Legal Tender

July 17, 2023

Greetings from the current sea,

Abraham Lincoln stared back at me. Well, just over my right shoulder, to be accurate. He wears a faint smile, but no one would mistake him for happy. This is a serious portrait.

The serial number was ML 19021238G. I have no idea what significance or meaning there is in those figures. There is the signature of the Treasurer of the United States below a promise that this paper is legal tender, for all debts public and private.

None of that registers with me, I don’t think of my purchase as a debt, I don’t wonder if it’s private or public, or if anyone is going to confirm that this paper is still worth anything. I just automatically hand it over, fully expecting that people will treat it with the respect Lincoln deserves.

When I handed the five dollars to the barista behind the counter, I could tell that she was a little surprised I was paying with cash, instead of the variety of other payment options available, none of which involved currency, none of which held the promise of the treasurer or a dead president.

The five-dollar bill sat in the little slot in the till for almost an hour. Another bill was nested on top for a short while, then left on its own journey. Then a woman, who was carrying an irascible Bichon Frise, bought a Venti cappuccino and a scone, and got it in her change.

Later in the day, she paid for a small Tennesee Toffee ice cream, in a cup, which she intended to keep a secret from her husband. She gave the fiver to the cashier who also intended to keep it a secret, but from her boss, and she pocketed the bill with her tip money.

At the end of her shift, she stuffed the loose bills in her purse, the one she never liked but the strap is long enough she can wear it cross-body. On her way home she stopped at a gas station and bought a pack of cigarettes, which cost her the five and a single and two dimes. The way she looked at it, she got the smokes for free. In her head, she used the words “Seriously, literally free”.

The man at the gas station licked his thumb when he counted the cash at the end of the day. He thought he tasted ice cream. It was after midnight when he locked up. He put the cash in an envelope that he would take to the bank’s night deposit, except he stopped to play pool for a while, have a beer, and then went to an after-hours joint. He played craps until the envelope was empty. When he woke up the next day, he was late for work, which didn’t matter because he was already fired.

The five was wadded up on the floor with a dozen other bills, swept up by the old man who had won the last throw. He walked home to his apartment in the first light, fed the cat, started the coffee pot, then flattened all the bills out on the kitchen table. He organized the bills by denomination, laying them all face-up, oriented in the same direction. He took the only five-dollar bill and held it up to the light. Lincoln looked out to his left at something. The man smiled, he liked Lincoln. He folded the bill in half and put it in his shirt pocket, thinking he would buy himself a lottery ticket.

It was still in the pocket when he washed his clothes at the laundromat a week later. When he left, the money, and a business card that he had in his jeans, were still in the dryer. The woman who found it, a soft piece of wadded paper, was delighted. She showed it to her sister, who was folding clothes on the counter next to her. Her sister then remarked she still owed her seventeen dollars from Christmas, a private debt. There was a brief, loud argument, perhaps making it a public debt, and the five changed hands along with a bit of acrimony.

The sister put the money in the collection plate at St. Pious the next day, which found its way into the petty cash drawer in the church office. Two days later it was given to a homeless man who needed it for bus fare to the social security office. Neither the man nor the money made it to the stated intention. The five was converted into two large fries at McDonald’s, which the man loves more than anything.

The five was moved into the cash drawer at the drive-through and was given as change to a man driving across the state to see his parents, who claim he never visits enough. He has told them he has to work, and the three-hour drive is not exactly nothing, and they never say anything about his sister’s absence, even though she lives even closer. That’s what he is thinking later when the five whirls out the open car window, and so he somehow blames his sister for his loss.

The swirl of traffic behind him propels the five into the service drive along the highway and is found by a little boy walking to his friend’s house. He sits on the curb and looks at the bill, wonders who the man in the picture is. He tries holding the bill so the man will look right at him but it doesn’t work. He turns it over and sees the pillared building on the back and it looks like a jail to him. There’s a tiny man behind the bars.

The boy doesn’t understand why the money works, any more than I do, truly. He knows, without knowing, it has value, because everyone agrees it does. To him it represents something enormous, like maybe comics or a giant bag of candy, something almost unfathomable. It is freedom from want, in a small, temporary way.

No one who held the money, and a rare few who will hold it, will care who had it before or after. No one will think about what the numbers are or what magic makes it equal cigarettes or French fries or comics or twenty minutes on the time clock.

Someone will use it for a bookmark, someone folds it into origami, it becomes part of a sack of groceries, a football bet, an hour of babysitting, a reward for finding lost cat. Lincoln will stare off to his left for the life of the paper currency, silently promising it’s worth all of these.

Throughout its life, the bill will become more and less valuable, depending on economic pressures and inflation and whether you are buying something at the airport or at Walmart. But mostly it will be worth some unit of time, and whatever people think they want or need that matches the denomination. And all of that is because we loosely agree that the magic is real.

Hope this finds you spending thoughtfully,

David

Copyright © 2023 David Smith