The Moffats (16 page)

So on they went. Way at the end of the street, on the harbor's edge, they could see the big sign. COAL. The letters were so high you could see them a mile away. The nearer they came to the water, the keener the wind howled. They talked little, keeping their noses buried in their mufflers. At last they reached the coal yards. Here there was a little protection from the wind, but goodness, how cold it was! The cold crept inside their mackintoshes and made their bodies shrink into tight little balls.

A big man with icicles in his mustache and a face blackened with coal dust asked them what they wanted.

"A bushel of coal, please," said Joe, handing the man the burlap bag.

The big man led the way to the coal sheds, where each different kind of black coal had its own stall. The coal man filled the bag with the shining black nuggets.

"Boy, oh, boy," whispered Jane, "don't you wish't all that coal was in our own barn?"

"All right," said the man, lugging the bag to the sled. "A dollar and twenty cents."

Joe felt in his pocket for the money. It wasn't there! His heart leaped into his throat. Hadn't he put that five-dollar bill in his coat pocket? The little pocket with the flap that buttoned? He felt again very carefully. There was no hole in it. But the money certainly was not there. His hands trembled as he began hastily to feel in all the other pockets.

Jane looked at him in helpless horror. The man stood there like a rock and said nothing. Joe gulped. In all his pockets, nothing! Could he have lost it? Lost all the money they had?

"Maybe you took the money," he said to Jane, knowing very well this wasn't the case, but hoping anyway.

Jane shook her head but she felt in her pockets. Oh, if only her fingers would close on that worn, little black purse! But no, nothing!

The two stood there in front of the coal man in the utmost dejection. Between the gusts of wind they could hear the ice making in the harbor. Joe went through his pockets again. Perhaps he had missed it? No. There was nothing that his fingers could possibly mistake for money.

They were so dismayed they could say nothing. Silently the coal man took the burlap bag off the sled, dragged it across the yard with a grunt, dumped the coal back into its shed, handed the empty burlap bag back to Joe, took out a quid of tobacco and said:

"No money, no coal."

Jane and Joe trudged out of the coal yards. The empty sled spun around crazily on the ice behind them. Jane didn't even feel like being pulled on the sled. It was hard not to cry.

"Shucks!" said Joe. "We'll find it. We'll retrace our steps exactly. We'll go slow and look on both sides of the path."

But the wind was now on their backs and urged them up the street swiftly. It laid giant palms on their backs and tried to hurry them along. The empty sled kept knocking into Joe's heels. They fought the wind every inch of the way, trying to go slowly to look for the purse.

Once Jane thought she saw it. "There it is," she screamed, pointing to something black under a street lamp. But it was only a small black mitten some child had lost.

Joe was looking on the right side. Jane was looking on the left. They didn't miss one inch of the way. They didn't see the oranges in the grocery store window this time nor did they notice Mr. Pudge driving by in a real sleigh, a real sleigh on runners. Why, you hardly ever saw a real sleigh anymore, but Jane and Joe didn't notice it.

Twilight deepened. The bright yellow trolleys were crowded with men coming home from their work in New Haven. Mr. Shoemaker, Mr. Ellenbach, and Mr. Horn all got off at New Dollar Street and walked up the street talking and joking together. They turned their collars up and thrashed their arms about to keep warm. It was good to have company, to smell Mr. Ellenbach's cigar, to hear Mr. Shoemaker's hearty laugh, thought Jane.

But the darker it grew, the more false alarms they had about the lost purse. Every shadow from every piece of ice or snow was pounced upon, but with diminishing fervor. And here they were turning into the gate of the yellow house with no coal and no money.

The little kerosene lamp shone through the feathery ferns of the frosted windowpane. They wiped their feet on the doormat and entered. They stood disconsolately for some seconds, blinking their eyes and blowing their noses. They listened to the sounds coming from other parts of the house that indicated what the rest of the family was doing. Mama was in the Grape Room, running the sewing machine like sixty to finish some of those middy blouses. Sylvie was preparing the supper in the kitchen and singing a song Mama had been teaching her, a French song called "Au Clair de la Lune." She would sing some of the lines and then call out to Mama, "Was that right, Mama?"

And Mama would stop the sewing machine long enough to sing out the right words and tune.

Every time Mama stopped the whirring of the sewing machine, they could hear a rattling noise that indicated Rufus was playing with his marbles on the uncarpeted floor of the Grape Room.

