by Sean McGinty
Before I pried off the lid, I had this moment of reflection. Because here we were, after all this time, finally at the end. And whatever was inside, money or gold or another fork, I decided I was going to share it.
And as I pulled back the lid I was reminded of those movies where the drug dealer lifts the briefcase lid and the camera zooms in on all those tidy piles of cash.
And—holy shit. There they were. Only these piles weren’t tidy, they were more like bundles: cinched in the middle with rubber bands, bills fanning out on either end like a paper bouquet. Money! Pure, unadulterated cash! For a moment I just sat there and looked at it, all those piles of money. After all this time.
I took a bundle and slipped off the rubber band, fanning the money out in my lap.
Homie™ popped up.
> yo original boy_2 what up?
u seem excited!
“I found the treasure.”
> wow that’s a lot of many dollars!
r u counting it?
can i help?
i can count fast!
:)
It was true. I flipped through the stack and Homie™ tabulated the total. Then I flipped through another stack and it tabulated that, too, quicker than the eye can see. Oh, wonders of modern technology. It was a good feeling, the two of us working together again like old friends. After a dozen or so bundles I asked Homie™ how much money we were looking at so far.
> zero!
“Zero? Whaddya mean, zero?”
> zero!
:(
“You’re glitching again. I’m gonna have to count it myself.” I started counting a stack…twenty, forty, sixty, eighty…but then a dark thought wormed its way into my brain.
“Hey, how much did you say this is worth?”
> zero!
“Zero what?”
> zero amero!
“OK. But how many dollars are there so far?”
> 180,101 dollars!
“So what’s that worth in amero?”
> zero!
“Zero?”
> zero!
us dollar amero currency transition = expired!
“What?”
> us dollar amero currency transition expired january 01 this year!
“It’s expired?”
> yes!
“So this is worth…”
> this is worth zero amero!
:)
As the money fell from my hands I heard a voice whisper inside me, and what it said was: Holy. And another voice, a little less soft, whispered back: Screw that. I knelt there, swaying back and forth between the two ideas, all nauseated, like being on the world’s worst seesaw. I started to puke but ended up just spitting instead. Nothing would come up. I was empty inside. I grabbed a bill. $100, it said. One zero zero.
So that was a bummer, and I knew the next thing I had to do was tell my dad and sister. But I couldn’t. Not right away anyway. I waited a couple weeks until the night of the JC Wonder Excursion’s North American tour concert launch party, held in Dad’s backyard. His band was going on an actual tour, four gigs spanning parts of northern Nevada and central Idaho, culminating at a VFW hall in Boise, where they’d be opening for the Christcore band This Bloody Cross.
I was actually kind of proud of him. He was finally making his dream a reality, even if it wasn’t quite what he always wanted. I just wished I had some spending cash to give him for his journey.
The truth about the money had pretty much taken the shine off my revelation of the holy wonder of it all, but even so, and even though a couple weeks had passed, maybe there was a little residual bliss, because I wasn’t as bummed out as I could have been. Just kind of like dazed. I showed up for the party with my grandfather’s busted lockbox under my arm. The band had already started.
Here’s the thing about my dad: he knows how to keep a beat. He’s not the flashiest drummer, but he’s always got the kick going. And the guitarist could play guitar, and the bassist knew what he was doing, too. You would expect it to be so. They had like over a century of practice between them. What I’m saying is, the JC Wonder Excursion wasn’t half bad.
“All right!” said Manuel, the bassist. “Raise your hands if you have a good feeling inside you. Whoo! That’s right! I’m feeling it this evening, too. This last one is by a band some of you old-timers may recognize. It’s about faith and prayer and a man named Tommy who used to work on the docks….”
And as they launched into it, those first throbbing notes, I’m not going to say I wasn’t moved a little.
> yay! for livin’ on a prayer available from island records?
“Yay!”
It’s no “Amazing Grace,” but it’s a pretty powerful song, and the JC Wonder Excursion knew how to rock it in a pretty satisfying way. And as they brought it home—all three of them singing the chorus in unison like a hard rock Christian barbershop quartet, with the guitar peeling away and Dad doing mad circles around his kit—I found myself thinking first about Katie, and then about Dad, and all the shit he’d been through, and how he looked kind of cool up there. The song came to an end—the final, triumphant cymbal crash hanging in the air like a musical sculpture of a woman’s leg—and the crowd went wild.
Later, I ended up sitting with Dad on the back porch. He was still kind of glowing from the concert—or maybe just sweaty—with Bones passed out happy at his feet. I wanted to say something, but it’s always at those times that I can’t find the right words. Bones pawed the air in her sleep, chasing some ghostly squirrel.
Dad sighed. “It’s pretty crazy, right?”
“What’s crazy?”
“Life,” he said. “I sincerely thought I would have this shit figured by now.”
“You don’t have it figured out?”
“Not even a little bit.” He paused. “Well, maybe a little bit….I’m giving up drinking.”
