Fiction by William P Adams
When Jimmy started first grade, his mother paid a sixth-grade boy a nickel a day to walk him to school each morning. He felt like a baby—other kids his age walked to school alone; why couldn’t he? After a week’s worth of grousing and complaining, Jimmy’s mother relented and released the boy from his lucrative bodyguard job. Jimmy was now free to travel the cement sidewalks of 26th Street to school unencumbered.
Space travel was huge in the 1960s, and Jimmy had a space-themed lunchbox adorned with planets and rockets. One day, he dropped the thermos, shattering the glass interior, and his mother then gave him a nickel a day for milk—since she wasn’t paying the kid anymore, it was a wash.
Jimmy developed a scheme since he had a nickel a day for milk. Some days, he’d go without, stop at the Dime Store after school, and buy a nickel’s worth of chocolate stars at the candy counter. He’d eat them after school or squirrel some away for later consumption.
The scheme worked flawlessly, and Jimmy decided to bring it to the next level. He went without milk and chocolate stars for a week and accumulated 25 cents come Friday. On Saturday, after breakfast, he had permission to walk to the Dime Store and left with the five nickels jingling in his pocket. A dashing rubber sword, painted silver, with a bejeweled scabbard had been calling out to Jimmy during previous visits—the price: 25 cents. Upon arriving, he made a beeline for the object of his infatuation, and it was displayed on the toy shelf magnificently—the only one left.
Jimmy picked up the exquisite weapon and marveled at his good fortune, thinking how lucky he was. He walked on air to the cash register and placed the five coins on the counter. The clerk smiled and jokingly admonished Jimmy to be careful, rang his purchase, and Jimmy left the store in jubilation, imagining himself aboard a pirate ship with piles of booty and swag.
When he arrived home, Jimmy brandished the sword dramatically before his parents like the swashbuckling pirates he’d seen at the neighborhood movie house. They wanted to know how he managed to acquire it because Jimmy received no allowance, and his mother could account for every coin and bill in the house. Jimmy couldn’t lie; it was a sin. He spilled that he’d saved his milk money for a week and bought the sword with the five nickels. His mother was upset that Jimmy went without milk and strongly suggested he march back to the Dime Store and return the faux blade.
But his father was inwardly impressed with his son’s creative business acumen, and after a short parental commiseration, they decided Jimmy could keep the sword if he promised to include milk with his lunch each day from here on out.
Jimmy agreed and immediately leapt aboard the imaginary Pirate vessel, sword flashing with the Jolly Roger waving above.
William P Adams is a retired baby boomer living and writing near Seattle. His short fiction, poetry, and memoir excerpts have appeared in Bright Flash Lit, CafeLit, Macrame Lit, Rockvale Review, Sea Wolf Journal, X-R-A-Y Magazine, and elsewhere.
