|
Sunny day in May, brisk sales. By late
morning, my left front Levi’s pocket was
heavy with paper money; my cotton nail
pouch was weighted down with coin.
When at last we had a lull, when Dad and I
were all alone, I began to sort the twenties,
tens, the fives, the ones. But before I
was entirely done, my spouse came out
of the house, assigned me a small task,
and went back inside again. A moment
later, when I remembered I’d been trying
to put my finances into some good order,
those many wadded bills had disappeared!
Dad and I looked high and low and
wandered up and down our rows of
borrowed card tables, seeking treasure
among the trash (that is to say, the cash).
I wasn’t worried, you know. (In this day and
age, a dollar doesn’t go very far; the money
had to be somewhere near.) But naturally I
was greatly puzzled, until our next customer
arrived, a friend of ours, who gently showed
my dad and me that I had stashed the cash
safely beneath my own left arm.
♦
|
