The Current Sea

Andrew Jackson dictates more of your life than your mother ever did and your lover ever will. Money makes the world go 'round, especially when it's in the form of that common denomination spat by ATMs every second of every day. Inflation's hit our pockets hard, but you can still tell a lot with a twenty dollar bill when it comes to judging character. You used to be able to do a lot with character, too.

There've been times when the green got the best of me, or someone else got the jump with the help of some cash. When I was in the fourth grade a mysterious tissue was sitting on the floor near my desk for an entire day. No one stopped to pick it up and throw it in the trash can a mere five feet away. Just before the afternoon announcements came over the PA system, my teacher-- a barrel-chested black man who cared more than he should have, walked over and picked up the crumpled tissue. "No one bothered all day long," he said disappointedly as he glanced at me quickly and lifted it from floor, revealing what was taped to the bottom: a crisp twenty-spot. We all learned something that day, or at least the more precocious of us did. The bus ride home was spent pondering what we could've done with such an unheard of sum of money. Twenty bucks could buy a lot of candy in 1994.

Then there's the aggravation tax trade-off. How many times have you loaned someone a small amount of money and actually been repaid without asking? Sometimes, as Sonny points out in "A Bronx Tale", lending a pest twenty dollars is the best way to get rid of them. They'll never bother you again with that debt hanging in the air. It's a cheap investment for a simpler life. It's one less headache to rattle your day. It's one less day in God's barrel of laughs. The punchline's in the pudding.

The theory spreads and mutates from the social scene to the construction site. There's the story of the foreman who asks his apprentice if he lost twenty dollars on the job. He holds it up and rubs the folded bill against itself, a visual aid to further the illusion and sweeten the bait. This money, of course, came from the foreman's wallet and is merely a test of the young man's character. If he says Yes he'll get his check in the afternoon and be asked not to return. If he says No he can continue to get coffee for the men every morning and continue his rite of passage. This hasn't happened yet, but it will in a few years. Revenge for that fourth grade mishap, perhaps.

Guilt, or fear of it, can drive a man just as easily. I had a friend who got a call about money that had gone missing in his driveway one night. He brought out his flashlight and combed the whole yard, but nothing turned up with the effort. It frustrated him so much that his friend had lost his money that he was prepared to lie and say he found it. Dipping into the liquor store fund didn't seem to be so bad in comparison to the alternative. No one likes to be a suspect. No one likes to lose that trust. The phone call came later that the money was found in a pocket or under a car seat. It was there all along, the seventh president of the United States grinning and hiding in darkness, not far from the skeletons dangling from cobwebbed hangers.

And what of your shadows? What's worth the money? You'd pay arms and legs to send them away. Twenty bucks is a drop in the bucket. Twenty years as a flash in the pan. Twenty rounds left in the banana clip, and the zombies are still coming.