Lucky Penny

Fifty years prior, give or take a week or two, when the town maintenance crew laid down the new sidewalk, there had been a movement sponsored by the local Rotary Club to plant 1,000 new trees in the community. This attempt at civic beautification was meant to serve dual purposes – revitalize the town after a period of economic and emotional downturn in the 1960’s due to a disproportionately high number of young local casualties of the foreign war in Vietnam, and allow the local Rotary Club to fulfil their nationally mandated service project for fiscal year 1971. With little to argue against, the town council passed the measure 7-0 and 1,000 oak saplings were introduced to bare patches of dirt all around the town, each sapling unaware of their ordained roles as saviors of the recovering township.

Among the 1,000 trees planted, roughly twenty or so were planted alongside the new sidewalk along Fortune Avenue, promising a degree of shade to those who strolled down the three mile stretch consisting of solidly middle-class cottages adorned with hedgerows and daffodils, an oft-used but poorly maintained baseball field, and a small pond which was home to a rowdy gang of geese who routinely mugged passers-by who were not paying sufficient attention.

Fifty years later, the houses, the ballfield, and the pond all survived alongside the long-since cured sidewalk on Fortune Avenue. The young saplings had grown into mighty oak trees delivering on the promised shade to pedestrians. The houses had not changed in fifty years, aside from varying levels of landscaping enhancements or neglect. The ballfield had been upgraded years before, but still maintained its haphazard groundskeeping despite its continued use. And the criminal geese had birthed generations of increasingly more aggressive goslings who soon took over the family business of assaulting any human who wandered into their turf.

It was into this environment that Ernie Paldrop found himself unexpectedly on a cloudless, muggy, stifling one-hundred degree June day just after noon. Ernie was a tall, thin, rakish man with a permanent look of aloofness to the miseries of the people his profession affected. He was dripping with sweat as he walked along Fortune Avenue, but was completely oblivious to any and all moisture or heat surrounding him. His eyes were glued to his black moleskin bound notebook, new but already well-used, its pages filled with notations of illicit transactions and obsessively calculated figures down to the last penny. This notebook served as the Old and New Testaments of the Ernie Paldrop Edition of his own bible. It was filled with epic tales of men and women, triumphant and fallen, and their various deeds and misdeeds, some successful, some fatal. All salacious and, to Ernie, valuable. The notebook never left Ernie’s side. It resided under his pillow as he slept. It sat next to his Grape Nuts and yogurt parfait each morning. It rested on a special shelf in his shower as he bathed. Without his notebook he would be a shell of himself. Aimless. Purposeless. Directionless.

Expendable.

This early afternoon, Ernie had decided to take a walk to clear his head and to pore over the contents of the notebook after an early morning surprise. He had not yet decided whether this surprise was fortuitous or ruinous. Ernie began every morning by logging onto the off-shore bank account he used for his business and reconciling the balance with the daily amount noted in his notebook. Prior to this morning, for the past eight years, three months, and one day, the two figures had matched perfectly.

However, this morning he awoke to find an additional $19,999.99 in his bank account.

As Ernie strolled down Whisper Road and mindlessly hung a left onto Fortune Avenue, he worked backwards through each transaction, each individual line, any notations marked in the margins. The figures paired seamlessly with each prior figure, the path of financial transactions gliding along a glass river straight to the horizon, with no ripple, driftwood, or rogue alligator head in its way to disrupt the free flow of flawless finances.

Was this a Monopoly Special – a bank error in his favor? Had he failed to notate a secret deal made even deeper in the shadows than he usually went? (Impossible, he thought, my mind is a well-oiled steel trap). Was this a lucky break…or something more sinister? This kind of dough did not just appear in one’s account, after all.

As he was nearing the earliest date on which such a transaction could have been made to affect his balance in any meaningful way, his phone rang.

Unlisted. But then again, in his field, this was normal. Ernie’s number was also unlisted. Ernie frowned and closed his notebook, folding his pen into the current page so he would not lose his place.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Paldrop! How are we on this sweltering perspiration of a day?” The voice on the other end was confident, jovial, and British.

“Doing fine. And who am I speaking with?”

“No matter. I just wanted to call to see how your bank account was doing today? My hope is a tad portlier than the day before? Hmm?”

Ernie, who had continued walking during the call, stopped and sighed. This was going to be a thing. He hated things.

“What is it you want?”

The voice on the other end chuckled a bit. “Right to the point, lovely. Well, it’s all rather simple, actually. The easiest $20,000 you will ever make in your life, as it turns out.”

Ernie wrinkled his brow, and shook his head slightly. “Ok, but the actual amount deposited wasn’t twenty grand, it was exactly $19,999.99.”

