Read Online The Boy With Penny Eyes by Al Sarrantonio - Free Book Online Page B

But the uneasiness of the table was eventually replaced by amazement as they watched Billy eat. It was as if the boy had not touched food in months. Though it was obvious that someone had trained him in table manners, he ate his food—three helpings of everything—with an almost frightening zeal. It was like watching a highly trained animal eat with a knife and fork. When he had finished .a second piece of apple pie and was holding his plate out for more, Jacob Beck could contain his amazement no longer.
    "Good Lord," he said with a laugh, "you're a bottomless pit!"
    "I'm hungry," Billy replied.
    From the other side of the table, Mary Beck stared silently at the boy.
    "When was the last time you had a sit-down meal like this?" Jacob asked.
    Billy paused before answering. "Four months."
    "Heavens!" He reached out for the boy, but the look on his wife's face made his hand fall to the table before it settled on Billy's. "And just what have you been eating for the past four months?"
    "Bread, mostly. Sometimes I found dead things."
    "Dead things?" Christine said, her voice filled with revulsion.
    "Raccoons. Once, a dead snake."
    It was the way he said it, the cool even voice, more than what he said, that sent a small chill through Jacob Beck.
    "Yech," Christine said, covering her mouth with her napkin.
    "I think we've had enough of this conversation," Mary said coolly. "Jacob, talk to the boy in your study." She got up and left the table, Christine still making faces and pushing away the remainder of her uneaten dessert.

    The boy sat still as a statue. To keep their talk from looking like an interrogation, Beck had moved the lamp away from the edge of the desk, where it didn't cut across the boy's face so sharply. He also turned on the lamp on the side table near the door, to soften up the room. He'd always thought of this room as a friendly place, with warm light and himself ready to listen to any problem with an open ear, but somehow, with this boy sitting perfectly straight in the chair in front of him, he couldn't dim the feeling that the room was in the cellar of some police station and he was the tough cop with the rubber hose in his back pocket.
    "Did you have enough to eat?" he said to the boy, putting as much wry warmth into his voice as he could. Long ago he had mastered the art of voice, as many professionals who counsel for a living do, and no matter how he thought or felt, he could always automatically make his tone soothing or cajoling, whatever was needed.
    "No," Billy said simply.
    Jacob put surprise on his face. "You nearly ate us out of house and home!"
    "I'm hungry."
    "Before we go to bed later, I'll see if I can sneak a little snack out of the refrigerator." Billy gazed silently at him.
    Beck leaned back in his swivel chair, putting his hands behind his head. He looked down at Billy from under partly closed eyes. "You know," he said, letting his manner change from conspiratorial to serious, "you present quite a little problem for me."
    Billy sat motionless.
    Beck angled forward, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. "Would you like to stay here with us for a while?"
    "Yes," Billy said.
    "All right," Beck replied, smiling. "I think we can arrange that. My wife and I would be very pleased if you would stay until we can find out where you belong."
    "Here."
    "Excuse me?"
    "I belong here."
    Beck tried not to register the surprise he felt. He let a moment go by, then said, "What I'm really leading to, Billy, is that I have to find out where you came from, who your parents are, where you belong. You know what I mean, don't you?"
    "The woman I lived with died."
    "I see. Was she your mother?"
    "No."
    "Do you have a mother?"
    Billy was silent. Then he said, "I lived with a woman named Melinda, who ran a home, but she died. So I left."
    "You mean a foster home? Wasn't anyone there when she died?"
    "No"
    Jacob Beck picked up a pencil and began to tap the eraser end on the blotter of his desk. "Wasn't there