The Pauper’s PennyKristian Wilkins
In one involuntary shaking handful of change I noticed a faded Nineteen forty-three penny – Abe’s copper face grinning his grin, emancipating me of my tax-paying duty on this bottle of copper-stained whiskey. The thirty-six cents now paid, I got on my magical moped – made much more magical after two ripening gulps of liquor. I pulled myself into traffic - my hands, my body steering the flying carpet as I thought a moment longer about that orphaned bastard of a penny that has existed decades longer than me. If I die right now – if this magical flying carpet of a moped notices and then crashes into the reality surrounding it and me – that penny will exist still. And so will the indelible prints of my index finger and thumb that have found new life – synthesized life – within the community of countless other prints on that old penny, left unwittingly behind by princes, paupers, and kings.
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I am a pauper! Down flows the copper river as I wait at the red light. The intersection, before my dilated eyes, evolves into a giant penny, spinning quickly on its end, as if a giant finger has set it in motion. I drink of the river again and its coursing heat intersects my frozen marrow. I am a pauper and if God’s finger has set this spinning Nineteen forty-three penny in motion, what can possibly stop it? I know God like the back of my own hand, and I know that he can not stop what he sets in motion, just as the back of my hand could not stop the front of my hand from opening this bottle so many years ago. The intersection has turned into a revolving winter’s sun, and it rises – it rises over me and it rises over the rest of this city. The sun is our father, suffering from the absence of our sight; aging and sallow because we refuse to look. But I can’t look -- his cleansing, yellow light will blind me; it will blind all of our early eyes. And I am a pauper – I was born one and I will surely die one; so I tip the bottle, put on some shades – the ones that won’t admit any of my father’s rays – and fly onward as the light turns green.
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As I sail toward an unknown point on this city’s metal-plated horizon, I feel the penny’s radiating heat on my shoulders, like a lover’s strong hands, kneading my sleeping muscles, untying with a tender ease the intricate knots of my back – once interwoven by isolation’s timelessness – once pulled tighter by the moon’s gravitational pull. The sorrowful streets begin to smile. I stop and look around me – in cars, in busses, on the street, in the gutter – stranger’s faces become recognized as family – my sister’s rich, copper color in this one – my father’s weary brow in that one. I raise the bottle and toast my family. “The sun is a penny,” I shout. “We can all afford a penny!” They cheer my proclamation and I become young and strong again. As a testament, the whiskey bottle shatters in my new vice-like grip, and the blood of my lacerated hand mixes with the last few ounces of liquor. Realizations become words: “We are tributaries! Each of us! All of us!” Boldly pointing west, I continue: “The sun will soon meet the ocean, and so will I! If we hurry, we can still reach it! If we hurry, we can all share of it!” They cheer my name again, and urge me to lead. This morning I was a pauper. Tonight, when we stick our big toes into the fathomless depths of the Pacific, we will all be kings and queens.