Photo: SC Martinez
Published in The Wild Word Magazine on June 16, 2024
A Lucky Two-Dollar Bill
Frequently, Joe forgot he couldn’t walk unaided anymore. Remembering infuriated him. In his eighties, with papery skin and alert, piercing eyes, he also didn’t remember how long he’d been at the facility, but he suspected it had been many years. Conversation passed the time.
“How are you today? We’ve met, but I can’t recall….”
“Seth.” He pointed to his clip-on badge.
What a coincidence! His son’s middle name was Seth. Joe wanted it for his first; his wife wanted Robert. She won.
Seth was in a body cast in a reclining wheelchair; his face swaddled in bandages covering his many injuries. It was hard to discern his age, but he sounded to Joe like a man in his early forties. He was intelligent and affable but contained. Though he couldn’t retain his name, Joe remembered liking him from their first meeting, whenever that might have been.
Seth’s eyes closed.
“Not feeling sociable today?” asked Joe. His smile created deep vertical wrinkles on each side of his face. He’d slept well the previous night and felt sharper than usual. Joe’s memory had gone bad along with everything else, leaving his recollections until his forties clear as day, but later years were spotty or gone altogether.
Joe’s chair wheels were locked, so he’d be facing this dour young man until he could get one of the attendants to drift into his vicinity and move him.
Seth spoke. “Hemingway penned an observation for us in our current state, ‘the world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are stronger at the broken places.”
“You lay out a challenge, bud. Goddamn, they’re going to have to wrestle me out of here, kicking and screaming. My sole aim is to raise hell and leave this earth with nothing left on the table. Broken or not. I’ve got a few good years left.”
“My dream is the same as yours, except for minor details like remembering my old life and what it was like,” said Seth.
“You talk like an academic. What do you think your livelihood might be?”
“Don’t know, maybe a literary critic or a teacher. I remember whole passages of prose and poetry but nothing else.”
“Relax, it’ll come back in time. I remember the oddest things on the even days.”
“Funny, Joe. How about you?”
“I was an attorney.”
“You enjoy it?”
“Despised it. I never took the time to enjoy life or my family. I recall a huge fight with my son, who wanted to be a writer. I knew how brutal the world was and wanted him to be practical and study business.”
Joe ached for something intangible he couldn’t name. His thoughts were like gnats, annoying the hell out of him, then gone.
“Why are you here?”
“The guy rolled me here,” said Joe. “Sorry if I’m wrecking your morning.”
“No, I mean – why are you in this rehab center?”
“I’m not exactly sure. My wife’s been dead a while. My kids are gone. I have a couple of bum knees no doctor will touch, bad hips, and plantar fascia on both feet. My conditions have conditions. I expect I’m guilty of living past my expiration date. I’m probably dead, but no one’s bothered to bury me.”
Joe scoured the sterile dayroom for signs of life. The residents appeared like a still-life tableau against the sunlight streaming in the windows. It seemed that Seth was the only one semi-willing to chat.
“What happened to you if you don’t mind my asking? Seth, right?” Joe asked.
“Right. The cops guess I was knocked out, robbed, and rolled off the subway platform onto broken glass. I can’t remember anything. If I’d lost my ID, they wouldn’t even know my name. Apparently, I live in Chicago.”
“What were you doing in New York?’
“Not a clue.”
“Some people aren’t human! When did it happen?”
“Fifteen days ago, they said. A dishwasher on his way to work spotted me unconscious on the tracks at three in the morning. Amazingly, I wasn’t crushed by a train.”
“A godsend. What about family?”
“They’re working on it. All I had on me was my driver’s license, a two-dollar bill, and a couple of red and white pinwheel mints.” He shook his head. “Sounds like the clues for a cheesy mystery, doesn’t it?”
“I remember those candies, my boy’s favorite. Haven’t seen them in years.”
“He lives nearby?”
“Who knows? I misplaced him long ago. After we disagreed about his future, he left. I said things I shouldn’t have. I’ve regretted that conversation for twenty years. My sole ambition is to find him and say how wrong I was.”
“Sorry, Joe.”
“Two-dollar bill? I haven’t seen one of those in a long time. I used to put one in the Valentines I gave my kids every year. I stopped after they grew up.”
Joe could recall the faces of his daughters, though they’d died years ago, his son’s not so much.
“They found my two-dollar bill in a secret compartment in my belt buckle. Pretty ingenious. It’s all the money I have in the world.”
“I think they’re supposed to be lucky. No wallet or phone?”
“Probably stolen. My license was in my shirt pocket. I guess the mugger didn’t have a sweet tooth.”
The clock’s minute hand shuddered and advanced. Another hour until lunch.
Joe sensed something rattling around in his head. He pictured his brain as a chunk of Swiss cheese with top-secret hidden passageways. Suddenly, one of his leg spasms struck, making him forget everything but the shooting pain.
Until the lunch gong rang, both men dozed intermittently.
An attendant unlocked Joe’s wheelchair, and he headed for the dining room. A second attendant pushed Seth near him.
On an impulse, Joe asked, “What’s your last name?”
“My license says Williams. It’s really common.”
Something shattered in Joe’s chest like a baseball hitting a windowpane. There was something about that name. He wished he could remember what.
To read Broken go to page 2
Suzanne C Martinez 
Mysteries of a sort
Leave one wondering and almost knowing …2 great slices of lives
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