I almost added “again”—because he’d done it before, he was always giving up drinking or starting a band or ending a band or whatever—but I kept my mouth shut.
“So what’s with the lockbox? What did you want to show me?”
“We need Evie here, too.”
“She’s over by the fence with Isaac. I’ll go grab her.”
“Wait,” I said. “So what’s the little bit?”
“What?”
“The little bit you have figured out about life—what is it?”
Dad reached down to stroke Bones. “Oh, I don’t know. Only that you never really figure it out. Or maybe that figuring it out is in some ways beside the point. Look, she’s coming this way.”
So then it was the three of us.
“What’s going on?” said Evie.
“I found something. At Grandpa’s. Buried under the tree.”
“No kidding?” Dad’s eyebrows raised. “What is it?”
“Well, don’t get your hopes up.”
Even so, when I opened the box and they saw all that money, their eyes lit up, but right away Evie knew what the problem was.
“The deadline for Currency Exchange,” she said.
“Right.”
“What about it?” said Dad.
“It passed,” I said.
“What? Aren’t there exceptions? Maybe some kind of exemption?”
“I don’t think there is.”
“The Federal Reserve was pretty specific in the guidelines,” said Evie.
“Jesus,” he said.
But here’s what’s funny: after the initial shock they were both pretty cool about it. Disappointed as hell, sure, but not, like, devastated. You never know what’s going to set them off. They’ll blow up and murder me over the tiniest thing—like, say, dropping out of school—but sometimes, for whatever reason, they’re just cool. As for me, I don’t know. It just would’ve been real nice to give them some money, you know?
Anne Chicarelli returned from Arizona, the Grand Canyon State, with ancient cultures, modern dining, and more than a Hundred Ways to Say Adventure™ (YAY!). She
showed up the next morning, and this time she got out of her truck and came onto the porch, and without knocking or anything waited there for me to open the door. And when I opened it, there she was, standing right in the middle of everything, and it kind of spooked me. She looked different—older, if that was possible. Without a cowboy hat on, her hair was so short and thin.
“I see there was a fire,” she said.
“Yeah, it was pretty crazy. The firemen came and everything.”
“Well, thank you for watching my horses. Did they behave for you? I hope they did.”
“They were great. Wonderful.”
“Georgia hung on a lot longer than anyone expected, but then I told them, She’s a tough one. Always was. I was in the lobby when she passed, but they say she went in peace with her arms crossed over her chest like a mummy. Now her body is six feet deep in the earth, with the sun shining down and the sprinklers watering the grass overhead. Of course, her spirit is in heaven.”
“Right.”
She looked at me. “And do you believe that?”
“Um.”
“And where does your spirit dwell, Adam? Have you opened your heart to Jesus? Have you let him fill you with his holy light?”
I thought back to my moment on the white horse—Cain or Abel, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t Jesus in my heart, exactly, but it was something, I guess, but maybe beyond it, too. Beside it? Including it? It was too much to explain.
“Shall we pray?” she said.
“Yeah, OK.”
And when Anne started in on the preachy stuff I kind of just let the words flow around me like water over a stone. Her voice so low and gravelly. And it was OK, whatever she said, whether I agreed or not. There’s more than one way to say the things that are beyond words.
It was decided that I’d watch Bones while Dad was on tour, and I drove over to pick her up on a Sunday morning. He handed me two pages of single-spaced typed instructions—seriously—along with her leash, brush, bed, food bowl, water bowl, and bag of Diet Munch™ dog biscuits. I swore up and down I’d do a good job—and I meant it—though I didn’t tell him about the little road trip I had planned for us.
We headed out that same day, cruising along on I-80 in my grandfather’s Ford Ranger, just me and Bones. It was a beautiful day. I leaned the seat back to a comfortable position and watched the fence posts and sagebrush passing in a quiet blur along the interstate. Every now and again I’d catch a glimpse of the Humboldt River, winding like a glittery snake through the brush.
“Check out that scene, Bones.”
We stopped in Lovelock to use the potty, and I bought some beef jerky and potato chips, and fed most of it to Bones. She was into that. Then onward westward, past Fernley, to where the road starts winding along the Truckee River. Finally, under a haze of gray, I could see Reno. All those glittery buildings.
The traffic was pretty bad, and I got squeezed out of the exit I wanted to take and was funneled instead into a construction zone and then had to backtrack, but the extra time was fine because it gave me to time to figure out what dorm Shiloh was living in at the University of Nevada, Reno. I ended up parking on the wrong side of the campus—but again it was fine because it gave me time to think about what I was going to say to her.
But in the end I decided not to say anything.
When I got to her room, she wasn’t there. Her roommate said she was maybe at the library. So I went over there, but she wasn’t there, either. The library was cool, though. It had these big glass windows, and as I was looking out them, I saw her. She was walking along the grass with some friends. They were smiling and talking. I started to head out to see her, but about halfway there I caught myself and went back to the windows and just watched her walk along the grass with her friends.
