Page 27 of Strangers in Time

“Where you think you’re goin’?”

“I got business to tend to.”

Lonzo snorted. “Whatbusinessyou got?”

“I’m goin’ to sell the book, that’s what,” Charlie replied.

Lonzo looked at him incredulously. “Who would pay for a book with nothin’ in it?” he said derisively.

Eddie answered. “For the paper. People need paper.”

Charlie nodded, while Lonzo suddenly looked interested.

Eddie said, “How much you think you can get for it?”

Charlie shrugged. “Hopin’ for maybe a quid.”

“A quid!” exclaimed Lonzo. “Forthat?”

“I gotta go,” said Charlie. When he glimpsed a certain look in Lonzo’s eyes that Charlie had seen before, he took off running.

“Oi,” cried out Lonzo. “We want a word with you. Weknowsyou’re lyin’ ’bout—”

They started to run after him.

“You come back here,” screamed Lonzo. “We knows what you really done that night—”

Charlie heard nothing else because with his long legs he was exceptionally fast, even in bad shoes, and he had turned a corner and fled down the pavement. He entered an alley that was a shortcut to the next street, and looked back, but they had given up the chase.

Okay, now to business.

SATANDWELLERS

ASCHARLIE WALKED DOWNthe street the city slowly awoke. The rain had stopped, but the blackened, scudding clouds and screaming wind threatened more inclemency.

Charlie muddled through in his mind what Lonzo had said.They know I was lying? They know what I really did that night?

He had no idea what Lonzo meant by that.

Charlie refocused on the task at hand. He had never really tried to sell anything before. He nicked things he or his gran needed; he didn’t part with things. But he’d told Lonzo and Eddie he was going to sell the book, so he had no choice.

He passed through one distinctive part of the city and then another. Charlie had found that London was like a large puzzle where every piece was completely different from its neighbors, at least in some ways. The farther he ventured west the more affluent and posh the surroundings became. He gazed at shop windows as he went by. Some were closed; others were just opening for business. Windows were being cleaned, doorways swept, awnings wiped down. Deliveries were occurring, though even here the supplies he saw coming off the trucks were meager. Yet he appreciated that folks were trying their best to keep things as normal as possible when life was anything but that.

There was a mobile canteen usually set up on the next street over, he knew. They came to bombed-out areas and set up shop at regular mealtimes. They fed both citizens and rescue workers.

Charlie made this detour, helped the women to pass out food, did a bit of sweeping and wiping up, and was rewarded with a cup of powdered milk, brown toast with a smear of marmalade, and Spam masquerading as sausage. Charlie didn’t mind. He actually quite liked Spam.

“Now don’t drop none ’a that on the pavement, boy,” the canteen lady had warned him. “If a bird comes along and steals it away a constable could put you in the clink for feeding a poor animalhumanfood.”

“Is that really true?” asked a clearly disbelieving Charlie.

“I’d like to say it’s just a bad joke, lad, but ’tis the law all right.”

Careful to not drop even a crumb while he ate, Charlie returned to his journey. His bookwouldmake a fine ledger. Perhaps at a counting house of some kind. Charlie had heard his gran use that term. What they “counted” there Charlie did not know.

A column of uniformed schoolchildren passed him with their tall, officious teacher leading the pack. Charlie eyed the students, who were not much younger than he was. When Charlie noted the teacher staring suspiciously at him, he tugged his cap down, tried to appear taller and bigger than he was, and hurried on. You could leave school at fourteen, but Charlie wasn’t quite there yet. And Gran would probably need to sign something and he doubted she would because education was important to her. But schooling could come in many different ways, he believed. And living by your wits and skills was one of them.

At Trafalgar Square, in the center of London, he passed a monument on a long pillar of stone with a man in archaic garb at the very top, and four huge lion statues at the bottom. The stone chap was an old war hero in His Majesty’s Navy or some such, Charlie recalled hearing. Like St. Saviour’s and St. Paul’s, how the bombs had missed him, Charlie didn’t know.

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