Justice Done

Two Bits

On the hot July day on which he reached his majority, Andrew Masters came into a handsome fortune, yet at three o’clock that very afternoon he was focusing his attention on a twentyfive-cent piece. His contemplation of this infinitesimal portion of his wealth took place beneath a large, shady tree near Jefferson Road, just outside the western Pennsylvania town whose oil fields had made his father rich. His father had not owned the oil, but in his youth he had developed a special pump that oilmen needed. In the early 1870s, during the Pennsylvania oil boom that followed the war years, the oilmen had bought a great many pumps, bailers, cables, and other equipment from Mr. Masters, so that his oil tool and supply company became one of the largest in the country. With a shrewd eye for a good investment, his riches increased.

His charming manners and unflagging industry made him appealing to a handsome woman who came from an excellent and well-to-do family. Her family did not approve of the match; they were horrified when the young couple defied them by eloping. While Andrew’s maternal grandparents had sworn never to allow his mother to inherit a cent, they had softened their hearts upon Andrew’s birth-hence the fortune their first grandson now found at his disposal.

Yet it was upon twenty-five cents and not his several millions that young Andrew meditated now. He had spent the last few hours beneath the tree, knowing that he was not delaying any family festivities; there would be no cake or candles, no champagne or caviar. In the Masters family, this date had not been celebrated as Andrew’s birthday since the day Andrew turned seven. For more than a dozen years, the first day of July had been commemorated only as “The Day We Lost Little Charlie.”

Andrew himself thought of it in this way, and was as silent and stiff with remembered grief as were his parents. The manner in which his younger brother Charlie was taken from the family was destined to make this day infamous to all who remembered the events of fourteen years ago, and if there were fewer and fewer persons who recalled it, the Masterses would never be numbered among those who had forgotten.

On his seventh birthday, Andrew sat beneath this same old oak tree. In his mind’s eye, he could even now clearly see Charlie, a cherub faced five-year-old, extending his small hand toward his brother and saying, “For your birthday, Andrew. I want you to have it.”

In the hand was a small, unpainted wooden soldier, one whittled from a scrap of pine by Old Davey, the head groom of Papa’s fine stable. Compared to the mechanical tin clown or the horsehair rocking horse up in their nursery, it was a poor sort of toy, but Andrew had coveted it. Still, he resisted temptation.

“Thank you, Charlie,” he said. “But I can’t take it away from you. Old Davey gave it to you.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the rattle of an old buggy coming up the road. The horse was sturdy but unremarkable, while the buggy was out-and-out shabby, nothing like the smart surrey or the four-in-hand drag or any of the other fine carriages owned by the Masterses. This particular buggy was not unknown to the boys, for they had seen it only a week before. Andrew smiled, soon recognizing the two men in the buggy as those who had given them four peppermint sticks and a dozen pieces of taffy on that occasion. Mama did not approve of this sort of cheap candy, and the brothers had delighted in secretly consuming these confections not an hour before their supper.

“Hello, boys!” the driver called, pulling up. “Ain’t ya lookin’ fine today.” Andrew could not return the compliment. The driver, who had told them his name was Jack, was a short man whose dark hair curled wildly around the edges of his cap. His bushy eyebrows put Andrew in mind of a caterpillar race. One of his eyeteeth was missing, and the remainder of his smile was tobacco stained. The man sitting next to him appeared to be a stretched out version of the driver, tall and thin, but with the same brows and fewer teeth. Jack introduced him as Phil. “Me and Phil is brothers, jest like you two. C’mon and join us, we’re gonna buy us some fireworks!”

As Independence Day was only three days away, Charlie thought this would be a splendid adventure. Andrew hesitated. “I’ll ask Mama,” he said.

The men laughed. “Yer a mama’s boy, ain’t ya?” the thin one chided.

“Come on,” Charlie urged him. “It will be a secret, just between us two!”

Andrew, who could only resist so much temptation in one day, gave in to this one. The men helped the boys up into the dusty conveyance, and crowded in after them. Andrew sat between the men, while Phil held Charlie awkwardly on his lap. They were hardly settled when Jack snapped the reins. The buggy lurched forward and they traveled at a quick pace down the road.

Andrew began to regret his decision almost immediately. The buggy was not well-sprung, and its jolting motion jarred his teeth. Phil and Jack, he thought, had not bathed in weeks. When they reached the road that would take them a short distance into town, Jack turned the wrong way. Andrew told him so, which brought a sharp look from Phil, but Jack merely explained that if they bought the fireworks in a place where his family was so well-known, someone would likely tell his father all about it. Imagining his father in an angry mood was enough to curtail further protest from Andrew.

