A Dark Soul
“I can’t believe you walked by that $100 bill on the sidewalk.” A man called out to Jack as he walked over to money. They were on Boylston Street in Boston. He picked up the crisp bill, pocketing it quickly.
“It is not mine,” Jack Dugginsworth, taking a lunch break from his world of suits and college graduates, stopped for a moment to talk to the man. He was looking for a job in college administration, putting to work a degree he received just before summer began three months earlier.
“Hey man, a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks.” the man, now one hundred dollars richer, said. He looked like a tall leprechaun in construction clothes; a union worker on lunch break from one of the Boston area building projects. A beer or two under his belt, he also had a scraggly beard, and a ruddy complexion. Probably about forty-five, he looked about sixty.
“Yah, but it is not my hundred bucks.” Jack stood ready to move on. His money was tight, but he saw no need to grab what was never his.
“What a simpleton, I don’t believe your naivete. Finders keepers!” the construction worker waved him off dismissively. “I found it and now it is mine.”
“You can have it.” Jack responded. “It is not mine and never was.”
The man looked somewhat surprised, he turned around and stopped. Just a few feet beyond Jack. “So just because this was not in your wallet, you are not going to pick it up even though it is one hundred dollars?”
“Iit is not mine. No matter how I slice it, it is not mine.” He felt like he was defending himself from a criminal accusation.
“What kind of a goody two shoes are you? A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks.” The man seemed intimidating and reminded Jack of some bullies he dealt with in junior high school. The worst died of a drug overdose two months earlier in his mid-twenties.
“A goody two shoes? How about what kind a black soul do you have?” Jack felt like he just said something to one of the bullies he wanted to say all his life.
“Oh a good, christian boy. Hey, Christian boy, the money is mine”
“You can have it. God gives me all the money I need, no more and no less.”
“And I am going to have a good time with it tonight, Christian boy.” He began taunting Jack.
“Go ahead.” Jack started to move on.
The construction worker continued on his way laughing at his good fortune.
Suddenly, a camera crew approached Jack and another approached the construction worker.
“Excuse me sir, why did you not pick up our one hundred dollar bill?” the host asked Jack.
Meanwhile, The construction worker just ran as the other camera crew tried to catch up with him.
