A Little Yellow Dog

That was the first time I didn’t hit him.

“Listen, I’m upset. I’ve had a really hard day. You got hundreds of dollars in your closet and I got to know if you’re going to jail or not. So tell me where it came from or I might get mad.” I said that all in a calm voice but anyone with half an ear could have heard the violence underneath.

“It’s ours.”

“And where did we get money like that?”

“You know,” Jesus said. I almost smiled because it was so rare to hear the boy flustered. “I saved it.”

“Where’d you get it from?” I asked.

It was during the boy’s long silence that I didn’t hit him for the second time.

“Well?”

“I got it from you,” Jesus said simply.

“From me?”

I realized that the palms of my hands had gotten hot because suddenly they cooled.

Jesus squinted at me, looking like a sailor trying to peer through a high wind. He nodded.

“You stole from me?”

He didn’t have an answer.

“Juice, I’m talking to you. This ain’t nuthin’ like takin’ twenty-five cents from my change drawer.”

“I took it,” he said. “I took it …”

“Where? Where’d you take it from?” I was thinking about the cash box that I kept hidden under a sloppy pile of bricks at the back of the garage. The garage was locked, and there was a lot of brick. No burglar would find it, but a healthy inquisitive boy might.

“I took it from the grocery money,” Jesus said.

“Don’t lie to me now, boy. I don’t give you that kinda money for groceries.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’re you talkin’ ’bout?” I took a violent step toward the table. Jesus was up and around the other side with all the speed and graceful awkwardness of a young deer.

“If you give me ten dollars for stuff and if I save some coupons and stuff, then I took the money I saved and put it in my money box.”

“That’s some shit, boy.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I did too take it out of the shopping money.”

“If you did that, then where’d all these big bills come from? You didn’t get any twenty-dollar bills in change from Safeway.”

“But if I saved up enough change and dollars then I’d use them and keep the big bills.” Jesus was almost pleading. I knew that every word was true.

“You been stealin’ from me for years?” The rage in my chest was beyond any anger I could have felt at my son. It was Principal Newgate, Idabell Turner, and Sergeant Sanchez that made me rage. I knew it but I just couldn’t help myself.

“You know, Jesus,” I said, “the only reason I don’t kick the shit outta you is ’cause I want to. We gonna talk about this later, but in the meantime I don’t want you spendin’ one goddam dime’a that money. Do you understand me?”

He started to say something but then nodded instead.

“Go on then.” I wanted to talk more to him but I was just too angry.

BY TWO A.M. I’d gone through every scrap of paper in Holland Gasteau’s fat wallet. I supposed that the man was Holland Gasteau because his driver’s license said so. I also figured that there was something wrong with him. He had over seven hundred dollars in his pocket. An everyday workingman only carried around what he needed for a day or two—all the rest of an honest man’s money was out paying bills or stacked in the bank for a rainy day. So Mr. Gasteau was either a fool, trying to be a big man on the street flashing his money roll, or he was a crook. Seeing the condition I found him in I figured that he was both.

But he was a workingman too.

There were fourteen check stubs from the Los Angeles Examiner shoved in his wallet. He’d received seventy-four dollars and nineteen cents a week up until mid-April of that year. There were six or seven racing tickets—two-dollar bets.

But the most interesting thing in his wallet was a note, a letter actually, scratched in peacock blue in the smallest print that I have ever seen. It was written on a sheet of paper that was half the size of a standard typewriting leaf.

Idabell you know that I love you and that I need you too. It’s only me and you in this world and I would never NEVER hurt you unless it was the best for both of us. I only took your peepee dog because that was the only way to make you do what’s going to make us rich and happy and you won’t have to work anymore unless you want it and people won’t believe that they can walk on me because they know that they got more money in their pockets while I’m down at the paper shack on my knees on the dirt floor.

I’m too classy for all that Idabell. You know I am. I know you’re out there right now taking a chance but that can’t be helped. Only you could do it and so I had to make the decision for what was the best for the both of us. Don’t worry. If you get in trouble I will take the blame. If you do it all fine then you could have Peepee and a house that’s paid for and a man you could be proud of. But because you know you got to trust me and then everything will work out fine.

I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND ALL OF IT. I