A couple of raindrops burst onto the windshield, and the sun was barely hanging onto the edge of the horizon as it was losing the battle for the sky. The creaky pickup truck grinded down the highway, with both passenger windows gone long ago and the searing wind tunneling around the heads of a mother and son.
“Pull into that there place up there, boy. That damn ‘otel or motel or what the hell they’re callin’ it these days.”
He jerked the steering wheel to the left and rumbled into the parking lot, just skimming the curb with the tires and dipping into a pothole. Her frail ribcage and his toughened torso were tossed around the cab mercilessly and both swore loudly. His mother backhanded him across the side of his head.
Their room was the farthest room from the desk, on the bottom floor with an empty lot of dust as its neighbor. The room itself was colored an unsaturated yellow with dark wood edging, and was bare except for two small beds and a gashed and jagged side table. The mother threw her suitcase in the corner and grumbled about the raindrops that had now disappeared, the knots in her wispy hair, and the side table with its chewed edges and scraped surface.
“Why someone would do that to a bought-an’-paid-for table is just beyond my goddamn reach. If you got your problems an’ you need to scratch up somethin’ to work them out, then go out an’ slice up a tree or somethin’. Someone handed over their cash for that there table, an’ it needs to be treated with a bit o’ respect.’
She then left the room, claiming that she saw something on the other side of the motel that she’d like to check out. The boy sat down on the inside edge of one of the beds and fell back onto its greasy comforters. He made as little noise as possible as he strained to hear the tiny sounds he knew were familiar to motels such as these. Running water, ticking light switches, soft moans and low murmurs. This was silence. He flipped out a small hunting knife, rolled over, and ground it into the side table.
His mother returned home after a short while with a pack of salted sunflower seeds and a large, empty tin coffee can that she had dug out of a dumpster. She ripped off the paper label that was wrapped around the can and then picked at the remaining line of glue for a quarter of an hour. When her weak fingernails were not working, she had the boy chisel off the rest with his knife she saw laying on the side table. She then rinsed it off in the cracked bathroom sink and spent another quarter of an hour deciding where exactly in the room to put it. The boy simply watched her.
She had just crouched down to put it on the outer side of her bed when she paused and pursed her lips together. Her eyebrows disappeared behind her bangs, and she told the boy to come over and help her pick something up. When he came over, he saw that just behind the threadbare bed skirt, there was an old, nylon suitcase of a dirty sea foam green. He picked it up
and put it on the edge of the bed, and his mother elbowed him out of the way to get a closer look.
“Look at the dust on the top of this here lid - it’s probably been down under there ‘bout three months, a’least. Proves my guess that these here room service girls don’t clean shit. Someone probably forgot it, an’ didn’t remember which damn motel it was at. Why, I remember one time when I was little an’ I forgot my suitcase at this fancy ‘otel an’ I didn’t remember until we’re ‘bout two states away. My daddy beat my ass pretty good there -“There was a sharp click and a choking noise as she opened the suitcase and saw what was inside.
It seemed that out of all of the straight, clean, crisp one-hundred dollar bills on earth, the ones that were crumpled, dirty, and torn were discarded to this suitcase. They were piled haphazardly and packed in as tight as they could be, and when the lid swung open the money shot up like a spring and overflowed onto the bed and the floor. They stood in silence for a couple minutes until the mother reached forward with a shaking, cautious hand and grabbed a handful of the bills.
She slid them around in her fingers, and then brought them to her face. She gasped and spun around to face the boy. She shoved the handful into his face and waved them around.
“Do you understand what this here is? Do you? It’s money. Money. Money to buy things with, an’ lots of it.” She threw the money back in the suitcase and wrung her frail hands around and around and around. She looked down and to the side and chewed on her bottom lip. Suddenly, her eyes snapped up and looked straight at the boy. “I’m taking it.”
The boy opened his mouth to start a sort of protest, but it was too late. She was already telling him to gather up the money and put it back in the suitcase. She had decided that someone may come back for their money, so she told the boy to close the blinds and to keep the suitcase under his bed for the night.
The next morning, he brought the suitcase out to the pickup, hidden behind his mother’s own suitcase. They left as soon as the sun began to rise and they were back on the same highway which was completely deserted at this time of day. His mother told him that she wanted to drive in order for the boy to protect the money in every way that he could. He sat in the passenger seat, clutching the suitcase on his lap.
“Hold that money tighter, boy. I don’t want one single goddamn dollar t’fall out of that there suitcase. Didja know that we are rich folks now? I’m buyin’ a real expensive foreign car. An’ a big ol’ house with a pool. An’ you know what? I’m thinkin’ I’d like a real fancy, electronic somethin’ or another house, with some big TV screens.”
The boy was having trouble taking this all in. He wanted to give the money to the motel manager, the police, anyone. Anyone but his mother.
“You listenin’ to me, boy? You be loosenin’ your grip on that money, I can see that! I want you to hold that money there like’t was your newborn baby. Now, as I was sayin’…”
He tried to block out what she was saying, but the sound of her voice still penetrated his barrier, even if the words didn’t. He let go of the money and let it just sit on his lap. He heard the volume and tone of his mother’s voice grow to a threatening, irritated scale. He began to bawl, wailing to drown out her voice; he couldn’t take it anymore.
The latch on the suitcase began to rattle as the wind poured into the cracks. The pressure continued to build as the boy continued to howl.
“Stop your damn cryin’! Do you hear me, boy? Hold down that damn suitcase! I told you to protect that there suitcase with your life, an’ here you are, lettin’ the wind get it! Now don’t you make me say’t again!”
The boy, crying even louder than before, smacked the latch open and watched as a swirling tornado of green filled the cab. He grabbed handfuls of what was left and began throwing it out the window, screaming for it to never come back. His mother lost sight of the road behind hundreds of Franklins and began to swerve left and right, finally coming to a stop sideways in the other lane.
The boy was still whimpering and grunting as he threw the bills one by one out the window onto the street. His mother pushed her hair out of her face and her eyes finally rested on her son. She lunged at him and shoved him out the window headfirst just as he was about to throw the last few bills. She climbed out onto the street, picked him up by his arms and slammed him against the car. She snarled at him, inches from his face.
“What the hell is your problem, boy? Do you think you’re funny or somethin’? Do you think this’s a joke, boy? I told you to do somethin’ an’ you go off an’ do the exact opposite. Well, y’know what, boy? You’re gonna walk up an’ down this here highway an’ you are gonna pick up every single one of them hundreds, y’hear? I don’t care how long it takes. You could be out here for hours for all I give a damn! I’m gettin’ my money!”
So the boy got up began to pick up the bills. They all seemed to get picked up by the wind right as he would go to grab it, but he chased each one down. He left his fight in the place of each bill that he gathered. His mother stood by the pickup and watched him bend and grab each hundred for three hours. She went into the pickup and got her tin coffee can and placed it right in front of the suitcase, and smiled as she spit her sunflower seeds into the can one by one.
!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!! 
It's mine too!
I hope that you have a wonderful time!!
Sta.sh
You're very welcome. 
