Just a Dollar

I rode my bike with my mail deliveries in the basket and the delivery route taped to the handlebars. Somehow, I had ended up in Hillsboro on the first day or work. Just when I thought the day could not get worse with the other employees calling me “new boy” after a hard day at school, I ended up delivering mail in the richest town I knew. The houses could be called castles and I was positive that if I searched the entire neighborhood for a weed in the grass, I would be unsuccessful. Each property was easily an acre of land and they looked like pictures found in a magazine.

With a weary expression on my face, I put packets of mail in impeccably painted mailboxes for hours. The sweat of hard labor dripped down my naturally tanned skin as I rode between houses. When I approached a new house I let my bike fall down with a clatter and I trekked up the stone-paved driveways, passing sports cars of all kinds. Out of curiosity, I even stopped to glance into some of them, wishing I could smell the musky scent of the leather seats.

After I finished my route, I had to pass through the city’s main town to get home. I could tell when I was close, because there were more people on the sidewalk, many of them toting shopping bags with designer names printed on the sides. The houses on one block had suddenly turned into stores on the next. There was a conglomeration of restaurants, clothes stores, and merchandise stores all crammed into a few short streets. It was rush hour, so I was forced to move from the street to the sidewalk. I walked my bike through the crowds, and even with the chatter of people, I could still hear the chain on my bike clinking on the rusted metal as the wheels turned.

I stared at them and they stared at me. The girls wore short skirts that showed off their toned legs, paired with heels that could break and ankle in the blink of an eye. The guys had button down shirts with ties and newly polished shoes. Almost all of them wore sunglasses that deflected the orange glare of the setting sun, but I still knew they were judging me. Inside their own private minds they criticized my clothes, my skin color, and even the way I walked. I continued through the streets at a fast pace with my head down and I saw my own white, turned yellow, v-neck shirt and jeans frayed at the ends where they dragged on the sidewalk.

A man walked into me, accidentally, I think, pushing my shoulder as he passed. I turned back and exclaimed, “Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” but it was too late. He had already disappeared behind me into the crowd of others just like him. I was significantly shorter than most of the other people in this town and I saw people’s chins point down slightly as I passed.

When I faced forward again, I saw an ice cream cart ahead of me. Even this cart looked state-of-the-art with its shiny top and clean wheels. As I approached the cart, I could read the overpriced menu on the side.

A tall, blond woman in her mid-twenties went up to the cart and ordered and cone of something I could not hear. She opened her wallet and handed a crisp five dollar bill to the ice cream man. In exchange, she took the cone and her change, struggling to get it back into her wallet in just the right way. In the process, she dropped a dollar on the ground and did not notice its absence.

I rushed to pick up the dollar, but before I could get there, multiple people stepped on it. Heels of all colors and dress shoes of every design walked right over the bill, paying no attention to what was right beneath their feet. When I finally got to the cart and got a hold of it, I could see the lady’s blonde head bobbing above the others at the end of the street. I quickly dodged people and eventually decided to ride on the side of the side of the street in between the cars and the sidewalk ledge. Cars beeped, but the drivers did not understand my determination or the severity of my mission.

I never lost sight of her as I moved. Gratefully, I saw that she had stopped at the red light at a crosswalk and it gave me a chance to catch up. When I got behind her, I was out of breath. The front, and I’m sure the back too, of my shirt was drenched in sweat and I had to constantly push my curly hair out of my eyes.

“Excuse me,” no answer.

I cleared my throat and, again, I tried, “Excuse me, miss,” with a tap on the shoulder.

She turned and her immediate reaction was to lean backwards a little in shock. I could see my horrid reflection in her glasses as she asked with disgust, “Can I do something for you?”

I held out the dollar and said, “Uh I saw you drop this at the ice cream cart, so I just wanted to return it to you.”

She took a quick glance at the now crumpled, slightly dirtied bill and looked back at me with what I sensed as slight confusion. She furrowed her eyebrows and commented, “It’s just a dollar.”

By then the light had turned green. She turned her back to me and crossed the street without a glance behind her. I watched her blonde head until it blended in with the others and all that remained was me holding a dollar in my left hand and my bike in my right. I shoved the dollar into the front pocket of my jeans and rode home as quickly as possible, no longer wondering why they all wore sunglasses.