IT IS TOO MUCH to say I waited for the cover of night the way Herman had poised himself behind the lines to go out into the dark of war to forage, but I did make myself hold back, tingling to go and do it, until long after everything in this battling household went quiet.
Finally swinging out of bed, I hurried into my clothes, Tuffy-wrapped arrowhead in my pocket for luck, and slipped into the moccasins. Cracked the door open, listening for any sound downstairs. There was none whatsoever except that nighttime not-quite-stillness of a house holding people deep asleep. Quiet as a shadow I crept down and into the sewing room. I didn’t know what I was going to say if I got caught at this. Something would have to come. It usually did.
Almost the instant I entered the small darkened room, I blundered into the cot, barking my shin on the metal frame and causing a thump that seemed to me loud as thunder.
Sucking in my breath against the hurt, I froze in place for what seemed an eternity, until I convinced myself the sleepers had not heard. Burning up as I was to get this done, but not daring to put on the lights in the room, I waited until my eyes adjusted to the dark and the furnishings in the room took form, if barely. What I was after had to be somewhere in here. Aunt Kate’s purse hung next to the door as always, but I knew better than to risk going into it. Tightfisted as she was, she would keep track of every cent she was carrying. No, in any household I knew anything about, there was a Mason jar where loose change, the chickenfeed, was emptied when people cleared out their pockets or purses of too much small silver. Normally kept in a kitchen cabinet or on a bedroom dresser, but from what I had seen, not in this case, undoubtedly to keep even the smallest coins out of Herman’s reach. That stash must be, ought to be, had to be in here in the vicinity of her purse, something like hunter instinct insisted in me.
I cautiously hobbled over to where the sewing machine was located. If I was right, a Singer model this fancy might have a small light beneath the arm of the machine to shine down on close work. My blind search ultimately fumbled onto a toggle that switched on a small bulb above the needle and router, perfect for my purpose. In its glow I could pick out objects shelved around the room, stacks and stacks of cloth and pattern books and such. But nothing like a jar holding the loose change of canasta winnings.
Doubt was eating away at my courage pretty fast—maybe I was loco to even try this and ought to sneak back upstairs to bed. Instead, Manitou or some similar spirit of the miraculous guided my hand into my pants pocket, where I squeezed the arrowhead for all the luck it might have. That steadied me enough to take another look around the room. My last hope, and it did not appear to be much of one, was a standard low cabinet next to the sewing machine, designed to hold thread and attachments. Quietly as possible I pulled out drawer after drawer, encountering a world of spools of thread and gizmos for making buttonholes and ruffles and so on, until finally I reached a drawer that jingled when I opened it.
I dipped my fingers into the discovery, very much like a pirate sifting gold doubloons in a treasure chest. This was it, coins inches deep and loose and rattling to the touch, nickels, dimes, and quarters, quarters, quarters, some in bank wrap rolls. My heart rate and breathing both quickened like crazy. There was so much accumulated small silver, a dozen or so quarters and the rest in chickenfeed would scarcely make a dent in it.
Biting my lip in concentration, I sorted out onto the platform of the sewing machine in the pool of light about the same proportion of quarters and dimes and nickels to make the drawer’s holdings seem as even as ever. There. I had it knocked, my rightful five dollars of the hard-won canasta pot. I was wrapping my withdrawal, as I saw it, in my hanky and about to pocket it for the journey through the dark back up to the attic, when the voice came:
“Are you done, you little thief?”
She was practically filling the doorway, in a nightdress as tentlike as the muumuu and wearing those fuzzy slippers that were noiseless on the living room rug. At first my tongue did fail me as I stared at a greatly irate Aunt Kate and she at me, an outpouring of words no problem for her. “I was on my way to the bathroom when I noticed this funny little glow from in here. It’s not like me to leave the sewing machine on like that, is it. And what do I find, Mister Smarty Pants, but you stealing for all you’re worth.”
I didn’t know anything to do but fight back. “Why is this stealing when I won the pot in the canasta game just as much as you did, remember? I bet Minnie Zettel got her share every time the two of you won. So why can’t I?”
“I went over that with you in the car—”
“And you told me you and Herman were headed for the poorhouse, but looky here, you have money you just throw in a drawer.”