Coin Collector
By Neil Jefferies. Published on March 12, 2023.
He was leading a trolley full of coins down the sidewalk. He could hear them slosh around in there, but they were safe. They wouldn’t go spilling out onto the pavement. No. That had happened to Nick Sanderson two years ago. Nick Sanderson was fired shortly after that. They told him it had nothing to do with the coins spilling onto the pavement. Brad found that hard to believe. Nick’s job was to ensure the coins didn’t spill everywhere.
‘You’re next,’ Nick Sanderson had said. Two years later, Brad still wondered what Nick could’ve meant by that. Was he to be the next fired? Was he to be the next to spill all that he protects onto the sidewalks? Pfft. Nick Sanderson was full of crap. Brad morphed his face into a mimicking frown. ‘You’re next,’ he said, mocking the memory of Nick (Sanderson).
Sometimes he thought about taking a little for himself. If he saw a shiny toonie, or one with a cool graphic on it, or a really old one, he’d think about pocketing it. He’d hold it for a second and look around like a squirrel guarding a nut. But no, he couldn’t do that. That's how the Nick Sandersons of the world got fired. When coins went missing on the job. He imagined returning to the office. His boss would read the guilt on Brad’s face and then look at Brad as if to say, ‘how could you?’. So no, he wouldn’t be stealing any toonies.
He stared ahead at the stretch of sidewalk that ran for three kilometres alongside a busy, winter blistered road. The metres stood short and stoic in the frigid breeze, taunting the owners of parked cars with flashing zeros. A day's work. Some of the metres were jammed from having foreign objects stuffed in the coin slots. He shook his head at these. How could people think that a broken twig would be accepted as payment for their parking? A receipt? A needle? ‘Idiots,’ he said as he used his fingers and a little metal tool to try and flick chicken bone out from one of the metre’s slots.
To his left, he heard an encroaching grumble. A hooded homeless man dressed in rags using a set of crutches was slowly hobbling towards him. He asked passing pedestrians for change, without enough life left to even feign that he’d put it to good use. Brad could see that the man's dignity was well beyond stripped. Like his clothes, it had suffered through a long and arduous deterioration. It had once held some form of resilience. Its fabric was meant to endure life’s…complexities. That fabric had been torn and tattered and it no longer resembled what it once was.
Brad tried to focus on the fragments of chicken bone at hand. He tried to remind himself that he was at work and that he hadn’t any time to worry about a homeless person. ‘Homeless people are everywhere,’ he muttered to himself under his breath. ‘You can’t save them all.’ No, he couldn’t go around handing them places to live, clothes to wear and money to spend. But here he was with a trolley full of coins that served no purpose beyond stuffing the city's pockets for more spending. What were they even spending these coins on? Roads? More parking metres? Surely a PERSON was more important than a parking metre. Better to move on from those thoughts though. Best not to question where those coins went. After all, it was the city’s business, not his, or the homeless man’s, or anyone else's.
‘It's the city’s business, not yours,’ he told himself. ‘The city’s business.’ He was a part of that city, wasn’t he? Was he not as valuable of a community member as any other? If not he, and those around him who took part in other essential jobs, then who was the city? He imagined a wrinkled frowning face with gargantuan features. A nose that protruded out at him like an accusatory finger. Eyes that somehow bulged outwards and sunk into the skull at the same time. Brows that hung over those eyes like perching falcons. Here's the thing: if he were to walk into one of these restaurants and opt to order a pound of hot wings instead of emptying the parking metres, those metres would overfill and they’d jam. The city needed him.
