POO DOLLAR….

Tommy D came with. It was a Wednesday morning, so he had nothing going on. To this day, I have no idea what Tommy D does for a living. When I pulled up to his apartment he was standing on the curb, wearing blue khaki shorts and a threadbare, short-sleeve collared shirt in cream with mother of pearl snap buttons. Underneath his arm he had a white Styrofoam cooler.

“Allright! Hot Hatch! GTI! Rolling in style,” he said, pushing up his sunglasses into his sandy hair. He opened the door, set the cooler on the floor behind the passenger seat and climbed in.

“Wha’d you bring? It’s 10:30.”

“Supplies. Necessaries for the trip.”

“It’s 10:30.”

“Luckily for you I’ve transcended time,” he said, slamming the car door and reaching back to pull out a Bud Light.

I shifted into gear and pulled away. “You know it’s no longer an open container state.”

Tommy D cracked the bottle open and offered it to me.

“Uh, no.”

He shrugged and took a long gulp. “September 1st, 2001. A day that will go down in infamy.”

“As what?”

“The day the open container law went into effect in Texas.”

“You remember the date.”

He pivoted in his chair, turning to face me fully. The movement was so drastic I took my eyes off the road to look at him, his mouth hanging slightly open. “Of course I remember the date. It has infamy.”

A honk brought me out of my distraction, back to the road, and I maneuvered out of the oncoming lane of approaching traffic. A driver in a bland sedan shook their head and fist as they passed.

I waved. Rolling down the windows I was caught with that air that is so distinctly Austin in late April. Wet, working on drying out, chilly on one current of air, warm on the next, cool and hot, tugging it out to see who would win May. Would May scorch, crisping the grass early and killing any real chance of greenery, or would the heat go dormant for another month, giving us a treat?

Hitting the on ramp, I-35 north, a stretch of bulbous, billowy clouds hung low on the horizon like distant mountains. Maybe they would keep a lid on that heat.

“Where we headin’?”

“I told you. Waco. I figured out the damned letter. It’s in the glove compartment.”

“Ugh, Waco.” He opened the glove box and fished out the folded Lucky Charms box upon whish I’d pasted the little strips of packing paper. “Letter?”

I filled him in on the packing paper, on the gluestick, and the strange boxy key as he read Dad’s note.

“So why are we going to Waco? This doesn’t say Waco.”

“You don’t recognize it? It does actually. That top number, 6705? The one cut off from the torn header. That’s the last four digits of zip code 76705. It’s got to be.”

“And you figure that’s Waco, huh?”

“It’s got to be. And that part on the left top…” I trailed off.

“Amer Ank?”

“American Bank,” I corrected. “The tear cuts off the middle part. That UFO circular bank right off the highway. It fits. That blocky key, I bet is a safety deposit box key at that bank.”

“And that will give you a key to your precious cherry lacquered box?”

“I bet.”

“Hmmmmmm.” Tommy D murmured as he took another swig.

I veered right and took the top-side of I-35 and as I did risked a glance over at Tommy D. Beer in hand, my dad’s letter on his lap, he had managed to pull out his cellphone and was going to town.

“You don’t seem convinced? What are you doing?”

“Checking zip code maps. There are 8 other numbers that could be out in front of 6705, and I don’t want to go to Waco if I don’t have to.”

I opened my mouth to object, but that was actually a good idea.

“That’s actually a good idea,” I murmured. I can only rarely keep my thoughts to myself.

“Actually? Like you are surprised by this?”

“Yeah, actually. Man, you’re as touchy as a lady…”

“Actually, no I’m not. But I don’t want to go to Waco if I don’t have to. Or at least, not Baylor.”

“You’ve said that twice now. Why not?”

“Bad experience,” he mumbled around the beer bottle. He finished his first. Holding up the empty he said, “Do you recycle in here?”

“In my car?”

Tommy D looked around. “Yeah.”

“No, Tommy, I don’t. Don’t distract me. What bad experience?”

When I saw Tommy D bite back a smile, I knew he was just working me. He did this. He was great at setting up the story. Creating a buzz. I knew he had gone to Baylor, knew it wasn’t a bad experience, so here he was winding me up…

Tommy reached around and with one hand deftly opened the cooler lid, and exchanged his empty for a better version. With a flourish he paused to examine the label, as if anything about a Bud Light had changed in the last decade. The car was quiet.

“Tommy!” I banged on the steering wheel. “What bad experience?”

Tommy twisted the cap and threw it into a cup holder. Fortifying himself with a deep breath and a boozy exhale, he finally uttered two words sotto voce, “Poo dollar.”

I almost swerved into a semi. “What?”

“Poo dollar,” he said, taking another quick swig.

