Once, in my town, there was an old man who lived by the river. He would sit out on the riverbank in all kinds of weather, right next to where he slept, in a hidey-hole formed by this holly bush and some rocks.
From a shoestring around his neck there hung a brown leather pouch, which contained one pound of gold dust.
The old man had a big, frowzy white beard, which he somehow kept round, like his face. He wore a squashed leather slouch hat with a rotted-through chin strap. I never saw him without that hat. In the winter, he stretched a navy peacoat over a thin and stained grey hoodie; in the summer, he took the peacoat off. I donʼt know where he put it; probably he tucked it into his hidey-hole.
The old man kept in pretty good shape, considering his only shelter was a holly bush. His cheeks above the frowzy beard were always a nice pink hue. But, aside from the gold, he did have an EBT card, and both Circle K and 7-11 are just a block away from that spot on the river. I think he ate pretty well. And the weather here in the coastal region of Washington state is mild: in the winter it isnʼt cold, just rainy.
One time – must have been summer, ʼcause it was dry and I was down on the river smoking and taking in the air and the sparkling water – I asked him where he got that pound of gold dust.
“My parents,” he said, and he winked at me.
“Your parents gave you a pound of gold dust?”
“Sure. I was born with it.”
I thought the guy might be a little bit crazy. “Well, why donʼt you do something with it? Maybe get yourself an apartment or something?”
“That ainʼt what itʼs for.”
“Oh.”
“Itʼs for my one true love,” he said, and his blue eyes danced.
Now, the old man must have been 75 years old, if he was a day. And he was sitting there next to the holly bush he lived in talking about his one true love. I decided for sure he was crazy. But I must have had the day off work with nothing to do, or something, so I nibbled at the hook: “And whereʼs your one true love? Do you know who it is?”
But the old man just grinned, baring some yellow and crooked teeth.
Iʼm not the only guy the old man would talk to; in fact, he would talk to anyone who had time to stop off the river path and shoot the breeze. It was rare to find him alone. With the other old men who happened by he would talk about the old days, when the timber town was booming. With the women he was courteous, usually directing the conversation to the beauty of the river or the pine-studded hills. I canʼt count the number of times I came across him chatting up a woman while while she stood there beaming. With the kids, he joked and played or inquired with gravitas about whatever kid stuff they had going on that day.
There came a summer day when I walked down to the river for my afternoon smoke and the old man wasnʼt there. In his place next to the holly bush sat a woman of about 40 or so. She had wavy, shoulder-length brown hair – the brown not too obviously a dye job, but you could tell – and she wore a leather bomber-style jacket, even though it must have been 70 degrees out. She looked too clean to be homeless, but she probably was, wearing that jacket on a hot day.
She looked away from the river as I was walking up, and I nodded a greeting, planning to walk by without bothering her. I was wondering where the old man was. Then I saw the leather pouch hanging from her neck. It fell between her breasts, which you could see a hint of with her jacket open and her V-neck blouse.
I had to stop. The pouch looked just like the old manʼs. I kind of sidled up to her, turning so we both faced the river, and asked her how it was going.
She smiled at me and, though she was not a bad looking 40-something, her teeth werenʼt doing her any favors. They were crooked and yellow – almost exactly like the old manʼs teeth. The similarity threw me off a second, then pulled me in again: I had to know what was going on. I didnʼt wait for any reply, other than the smile. “Whatʼs in the pouch?”
Her smile broadened and she batted her eyes. “Secret,” she said.
“Oh.” I felt rude, confronting her like I was. But I had my reasons. “Thereʼs an old guy, sits here, wears a pouch just like that.”
She smiled some more. “Heʼs the one that gave it to me.”
“Really?” I found that hard to believe. “He said it was for his one true love.”
This time when she smiled her blue eyes twinkled. She didnʼt say anything in response though.
“Do you know where he is? The old guy?”
She just shook her head and looked at me. It felt pretty awkward, me pushing her for information, suspicious of how she got that pouch, and her not saying much, so I hit the eject button. I went over to Circle K, then crossed the road to 7-11, to see if I could find the old guy. No luck.
After that whenever I walked down to the river, the woman was sitting there instead of the old man. I didnʼt see him anywhere else in town either. I didnʼt get too worked up about it; for all I knew he had found a place or something. But I always watched out for him.
The woman wasnʼt like the old man, even though she sat in his place. The main difference was she never talked to anyone, unless they walked up and started talking first. And one time I saw her taking gold out of the pouch. She was crouched down by the river with the pouch in her hand, and it looked like she was sprinkling the dust on the water. A family of geese swam in a semicircle just out of her reach; as soon as she sat back on the bank, they rushed in and started eating.
Oh, thatʼs a fine thing to do with gold, I thought. Sheʼs even crazier than the old man.
