Hard earned cash

Another random part of the life of my buddy Arthur from Lincoln’s Hoard

Arthur noticed the penny laying on the road, right at the corner of Locust Street and Longacre Drive, about three feet onto the crosswalk that made its way across Longacre. It was dirty and scuffed, but his practiced eye easily picked it out. Turning his head left, right, and left again, he noticed only one car passing through the intersection on the opposite side of the street. He held onto the stop sign at the corner of and used it to steady himself stepping off the curb. Arthur bent over, right hand reaching out as his arm dropped lower. He bent slightly at the waist and leaned his left hand on his knee as support. His fingers slipped uselessly off the penny. It had been a rather hot July, which had baked the surface of the road and softened the tar. The coin had driven into the road by passing vehicles. Arthur took a deep breath and straightened upright. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his penknife. Its brown handle was worn slick by years of handling and the blade itself was only half its original size, the soft steel eroded by countless sharpening. Pinching his fingers on the blade, Arthur unfolded the knife and bent down to, knife outstretched and trembling slightly. Dropping the knife gently on the ground, he planted his knees on the road. The handful of change he had already collected that day shook heavy in his pocket. He picked up the knife again and began to pry at the edge of the penny, trying to free it from its prison. Sunlight poured relentlessly onto the back of his head, and a drop of sweat curled down his forehead and dripped off his nose, landing next to the penny. Shade rolled over him and offered a bit of relief when a car pulled up to the intersection and stopped in front of Arthur on his hands and knees.

“Hey are you okay?” the driver asked, sticking his head out the window. Arthur passed the knife from his right hand to his left and began to pick at the other side of the coin. “Yo man, are you okay? Do you need any help?”

Arthur clenched his jaw and tried to force the blade underneath the penny, but couldn’t make any progress. He switched the knife back to his right hand and tried again from the other side.

“What the hell? What’s your problem?” Another drop of sweat rolled off the end of Arthur’s nose, then another, but the stubborn penny was not moving. The blast of the car horn a few feet from his head startled him, and he dropped his knife. Sighing, he fumbled with his clumsy fingers and grabbed the knife, folding it carefully and sliding it back into his pocket. He pushed with both hands against the road and slid his feet underneath him. Old muscles strained against gravity, and Arthur stood up and shuffled off the street, leaning again on the stop sign at the corner to make it over the curb, oblivious to the continued honking of the horn. He ignored the driver’s “Fuck you old fart!” and missed the extended middle finger as the driver sped away. Arthur only had eyes for the penny in the road, no different than before save a few scratch marks in the surrounding tar.

Arthur drug his pocket watch out of the pocket of his suit jacket and noticed it was four minutes after five o’clock in the afternoon. Thursday and five o’clock in the afternoon meant it was time to go grocery shopping, and he walked down Longacre towards the Acme that was a block and a half down the street, turning away from the penny with reluctance Although his normal route did not come back to this neighborhood on Friday, Arthur decided to come back tomorrow for this penny. His eyes swept the sidewalk as he walked toward the Acme, searching for more change but content with the knowledge that he would be able to collect that penny the next day. Nearing the grocery store, he bumped into the back of man standing on the sidewalk, scribbling furiously on a clipboard.

“Whoa there, sorry sir” the man said, spinning around. Arthur’s eyes traveled from the ground, taking in thick boots first. The right toe had a big scratch in the leather, and a glint of steel was visible underneath. His clothes were dusty and sweat stained, and the man tipped his hard hat briefly in greeting as Arthur’s eyes met his. Blinking once, Arthur turned away and continued to shuffle towards the Acme.

The air conditioning in the grocery store dropped the temperature sharply in contrast to the July afternoon, and Arthur shivered as he picked up a small red plastic basket from the stack at the front door. He had finished last apple today, so he needed to get seven more to last him until his shopping trip next Thursday. He had plenty of oatmeal left for breakfast, and some leftover chicken that he had cooked on Wednesday for dinner. A quart of milk joined the apples, along with some green beans and a box of spaghetti. Arthur waited silently in line with his food, eyes watchful. Around the registers and near the doors of the supermarket were usually good locations to find loose change, but there seemed to be no luck on that front today. Arthur ignored the cashier’s irritation as she tapped her fingernails on the counter, waiting for him to fill out the check to pay for his groceries. He was oblivious to the shuffling and muttering of the customers behind him as logged the purchase in his register and balanced the checkbook, doing the subtraction twice in his head to make sure it was correct.

He checked again around the doors of the store as he left, but nothing new was to be found since he came inside. He stopped shivering and began to sweat again as he left the air conditioning for the heat of the July evening, continuing down Longacre Drive and towards his house. The heat beat down on him the entire trip back, slowing him down. He shuffled up the walkway that led to from the sidewalk to his front door. Gripping the handrail tightly, he took the three steps up from the sidewalk to his front porch with care, noticing the one in the middle had begun to warp. Unlocking his door, he walked across living room, The plate glass mirror that covered half the walls reflected his twin, a tired man carrying a small plastic bag full of groceries, leaning to his right and making slow progress through the room. Passing through the living room led to his kitchen and put away the apples, milk, green beans, and spaghetti. He hung his suit jacket on the back of the single kitchen chair, the coins he had found today shifting heavily in his coat pocket. Dinner was leftover chicken from Wednesday night’s dinner, and he finished the last of open quart of milk he had bought earlier in the week.

