The Dog Tag

Quickly Ambrose realized he was in the city park, the same park he usually took on his way back and forth to school. After the yelling match he had with the school principal, the park seemed like a good place to be—a good place to clear his head. The trees were nicely spread out, the grass was a vibrant green and at the moment he could see all of it, even the pond. Never had he been able to see all of the pond, usually there were geese or people, but there was no one. It was really nice, Ambrose didn’t have a thing to worry about and just for a moment he was completely free of worry.

Ambrose had never been in the park at this hour, and honestly it was pretty cool how silent it was. Sort of like he had the whole world to himself. But then it all ended when he heard a loud sniffling behind the bushes ahead. Ambrose followed the long straight sidewalk, curious as to what was happening. He didn’t really like the idea of having to deal with another problem, but he thought it’d be nice to help. Just around the thicket was a tall, slender old lady who looked too dressed up to be in the park. She was wearing a dress, Ambrose had never seen a dress this close before. Especially one this clean and this white? Her dress was white! Ambrose thought the fact she had a white dress was the coolest thing ever! He had been so intrigued that she had what looked like a polar bear sweater, a white dress, and fancy high-heeled shoes that he hadn’t noticed that the woman was looking at him in a very sad and disturbed manner.

The woman wiped a tear from her face with her handkerchief and pulled back her white hair, “Wh-at are you doing?”

Ambrose was embarrassed and his dignity felt a little wounded, but he still looked up and said nervously, “I—I was just looking at your clothes, they’re great.”

“What?” she asked as her voice quaked.

Ambrose felt even more awkward, “Sorry mam, I was just looking at your clothes—”. For a very, very unpleasant second, Ambrose had forgotten the real reason he came over to her. When it finally did hit him, (like she would have if he got any closer) he sat down on the bench and stated, “I saw you crying and I wanted to help, so I came over here to see what was wrong. And in the middle of it I got sidetracked at how pretty you looked.”

For a second, there was what could have been dead silence, but the lady was still sniffling and looking very weirdly at Ambrose.

Ambrose very flusteredly blurted out, “NO! I didn’t—I wasn’t—”

The lady chuckled and wiped another tear, “I know what you meant, you were complimenting me.”

“Yes, exactly!” Ambrose chuckled with relief. The woman sighed and looked at her watch. They both sat there in silence and Ambrose was starting to feel like it was his fault that they were both so awkward. In all truth, he sort of wanted her to start crying again so she wouldn’t be focused on him so much. Ambrose asked, “why were you crying?”

The lady closed her eyes and replied, “My husband died.”

Ambrose felt awful, who asks that after someone’s husband dies! Apparently he did. Earlier he felt like the victim, but now he was just the person picking at scabs.

The woman looked at how awful he felt and realized she had said the wrong thing, she then blabbed out, “Oh no—I meant that he. Well—he did die, but it was a few years ago.”

It didn’t help that much but it did ease his conscious a little bit. That’s still a horrible thing that her husband died, but it wasn’t as bad once you have some time to live without the person you’re missing. So, instead of making it worse, he tried to make conversation, which usually didn’t go well anyway. “How’d he die?”

“He died in the war.” the woman sighed sadly as she stroked the little black book in her lap which, oddly Ambrose didn’t see before. Probably because he was too focused on her clothes. He jumped, she started to talk again, “Oh well, I better get going. Thank you very much for stopping and actually being worried for me. You wouldn’t know this, but I don’t have many people who care for me.”

Ambrose felt bad, but was not regretting the fact that he talked to her anymore. “Yeah, no problem, my mom taught me to always help those who are in need.”

The lady stood up and thanked Ambrose once more. Then she walked off taking her little black book with her. Ambrose watched her leave and never noticed. Then, when he got up to leave himself he stepped on what felt like a thin tin strip. The shiny object laid on the ground taunting him. He picked it up and wondered why in the world the lady had dropped a flattened out quarter? When in reality, he had just noticed that what was a flattened quarter was a dog tag from a war veteran! Not just any war veteran—the town hero, Geralt J. Terra. Ambrose leaped with excitement! You would have thought he won the lottery! Which in this case would be the same thing. You could have just replaced it with $10,000 and call it just as good.

Ambrose burst through the door of his dirty, broken down apartment. At that moment his mother threw the dish rags in the air and dove as if a gun went off. She was a skinny woman with barely any meat on her bones. She wore filthy rags like a dress and had her sleeves rolled up with her arms over her head. Her bandana was bright red and covered in dirt. She looked like the skinny version of the “We Can Do It!” poster girl.

