The Man on the Park Bench

  ***

  The cruiser arrived at the police station in under ten minutes. The two policemen escorted Ray and Mrs. Travis up the worn concrete steps and deposited them in a waiting room, made dark with dirty windows and half drawn shades. The heavy set one guided Jack down a long hall into an interrogation room. "Wait here," he said. He left, locking the door after him. Jack looked around and wondered if the small mirror on one side was a two way window, like he’d seen many times on TV.

  What did his mother think of him now? She was crying in the squad car, with jerking sobs he had not heard from her before. Ray had tried to comfort her but said nothing to Jack about what was happening.

  Jack leaned forward at the scarred conference table, his feet entwined around his chair's rungs, and made slow, invisible circles on the tabletop with an index finger. He’d never really known his brother. He was, after all, only twelve years old when Ray went to the penitentiary. Before then he had caught only glimpses of him when he entered or left the house.

  No, that wasn't quite true. During the past three years, while lying in bed, he’d often thought of Ray's little kindnesses to him. The times he carried him on his shoulders through the snow to school, for example, because his worn shoes let water seep in. Or in the summertime when he played catch with him, because "Dad would have done it if he was here."

  He heard a key rattle in the door lock, and a different policeman came in. He was older and had a mustache that stopped just short of having handlebars. He sat at the table, rifled through a stack of papers, and looked up.

  "I understand you broke into Mason's Hardware last night," he said.

  "Yes sir."

  The policeman wrote something on his note pad. "What did you take?"

  "Well…" Jack thought a moment. "Just things, I guess. I don't remember what it all was."

  "Do you remember the electric tire pump and the shotgun? And a dozen knives?"

  "Yeah, I remember them now. There were some other things, too."

  The policeman appeared to take more notes on his notepad. Then he took his reading glasses off and put them in his shirt pocket.

  "You're full of it," he said.

  "I'm sorry?" Jack said. "What do you mean?"

  "You didn't rob that hardware store any more than the man in the moon. How come you're lying?"

  "I did, too! I just don't have a very good memory, that's all."

  "You're fuller of it than a Christmas turkey," the man said. "You didn't break in there. No way."

  "Did too." Jack glared at the man, then looked down at the table. His finger started making invisible circles again.

  The policeman stood. He smiled as he gathered his papers and put his pen in his pocket. "We caught a guy a few minutes ago who had all the hardware store things in his car," he said. "He’s in the next room right now, spilling his guts. Now you get on out of here."

  Jack ran down the hall ahead of the policeman, into the waiting room. He ran to his mother, sitting on a hard wooden chair and hugged her with such fierceness that her glasses almost fell from her nose.

  "What on earth?" she said. "What's got into you?"

  The old policeman caught up and stood watching. "Damned if I know. All I know is that your boys didn't do that burglary. Neither one."

  She squeezed her sons to her, then wiped her eyes. "Well can't you help an old woman up?” she said. “How am I supposed to get dinner on the table if we waste our time sittin’ here?"

  Heroes on Parade

  A parade wasn’t even scheduled. But there it was,

  and only she and Margaret could see it.