the Pallbearers (2010) Read Online Free PDF Page B

salaries, insurance, food, schoolbooks, medical ... it goes on and on.
    "Anyway, we didn't want our RCL lowered, so we stupidly didn't report the drop in staff positions to the CDSS. Two of the staff we lost had doctorates and that figured big in our high RCL rating. At the same time, we lost one or two other people, so our staff-to-child ratio took a big hit as well. We were trying to keep it a secret 'til we worked our way out of it.
    "Then, last Christmas, they retroactively lowered our RCL and the state auditor came after us. They demanded a repayment check of almost half a million dollars. We didn't have it. Worse still, with our lowered RCL, we went from six thousand to four thousand per child. This place just couldn't run on that.
    "Like I said, Creative Solutions is a nonprofit and didn't want to take the loss. They were thinking about closing the home. Just a few days before Pop died, the California Department of Social Services notified us that because of us not telling them the truth about our staff changes, they'd become suspicious of everything and CDSS was about to do a full audit. Walt knew there were even more problems that a state audit would discover. He just couldn't deal with it."
    "And that's why he burned the office before he committed suicide," I said. "To destroy the records?"
    "Maybe." She wiped another slow-moving tear away. "I don't know. I don't want to believe he'd burn this place. I also don't want to believe he'd kill himself."
    "Me neither."
    "But what can we do about it?" she said, shrugging her shoulders in a gesture of defeat.
    "Let me mull it over. I'll come up with something."
    Good-bye Waikiki.

    Chapter 7
    Half an hour later, I found myself on the second floor of Sharon Cross Hall, looking into my old room at a scowling black kid who was about nine. He was sitting on a bunk holding a first-basemans glove and wearing his Little League uniform. Across his chest, it said "Astros."
    "Looks like you had a game," I said.
    "My team had a game. I didn't get there 'cause all the vans were at the funeral. They wouldn't let the young kids go to the church to see Pop off. Some county shrink thought it was bad for our emotional development."
    I wandered into the room and he stood up immediately. He didn't want me in here. His posture was confrontational, even menacing.
    "This is my crib, Chuck," he said. It wasn't quite a threat because I outweighed him by a buck fifty. Call it a statement of fact, fiercely delivered.
    "This used to be my room a long time ago," I told him, trying t o e ase the tension with some common ground. "Lemme show you something." I walked over to the painted wood cabinet. I opened it and looked for some words I'd carved in the paint on the back of the door over a quarter of a century ago. Of course they weren't there anymore. I looked over at the Astros' first baseman. "Guess it got sanded off," I said stupidly. "It used to say, Tuck everybody. S. S.' S. S. is me, Shane Scully."
    "Fact that you lived in this room ain't nothing to brag about," he said sourly. "Just tells me you're another fucked-up loser like the rest of us."
    I let that go and turned to face him. "So how 'bout you?" I asked.
    "How 'bout me, what?"
    "You think Pop killed himself?"
    "No way."
    "You seem sure."
    "Hey, Scully . . . That's what you called yourself?"
    I nodded and he continued. "Only cowards take that ride. Pop was no coward. 'Sides, he's been helpin' me look for my real people. My mom and shit. Two years we been doin' it. He even spent some of his own money on a lawyer guy who wrote up some papers. We were gonna make the court tell us where I came from. He wouldn't check out, leaving me holding dirt."
    I nodded. "Probably not."
    I turned to go, then stopped in the door and looked back. "What's your name?"
    "What's it to you?" he scowled. "'Cause I don't need no new - friend. Friends are just people who hang on ya and drag ya down."
    I left the little cynic standing there. He was a living, breathing