” said Benchman to nobody in particular, rising with a grunt, limping out of Charlie’s life exactly as Charlie had hoped.

“It’s okay, Charlie, you tried,” said Aaron, reaching over to help his pal from the pond; and with this proof of his devotion he assured himself of riches.

Until that moment Charlie had thought he might retrieve the glider and only the few visible coins, leaving all the rest in their drowned condition until much later, perhaps at dusk, but certainly alone. Now, still looking after the departing old fellow who was well out of earshot, Charlie grinned. “I’m okay. Aaron, have I ever lied to you?”

“Lotsa times. But if you say you’re—”

“Not just fibs. Big old lies, guy.” Charlie’s gaze was intense, with the imaginary heat of uncounted wealth underfoot.

Aaron blinked and thought it over. “Well, there was that time in—”

Exasperated, Charlie burst out, “D-Word it, Aaron, just trust me, okay?”

Aaron allowed full force to Charlie’s use of this forbidden Word and grimaced as if pained. “Okay, okay! What did I do, Charlie?”

“Nothin’. It’s what you’re gonna do. If you trust me, lie down here and reach past the curb as far down as you can. It’s yucky and kinda cold on the bottom. But Aaron, Aaron, ohhh man, honest—
you won’t care.”