“I can’t believe I haven’t heard this—”

Tommy D held a hand up, interrupting me. Now that he had started, he demanded the floor. “Okay. Freshman year. Or maybe sophomore,” he paused. “Nah, who’m I kidding. It was Freshman year for sure. I transferred before Sophomore …anyway, I don’t exactly remember where on campus I was, one of those tiny little apartment complexes, all red brick like everything else, only this one had balconies. Maybe it was the Arbors, I don’t know. You know the campus?”

I shook my head. He took another swig. We were heading north in no traffic, passing Georgetown, making 80 look easy. Still at the rate he was downing those BLs, Tommy would be a twelve pack in by Waco. No help.

“If you don’t know the campus specifics don’t matter. Picture a small red brick two story cluster of apartments with balconies. Maybe the railings are iron, maybe wood. The apartments overlook a grassy carpet, green or brown. Probably brown. Upon this carpet walk passersby. I am one of these. A hapless and young, silly taker of late afternoon classes, smoking Camel Red Lights, messenger bag dutifully slung across my chest, head on a swivel for lady talent. Do you have the image?”

I was impressed by this image he was painting.

“I’m impressed by this image you are painting. I actually do.”

Tommy D shook his head ruefully and rubbed his non-beer-holding hand down the front of his jeaned leg. “Yeah, probs. Anyway, so I was walking past said apartments and I saw a group of drunk guys hanging off one of the balconies like they were stretching to feed the animals. I did. I saw them, but I didn’t think anything of it, right? I didn’t. I mean, there aren’t many fucking balconies on Baylor, they’re locked up tight up there—maybe it’s a metaphor, I don’t know—there just aren’t a lot of them, so it was normal for the balconies that did exist to, you know, have people on them—”

“Especially if it isn’t too hot,” I offered.

“Exactly right. Exactly right. Which it wasn’t. It was goddamn pleasant. So of course those dudes are going to be out there. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“So what happened,” I said smiling.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tommy D’s shoulders sag.

“I saw a dollar,” he said simply.

I laughed. A poo dollar.

“Sitting there, pretty as you please, like a…like a…” he swigged again.

“Like a piece of ripe fruit,” I offered.

“Exactly, like a fucking beautiful, unblemished peach, lying fluffy on the grass, assuming you would find a ripe peach sitting on grass—”

“So…”

“So you know, I did what everyone does when they see a dollar. I took a quick glance around, street-level you know, and no one was around—it was Langoliers out there—so it didn’t belong to anybody. And maybe I had my earbuds in, maybe I wasn’t fully tuned in, but whatever, I bent down and picked the motherfucker up.”

I roared. Beating on the steering wheel, tears queuing.

“Yeah, go ahead, bastard. I know, I know.”

“It’s just, so so funny! Go on.”

“So feeling like I won the lottery, I bent down and curled my fingers around the dollar to the underneath…” He paused to take another theatrical sip.

A police car passed us going fast on the left, a little pay-attention nudge to my driving self. I was totally in Tommy’s tale. I lowered my speed to 79. Tommy D didn’t seem to notice.

“That’s when I felt it. Wet. Soft. Squishy.”

I pounded at the steering wheel, mouth open, horrified.

“And I dropped it immediately, but of course it was too late and then I smelled it, literal shit and that’s when it came…”

“What?”

“’POO DOLLAR!’” Tommy cupped a hand by his mouth megaphone-style. “’POO DOLLAR!’ A fuckin’ chorus from that damn balcony. Those dudes all laughing, roaring, howling. ‘POO DOLLAR! POO DOLLAR!’ They were falling all over themselves, hanging on that railing, laughing and shouting.”

I broke into another wave of laughter. Tommy finished his beer, Adam’s apple bobbing.

“Yeah just like that.”

“So wha’d you do? You go after them?”

Tommy threw me a glance, a mixture of irritation and disbelief, blonde eyebrows arching, mouth twisting. “Nah man, there were like ten of these guys. Maybe a coupla girls. Look at me. I’m scrawny. I couldn’t even take one of the girls. Nah, I did the only thing I could. Flicked ‘em off and wiped my hand in the grass.”

“And skulked off.”

“Exactly. All to more calls of poo dollar.”

My laughter boiled down to intermittent chuckles and eventual just a smile in silence, that lull in conversation, that chasm without a bridge. I passed a line of semi-trailers and the sign to Salado and Roberton’s Hams. Road noise ground on underneath. My GTI, for all its pluses, always sounded like the windows were cracked on the highway. The little droning somehow made the post-story silence deeper. The moment had that where-do-we-go-from-here quality. Beside me Tommy wiped his hands again on his jeans and reached around to exchange another beer. Three beers to Salado. Should be a country song.

“But you know what’s funny?” he asked a mile later.

“Poo dollar?”

He turned in his seat.

“Yeah. That’s exactly right. Because as I walked on, fuming and smelling of some creature’s shit, man or dog who knew, after about a hundred yards I heard another chorus of POO DOLLAR erupt behind me. And you know what? I laughed at that shit.”

“Bad experience?”

“No doubt,” he said. “Poo dollar.”

“Waco here we come.”

We drove on.