The Man from Lipperhey

The Man from Lipperhey

By Jon Plante

It was midday at the station. Noisy. Crowded. Tourists scratched their heads, baffled by maps and signage. A man played a saxophone for tips. Jake and his mother were waiting on a bench. She clutched their tickets tightly. An old man sat across from them, wearing a tweed suit. His arms were folded, and his legs were crossed and from the looks of it he was very much asleep.

Jake’s mother couldn’t afford to live there anymore, so they were going to live with her sister and her sister’s new husband. It wouldn’t be as nice as their old house. The air wouldn’t be as fresh. And Jake would go to a new school with new friends. He hated the idea of it.

Suddenly a loud voice echoed through the station, “The shuttle to Lipperhey arrives in two minutes.” The old man shook to life, adjusted his eyes and quickly jogged to his platform. But as he sprung up, something fell out of his coat pocket. It was a small black notebook.

His mother didn’t notice when Jake got up to fetch it. She was distracted by their journey ahead. At first he just sat down next to it. He looked around to make sure no one was watching. He inched closer. What secrets did it hide? What secrets had to be contained by that rubber band wrapped tightly around its matte black cover? He lifted the small book, peeled off the elastic, and looked inside, eager for some imagined treasure that lay within.

Numbers. Rows and rows of long numbers. Was it homework? Some kind of math puzzle? Or was it a spy cypher? Surely, Jake thought, he had stumbled upon something big. Would the government reward him for bringing down a global espionage ring? He’d be able to help his mom. He’d be able to buy his old house back.

But, no. As he flipped more pages, he saw dollar signs. Literal dollar signs not figurative ones. He saw summations, and words like “fund balances” and “deferred outflow of resources”, “Interest calculations” and “depreciation”. This was the cold accounting of the real world. Boring. Useless.

Jake decided if it wasn’t worth something to the feds, maybe it would be worth something to its owner. He had a fancy suit with a tie and a waistcoat after all. His countenance was distinguished. And who could sleep in a place like this, but a man without material concerns. He could be their benefactor.

Jake looked up but the man was out of sight. But on the east platform there was a sign for “Lipperhey”, so Jake ran. Past the tourists, past the man with the saxophone, and up concrete stairs to the walkway above. The man was nearing a gate as Jake finally caught up.

“Oh my God, thank you, son! I can’t believe I dropped it. I would have lost my mind if I hadn’t found it.” The man reached into his pocket. “Here,” he said, “a token of appreciation”. Jake held his breath. This was the moment he thought. Jake held out his hand as the old man placed something into it. Jake waited until the man walked onto his shuttle, and then slowly opened his hand to see what was inside. It was twenty thousand dollars.

“Cheapskate.” Jake thought. He turned to a newsstand with the two crumpled bills. “Maybe I can buy some gum,” he wondered. “This would have been worth something five hundred years ago.”

The announcer spoke again, “The shuttle to Mars arrives in two minutes.” Jake ran back to his mother to get their bags. The nearly worthless money carelessly fell out of his hands, and drifted into the trash-filled gutter beside the platform.