After washing the dishes and putting them away in the kitchen cabinets, Arthur put his suit jacket back on headed towards the basement door in the far corner of the kitchen. Arthur flipped the light switch at the top of the stairs and the bare incandescent bulbs lit up the recesses of the basement. The steps for steep and narrow, and Arthur took considerable care walking down the steps, holding onto the banister on each side. Counting the coins that he pulled out of his right hand pocket, the day’s find was four dollars and ninety seven cents. He poured the handfuls of change into a coffee can, making careful note of what he had found that day in his ledger for this year. After the recording was done, he walked across the basement, comforted by the presence of hundreds and jars and barrels of coins that surrounded him. Mason jars, coffee cans, water cooler bottles, plastic storage bins, milk jugs, cups, and several fifty five gallons drums, all stacked and labeled neatly with their contents. Undoing the latch on a wooden toolbox that sat in the corner of the basement, he took out a large flat headed screwdriver before going back upstairs. The screwdriver would give him more leverage than his pocketknife and allow him to peel that penny out of the tar in the road.

Arthur’s mirror twin made his weary way across the living room and upstairs. Laboriously he unknotted his tie and took off his shirt, hanging both back up. He put his wallet, penknife, house key, and pocket watch back in his nightstand, along with the screwdriver The bare wooden floors of the hallway thumped with his tired footsteps as he brushed his teeth, rolling the tube from the bottom up and rinsing his mouth out with a swallow of water from the glass at the right hand side of the sink. He placed toothbrush in the holder and his footsteps once again echoed down the hall. Arthur’s fingers struggled with his shoelaces and he finally disrobed, laying down in bed and pulling the sheets up to his chin.

It was even hotter than the day before, even has Arthur proceeded down to Locust Street and Longacre Drive early Friday morning. He felt slightly uncomfortable going this way because this was his Thursday route and not his Friday route, but he knew that penny was waiting at the intersection. He had found a nickel and two dimes on the way already, so it was shaping up to be a good day. The screwdriver sat awkwardly in his jacket pocket, and checked every so often to make sure it had not fallen out. Nearing the intersection, a tri-axle dump truck lumbered past Arthur, but even its engine was drowned out as a cloud of dust rolled down the street and a louder machine kicked into life. Arthur’s eyes narrowed and he picked up his shuffling pace, not daring to look ahead until he reached the intersection.

They were doing road work. They were redoing the surface of the road. They were milling off the first few inches of blacktop. They were going to lay down a fresh lay of smooth asphalt. They had started at Locust Street and Longacre Drive.

Arthur clung to the stop sign at the edge of the road. They had already milled away the blacktop of the crosswalk. The penny was gone.

The temperature jumped another ten degrees. Twenty. Arthur felt light headed, and sweat began to pour of his body. He immediately felt icy, freezing cold as the sweat drenched his clothes. Arthur squeezed the stop sign even harder as he swayed left and right. He leaned over and threw up.

A pair of boots intruded themselves into his vision as he was bent over, spitting as bile burned the back of his throat. “Hey, are you okay?” a voice asked. Arthur recognized the glint of steel in peeking from the right toe of the boots in front of him. A hand patted his back, and Arthur flinched. He straightened up slowly and recognized the face that was underneath the hard hat yesterday in front of the Acme.

“Why don’t you sit down? I’ll grab you some water to drink or something.” The man in the hard hat reached for his shoulder again, and Arthur pulled back, shuffling back the way he came, holding his stomach and trembling

He didn’t remember getting home. Arthur’s feet took him back of their own accord, his body following on automatic pilot. He found himself in the basement, surrounded by the jars and barrels of change he had managed to save. He opened several of his ledger books, desparately reading the neat printing and accounting of his successes in the past. Digging both hands into a fifty five gallon drum of coins, the cool weight of the metal running through his fingers soothed the burning pounding in his head, until his shaking hands dropped the coins on the floor. They hit the floor with concussive force, spraying and rolling everywhere, and Arthur thought for an instant his skull would burst. He crawled on the floor, whimpering, hunting down for all he had dropped.

Hours later, he lay curled up in bed in a tight ball, still wearing all his clothes, still trembling. His hands and knees stung from crawling around the rough basement floor in his search for the fallen coins. Arthur still wasn’t sure he had found them all, and he knew he would search the basement for days until he was positive all had been picked up. He pulled the sheets tighter around himself. Arthur thought back to the time that he had found six quarters glued to the sidewalk, someone’s idle or drunken prank. He remembered working with the glue de-bonder and scraping away at the sidewalk with the screwdriver, crouched down as countless people walked by. He remembered the elation as the first quarter was freed, as well as the next, and the next. He remembered the heavy weight of the quarters in his pocket. The remnants of glue and scratch marks on the concrete of the sidewalk stood as testimony to his triumph. The shivering didn’t stop, and Arthur pulled the bed sheets even tighter.