Arthur Unknown

Arthur MacArthur lived two houses down in a one-story house painted three shades of brown…

Arthur never thought of himself as lucky.

Luck didn’t have much to do with him. Even playing games, he usually rolled a bad number or drew a bad card. Didn’t bother him, though. Why let things you couldn’t do anything about make you sad? Arthur could have been sad but for some reason he never was. That reason was his mama. Mama was busy but that didn’t matter to Arthur. His mama was there and she loved him completely and totally. She gave him a little black notebook full of things she would say to him if she was there.

One day he saw a couple of dimes on the floor of McKinney’s and he remembered something she’d written in that book: Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck.

They’re not pennies but it still might work, he thought to himself as he stooped to pick up the coins. Just then, his attention was caught by the man checking out in front of him. He seemed a little bothered—not angry, but starting to get a little fidgety. Arthur heard him muttering things like “sorry, thought I had enough,” and “didn’t realize—,” and it was soon clear that he didn’t have enough money for his medicine. Arthur silently slid the two dimes on the counter and the man said “Ah! Thank you son” and the cashier took them and the man took his receipt and left. Arthur paid for his mama’s medicine with the money she’d left for him on the table and took his receipt and left too.

His dimes were gone, but on the way out of the mart, Arthur was shocked by the sight of a dollar bill laying right on the pavement in front of him. Paper money always got his attention—most of his money was coins that Mama would give him as allowance or the Tooth Fairy would leave him under his pillow. The only paper money he saw was what Mama left on the table. So seeing an actual dollar laying on the ground was a big deal.

He came to his senses and picked it up and realized that it wasn’t a real dollar. It must be a fake because it said “TWO DOLLARS” and had some other president, not George Washington, on the front.

A voice behind him said, “Is that a 1976 two dollar bill?” Arthur turned to look and saw a woman in a brown sweater and brown mottled glasses looking down at the bill in his hand. He showed it up close.

“Well, that is a pretty nice find,” she said after a second. “Tell you what. I’ll give you a TWENTY dollar bill for that two dollar one. My husband collects that sort of thing and I think that’s fair…”

The words from Mama’s black notebook came to mind. You’ll know a good deal when you feel it. If a deal is a steal, you should seal it.

Twenty was a LOT more than two, so Arthur figured that qualified as a good deal. Arthur and his crisp twenty dollar bill set off for the walk back home. Except Arthur couldn’t think about anything but his mama’s face when he showed her that money. He pictured her smile, big as the moon, opening up like a blooming flower, when he held it up in front of her. He couldn’t wait.

But he glanced to his left and saw a truly sad sight. In a big heap of ragged blankets, a person, hard to tell if it was a man or woman, old or very old, was sitting with legs crossed behind a hungry-looking, ragged little dog. Arthur didn’t have a lot of things, but he always had something to eat and the sight of the person and the dog on the sidewalk gave him a jolt. He had seen other people like this before but now something was different. Now, he had a twenty dollar bill in his pocket and now he just saw the sign on the wall behind the person.

Double Meal: 2 Soups, 2 Salads, 2 Sandwiches: $20 tax incl.

Words from the book sprang up in his mind: There is no such thing as an accident, if you’re seeing a sign, you should act on it.

Well, that was certainly a sign and Arthur knew what to do. He came out of the place with the Double Meal and sat it in front of the person and left real quick before the person, or the dog for that matter, could say anything. He could see his mama’s smile, even without the twenty dollar bill.

So he kept going on his way home, thinking about how today had a glow and he would probably always remember it, anytime he wanted, like he was right back here, right now. Some days are like that.

But his day wasn’t over.

He noticed something smallish, a little tattered, and laying there, right at his feet. A scuffed black wallet was wedged between a rock and a branch near the end of the sidewalk Arthur was about to hop off of to take the shortcut back to his house. He was thinking about himself as a treasure hunter, finding artifacts for museums, as he opened the wallet and looked at the face on the driver’s license behind the little cracked plastic window. His eyes drifted to the address by the photo and he realized it was just two houses down from his own! His mama had drilled their address into his brain since he was a kid—you know, a little kid. So he knew this was one of his neighbors. But he didn’t recognize the face in the picture.

Arthur couldn’t fit the wallet in his pocket, so he put it in the bag with his mama’s medicine and carried it as he headed back to his neighborhood. And he got to his neighbor’s house first, so he braved himself up and knocked on the door. He waited, taking the wallet out of the bag from the mart. The garage was open so there must be someone home. He knocked again, a little louder.

He didn’t want to leave the wallet by itself on the porch but he didn’t want to Trespass either. Mama was clear about Trespassing. Except maybe he could leave it in the garage (it would be safer there). He walked to the garage and up to the steps going into the house when he noticed there was a window in the door to the house that he could see through. He could see into a hallway that looked like it led to the kitchen. And there was someone lying on the floor in the kitchen.

Arthur threw open the door and ran down the little hallway and stopped by the person on the floor. It looked like the person in the wallet, but his eyes were closed. And he wasn’t moving, even when Arthur wiggled him. He dropped his bag and the wallet and everything spilled out. Arthur saw two one-hundred-dollar bills fall out of the wallet but he wasn’t thinking about anything except the man on the floor and he took off running back to town the way he had just come.

If someone’s in trouble, find help on the double, his mama had written.

Sitting at the station, Arthur was watching all of the commotion around him. He had given the woman behind the desk his neighbor’s address and had been told to stay put and they would call his mama to come get him. The place was frightening and exciting all at once. He had never been inside but had walked past it many times and wondered about the stories of the lives of the people who had been inside. Now he had one of those stories. He heard the people in uniforms talking about his neighbor. He heard “attacked” and “critical” and “hospital” and he knew it wasn’t good but could maybe be worse.

He was there a long time.

He was thinking that they might have forgotten to call Mama and started braving up to ask someone when a short woman with brown sort-of-curly hair came over to him. She knelt down to look in his eyes and he looked a little sideways.

“You, sir, are a hero,” she said. She said more but it was kind of a blur until she got to what seemed like a big moment in her speech. “Two thousand dollars!” she said, and looked at him. “You just earned a reward of two thousand dollars!”

Arthur didn’t know what to say. That seemed important to her, but he was wondering if his neighbor was okay and when was Mama going to be here? He said he didn’t want the reward, just Mama to come pick him up so he could go home and sit at the table and eat supper and listen to Mama talk about her day and tell her about his. He had a lot to talk about today. And right when he finished talking, Mama walked through the door.

She went straight to Arthur, picked him up in a big hug, with her purse slipping down to her elbow. Arthur hugged her back and then she sat him on the chair so she could talk to the short woman. After awhile, she bent down to look at Arthur. “I’m so proud of you. You’re the biggest person I know. That reward is a lot of money but what do we say? We work for a fee but do good things for free. And besides, I just got a raise—out of nowhere. Twenty thousand dollars!”

Later that night, after Arthur had recounted the events of the day and Mama had described how they had announced her promotion at work and the thoughtful little thrown-together party her friends had set up at lunch, he got his pajamas ready and took the little black notebook out of his front pocket. He flipped to the last page and read the statement with a new understanding of life and its wonderments.

Whatever you give out of love or concern, ten times that amount you’ll receive in return.

©2021 Kevin and Rebecca Kelly