Buying Extra Time

Caw. Caw. Caw.

Oh, Gerald, I thought to myself. Gerald was a crow who had decided to take up residence outside my bedroom window for the last ten years of my life. He also just so happened to be an early riser. I glanced over at my alarm clock, only to see that it was only three-thirty in the morning. Groaning, I sat up and walked over to the window putting most of my body weight under it to get the old thing moving. As the window slid up the track it made a terrible whining noise and I cringed, listening for movement elsewhere in the house. Once I knew I hadn’t disturbed anyone’s slumber, I returned my attention to Gerald.

There he was, perched without a care in the world. He shifted his gaze towards me and tilted his head to the side.

“This is early even for you,” I told the bird.

He squawked at me again and inched closer. I laughed and held out my hand to him. Gerald and I had been friends for a long time, he didn’t hesitate to perch himself upon my finger.

“Alright Gerald, what’s the deal? You know I have work in the morning.”

The bird stretched out his wings as if to shrug and I laughed again. Gerald had been my only friend in a lot of dire times over the years, it sounds odd but I had a genuine connection to him. Something caught his gaze and he quickly turned his head, preparing to take flight from his perch. With one final goodbye squawk, he was gone.

Sighing, I looked back over at the clock. I knew that if I went back to sleep now, I couldn’t guarantee I would wake up again at five. Reluctantly, I opened my closet and started hunting for clothes.

Clad in a grey hand-me-down long sleeve shirt and my “lucky” pair of jeans, I tiptoed through the house, shoes in hand. My little brother’s door was cracked and as I passed I could hear his tiny, adorable snores. I paused in his doorway and peered into his dimly lit room. There he was small, helpless, and unfortunate enough to be born into a world where dads don’t always stick around to see their children grow up. He was everything innocent in the world and I intended to do everything I could to protect that.

I gently ran my finger down his cheek before quietly sneaking back out of his room. The stairs in our house were old and seemed to moan louder and louder the longer you took to walk down them, so I tried to tiptoe down them as quickly as possible. I had been avoiding my mom for days and I knew that if I woke her up there would be nowhere to hide, I would have to face her. But what was there to say?

My dad was gone, she was dying and it was my responsibility to take care of Zach after she was gone. The problem was it had always been my responsibility to take care of Zach, even before she was sick. Almost nothing had changed except her income was more reliable because it was coming from the state. But there my mother was, putting on a show for everyone, acting as if her having cancer somehow made a difference in my everyday responsibilities. As awful as it was to say, cancer was most likely my mother’s karma from the universe. To say she wasn’t “well-liked” would be the understatement of the century.

Calling my mother a grifter would probably be a compliment to her profession. I couldn’t remember a time in which my mom had ever actually performed a day’s worth of work, let alone a hard day’s work. Tami was always looking for the easiest route and even cancer wasn’t going to change that about her.

Once I had safely landed in the kitchen, I made my way over to the cupboard and grabbed a PopTart. I haphazardly shoved it in my mouth, getting crumbs everywhere in the process, and grabbed my headphones before heading towards the door. As I was coming out the door, brushing crumbs off my chest and trying to shove one earbud in, I noticed Gerald. He wasn’t in his usual spot, but he seemed to have parked himself directly in the middle of my driveway.

“What’s up, Gerald?” The bird tilted his head and cawed at me, before taking flight and leaving me standing there alone. I shrugged and popped my other headphone in, heading down the street on foot.

I decided to do a little light jogging and ran until the sun began to peek over the horizon. As I was making my way back towards my house, I noticed Gerald standing in the middle of my driveway again. This time, he was standing on top of something.

“Well, what do you have there?” I knelt next to the bird and examined the object beneath him; he graciously hopped off. It was a small, black notebook with a small black ribbon hanging out of the bottom, marking a page in the front half of the book.

Written in neat, small writing on the marked page was the following:

Drea,

You saved my life once.

We were just strangers and you passed me on a park bench with a long look on my face. You took the time to ask me what was wrong.

That day, I was about to inject an 8 ball into my veins because I thought all hope was lost. A lot had happened, and I didn’t see a way out. As young as you were, you saw something in me that others were too busy to notice.

To the left of your driveway, near the daisies, I’ve buried a key to a safety deposit box. Go to Tri-Community Bank on 4th Ave, the box number is 107 and it is in your name.

Brandon

Brandon Bennett was the Tony Montana of this town and back then, I had no idea who he was. The incident he was talking about in this journal occurred when I was six years old and he was just some depressed guy on the street. I hadn’t even realized it was him until years later when my mom retold me the story. She said she thought he was going to backhand me for coming up to him like that, she was surprised he even spoke to me. He certainly wasn’t in the business of charity and this type of thing wasn’t his style, which made me pretty nervous to go anywhere near that safety deposit box.

Gerald had stood silently beside me as I read the note. I quickly thumbed through the rest of the pages, but they were all blank. It was just so strange, a bird delivering me a notebook with clues to a hidden safety deposit box with who knows what inside?

“Should I take a look, what do you think?” I looked over at Gerald who gave me a firm “caw”, which took to mean yes. I glanced over at the daisies, knowing that my mom would be furious if I harmed so much as one petal on those flowers. Though I hadn’t noticed it before, I could see now there was a pile of dirt near the base of one of the daisies that were just too neat to be a coincidence. I took a deep breath and headed towards the flowerbed.

Needless to say, my curiosity did get the best of me and before I knew it I was marching through the front door of Tri-Community, dirt-caked under my nails and all. This was a ritzy place and the banker was sure to show her distaste for me by asking me to wash my hands before we could proceed. It was nothing I wasn’t used to, unfortunately, I was guilty by association and she probably thought I was there to rob the place. I presented her with the key to my mysterious safety deposit box and she led me back to a private room where she removed my box carefully from the wall and set it on the table in front of me.

She reluctantly left the room and even after she was gone, I didn’t move for a few minutes. I was terrified that this was all some sort of sick joke; Brandon wasn’t exactly known for his “winning” attitude. After a few minutes of chomping my nails until they bled, I finally took the plunge and opened the box.

Cash.

More cash than everyone in my entire extended family combined had likely ever seen.

Twenty thousand dollars, to be exact.

At the bottom, there was a note in the same handwriting:

Since you saved my life, I’m saving yours.

Now we’re even.