Spirits and Demons

A & W Rootbeer Stand

                                                           Part Thirty Two

  It was only a matter of time before Mike and his siblings would be discovered living alone in their grandmother's house. Spring had arrived bringing with it a hint of summer warmth. A loud knock was heard upon the door and Mike, Tommy, and Kathy lay flat on the floor so as to not be seen by the state agency people peeking through the windows. They lay quiet, listening to the authorities speaking loud, saying they knew someone was in the house. Mike held his hands over Tommy and Kathy's mouths as they lay still crying quietly. Being warned many times they had to be quiet when the authorities would show up, they still cried in fear of being taken away. Thirty minutes later when Mike was sure he heard the cars leaving, he took Tommy and Kathy by their hands and guided them out of the back door. Ricky and Ronny came out of hiding and met them, they'd been hiding in the garage behind their grandmother's stored furniture. They admitted they had been seen and followed home by the authorities and they'd taken a shortcut through the woods to the railroad tracks near the garage. Mike took his siblings over the railroad tracks to a nearby A & W Rootbeer stand and ordered a frosted glass rootbeer for all of them. He then used the pay phone and called their mother at Carl's bar where she was working at to tell her what had happened. Their mother related to him to wait at the rootbeer stand until she sent a taxi to pick them up and bring them to the bar. While his siblings were drinking their rootbeers, Mike wrote a note for Jimmy Don and ran back across the railroad tracks, leaving the note on the kitchen table for him to let him know where everyone was at. Mike arrived back at the A & W just in time for the taxi and twenty minutes later tey were dropped off at the bar. Their mother made them wait behind the bar so as to not be seen by the police. She asked around and got the name of a babysitter, then she called Carl to come and tend to the bar while she took her children to the babysitter.

  Miss Lee was a giant of a woman with a large mole in the center of her forehead. She lived in a two story house with lots of upstairs bedrooms though the children she babysitted were all kept downstairs on pallets and in baby beds. Virginia was so relieved to have found a place where she knew her children would be safe and not taken away by the state authorities. It was expensive paying for her six children to stay at Miss Lee's yet she paid what she could when she could. Tommy and Kathy adapted as well as could be expected though Jimmy Don, Mike, Ricky, and Ronny could hardly bear staying there amidst all the crying babies all the time. To have to go to sleep at an early hour and live by Miss Lee's rules was too much for them. There were some crazy moments there for all the bedrooms on the second floor were rented to single guys. On weekends many of the guys would be drunk from partying at the local bars and would return to their apartments carrying on loud and drunk with females thay'd picked up somewhere. Three o'clock in the morning one of the guys and his date were drunk arguing and they woke everyone in the house. Miss Lee couldn't calm them down as much as she tried. The guy's date clad only in her panties and bra, ran out of the back door screaming to the alley and he gave chase. Miss Lee called the police and after a thorough search the police had found the couple making love on the neighbor's lawn. One policeman handed the lady's bra and panties he'd found in the alley to Miss Lee and she immediately put them in a brown paper sack and asked the police to leave when she discovered the couple had made up. It was all too funny and both policemen were grinning and laughing as they left. Miss Lee offered them some home baked cookies and sent them on their way. The very next night another bachelor who rented one of Miss Lee's upstairs apartments was caught breaking into a cigarette vending machine that sat outside the Exxon service station across the street. He was terribly drunk and his excuse was the vending machine wouldn't take his coins. The facts came out that he was on parole and he received a ten year prison sentence. If that wasn't enough it seemed all the excitement got Ricky going for he was giggling madly and was caught making a retarded girl eat a waterbug and Miss Lee called Virginia relating to her that she couldn't watch her kids anymore. After all the police trouble with the drunk bachelors, the city took her license away and closed her babysitting business down. The police stated she couldn't continue her babysitting business and all the parents were called to come and get their children. Mike pondered the great memories he'd have of the late nights looking at the moon and stars, smoking marijuana on the roof with some of the bachelors and their girlfriends. The times he and Jimmy Don had climbed out the window and went to the all night bowling alley to play pinball and pool. Mike had no idea where he and his siblings would end up staying next.