The road smoothed a little, and Jack began to sing certain songs, those which he undoubtedly knew to be of a nature guaranteed to intrigue small, well-mannered boys, and Andrew and Charlie eagerly took up the task of learning the melodies and (most especially) the lyrics of these odes to bodily functions. They had never heard the like before, not even from Old Davey, whose sporadic bouts of cursing they had been thrilled to overhear on a few memorable occasions.

After a time, though, Andrew’s enthusiasm waned and he began to look around him. He was unfamiliar with his surroundings, and began to worry that they had been gone too long. Phil, he noticed, was eyeing him in an unfriendly fashion.

Jack seemed to notice this, too, and said, “Nearly there, Phil. Don’t git yerself huffed.”

Phil grunted and sat back.

“Lookit here,” Jack said, pointing ahead. “There’s the little town we been lookin’ for. Firecrackers’ll be sold at a place jest on t’other side of town.”

It was not much of a town, and Andrew thought he would be happy to be finished with their mission and on his way home again. To his surprise, though, Jack halted the buggy, pulling up across the street from a small store.

“Andy,” Jack said, “Charlie here says it’s yer birthday. Z’at true?”

Andrew nodded.

“Well, I think Mr. Andy here should get something special, then, don’t you agree, Phil?”

“Sure,” Phil said.

Jack reached into one of his pockets and produced a small coin purse, and from this, a quarter. He handed the coin to Andrew and said, “Go on, there’s a store right over there. Spend it on anything you like. Two bits, jest for yerself.”

One might think that a child raised among the luxuries of the Masters household might snub a mere twenty-five cents, but it was, in fact, the first coin that had ever been given to Andrew. Nothing so mundane as legal tender had ever before been allowed within his grasp: all purchases, all exchanges of money, were in the hands of his elders and their employees. Never before had he enjoyed anything that might be called his own money.

He glanced up from the coin to see a look of envy on his brother’s face. He knew what he saw there well enough-from not long after the day Charlie was born, Andrew had often worn that look of envy. The fair-haired, sweet-tempered Charlie was more often in favor with his parents and the servants than was Andrew, who tended to be what Mama called “a willful child.” This look of envy, coming from Charlie, was almost exclusively limited to those rare occasions when the boys were visited by their grandparents, the only people who looked upon Andrew with anything resembling favoritism. And now, staring at the shiny coin, Charlie was positively green.

For Andrew, the quarter’s value grew.

“Go on,” Jack was saying. “We’ll wait here for you.”

“I wanna go with you,” Charlie cried as Jack helped Andrew down from the buggy.

“It’s my birthday,” Andrew said, turning his back on his brother, skipping his way to the store.

The store was of a type his parents would undoubtedly disdain. The windows were dusty, as were the tops of many of the jars and cans on the shelves. But to a boy of seven with two bits in his pocket, it was a palace of curiosities-buttons and ribbons, pencils and pipes, razors, and soap-all received Andrew’s study. He held his hands behind his back, not wanting to bring about the wrath of the palace’s king, a sturdy balding man who stood behind the counter.

The proprietor, seeing the fine quality of the material and workmanship in Andrew’s cap, shirt, knickerbockers, and silver buckled shoes (few of his adult customers wore footwear as fine as the boy’s), and noting the youth’s quiet politeness, was himself all patience and kindness. Indeed, these were hard, lean years, and it would serve no purpose to turn away any customer. This boy’s mother would be along soon, he thought, rubbing his hands together.

Andrew continued to stroll slowly through the narrow aisles. The air in the store was redolent with what he found to be an unusual mixture of scents: tobacco, leather, coffee, cheese, peppermint, and vinegar. He saved for last an examination of the jars on the counter-horehound candy, licorice, and all manner of other delights.

But each potential purchase was quickly dismissed as one other thought continued to occur to Andrew: taking home a piece of horehound candy or a peppermint would mean parting with his quarter. His lovely, shining quarter, with its full-figured Liberty seated in flowing robes, its eagle on the back. His hand closed tightly around it. No, it was his two bits.

It occurred to him that he need not spend his quarter in this store on this day, and the more he considered this idea, the better he liked it. The quarter itself was a prize, and if Charlie should nettle him, he would pull the shiny coin from his pocket and hold it before his younger brother. This thought of Charlie made him mindful of the fact that he had been in this store for quite some time now, and that Jack and Phil-especially Phil-might be angry with him for dawdling. He suddenly found himself uneasy over having left Charlie with only those two coarse men to keep him company. He bid the dismayed shopkeeper good day and left the store.

He was startled to find the street nearly empty and the sun much closer to the horizon. He controlled a growing panic only by telling himself that Charlie and the men had undoubtedly tired of waiting for him and had moved on to wherever the fireworks were being sold. He hurried down the street in the direction they had been traveling. After a few yards he began to run, but quickly reached the limits of the small town without seeing any sign of Charlie and the men.

