Providence

Providence

We were holed up in a trailer on a hillock of mud and pine needles that winter, surrounded by piles of black trash bags, a broken picnic table, an abandoned refrigerator, and at least nine children’s bicycles in various states of brokenness. We’d both been laid off from our jobs in town and spent the days playing cards and watching the same few DVDs. Our unemployment had run out, and we were still waiting for our food stamps.

​It was cold, dingy and dark. Scrubbing and cleaning were no help. There was a constant mildewy smell in there. Sometimes I would dream of my childhood home, the full refrigerator, the clean bedding. I’d wake up with a headache and feel disoriented, was this what had become of my life? Then the cat would climb on my chest and purr, and Tanner would bring me some instant coffee, and I would try to count my blessings, tell myself that things would get better in the spring, we’d plant flowers, get jobs again.

​The high point of my day was walking down the hill to the mailboxes. The cat was so bored she walked with me. I bundled up in a cast off puff jacket I’d found in one of the abandoned vehicles, the February chill got into my bones, and headed out. There wasn’t a single sign of spring yet, and all the trees were bare and the sky was that same bruised gray it had been for weeks. The nearest neighbors vicious German shepherd barked at us in a frenzy from behind his fence, and the boars rutted and grunted when we passed as well. My neighbor had finally borrowed a tractor to take out corpse of the one that died, so we were spared that sight and smell. Most of the folks on the road weren’t any better off than we were, I could see their homes through the bare trees.

Our mailbox was yawning open, which wasn’t usual unless a tweaker had been by searching for debit cards, that had happened a few times, the giveaway being the discarded mail scattered along the road. When I stooped to peer inside, with the cat purring against my legs, I saw a crumpled grocery story flyer and a little black book. The book was like my Dad’s address book, old school. The book was business card size and held together with a dirty red rubber band. I popped it into the one pocket that didn’t have a hole in it and headed back, my fingers were too numb to look at it on the road.

​“Hey, Tanner, look what I found in the mailbox!” I said when I got back. We sat together on the dingy plaid couch. He thumbed through it carefully; he’d been a gifted child and even now his synapses were quite sharp, I thought he might be a genius. And I thought he’d know whatever secrets the book might hold.

​“It looks like it might be bank accounts and pin numbers.” Tanner said, in his slow laconic voice, I don’t know where he had developed that Appalachian drawl; he’d grown up in Marin County. The little book was quite old, the leather cover was worn, and it had thin tissue-y pages like an old Bible. The writing looked like an old person’s, quivery but readable.

I took the book from Tanner, and saw a kind of code, like WF or BA or CU, then a long number, and then an amount next to each account. It was all different amounts, odd ones like $64.97, but there were a lot of them.

​“Let’s see how much it adds up too!” I said, and I found an old envelope and a pencil and totaled it up, it took me forever, but I came up with $20, 043.71.

​“It might all be closed accounts or something, though, you know?” Tanner said. “And why would it be in our mailbox?”

`​“Maybe the person used to live around here. Maybe somebody found it on the road and put it in our mailbox. But Tanner, what if we took some of this money, just one of the accounts? Just to see if we could?”

“But what if we got busted? Or they hit the alarm or something?”

“We could hitchhike to town and try to withdraw, from just one of the accounts, one of the little ones. Would that work?” I thought for a moment, realizing that all we had were the numbers, not the name on the account; I wouldn’t be able to fill out a withdrawal slip without a name. My heart was pounding, and I felt elated, scared, excited and nervous.

Tanner flipped through the little book again.

​“No, check it out! It has a name and a P.O. Box on one of the inside back pages.” He said, sounding more animated than he had been in years. Whitney Marlboro was the name, so either Tanner or I could pretend to be that person. But we’d probably need an I.D.

​“Man, what we could do with $20,000, huh?” I said.

​“We could move into an apartment and even get some furniture.”

​“We could move across country.”

​“We could buy a used car.”

​“We could get your dental work done!”

​ I grabbed the book again, and I noticed there was a little flap in the back, and I pulled and pulled on it, and an ID fell out, it was Whitney Marlboro. What a gift we had received, we even had an ID now, though of course the picture didn’t look much like me. But Whitney was a nondescript woman, about my age, I could pull my hair back in a tight ponytail and leave off makeup and wear a beanie. I could pour on the charm and talk super rapidly, with my thumb over the photo.