Joe and Jane stood warming their hands by the potbellied stove in the sitting room, feeling very much out of the family scene. How could they tell Mama about the five dollars gone? It would be easier almost to go back out of the house and never come back. That's what they thought. "The last we'll have," she had said, "until these sailor suits are finished." Goodness only knew when that might be! No coal until then, did that mean? Joe looked at the coal scuttle. Just half full. It wouldn't even last through the night.

Sylvie had heard them come in. She danced into the sitting room, still singing. Now she sang, "Oh, where is the coal?" to the tune of "Au Clair de la Lune..."

Jane said, "We lost the money."

"Lost the money!" repeated Sylvie, aghast.

"Yes, I lost the money," said Joe.

Rufus came into the sitting room on all fours in pursuit of an aggie that had gotten out of his hands and gone careening from corner to corner.

"Lost the money!" repeated Rufus, forgetting the runaway marble.

The four stood around the stove in consternation. How could they tell Mama? Their last five dollars!

The whirring of the sewing machine stopped and stayed stopped. Mama went into the kitchen to see how Sylvie was getting along with the dinner. Not finding her there, she entered the sitting room.

"Goodness! What long faces! Whatever is the matter?"

"I lost the money," said Joe.

"Lost the money?" said Mama.

For a few seconds there was silence. A hot coal fell from the grate and rolled to the carpet, where Mama swiftly scooped it up with the coal shovel before it had a chance to burn a hole. Joe knew he had never felt as miserable as this before in his whole life. It was certainly a far worse feeling than the time he had had to do the sailor's hornpipe, and nearly as bad as the night Rufus was so ill. This thing was his fault entirely. What could he do to make up for it? He prayed for a tremendous snowstorm. He might earn it back by shoveling sidewalks. But there wasn't likely to be snow with the weather this cold. The other Moffats, knowing how miserable he was feeling as he stood there with his hands stretched to the stove and his face as expressionless as that doorknob there, felt scarcely less miserable.

Mama finally said, "Well, if it's gone, it's gone. We'll manage somehow. If I work late tonight, I might finish some of the suits by tomorrow."

This was horrible, thought Joe. Mama work late because he had lost the money! He just couldn't help having a huge lump in his throat. He blinked his eyes hard and fixed them with a stare on the mantel. Of course he wasn't going to make matters worse by crying in front of them all. As he stared up there, he gradually became aware of a small black purse on the clock. Why ... why ... why, there it was!

"Oh," he gasped. The relief was almost too great to bear. "There it is, there it is! I musta laid it on the clock when I was warmin' my mittens by the stove. I remember now. That's what I did."

Joe's spirits climbed to the sky. He took a shin-donnegan over every chair. He grabbed the purse, pulled his cap down over his ears, and ran out of the house. He snatched his Flexible Flyer and was halfway up the street before Jane caught up with him.

"You don't have to come again if you don't want," said Joe.

"I do want," said Jane. "Mama said you could wait though, and go in the morning before school if you'd ruther."

"D'ruther go now. Get on," he ordered.

Jane sat on the sled and Joe felt so good he ran like a racehorse, kicking bits of ice and snow into Jane's lap all the way to the end of New Dollar Street. When they turned the corner, the wind was too strong for this. So Joe gave the rope to Jane and pushed her instead by the shoulders. She bent over like the letter C and listened to the hard scrunching of Joe's heels in the hard snow.

"Comin' back'll be easy," he panted.

"Yup," she answered.

When they arrived at the coal yard, it was inky black. The man with the icicles in his whiskers was locking up the office. He had a smoky oil lantern in his hands and said, "Too late for coal tonight. Scoot!"

Scoot? Not Joe. This time he'd get his coal.

"We been here before today," he said.

The man raised the smoky lantern and peered into Joe's face. Then into Jane's. They held their breath.

"H-m-m. Well, come along." And he led the way across the coal yard. It was pitch-black now and the children kept close to the man with the lantern. Jane clutched Joe by the arm. This was a hobgoblin kind of a place, she thought, looking to the left and right. Suddenly the black was dispelled by the appearance of the moon. The wind had tossed aside its mantle of clouds for a time and there the moon was, radiant.

"Look how fast it's goin'," said Jane.

"Yeah," said Joe. "Only it's the clouds that's goin', not the moon."

As the man shoveled the coal into the bag again, the children walked to the edge of the wharf. The harbor looked as though it were frozen tight. But far out they could see a black space where the water still defied the cold.

"Boy, oh, boy, I'd hate to fall into that water," said Joe, shivering as they returned to their sled. The man lugged the bag over to them and with loud grunts placed it on their sled. Joe handed him the five-dollar bill. The moon disappeared again. So the man had to count the change out of his dirty black canvas bag by the light of the lantern. Joe bent close, too, in order to see that the change was right.