Out of breath, he walked a little farther, feeling by turns angry and betrayed, then frightened for his brother, then worried and very alone. In this tumult of emotion his active imagination conjured up a variety of explanations for his situation:

– They had grown tired of waiting for him, bought the firecrackers and were now journeying back to Jefferson Road. (A vision that left him wondering why they hadn’t called to him, or fetched him from the store.)

– Charlie had become ill, and the men had rushed him to a doctor’s office. (Which led to a fruitless search among the few buildings of the small town.)

– The men had taken a different road back into town, had called at the store and learned that Andrew had already left, and were at this moment on the way home. (That this situation was his own fault, he was too ready to believe.)

– Charlie, angry over the gift of the quarter, had urged the men to trick Andrew, and they were at this moment laughing as they drank cool glasses of lemonade in the shade of the old oak. (Too unlike Charlie.)

Andrew, although cosseted and sheltered, was not a stupid child, and one last possibility took hold of his young mind. Perhaps the men had tricked both boys, and for reasons Andrew could not fathom, had stolen Charlie.

He felt hot tears fill his eyes, but dashed them away quickly. He wanted no harm to come to his brother, but he did not know what to do next. The thought of returning home without Charlie was unbearable.

He began to ask the few people he met on the street if they had seen Charlie or the men. Invariably, they had not. To his surprise, they were rude and brusque in their answers. These were hard people, he thought, nothing like the folk who surrounded him at home. The town and its few inhabitants suddenly seemed mean and low to him. He went back to the one place where he had been treated with courtesy.

The shopkeeper was less friendly this time, but politely told him that he knew nothing of anyone named Phil or Jack, had not seen a five-year-old boy named Charlie. When asked if he knew where firecrackers were sold, he proclaimed one could find them locally only in Andrew’s hometown.

“Would you please take me there?” the boy asked.

“Take you there? I suppose I’m to close my shop and hire a rig?”

“My father would be willing to…” He stopped before saying “pay you,” because the phrase made him realize why the men might have stolen Charlie. His father would pay for Charlie’s return-but Andrew, much cast down, certain he would be blamed for all that had gone wrong, wasn’t sure his father would want his willful eldest son back at all.

“I’m sure your father would be willing to take you wherever you like,” the store owner was saying, “but I can’t leave my place of business.”

“Please, sir, how far am I from Jefferson Road?”

“By the main road? About ten miles. Of course, as the crow flies, it’s only about three.”

“Which way does the crow fly?”

The man laughed. “Oh, westward over the oil fields, I suppose.”

Andrew brightened a little at this. His father had taken him to the oil fields twice, most recently just two days ago. The oilmen knew his father. He might see someone there who would help him return home.

He thanked the proprietor and began walking toward the forest of wooden derricks he had seen on the way into town. When he reached them, he again became frightened. Although the paths between the derricks had the same sharp fragrance of oil-soaked wood and earth, there was no sign of the bustling activity he had seen at the other oil field, the one he had traveled to with his father. Here equipment was still and rusty with disuse, the drilling platforms damaged and empty. The wooden buildings attached to the derricks, which he knew to be called doghouses, were rickety and missing boards. Even the small offices and equipment shacks appeared to be abandoned. He remembered his father talking of wells that were dry, and wondered if this was an oil field full of such wells.

He told himself that he would sooner or later find other people, and walked toward the sun. Close up, the distance between the wells was greater, and the derricks seemed much taller. They loomed over him, silent giants which began to look identical.

His feet started to ache, and then to throb and burn, but still he walked toward the sun. That the distance he must travel to reach his home was nearly double the shopkeeper’s estimate would not have mattered to him. He was thirsty and tired, but he continued to place one foot before the other, the sound of his steps a counterpoint to his troubled thoughts. He walked over hills whose shade was welcomed but confusing to his sense of direction. Coming to one rise, he at last saw the more familiar sight of an active field. He could not run, but began to shout for help as he drew closer and closer. One of the men who was climbing high on a distant derrick noticed him and pointed. Soon, two men rode horses to where he stood, swaying on his feet, exhausted more by his emotions than his exertions.

“Why, it’s the Masters boy!” one of the men shouted, leaping down from his horse.

“Charlie,” Andrew said, beginning to cry. “They stole Charlie.”

At first, his parents rejoiced in his return. They had spent several hours alarmed by the discovery that their children were not playing under the tree and could not be located anywhere on the large property. They could not know that by the time the attic and stables had been searched, Jack had already given Andrew his quarter.

