Charlie Perkins heard the jingling of the bells that hung over the entrance to the diner and looked up from the plates he’d been drying.  A boy, probably about six or seven, had come in, carrying a classic “running away from home” bindle over his shoulder.  The lunchtime rush at the diner had subsided, and as usual, Lou was the only one left at the counter, finishing his meatloaf sandwich.  Charlie knew that Lou considered sitting at the diner to be part of patrolling his beat, and since he made as many arrests while reading the Boston Herald as he did strolling along Main St., the point really couldn’t be argued.  Charlie wasn’t surprised when Lou gave the kid a friendly smile and waved him over to the stool next to him.  Maybe Lou wasn’t the most ambitious guy around, and probably not the smartest, but when it came to kids and parents, Lou always seemed to be able to help them remember why they wanted to stick together.

 Charlie didn’t remember having seen this kid around before, but he would be the first to admit that years of drinking hadn’t improved his memory.  For some reason, seeing that kid brought up a vague recollection of the time he had run away.  He’d been seven. too.   Now he could remember clearly and was wishing he couldn’t.  The running away part had been fun: off on your own, skipping rocks  across the lake, chasing the gulls.  But when he got home, Mama was in bed, during the day, which had never happened before.  There was his older sister Eileen absently petting the Laborador retriever-Irish setter mix that his mother had named Glinda, after the good witch in the Oz books.  The doctor was telling Eileen that Mama had the Spanish influenza, and that Eileen needed to make sure Mama had plenty of liquids and was kept warm.  When Mama died, two days later, Charlie knew it hadn’t been the influenza that killed her; he had, by running away and breaking her heart.  

 After that, he had accepted everything that happened to him as his just punishment.  He hadn’t cried at his mother’s funeral, or when Aunt Corinne had decided that Eileen needed to be brought up under the guidance of a woman, but didn’t have room for Charlie, or even on that awful day when his Dad had silently and grimly built a bonfire in back of the house and tossed in anything that might remind him of Mama.  Charlie’d lost his baseball cards in that blaze, probably because he kept them in a beat-up wooden box she’d given him.  He’d had two cards of Shoeless Joe Jackson, because no kid would trade for him after the Black Sox scandal.  What would they be worth today? he thought, welcoming the chance to focus his mind on something other than that day.  That day after the flames died down and his father took his deer rifle and shot Glinda.

 Struggling to bring his mind back to the present, Charlie tuned in to the conversation between Lou and the kid.  The kid was talking about baseball, about how the Red Sox might win the World Series this year, like they had a few years ago.  Charlie smiled.  He remembered the last time the Sox had won a Series, but that was back in 1918, forty years ago.  Lou didn’t follow baseball, Charlie knew, and he was trying to get the subject around to the kid’s home life.  “So,” he was probing, “have any pets?”.  Charlie’s smile turned into a stare as the kid thought for a minute, then replied, “Well, pretty much just some tadpoles, but Mama’s got a dog named Glinda that she shares with me an’ Eileen”.  

What a strange coincidence! Eileen. Glinda. Charlie struggled with the possibilities and then gave up. It was the tiny scar on the kid’s chin that sealed it for him. He’d gotten that scar when he’d thought it was a good idea to slide down the stairs in a cardboard box. It had been fine until he got to the bottom and wiped out on the front door rug. 

“So whatcha got in your bindle?” The kid looked serious for a minute, then reached down to the floor. Untying the bandana, he pulled out some oatmeal cookies wrapped in a napkin, a rabbit’s foot keychain, and a scratched up wooden box. 

“I just brought my best ones,” he said, pulling out a handful of baseball cards. “Everyone says he was a cheater, but I don’t believe it. I even have two of him.” 

Charlie stared as he recognized the Shoeless Joe Jackson cards, one with the bent corner.

“I, I used to have a baseball card like that,” he finally managed to say.

“If you want, you can have this one. It got bent. I only need one, anyway.”

“Thanks. You must be a big baseball fan. It’s been a long time since Shoeless Joe played.”

The kid briefly looked puzzled. “Time just seems different when you’re old.”

Lou was lumbering to his feet. “Break’s over. No rest for the wicked.” He made eye contact with the kid. “Hey, I bet your ma misses you.” He threw some change on the counter and headed out the door.

Now what? Charlie couldn’t think about anything except how to protect this kid – this younger Charlie – from walking out the diner door to the unthinkable events that lay in his future.  He couldn’t let the kid go back home to that.  What could he do, though?  There was no way a booze-soaked hash-slinger could take care of a seven-year-old kid. Charlie’s mind raced.  Eileen.  Her kids had all turned out all right.  “Gotta make a call”, he mumbled, fishing in his pocket for the nickel as he headed to the pay phone in the back.  He let it ring ten times before numbly replacing the receiver.

Maybe he could keep the kid with him until he get hold of Eileen. His shift ended at three today, so maybe, maybe. . .

Too late, he heard the jingle of the bells at the door.