“Ambrose?” she inhaled and slapped her hand onto the counter for support, “you scared me half to death!”

Ambrose was jumping with excitement, he ran over and helped his mother up while in the process chanting, “Mom! Mom! We did it! We’re rich!”

His mother looked at him very doubtful but calmed him down and at least showed interest. Once she had sat him down she came over with another rag and began drying her hands off to focus on what he had. She looked at what appeared to be a metal band-aid at first, but then she looked at it more. Beginning to look back at her ecstatic child and back at the dog tag her face started to crack a smile and her eyes lit with joy.

“Where’d you get it?” Ambrose’s mom asked.

“I—” Ambrose didn’t know what to say. Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to steal from a mourning old lady. First, it sure didn’t help his consciousness at all. Second, he had the feeling it wasn’t gonna make his mom happy. So he decided to push it off, cause he knew he could not lie, “does it matter where I got it? I mean, really, we have it—don’t we?”

His mother’s expression became ice cold, “You didn’t steal it did you? I thought I raised you better than that.”

Ambrose smiled, but she could see right through his deception.

“Wherever you got that, you better take it back right now!” Ambrose hadn’t seen this side of his mom for years. She was very disappointed and looking very worn, aged, and tired. He could tell she couldn’t handle another hope of hers being shattered. So, he apologized and told her everything, no matter how much it hurt him. He knew he wasn’t ever really gonna sell it. For whatever reason the old lady had the dog tag, she had it, and it was hers.

A few days had gone by and after the long fight with his mom, Ambrose had taken to the streets, looking for the old lady. And when he never found her, Ambrose was pretty disappointed in himself for not going straight to her after she had dropped it. He kicked at rocks in the park and threw whatever he felt like at the poor pigeons, because he was frustrated and mad. There was nothing he could do! He couldn’t just make money. He couldn’t just sell the dog tag! No! There was no way out! Ambrose just wanted to scream at the world! But instead, he was about to do much worse. Overwhelmed with pressure, he grabbed the dog tag and aimed it toward the park’s pond. Before he could do anything with the loaded arm a woman cried out to him and started running straight for him. Ambrose was more terrified than anything and was about to start running and yelling “stranger danger” until he saw an old woman with a black notebook, jogging as fast as her heels would allow her. Ambrose stopped and with great relief, ran towards her.

“MY DEAR BOY!” the woman exclaimed, “please do not throw away my husband’s dog tag!”

“Geralt Terra was your husband?!” Ambrose gasped.

“Yes!” the woman huffed for air, “I was his wife.”

“So there is a reason you had his dog tag?” Ambrose pointed out the obvious.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” the woman repeated, “now can you please give the tag to me before I have another panic attack where you almost throw it into a lake!”

Ambrose was speechless. Did he almost just throw away Geralt Terra’s dog tag?! What was wrong with him?! He quickly shoved it into her hand and apologized for almost throwing it into the pond.

“It’s okay, honestly, I can’t believe you didn’t sell it right off the bat.”

And just like that he wanted to throw it in the lake again—thanks for pouring salt into the wound. But, he had made it this far, so he just told the truth, “Trust me, I was about to, but then my mom told me it wasn’t right to sell something that doesn’t belong to you. So I didn’t—even though we really needed it.”

The old lady looked insulted but quickly got over the fact that he almost did, then focused on the fact that he actually didn’t sell the tag. She smiled and replied, “Well, it sounds like I’d like that mother of yours very much. And please tell her thank you for raising such a nice young man.”

Ambrose smiled back and said, “I will.”

The old lady looked down at the tag and stated, “You say you needed money from this tag, right?”

Ambrose had no clue where this was going, but answered honestly, “Yeah we are pretty poor.” Ambrose hated saying that out loud, but it was the truth.

The lady looked at him with the most serious face Ambrose had ever seen and said, “Well you won’t be anymore.”

Ambrose felt like this was a joke, and he wasn’t finding it funny, “What do you mean, I won’t be anymore?”

“Well child—you have to learn that the world gets you down. But if you always come back playing the world the right way, you’ll always end up on top.” The lady smiled and patted Ambrose’s shoulder, “I’d like to pay you back for the kind thing you did and give you double what any shop would have offered you—an amount of twenty-thousand dollars!”