What A Silver Dollar Buys

Randolph lay flat on his stomach, dirty brown hair sticking up like wet, bedraggled straw, and tried to stick his fingers into the hole at the bottom of his tree. He thought of it as “his” tree because he’d been coming here since he was a little kid, maybe six. The first time his dad ran off he came to this tree. The last time his dad ran off he came to this tree. He even came to this tree when that stupid girl Tanya told everyone she didn’t like him because he smelled funny. Not like he cared what she thought, he assured his brain while he remembered.

Now he got the first two fingers on his left hand in that hole, and he felt around. He knew what he was looking for but he couldn’t feel it and that frustrated him. He couldn’t afford to lose it, not now. He needed every penny if he was going to really run off this time. Run off like he should have done a long time ago. Then he felt it, the big, flat, cold piece of metal and he grinned, showing his stained, crooked teeth to a meandering squirrel who startled with wide, beady eyes and darted away. Randolph turned back to his task. He frowned. Why was it pulling away? With new force he renewed his grip on the coin and pulled as hard as he could, and finally it came loose and his fingers, coin firmly lodged between them, slammed out of the hole and scraped skin and blood against the tree’s bark. “Ow,” he couldn’t help uttering. His watery blue eyes widened when he could have sworn he heard a small echoing “ow” from the hole.

“What th-“ he bent his head down and tried to peer into it, wondering if some repeating bird was stuck in there or something. He strained to get a good look into the dark cavern of his tree. He sucked in air with a whoosh and sat up on his knees, eyes wider than they’d ever been and his head shaking in denial. He had NOT seen that! He had definately NOT seen some little human-like thing before it flitted away. No. Those kinds of critters don’t really exist, he reminded himself with disgust. Even when he was little tiny he never believed in fairy tales. He knew they weren’t real, knew it because no one could live such a fanciful life in a world like his. The longer he sat pondering, the more he knew he’d probably seen a squirrel or a chipmunk or something that his dumb eyesight mistook for–what?

Shaking his tousled head, he lay back down on his flat stomach, in his white t-shirt stained with dirt and grass, and peered again, this time with his other eye. It couldn’t be true. Not in his tree of all things! He scrambled up and backed away, forgetting to pick up the silver dollar he dropped on the ground. He turned and ran as fast as his ratty converse shoes would let him and didn’t stop until he was inside the townhouse, panting and sweating, liquid running down his face and mingling with the dirt already there. Once he caught his breath he stood up straight and noticed Bobby lounging in his father’s ratty brown recliner. He walked slowly forward, his harrowing experience at the tree forgotten, and asked, “what are you doing in dad’s chair?”

Bobby shrugged his thin little shoulders and kept munching Doritos from the crumpled bag in his lap. “He’s not home. He won’t be home for a long time. I can do what I want.” He continued to watch the cartoon on a small television with a grainy picture and two metal rods sticking up from the back.

Randolph glared at him. “No you can’t. Dad’ll flip if he comes in and sees you in that chair. Now get out,” he growled the last before turning into a dark kitchen. He bent down, extracted a small pot from a plywood cabinet with creaking doors, and plunked it on an impossibly filthy stovetop.

“What’er you makin’?” Bobby called from the recliner.

“Hamburger Helper,” Randolph yelled back and got busy preparing dinner for himself and his younger brother. He’d been making their supper for years, since their mom moved on when he was-what-five or so. His dad worked some job most of the time so that left Randolph to take care of Bobby who was maybe three back then. Randolph was tired of taking care of Bobby. Real tired. He pressed his lips together as he thought about how tired he was. Bobby got on his nerves all the time. He remembered last week, when he actually hauled off and whacked the little guy. He hadn’t meant to and felt bad about it, but he was so mad all the time. All the time thinking about running off. Why not? He snorted as he poured a can of peas into a bowl, plunking it into a microwave crusty with remnants of meals past. His mom had done it. His father had done it twice, once when Randolph and Bobby were real young, and they ended up at that tree. His tree. Randolph ran out of food after a few days and Bobby was crying his little sappy eyes out from being hungry, so they were actually looking for food. What they found, in the park under his tree, was comfort and sleep. For some reason Randolph felt safe at that tree in a park which wasn’t really safe.