My work schedule changed soon after that. I went from working overnight at the grocery store to a 12-hour day shift at the fish rendering plant. I didnʼt have a lot of free time for walking by the river, then, for about a year. Even that winter, when we actually had weekends off, it just never felt like going for a walk was the thing to do: it was always raining, plus I was walking a couple miles to and from my 12-hour shifts. The last thing I wanted to do on my days off was take another walk.
So I donʼt know exactly when it happened, but by spring for sure the woman was no longer on the river. It was probably the first real nice day of spring when I got out to the river and noticed just a vacant spot on the bank where the old man, and then the woman, used to sit. It was kind of sad, but again I hoped the woman had found a place to stay, instead of having been forced to camp out in the wind and wet.
By fall I was tired of fish, and I took a job at Circle K, back on overnights. I didnʼt see the old man or the woman, and they had kind of faded from my mind by that point. I did see a lot of the homeless though: Circle K had a bathroom that was open to the public, the only one on that side of town, so we were a hot spot for them. Theyʼd come in wet and stinking and ask for the key, which a lot of my co-workers would refuse them. Iʼd always give it to them – better they do their business in our bathroom than on the sidewalk or the riverbank, I figured.
There was one homeless kid who came in on a regular basis. He was probably in his 20s, and he liked to sleep out on our sidewalk between the propane tank cages, under our big red overhang. It was out of the way and I usually didnʼt drive him off, even though it was my job to police the front of the store. Usually I left him alone unless someone complained.
One Monday morning a lady came in at around 5:30 and ʻlet me knowʼ that there was a ʻrough looking sortʼ sleeping out there. I nodded and thanked her and let her pass out of the store, hoping that would be the end of it. But then I remembered it was Monday and rush hour would be starting in a little while, so I figured I probably should ask the kid to move on. When I had next had a minute, I went outside to do the deed.
The rain was just a fine mist. I found the kid fast asleep, scrunched up with his back against one cage and his feet against the other. He had a thin white blanket over him, one side of it draped outside the narrow slice of dry pavement protected by the overhang. His long black hair and stocking cap were wet; heʼd obviously been out in it at some point. But there were other overhangs in town to sleep under, I told myself. I crouched down next to him.
“Hey, dude, you awake?”
He moved a little, just sort of shifted so that he leaned more against the wall than the cage. I could tell he was awake. “Itʼs time to go.” I really didnʼt have to explain myself since we had been through it before.
He grunted, but didnʼt move again, and I just sat my heels looking at him. Iʼm pretty sure he could sense me, ʼcause after a bit he threw off the blanket and sat up. When he did, that brown leather pouch flopped forward and dangled from its shoestring around his neck.
“Hey, where did you get that pouch?”
He looked at me, his blue eyes flashing beneath a knitted brow, strands of hair sticking to his face. He covered the pouch in a fist. “My friend.”
“What friend?” I figured it had to be either the old man or the woman. I was hoping it was the old man; I still wanted to know what had happened to him.
“Cynthia,” he said.
The woman, then. I really wasnʼt that concerned about her – I had never wondered about what happened to her like I did the old man – but something shifted in the moment I realized the kid knew her. I hadnʼt really wanted to kick him out of his dry spot into the rain before, and now I couldnʼt bring myself to do it.
I stood up and backed away. “You know what, never mind. You arenʼt hurting anything here, and itʼs raining. Iʼm not gonna kick you out. At least not today.”
He lit up a little, like he was just about to smile, and he went ahead and stood up and threw the blanket around his shoulders.
“Really, you donʼt have to go,” I said, and I turned to go back inside the store. He called me back, though, before I made it to the doors. When I turned around I saw he had taken the pouch from around his neck and was holding it out to me.
“I think you should have this,” he said.
I took it on reflex. Itʼs just what you do when someone goes to hand you something. The pouch was warm in my hand and yet I felt a little tingle in my arm like I was holding something cold. The weight of the gold felt like money. But I knew as soon as my hand touched the pouch that it wasnʼt for me.
That tingle like cold brought an instant clarity: I understood what the old man and the woman and this young guy had been doing with the pouch. The tingle spread up my arm and into my chest, and I knew without question that I would do as they had done.
I quit my job at the end of that shift and went down to the river and sat next to the old manʼs holly bush. I go there every day now. Everyone who passes by gets a pinch of gold from the pouch, yet it never empties: thereʼs always one pound of gold dust in it.
I suppose eventually, if I continue to not work, Iʼll lose my apartment. Iʼm not sure I care, but maybe it wonʼt actually come to that. Maybe Iʼll find the next steward of the pouch before that happens.
In the meantime, I sit and smoke my teeth yellow and watch the rippling water – and give.
without the use of AI.