“Yes, well, that was necessary due to, well, let’s call it an accounting necessity. The remainder of the $20,000 will be paid upon receipt. You have my word.”

“Receipt of what?”

There was a slight pause on the other end. “Of what? Why, of your notebook, of course. We have purchased your notebook, and all of the entries therein, for $20,000.”

Ernie scoffed. “My notebook? Yes, well thank you all the same, but unfortunately it is not for sale. So, if you could go ahead and withdraw the money, or instruct me as to a location where I can send it, I believe we are done here.”

A slow sucking in of air on the other end. “Mr. Paldrop, I’m afraid you don’t quite understand. This isn’t a request. The money is yours. And the notebook will be ours in a matter of minutes. And don’t worry, there’s no danger to you. Once we have the notebook you will never hear from nor see us again.”

“Look, I appreciate you would like what’s inside that notebook, I get it. But this is my livelihood, and it’s simply not for sale.”

“Well, we feel the $20,000 should suffice in compensating you and leading you well on your way to a new livelihood. We are very impressed with what you’ve accomplished up to this point, and are grateful for your meticulous record-keeping. Now, with that said, if you will turn around, you will see two gentlemen – Mr. Messerschmidt and Mr. Sopwith – who will be more than happy to assist you in completing our transaction.”

Ernie turned around and saw two men with dark complexions, both in sunglasses and navy blue suits, perfectly tailored, approaching. Ernie clutched his notebook, shook his head, and yelled, “No!”

The men briefly stopped and looked at each other, confused. Ernie turned and began sprinting down the sidewalk, desperate to get away and preserve his sacred notebook. The men took chase, gaining incrementally, using their physical superiority to close the gap. Ernie glanced over his shoulder and saw them getting closer. He passed the cottages. He passed the baseball field, with a game currently ongoing (4th inning, Tigers – 3, Spiders – 2, runner on third, Spiders at bat), and neared the pond. By this point, the men were less than fifty yards behind him, and seconds from overtaking him. Ernie sensed the futility of his run but knew nothing else to do.

He approached the pond.

As he grew closer to, and eventually passed, the pond, the geese sensed something afoot, and they were not pleased. A full five hours had passed in peace, with nary a human invading their general real estate. Suddenly one of the humans passed by in a blaze, sending the geese into a fury. They ran out onto the sidewalk, yelling after Ernie and taunting him mercilessly. He was lucky that he had passed so quickly, otherwise vengeance would have been theirs. They began to turn back towards the pond when they saw two more humans approaching, at equal speed.

The geese could not believe it. This was too much for them to endure. They readied battle-stations.

Mr. Messerschmidt and Mr. Sopwith saw the geese, but figured they would scatter as soon as they approached. Their eyes were fully trained on Ernie in the distance. While they were under instructions to retrieve the notebook peacefully, they had also been told all bets were off in a struggle. They had secretly hoped for a struggle, it having been a slow year for them with regards to violence.

They neared the geese, and to their surprise, the geese were not budging. In fact, the geese, to the men’s horror, had began charging them! The two men stopped abruptly and tried to go around the geese. But the geese were not having it. Someone had to pay for this disturbance, and it was going to be these two humans. The charge continued and suddenly the men found themselves on the receiving end of a barrage of beaks and wings and talons. Screaming bloody murder, the two men turned on their heels and sprinted back down the street the other way. No money was worth this, and they would deal with the consequences. Their boss could perhaps be reasoned with; not so with these winged monsters.

Ernie continued to run another hundred yards before he looked over his shoulder, convinced he was about to see two sets of hands upon him. Instead, he witnessed the massacre behind him. He slowed to a jog, then stopped. Laughing hysterically, Ernie reveled in his good luck. The men were gone, and the notebook remained his. Plus, the mystery of the money was solved, and his accounting good name remained intact. Ernie sighed in relief and turned back to continue his walk. His foot immediately hit an obstruction, and he began to trip and fall.

When the town decided on oak trees fifty years prior, little consideration was given to the growth patterns of the trees years into the future. While the mighty trees would provide aesthetic and practical uses once fully grown, no one thought to consider what would happen below ground. Over the course of fifty years, the roots of these trees expanded both to support the tree itself and to seek out water sources. These roots were relentless, and grew out in all directions, regardless of what was in front of them. The placement of the trees next to the new sidewalk proved especially troublesome, as the roots grew up through the concrete, creating uneven surfaces. These proved to be problematic to distracted pedestrians, including, on this day, Mr. Ernie Paldrop, who found himself falling to the sidewalk because of one of these roots.

Just before his head hit the pavement and knocked him out unconscious, Ernie noticed a single penny lying on the sidewalk, heads-side up. As he fell, his hand reached out for the penny and clutched it.

His last conscious thought was a mental note to record this latest transaction in his notebook.