Green Notes

I hate money, I really do.

Whether it’s those little green notes or numbers on a screen, I hate it.

What it does to people, to our neighbourhoods, turns things inside out, upside down.

It’s not like I’ve always hated it. When I was younger it’s all I wanted, a bit of green in my hands. And I’d do anything, literally anything to get it. No matter what it cost.

It’s funny, you can hold a gun to someone's head and all you be thinking about is how much they owe you. Not, what the hell am I doing.

That’s money for you.

I’ve seen the crackheads all up and down my street and it’s no different.

I ain’t saying this like it’s revelatory or anything.

We all know money’s like a drug, it’s just a drug we used to.

Look I know we need it, so I can’t not make money, but I just make enough to get by, to keep my family going.

But back in the day I’d have dreams of money. Lying on a bed of it.

We all did, us neighbourhood kids, and we all followed those dreams; most who did died, I stopped dreaming cause at some point you realise with this skin colour, living in this little shack, in this here postcode, a bit of money paints you a certain way.

People think you doing something wrong, even thought most of the time you are.

The only way to get out of here bar handcuffs or a coffin is the lotto.

I got my winning numbers right here, my son's birthday, 10 - 15 - 19 - 9 - 9, the rest I pick are just random.

I know how that looks, I hate money, but I’m in the lotto. I guess you have to be a certain kind of person to get it.

Man my old shack looked extra old when I settled into my lazy boy and flicked on the tele and lit up my smoke. I sucked back the cigarette and felt the bliss of my afternoon routine wash over me. But like usual, I forgot to ash, and that ash it got bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier, until it just dropped to the floor, singeing my beautiful rug.

Below my sink I opened the cupboard and fished around for the carpet cleaner, till my hands took hold of something odd, yet familiar. And I pulled out from the darkness of the cleaning cupboard a wad of cash kept tight by a couple of rubber bands, I reached in again and pulled out another.

I know what you’re thinking and I thought it too, maybe by some miracle I could just keep pulling wads out, more and more, from some portal to moneyland. But this is all too real this life, and once I pulled the last one out and counted it all, I had in my hands a solid twenty grand. I felt queasy looking at it, goddammit I whispered to myself. Where the hell did this come from? Who the hell owns this cash? I could tell by the wear and tear it was all drug money. But why was it here?

You can always feel the cops before you see them, a little disturbance in the force that green puppet Yoda would say. And as I looked at that dirty cash and heard my door crumple from some cops big black boot I felt I knew for sure this was a stitch up, cops planting shit, upping their case numbers, making me: just another number.

****

I’m ashamed to say it, this wasn’t the first time I’d seen the inside of an interrogation cell. I’ve stared back at myself wondering who was watching on the other side of that double mirror more times than I care to count.

As I sat there, rubbing at the red rings on my wrists, I thought about the money. Sure I’d heard of cops skimming a little cash off a major bust and planting it when they need a few more arrests. But who the hell am I to them? You’d think they’d plant this cash on dealers, not a truck driver.

Then again I’d also heard of drug dealers keeping stashes of cash and drugs off themselves, in little hidey holes across the city. Maybe my house was one of those holes.

The cell door shuddered open and two old boys in blue walked in quickly, setting down a few photos and a folder. Like a reflex I asked politely for a lawyer.

“Sure thing,” one of them replied.

“Twenty grand,” the other said, “big bucks huh, where’d you get it?”

“Lawyer please,” I continued politely.

“We took a little walk down memory lane with your file, haven’t had someone your age in here for a very long time.”

“True that. A guy like you should be looking at prison like a graveyard, your final resting place.”

“Lawyer. Please.”

“Sure, sure. We just got a few questions. You can answer them, it might help you walk out of here, or you can wait it out for the state appointed.”

“First things first. Explain this,” the other said.

And the copper opened the folder with a flourish and threw a little black book across to me. Didn’t know what it was, had never seen it before in my life, I told them.

They looked at me like I was an idiot.

I opened the book and flicked through a few pages. Names and numbers, dollar signs written here and there.

“Practically every dollar of that twenty grand can be found in there,” they said.

A ‘who owes who’ record. It didn’t take long for me to recognise the sketchy handwriting.

My boy. God. Dammit.

You can’t leave your kids alone for a second in a neighbourhood like mine. Too many vices not near enough virtue, that’s what my pa used to say.

“Book sure looks familiar, don't it?” The old cop on the right wakes me.

I’m here now. In this seat, have to stop thinking about the past. I look at the black notebook in front of me, these cops, a few years my junior, they see evidence of a crime. Me, I see an escape plan, just not a very well thought out one. But that’s youth for you, decisions made without blinking an eye.

I scratch the tip of my nose. Here I am, an overweight, overworked, middle aged man, wife gone, kids on the loose, with only a dilapidated shack to my name.

Then there’s my boy, young, dumb, making mistakes, mum gone, dad just a man whose whole life can fit into a sentence. No wonder he wants to escape fast.

There’s no question here for me.

That’s my kid, my boy, he ain’t gonna wake up one day forty years old, scarred and tattooed and released into the deep end of life. Not on my watch.

“Yeah, sure does,” I reply.

I may die in prison, but that’s a free roof, three free meals a day, and if I look on the bright side, I’ll never have to worry about money again. And I’m not gonna lie, that’s actually kind of soothing for me.

I pick up the notebook and run my fingers across the ink that’s written by my son.

Maybe this writing ain’t too sketchy.

I flick to the back and find drawings.

Too beautiful. I don’t have the words in my head to give them proper life.

There’s an eye that looks way too real.

An alleyway I feel I could walk down.

And my wife, his mum, looking so realistic I… I open my mouth to say something to her.

Maybe this whole thing will set him straight, put him on the path to something great.

But even as I say it I realise that truth, he ain’t going nowhere without that money.

I hate it, I really do.