In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [71]
“That’ll teach you to listen to me about all that junk you always eat.”
I finally fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion.
The next morning for a few brief rapturous minutes I had completely forgotten that I was a doomed man. And then, halfway through my Wheaties, it all came back. My spoon hung in midair. The sun streamed through the kitchen windows. My mother’s Chinese-red chenille bathrobe hunched over the stove, making coffee. All the old familiar things of my former carefree life lay about me. The cracked plastic radio on top of the refrigerator, the old kitchen table, my Little Orphan Annie shake-up mug, the blue glass Shirley Temple sugar and cream set which meant so much to my mother, all part of a Better Time.
After school that day I went through the motions of ball-playing, a wizened, care-bent figure at second base, knowing full well that retribution was inevitably drawing nigh. It had to come tonight!
My father usually got home from work about six, just in time for supper. We were expected to be in the house no later than five-thirty, washed up, and ready to eat. Tonight I lagged in the gloom, trying to forestall the inevitable. My fellow ballplayers had long since melted off into the twilight. In the distance I could hear my mother shouting for me through the kitchen door, and finally, painfully, I dragged myself home.
Staring out at me from the bathroom mirror—hollow eyed, lined death’s head of a face, covered with Lifebuoy suds.
And then it came. A great angry roar of flying cinders, the Graham-Paige booming up the driveway, roaring around the back angrily, and then—silence.
The water trickled feebly in the sink. My kid brother blabbed somewhere off in the distance. I clung weakly to the towel rack, waiting for the fatal blow.
The kitchen screen door slammed. There was now no escape! A brief thought of drinking iodine passed through my tortured cranium. They’d feel sorry then! But would they? They would probably welcome it, after what I had done!
I hear my mother’s voice from the kitchen:
“What’s the matter?”
And then a bellow of inchoate rage. I knew any minute thunderous footsteps would head for the bathroom. Already I could feel the sobs welling to the surface.
And then my father’s voice, booming in rage:
“Those bastards down at the parking lot! They banged up the fender on the Graham and the bastards deny it!!”
I clung to the sink, bells ringing in my skull. I had been witness to an actual miracle. I would never again be an Unbeliever!
The voice angrily continued:
“I drove it in that lot absolutely perfect! Not a scratch on it!! Come on out and look at it!”
Again the door slammed and silence reigned. I tottered into the kitchen, weak and shuddering with relief. I peeked out of the back window and I could see my mother and father angrily stalking back and forth around the rear fender. They came up the back porch, with my mother saying:
“That’s terrible. Isn’t there something you can do with the Better Business Bureau? Why don’t you call the Better Business Bureau? Don’t let them get away with it. You’re just too easy on people.”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘EASY’!? I HOLLERED FOR TWENTY MINUTES! The guy says that car wasn’t touched! The lying bastard!!”
“Well, I’m going to call them myself. I’m going to call them.”
She sweeps past me into the dining room, to the phone. My father plumps down at the kitchen table, white with rage. Off in the living room, the sound of my kid brother crying could be heard. He always did this when there was trouble.
I did nothing, just looked innocent. My mother slammed back into the kitchen.
“You’re going to get satisfaction now. I really told them. It’s that lot across from the Real Estate office, right? Across from the Real Estate office?”
“Yeah.”
Never in my life, before or since, have I enjoyed meat loaf so much. Mashed potatoes and peas and carrots