School was out. It was a snow day. Margie stepped outside her warm house and stood on her snowy wooden deck and looked at the river. She was careful with her steps to make sure she wouldn't slip and fall. She couldn't afford to do such a stupid thing. The snow still drifted from the white sky.

Then some snowballs crashed at thick brown coat from behind. Aaron and I hid behind the deck fence and quietly giggled. We were both ten years old at the time. We loved to play pranks on Aaron's grandmother whenever she was around.

Without turning around, she knew the attack came from us. "Boys, why don't you do something useful and shovel the driveway."

Aaron replied by throwing a snowball at her.

"Okay," she called out, "how about you shovel the driveway and I pay you guys."

Aaron popped up from behind the wooden deck fence. "Really?"

Margie hit him with a snowball right in the chest. She laughed. "Yes, I'll give you guys each a dollar and some cookies."

"Cookies!" I shouted and I popped up.

Aaron smashed a snowball in my hair. "That's for her not getting you."

Margie pointed to the rugged garage. "The snow shovels are in there. The quicker you get my driveway done, the more cookies I'll give you."

Aaron and I rushed to her storage garage. Aaron rammed the down open (it got stuck easily) and we stepped inside. There were no cars in the garage, just tools, containers, boxes, and some other junk. In a corner by the riding lawnmower stood two, large snow shovels. We each grabbed one and started work on the driveway.

At first we loaded the snow in large green buckets that were next to the garage. Then we carried the buckets over to the clearing where the old blue eighteen-wheeler Louie owned and some other old trucks rested in peace and in pieces. We dumped the snow out there and made a several snowmen. We even found an old cardboard box and wrote "Snowman Crossing" on it with a thick black maker. I sat it by one of our snowmen.

After we finished Margie's driveway, we went inside her house. We took off our wet shoes and coats in her little welcome room. We stepped inside her kitchen, our white socks dripped with melted snow on her brownish-yellow tiled floor. She pulled out a fresh batch of chocolate chips from her over as we took a place at the oak table. The smell enlightened us as she sat the cookie tray down on the table.

Aaron and I immediately grabbed a cookie off the tray. We didn't care that they were steaming hot. They were cookies after all and we could always cool our burnt mouths with a glass of milk.

"You know what," she said as she pulled out the money from her purse, "I bet you boys could make a lot of money if you went door-to-door, asking people if they want you to shovel their sidewalks."

"Yeah, let's do, Aaron," I said with my mouth full.

"Okay. Come on, let's go."

"I'll give you guys your money when you get back," Margie told us as we got our gear on. "Be back in two hours."

We told her we would be by then and we stepped outside. We had to walk a few blocks before we could actually get to a house since there were just a few old buildings, Aaron's house, the tall highway bridge, and the staking rink in the area.

At the first house, Aaron knocked on the old white door stained with dirt. The house was kind of beat up, but it had a sidewalk (at least we thought so. We couldn't tell from the snow). A harry, poorly dressed middle-age man slowly opened the door.

"What do want?" he asked us.

"We just wanted to know if you want us to shovel your sidewalk," Aaron told him. "We'll shovel it first and then you can pay us how much you think we deserve."

He moaned. Then he pulled out two bills from his wallet from his raggedy blue jeans. "Here's five dollars for each of you if you just go away."

We took the money and said thanks. He nodded as we put the money in our coat pockets. He looked pass us, out off into the road. Something caught his eye.

"Goodbye now," he said and slammed the door shut. We heard him lock the door and run off inside.

We looked at each other with confusion. I shrugged and we walked to the next house as a police car drove by. For about an hour and thirty minutes, we shoveled people's driveways and sidewalks. Some told us that they would do it themselves and others said just simply said "no thanks."

Together, we each earned twenty-five dollars. That was ton of money to us (and it still is in a way). Happy with what we got and low on time, we decided to head back to his grandmother's house.

On the way back, we saw the large entryway into the forest by Aaron's house.

"I wonder what the woods like with all the snow," Aaron said.

"Me too. Let's go check it out. We still have a few more minutes before we need to get back. We can just cut through the woods."

And so we went through the woods. We went to the center of the woodland area to where our main base was. At the base piles of old clothes, small appliances, and junk had been dumped there throughout the years. We used some of the junk to make walls, seats, tables, and whatever we could think of.

We talked about what we planned to spend our money on when we heard someone digging in our base. We stopped outside by the entrance and looked through the snow-covered trees. Digging a deep hole was the man we'd first offered our services to. Next to the hole was a large locked chest.

Aaron and I quickly hid.

"What do you think is in that box?" I whispered to Aaron.

"I don't know," he said. "It could be a body."

"Or stolen money."

"Or -"

"Hey, get out of here you kids!" the man shouted.

"Run!" we said at the same time.

Neither of us bothered to say jinx as we ran together out the way we came. We didn't once look back in fear that we might trip. As soon as we got back on the road, we finally looked back. We were not followed.

"What are you boys up to?"

We jumped at the sound of the booming voice. We turned around a saw a police officer in his car. The windshield wipers wiped off the falling snow. He was a rather young officer. His clean-cut shaved hair shouted discipline. We ran up to him and told him what we saw. He asked us what the guy looked like and we described him.

"Okay, hold on a minute," the police officer told us.

He pulled over to the side of the street and radioed in what he was going to do. He got out of the car and we walked with him to where the man was. The man pushed the chest in his hole when we arrived.

"Freeze!" the cop shouted, aiming his gun at the man.

The man stopped and raised his hands into the air. "Shit."

"Well, if it isn't Johnny McMarsion. You guys found the guy whose been robing the banks around here. Good work, kids."

The officer read him his rights and arrested him. Back at the police car, he put Johnny in the back. Next he got our names and addresses and said he would contact us later. After we watched the officer drive away, we rushed to Margie's house and told her of our adventure.

She didn't believe a single word of it.

Bummed that she didn't believe us, we ate some more cookies. We knew it happened and that's all that mattered to us. Still, we would've liked someone to believe us.

A few days later, when the snow had left no traces of its visit, Margie checked her mailbox. With the bills and the junk mail was a letter from the Hoquiam police department. She walked inside her house. Aaron and I were at school we she got the letter. It was the first thing she opened up she told us. Inside was a thank you letter to Aaron from the officer and a check for fifty dollars as a reward.

Margie couldn't believe it.


The End
Story (C) 2001 by Dennis Spielman
More Short Stories