​I began pace around the tiny trailer out of nervous energy, and the cat decided it was a good time to go out. Was it wrong to try to get the money? Was it illegal? Would we get busted? $20,000 wasn’t that much, but it would be a life changer for us. And, providence had provided this chance to us, right? Maybe a neighbor had seen how down on our luck we were and wanted to help us out? I lay awake for quite while that night, seeing the glow of the moon through the plastic sheeting in the “bedroom”, working through scenario after scenario.

The next morning after the last of the instant coffee, we clanked mugs and decided to take a shot at getting some of the money. We’d had to hitchhike/hike to town, and didn’t get picked up until we were almost to the edge of town. My hands had turned completely white and I couldn’t bend them. I could buy some gloves with the money.

We decided to try the first bank in the book, which we assumed was Bank of America. I went to the counter, pulled out a withdrawal slip like I owned the place, and started with $60 from an account that had $63.14 in it. I was afraid to empty the account that might raise some eyebrows. I hoped I could pass muster as Whitney Marlboro, and as a respectable middle class person. I felt sweat trickling down my armpits and along my side, but kept smiling and chatting and the teller barely glanced at the ID. I couldn’t help but grin at Tanner lounging by the ATM and I hoped I was out of camera range.

​“Let’s buy some veggies and fruit and coffee and creamer! And some wool gloves!” I crowed, all the foods I had been craving, and we walked over to Grocery Outlook. I couldn’t wait for some steamed broccoli, maybe some shrimp, maybe some orange juice, instead of macaroni and cheese and old peanut butter and white bread from the food bank.We got a ride all the way home this time.

“Tomorrow let’s do a few more banks, or maybe we should go for the gold so we could get a car!” I crowed.

And that is what we did, and since we did smaller increments, we had no problems with the banks, though it took quite a while to go to each one, and we went to different branches in the towns nearby out of caution.

And so it was. We each got I phones with no contract, $1200. Then, we got a car from an old friend of Tanner’s, $9500. One year of insurance, $435. We got all the groceries we had been craving, including wet food for the cat and all the pantry staples anyone could ever want, $675. We paid the landlord for 6 months, $5600. We paid overdue gas and electric without a payment plan, $335.46. We bought some warm clothes at Target, complete wardrobes almost, $876. The entire Bear River middle school student body got Moleskine notebooks too, the cool ones with the arty covers, and a classic roller pen, anonymously, $640. I even got one for myself. And we put $5000 in the bank.

But it was like “The Magic Fish.” Remember that old story? “Oh, fish from the sea, come listen to me!” and the fisherman asking for too much and losing it all? We had everything we needed, but we were still in our hut by the sea. Maybe we should have done good with the money, not just for ourselves. It wasn’t too late, maybe we could give some of the money to the food bank that had helped us, not just be selfish. Just to build up some karma points. And maybe we should have tried to find Whitney Marlboro; after all, it was her money. I even googled Whitney Marlboro but just came up with a town in New Jersey, and I went no further. Instead we burned the little black book in the wood stove.

A few months passed, so much easier with a car, and I applied for a few jobs, though COVID was still getting in the way of that. The weather was warming, more like spring and I did plant some primroses around the trailer. We did a dump run for all the trash and bikes. We got a fresh couch cover, bright yellow, and a throw pillow to match, and some new dishes, so the trailer looked spiffier.

Then I heard a car pull into the property, and I saw the sheriff’s vehicle ease up to the trailer. Tanner and I jumped up off the couch, and looked at each other. For a split second I considering running, but the bang at the flimsy aluminum door came too soon.

Long story short, Ms. Marlboro had dropped the little book while jogging, and a passerby picked it up and put it in our open mailbox. She had gone to one of the banks with a deposit and saw that it was nearly emptied. Since we had $5000 left, she agreed to not press charges if we returned that money and got on a payment plan. We both got terrible jobs at the new Amazon warehouse in Rocklin.

I kept the Moleskine notebook though, at least I could write down my dreams. Maybe some day we could get ahead.