And you could say I was a coward for not going out there, but OTOH, she seemed OK without me in the way. She had on her tie-dye shirt and she was laughing and talking and…she looked happy. So I said what I had to say right there, watching her through the windows.
“Shiloh, you were right. I was an asshole. I’m sorry. I’m working on it. Thanks for the fun we had. I hope you have a good semester and a fun time with your friends and a great life.”
And that was that.
Later, outside Reno where the highway begins its ascent into the Sierras, I called Katie—and was kind of surprised when she answered.
“Hi, Aaron.”
“Oh, hi! You picked up.”
“Sorry I haven’t returned messages. Look, next time I’m in town I’ll pick up my stuff, OK?”
“Actually, I thought maybe I could bring some of it to you.”
“That’s OK. You don’t have to do that.”
“I’m actually kind of already on the way.”
“What?”
“Like an hour away at most. Where are you? How do I find you?”
Katie was silent, and for a moment I thought I’d lost her.
“Katie?”
I heard her sigh. “Do you know where Sugar Pine Point State Park is?”
“No, but I can find it.”
“OK. From the parking lot, head downhill toward the water. There’s an old mansion, some trees, and a pier. I’m at the end of the pier, reading a book.”
“Give me an hour,” I said, or tried to say, but now Homie™ was in my face.
> error!
network overload!
users in FAIL must wait in line!
:(
After that I couldn’t pull up any maps, so I asked the lady at the gas station in Truckee if she knew how to get to Sugar Pine Point State Park. I’m not sure if she was confused or just messing with me, but anyway, following her instructions to the letter, I ended up at a small restaurant near the Lake Tahoe shore called The Pines. Still no service. The door to the restaurant was locked. Inside, a man with a shaved head was running a buffer over the floor. I banged on the door until he shut it off and looked at me.
“Closed until four!” he shouted.
“OK, but do you know where Sugar Pine Point State Park is?”
“Which direction you coming from?”
“Nevada.”
“Then you’re doing it right. Continue west.”
“On which road? How far?”
“Same road. Three point two miles. In three point two miles, you’ll come to a sign that says Sugar Pine Point State Park. Turn left there.”
“Hey…so what’s the food like here?”
“The food? The food here is outstanding.”
“Really?”
The man wheeled his buffer to the front of the restaurant and unlocked the door. “Why would I lie to you? What motive could I possibly have?”
“You work here.”
“Well, yes. That’s true. That is true….” He rested his hand on the buffer and sort of spun it around.
“I was thinking of maybe taking a friend out for dinner.”
He gave it some thought. “Well, this is your place. For atmosphere and food, it can’t be beat. Best place on the lake. Check out the reviews if you don’t believe me. We’ve got over a hundred YAY!s. I see you’re having FUN®—give a YAY! for The Pines and we’ll give you a free dessert with your meal. Yes, the chef is a tyrant. All he does is work and he has no friends and he abuses the staff in ways that probably violate every labor law there is. But the man can cook—I’ll say that much.”
“Who’s the chef?”
“Me.”
“Oh.”
“I’m running the buffer because I just fired the afternoon help. He was annoying me again. You know those people? The ones who never have anything real to say, so instead they’ll give you complete, real-time synopses of television shows? He’s one of those. It’s like, if you’re so big on it, how about you just let me see the show myself? Then we can have an intelligent discussion, a two-way conversation, instead of this tedious monologue where you get to relive all the fun you had and I’m supposed to just sit here and be your sounding board.”
/>
“You fired a guy for telling you about a TV show?”
“Oh, I’ll probably hire him back tomorrow. It’s an ongoing thing between us. He’s my brother.”
And with that he started the buffer again.
OK, so YAY! for The Pines and their free desserts and helpful instructions, because 3.2 miles down the road, I came to a sign for Sugar Pine Point State Park. I turned left down the road and parked near the edge of the lot. It was a1,000 to park, and the signs said NO DOGS ON BEACH, but I let Bones free anyway—she immediately took off after a squirrel—and then I started crutching downhill, toward the water. It was evening, the sun low in the sky. There was an old mansion, some trees, and a pier. At the end of the pier sat a woman in a straw hat reading a book.
“Hey, you’ve got the entire pier to yourself.”
“Not anymore.”
“Ha. Right.”
She was wearing a swimsuit, her purple swimsuit, face hidden behind the brim of her hat and the pages of her book, which was called It Does Not Die Under Any Condition by Cynthia Smith, author of the It Does Not Die series, including It Does Not Die in Sunlight and It Does Not Die Alone—all available from Scare/Bait Press (YAY!).
A boat roared past, dragging an empty wakeboard. Katie turned the page.
“Good book, huh? What’s it about?”
“The undead,” she said.
“What, like zombies?”
“No.”
“Mummies?”
“No.”