Frankly, he saw no good reason why he shouldn’t be spilling the coins onto the pavement, pocketing a few gems for himself along the way and handing a good chunk of the rest to the homeless man. Yeah. What would be the matter with that anyways? Not all of them of course. No, he wouldn’t dare take all of them. But he was the one doing the work. He was the one standing in the freezing cold, trying to flick frozen chicken bone out from the coin slot. He was the one who had to cover the whole block. A block that used to be shared work until they fired Nick Sanderson for spilling all of the coins onto the sidewalk. Perhaps this was exactly what Nick meant when he told him ‘You’re next.’ Perhaps Nick knew that with a few more years under his belt, he’d give in to the temptation to purloin. That guilt would creep up from his wandering thoughts. That it was only an expiring time slot away before Brad began to realise how futile all of this was. Brad imagined Nick dressed as a prophet. His face darkened by the hovering hood of a robe. His eyes looming in that darkness like little fluttering flames. He imagined telling folktales around a fire with fellow coin collectors. ‘Nick Sanderson, the almighty. He, just like you and I, was a mere coin collector. A pawn for the city to play. Nick didn’t stand for it though. Nick prophesied that the money we collect, should be given back to the community. To those who need it.’ The faces by the fire wowed in amazement. Realising how obvious it really was. The money should go to the people.
No. Nick Sanderson had lost his job. He was no prophet. Brad couldn’t afford to lose his job. He had a cat to feed. Without the money on his paychecks, how would he feed his cat? Cats eat their owners when they die. What would stop that little paw stomper from eating Brad's eyeballs in his sleep?
The last bits of bone fell out onto the ground below him and piled into a grave. He shovelled the coins into his trolley. Brad was telling himself not to look at the homeless man, who was moving quicker towards him, grumbling unintelligibly. ‘Working nine to five,’ Brad hummed to himself as a distraction. When the metre was emptied, the old decrepit figure was within a dozen feet, the excruciating limp becoming clearer and far more devastating to ignore. His face was still shaded slightly by the hood. ‘Spare change?’ he moaned. Brad was unsure of what to say. Did he have spare change? Well, yes. Enough in fact to potentially change this man's life if used wisely. He had a trolley full of spare change. Money that people had tossed into metres without a second thought. Money that those same people had kept from this same homeless man because they needed it to pay for their parking.
‘I uhh,’ he fell clumsily over his words. ‘I umm. I’m uhh, I’m sorry man. I’m just doing my job. I’ll lose my job if I give you any of this, and then my cat won’t get fed. I’m scared that if I don’t feed my cat, she might eat my eyes in my sleep. If that happens, then I don’t know what I’d do. I can’t imagine I’d get a job very easily with a half eaten eyeball, hahaha.’
The homeless man stood there staring at him with his palm extended outwards and his mouth agape. His breath crept towards Brad in cold clouds. They breathed the same air. They were just trying to survive. They shared a moment like that, and Brad felt a vague familiarity with the man. ‘Umm. I’m sorry, my friend,’ Brad said, putting an end to the interaction, leaving the posed question to its dangling. The homeless man had a look of endearment on his face, a light in his eyes that kept Brad from continuing on. The man approached a little closer. ‘I have something for you,’ he said. Brad’s face loudened in surprise. ‘You have something for me?’. The man nodded. They stood face to face, man to man, collector to collector, both of their breaths creeping away from them and mending into one wintry air. The man reached into his coat pocket, holding Brad's gaze like old friends saying goodbye to each other for one last time.
A knife entered Brad’s stomach. Blood sputtered out. His expressions masqueraded from pain to amazement to cluelessness to regret and back into pain again. The knife was removed. The trolley was taken with the crutches suddenly unnecessary for an escape. The man was moving swiftly away while Brad spilled onto the pavement.
Neil Jefferies grew up in a small city called Red Deer. During his adulthood, he has reached his arms into the depths of ice cream buckets for minimum wage. He has spun and warmed milk in a pitcher to pour on top of espresso for minimum wage. He has poured beers he hates the names of into pint glasses again, for minimum wage. He currently resides in Vancouver, BC, where he, his girlfriend, their two other roommates and a trio of cats occupy a house that costs more money to live in than a minimum wage job will provide. As a writer, he has had one story shortlisted in the Vocal Fiction awards amidst a slew of other rejections. This is his first published story.
