Chapter 4

It was only six thirty, way too early for either of them to be going to bed yet. I hadn't expected to have to deal with any of this so soon. I went into their bedroom, noticing right away the opened envelope, and the five rolls of money sitting in the center of their bed. It looked like they hadn't even bothered to count the money.

"Would you care to explain any of this?" My father looked menacing as he pointed his finger accusingly at his bed. For some reason, one I'm sure I'd never understand, he had gotten angry about being given so much money.

"Explain what?" The words were barely out of my mouth before he came at me and threw me down on the bed. My mother screamed something about him promising her that we'd only be talking.

"I know what I said, Kitten, but that was before I found out he was just going to lie, right to my face like this."

For some reason, what he was saying now made me angry. In the past, I'd always tried to bend to my father's will. He was my father, and I loved and respected him. Many times I'd have done things differently than he did, but, he was my father, and the head of our family. The money was meant to help my family, to help him to provide for all of us. I might have been able to understand part of this, but not how angry he was about this money.

"What did you think, Jimbo, that you were going to become the house fairy? I looked the other way about that forty two dollars, and I even pretended to believe that two hundred your friend Larry suddenly decided to lend me, so I could travel out here and snag this job, was actually from him, and not from you. I can't pretend any longer though, so what the hell is this?"

"I'm hearing a lot of complaining, dad, but I'm not sure what it is you're so mad about? What makes you think I know any more about this money than you do?"

I barely had a chance to cover up at all before his suddenly launched body landed on top of me, breaking at least one of the bed boards holding up the mattress and frame beneath us. I felt his fist landing a punch on the side of my head, just above my right ear.

The punch hurt my head some, but I knew it had to have hurt his fist even more. I moved myself quickly out from under him and pushed him away from me as I tried to get up off the bed. At that point, all I wanted to do was get away from him. I guess I thought he'd cool off and become calmer in time, then the two of us could figure out what to do from there.

This was one reaction I hadn't fully anticipated from him. He got up from the bed quicker than I thought he could manage to do, and hit me a hard blow to the back of my head. I knew he could have either killed me or paralyzed me if his fist had struck me even two inches lower, somewhere down on my neck.

I was already upset, hurt, scared, and angry, even before that second punch. As soon as it landed, I turned and set my feet, balancing myself in order to strike back at him. I didn't even think about what I was doing, I just acted automatically. I'm not sure how many times I hit him, only that my mother's screaming and crying, as well as her yelling for us to stop, finally started getting through to me.

My father was still on his feet, but that was about all he could manage doing. I'm not sure he even knew where he was after the barrage I'd just finished landing. Looking at his face, I was certain I'd hurt him badly. His eyes couldn't seem to focus. His reaction to finding the money had surprised me.

My own reaction to his hitting me had surprised all of us. I noticed both my brothers and Nancy standing near the open doorway. Their expressions were ones of complete disbelief. For anyone to raise a hand to our father, that was something that had been absolutely unthinkable, before it had actually happened. I pushed my way past the three of them, went into my bedroom, grabbed my coat, then left the apartment.

As I walked, I tried to think about whether there was any way to undo what I'd done. I sure couldn't see any, but then, I couldn't have imagined the situation turning out like it had in the first place. I had the money and the coins safely stored in a place I knew my parents would never be able to find. I had only found it myself by a complete series of accidental occurrences.

Outside our apartment, under the eaves of the roof, there was a one foot high, two feet wide, by three feet deep, depression. I had no idea why someone would have wanted to put it there, or what purpose it could have served being there. I only found it when trying to find out where a squirrel was hiding. I'd noticed him climbing over on a limb that came out to within a foot or so of our apartment. Someone had cut off that branch some years before, and now the tree had grown to where it was right at roof level. My mother sent me out to try to find out what the noise was up on the roof. The first time I went out and saw two squirrels playing on the roof. I came in to report what I'd seen, and my mother seemed okay with just knowing what was causing those sounds.

After a week of this, she'd had enough, and sent me out again, telling me to find a way to get rid of those damned squirrels. My mother didn't cuss much, so her telling me that let me know she was serious. I had my dad's ladder and was getting ready to cut off the branch the squirrels had been using, but then I slipped, and fell off of the rung I'd had my foot balanced on. As I fell, I just happened to look up and notice that one of the nails in the grey siding tiles had come out, and the tile was now hanging loose on one side, up just under the eaves. Unhurt from my fall, I went back up the ladder and cut off the offending branch. Done with that chore, I moved the ladder over to see what needed to be done to repair the slipping tile. That was when I discovered my little hiding spot.

I bought two old Army blankets from a military surplus store by our apartment. The first thing I did was to carefully re wrap, then tape all the money I had left into three bundles, using some butcher's paper I'd gotten at that same store. After that was done, I used one of the blankets to wrap the pillow case with the box and other coins, to protect it from the temperature, or from any outside moisture, and put it in the back of the hole. I put the money bundles in the other blanket and wedged it into the opening as far back as I could manage. After doing this, I got a new nail and reset the loose tile. When I was finished, you couldn't see any difference between it and the other side wall tiles. I wasn't worried about anyone finding my hiding place, not unless they tore the apartment completely down.

I had almost twelve hundred dollars, money I'd grabbed on my way out of the apartment, the rest of the money from the bundle I'd opened when I first went to get the five thousand dollars for my parents earlier that day. I walked over to an all night diner and ordered myself a banana split. This was my favorite dessert, but one I'd seldom been able to indulge in. With my mind in so much turmoil, it was difficult to get much enjoyment from the purchase.

I was still sitting in the diner, three hours later, when my father walked in the door. I didn't notice him until he slid in next to me in the booth I was sitting in. His weight made me scoot over as my butt slid on the slick seat cushion.

"Maybe we can finish our earlier conversation now, Jimbo. Tell me again where that money came from?"

I noticed that he was much calmer, and that his right eye was partially closed up from one of my punches. I felt bad about that, the eye, not him being calmer than before.

"I found it in the woods, in a satchel under a dead guy. I took the money, more than thirty thousand dollars, and replaced the satchel back to where I'd originally found it. A week later, some other kids found the body too, and they must have called the police. It was in the papers. The guy had been in a big shoot out, and five other people besides him had ended up dead. He must have lived long enough to make it over to the woods before he died. He had the money, but he was dead, so I decided to take it from him."

"You stole the money then?"

"Call it that if you want to. He was dead when I found him. The paper said the dead men were all criminals."

"You didn't know this when you took the money though, did you? Where's the rest of that money? You said it was thirty thousand dollars?"

"I have most of it left. I haven't spent too much of it on myself, except for some old coins I bought a little while back. There is almost twenty thousand left."

"Five you put in that envelope, so that leaves another five thousand missing. You said you bought some old coins, did you mean five thousand dollars worth?"

"There was this old man who wanted to sell his collection, but didn't want to let any coin dealers take advantage of him on the prices they'd pay. He put an ad in the paper, and I called him. I liked what he was selling, so we made a deal and I paid him the five thousand. Don't worry, those coins are worth a lot more than I paid him for them."

"I'm not worried about how much the coins are worth. I am worried about how a son of mine could just go around taking other people's property, and doing it without having a care in the world about whether or not doing so was plain wrong. You're a thief, Jimbo. No other way of even looking at it, either. You took something that didn't belong to you. Something you had absolutely no right to have."