Read Online How Loveta Got Her Baby by Nicholas Ruddock - Free Book Online

They opened early there because, for the owners, there was nothing better to do. A perfect place, really, for customers. Aaron was like a cripple up the steps but they landed him safe and sound at the first table. Henry ordered green Jello for Queenie, which made her happy right off. They hung Aaron’s coat up on a hook beside the table, and they watched it drip, start puddles on the floor.
    â€œAaron, that’s the first time ever that I ran someone over.”
    Aaron had a sip of his tea and shook his head.
    â€œHenry, I lost it all. Lost all of my money.”
    â€œRan over your legs, though, that’s all. Slow and smooth, and it looks like it was pretty much painless.”
    â€œNine thousand dollars, cash money. Oh my God.”
    Henry then added a squirt of extra Top Whip to Queenie’s Jello. It was good Jello, firm and well cooled. She picked up a lime-green cube of it in her fingers, turned it this way and that, held it up to the light and examined the surface striations.
    â€œThe money was like a package, solid, wrapped in one of those fat elastic bands. I dropped it out there, somewhere.”
    â€œHad I driven, Aaron, I tell you, with less care or without the girls, I’d have flattened your head. We would not be having this conversation.”
    â€œI think I must have pulled it out by mistake. Got my gloves out of my pocket, that’s when it must have happened. Fell out. I patted my pocket where the money was. Where’s it gone? Fallen to the ground, that’s the only place. Nothing but darkness. Down I went on my hands and my knees, the whole night long, four, five hours and the fog, what, an inch away? Not even that. A blind man, hopeless. Finally, I’m played out, I lie down. Bang, sometime later you run me over.”
    Aaron Stoodley was making no sense. He never had anything like that kind of money.
    â€œA thousand dollars I’d give, as a reward, to get hold of that money again.”
    Talking to Aaron that morning was like squeezing the bottom of a tube of Pepsodent. There was toothpaste in there somewhere but it took a half hour to drag his story out in some kind of sequence.
    It seems that about three weeks ago Aaron got a letter with two names he never heard of at the top corner. Lawyers in Halifax, it turned out. They wanted to give Mr. Aaron Stoodley nine thousand dollars because some relatives of his had died over there, on the mainland, and somehow the money they left had come down to him. These distant relations had all died from botulism, sadly—they were young—all at one go, their food full of poison and down they went, all in a terrible heap. He asked his grandmother, Priscilla, “We’re related to these boys?” “Yes, yes it’s terrible, death visited upon them so cruelly. Such young men. Cousins, what a shame.”
    Aaron drove all the way to St. John’s, to the bank, as instructed, to see if it could possibly be true.
    To his eternal wonderment and surprise, it was. He was handed the money by a lady in a suit. A real cheque with red numbers, but Aaron asked for it, “Please, please, in cash.” “No problem, Mr. Stoodley, here you go,” and she wrapped the dollar bills and snapped a big elastic band around them, cinching them at the waist.
    He left the bank and walked down Water Street like a merchant prince.
    Queenie switched to red-cube Jello for her second helping. She was quiet, always deep in thought for a girl her age, “still waters” as Eunice said. She wrinkled her forehead. She was never any trouble at all to take care of. Read her a book, sing her a song, she was happy.
    She dipped her hand in and out of her purse and looked at Aaron Stoodley.
    â€œDespite my riches, Henry,” Aaron said, “I was still suffering, I was sore at heart. How’d you feel if your distant relatives up and died like that, so many, so young, and so all at once?”
    â€œI wouldn’t