To Gain the World

by Robert Garner McBrearty

My teenage son says that money doesn’t matter, and on one level I get it, but if you’ve ever been short of it, you know it does.

I point out that we stay in nicer hotels now when we travel, and he admits that’s sort of pleasant, though he says, and I know it’s true, that he’d be fine staying in a hostel. In fact, he might prefer it.

We eat at better restaurants now, I tell him, and he says that is enjoyable, but he’d be fine really with just about any grub, beans from a can, maybe some tuna, and again, I know it’s true for him.

But you wouldn’t want to sleep out on the streets, right?

I don’t know about that.

Okay, but the only reason you say that is because you could come home any time to a nice house. It would be an adventure for you, but it would get old fast and you would want to come home to a nice warm house.

He sighs. You’re right Dad, it would get old. I would want to come back to a nice house. Do you want to break me, to make me admit that money matters? Okay, it matters, but it doesn’t matter as much to me as it does to you.

There is some implication here that I am some sort of brutal capitalist, but I don’t think that’s fair. I came into a little money. That’s all it is really, a little money, not some great fortune. But the hotels are nicer now, it’s true, the restaurants more expensive if not always as friendly. Our new house is bigger than the old one, though there are fewer of us who live in it now.

I was in a park yesterday sitting on a bench, and there was a homeless man nearby. He’d put his pack down on the grass and he was digging through it. The autumn afternoon was turning chilly and I wondered if he was looking for something warmer to wear. He ruffled through the pack, agitated. He looked particularly worn out and scraggly even for the homeless. I thought of going up and offering him some money. I could give him all the cash in my wallet really. I had plenty more in the bank. I could have gone across the street to a store and brought him back a heavy sweater. It really wouldn’t cost me much. I felt his eyes on my back as I walked out of the park without giving him anything.

But I remembered the conversation with my son. Something felt terribly wrong, and I vowed that the next time I came across a homeless person I would help in some way. The walk home took me alongside a narrow ravine with a slow stream of water at the bottom. Aspen trees, beautiful with yellow autumnal leaves, grew on the banks of the ravine. I heard a cough, a very ill wet sounding cough. Through the trees, I spotted a cardboard lean-to in the ravine and the shape of a person below a blanket. It was getting colder, so it would be a very cold night in the cardboard shelter with only the blanket. Again, the wet cough. Would this person even last the night?

I hurried away. I walked fast and a sweat broke out on my forehead even in the cold of the coming evening. I came through the front door of my nice house. No noise came from inside. I stood in the high arched entryway and felt a great emptiness in the house as if everyone had moved away long ago.

Robert Garner McBrearty is the author of five books of fiction, most recently When I Can’t Sleep, a collection of flash fiction (Matter Press). His stories have appeared widely including in the Pushcart Prize, Missouri Review, New England Review, Fiction International and North American Review. His new collection of short stories is forthcoming from University of New Mexico Press.