They wept over Andrew when the oil field boss brought him home, and had not remonstrated against him. But quickly their alarm returned; their fears for Charlie were expressed in recriminations hurled at his older brother, who should have known better than to get into a strange conveyance, who should have known better than to leave his brother for a quarter.

“Two bits!” Papa shouted. “Even Judas held out for forty pieces of silver!”

His mother intervened then, and separated them by taking Andrew to his room. But soon there were police to be answered, and not much later the detectives from Pinkerton’s, and over time, endless others.

Tough men, large men, ill-mannered men, always badgering him for descriptions and repetition of details, making unpleasant suggestions as to how it might have truly happened that Andrew was spared. Under this assault, details became confused in Andrew’s mind, memories shifted, and to his father’s fury, he could not name the town-or be certain of the roads, or how far he had traveled. Eventually the store he had visited was located, but as Andrew could have told anyone who might have listened, no one in that town had noticed Charlie and the two men.

A ransom note, postmarked from Pittsburgh, arrived three torturous days later. The letter, filled with misspellings, was eventually deciphered to be a demand for twenty thousand dollars, details of payment to be forthcoming. Papa declared himself ready to pay.

By now, newspapers were publishing stories of “Little Charlie Masters,” whose brother had abandoned him to kidnappers. This was, of course, not at all what the papers intended to convey, but it was how every story appeared to Andrew.

During this time Andrew slept and ate little, cried easily and was prone to nightmares of the worst sort. He could not help but notice that his parents no longer looked him in the eye, that the servants whispered. Had not Grandpapa arrived to protect him from his persecutors, and threatened to remove their one remaining son from their home, the Masterses might not have gone on as a family through the ordeal that awaited them.

The instructions never came. The explanation for the failure of the kidnappers to continue on their course was not uncovered until an enterprising Pinkerton’s man compared descriptions of Jack and Phil with two robbers gunned down by police in Pittsburgh on the day the letter had been received. As he lay dying, one of the men-Jack, it seems-had said, “Never find Charlie now.”

Questioning of the men’s few known associates yielded nothing. The detectives advised the Masterses to assume their son was dead.

Never one to give up, Papa announced to the newspapers that he was offering forty thousand dollars-an astronomical sum, twice the amount demanded by the kidnappers-to anyone who returned his son Charlie to him. Other than renewed publicity and attention, nothing came of it.

Over the years following Charlie’s kidnapping, Andrew learned to calmly accept his altered position in the family. His parents could not punish the kidnappers, so they punished the person they had come to view as an accomplice. They used the weapon of choice for persons of their breeding and social stature-civility. Andrew was accorded this, but little more. Charlie, by contrast, took on in memory saintly attributes he never had in life, became the perfect son denied to them. His room was enshrined, his toys left waiting for his return.

On Andrew’s eleventh birthday, the one hundred and fourth pretender (by Andrew’s careful accounting) arrived at the Masters home. He was easily dismissed as yet another boy put forward by some schemer as “Little Charlie.” There were always stories to go with these pretenders-of how the missing boy’s “adoptive” parents had taken pity on some feverish waif who had then forgotten all of his previous life until just this moment-but Andrew could not bear to listen to another one. He asked Old Davey to saddle his favorite mare, then rode toward the town where Charlie had disappeared.

This time he did not venture into the town itself, where he had become a familiar and pitied sight, but turned off into the abandoned oil field. He rode slowly, and at times dismounted to take a closer look at some object. At last his search was, at least in one sense, rewarded. He spent another hour or two at the site, then rode home. That he was filthy and had ruined his clothes either escaped his parents’ notice, or was (more likely) not thought to be worthy of their comment.

This he did not mind.

Now, as he stood beneath the oak on his twenty-first birthday, he put the quarter back in his pocket and removed a second object. It was a crudely whittled soldier, weather-beaten and oil-stained, found near an abandoned well.

The well was a disposal well, used to hold oil-contaminated water and sludge pumped from other wells. It was about sixteen inches in diameter; too narrow for an adult, perhaps too narrow even for a schoolboy, but not too narrow for the body of a small child. He had known that it would be useless to look down it for Charlie’s remains; the well would be too deep.

Andrew had never been able to picture Phil and Jack planning to endure a child’s company while waiting for ransom; if they had left Charlie with someone else while they robbed houses, that person would have long ago claimed his father’s reward money. No genuine claimant had stepped forward.

Fourteen years had passed since Charlie disappeared, and the pretenders were growing fewer, but before the end of his father’s life, Andrew’s count of them would reach two hundred and eighty-six. On this day, he did not yet know that number, but he did know what had happened to his brother. On this day, he simply rested in that knowledge, and took his revenge in his silence.

“Thank you for the birthday present, Charlie,” he said, tucking away the second-and only other one-he had received since the day he turned seven.