He and Bobby ate at a table with peeling plastic veneer. They ate without speaking, snuffling up their food quickly. They were watching TV from the floor, both of them sitting Indian style, when their father came tramping in. They both sat up from slumped positions, hearts accelerating inside their thin chests. You never knew what mood he was going to be in. But tonight he took off his boots, cleared his throat a lot like he always did, and shuffled into the kitchen to eat the rest of the Hamburger Helper from the pot before he shuffled to his recliner, sat back with a beer and a sigh, grunted at the boys, and started to snore.

Before too long both boys stood up stiffly and shuffled to their own beds in the one bedroom they shared. They lay down on one big bed that sagged in the middle, and Bobby started snoring almost as quickly and loudly as their dad. Randolph shifted himself a lot but couldn’t get comfortable. Then he remembered. The silver dollar, the one he’d held onto since he was around eight when his mom’s mom gave it to him for a lost tooth; he left it at the bottom of his tree. Randolph slid carefully off the bed, pulled his jeans back on, grabbed his shoes, and eased out the front door while his father and brother snored on.

He couldn’t believe he was so stupid. That silver dollar was the only thing she ever gave him, his mom’s mom. He never should have taken it out of his box stuffed way under the bed, the box full of stuff Randolph kept secret from everyone else. He didn’t want to think about that box, though, because it held one item he never understood why he kept. And after that weird experience this afternoon, maybe he didn’t want to know.

He puffed his way to the park and climbed over the dinky metal gate cops thought would keep people out of it after dark. He jogged over to his tree and plunked down. He felt around in dewy grass with both sets of fingers and winced from the sting in scrapes on those left two fingers–then he stilled and scrunched down, wondering if he dared to take a peek.

There they were. Little human things inside his tree, scurrying around like hummingbirds. He couldn’t believe it. He saw them because there was light inside, light from some tiny source those little things must have built. They were scurrying around his silver dollar.

Randolph felt like he should be dreaming but he knew he wasn’t. They were real, and they were in his tree, and they were surrounding his special coin in that little hole he never even noticed before today. He sat back and forced his tired brain to think. He didn’t know what they were, but they sure did like his silver dollar. They were bent over it as they moved around and around. He thought they might be rubbing it or something but he wasn’t sure.

Slowly Randolph stood. He walked back to the townhouse he shared with his exhausted father and needy little brother, softly opened the door, and quietly slid off his jeans next to the bed. As he drifted into slumber, Randolph’s thin face was creased into a smile for the first time in–maybe ever.

* * * *

Nothing much changed in Randolph’s life after that night. He still had to cook for his dumb little brother and take care of his moody father, but he smiled. Everyone in his life talked about it for awhile until they got used to it. The somber boy who never smiled and always kept his head down, never talking to anyone at school and who absolutely never shared anything with a teacher or anyone else–he became friendly. He talked to people and was pleasantly surprised when they talked back. Bobby, who always followed Randolph’s lead, was perplexed at first but then started to smile, too. Then he started to talk, and before too long they had friends, both of them. When summer came they begged their father to sign them up for baseball and he grumpily agreed.

Randolph still visited his tree occasionally and early one balmy fall morning, sitting at the base of it and whistling a funny little tune he thought he might have picked up from inside that tree, he sanded down a tiny round door with now-shiny hinges before he carefully placed it at the opening of the hole. His tongue protruded while he worked to get the smallest of screws secured in the bark, and then he sat back with satisfaction. As he wiped off the door and tried it, swinging it back and forth a bit before shutting it securely, he wondered how it had come to be in his box for those six years or so. The back of his head knew, he thought, but his twelve-year-old head couldn’t make sense of it.

He stood and stared down for a few minutes, whispered “fairy tales” under his breath with a glint in his vibrant blue eyes, and skipped away. It was time for school.


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