Seeds of Gold

“There is a hole in his stomach, I think that is where the money goes.” Chico said to the other small boys kicking stones in the alley outside the dingy Public House. 

Like Chico, only 5, or 6 years old, the other boys nodded, sensing the truth. They had all known despair, watching their own fathers lose themselves, pouring golden, liquid drinks down their throats. Many of the boys had been sent by their mothers to the Public House to get their fathers to remember they had a family at all, to encourage them to return before all the money disappeared in drinks and card games.

Chico, his round face dirty, could only sit in the alley, wishing for a different outcome because he had nowhere else to go. Chico’s mother had passed the summer before last, and ever since the boy followed his father like a midday shadow, much smaller, but always underfoot.

 A grim, tired man, Chico’s father’s narrow shoulders and body bent from constant digging and panning for gold.  Chico loved his father, and knew he had an ability which put him above just a common miner, he could smell gold.  He could find hidden caches of the yellow metal, know when a seam had petered out, and when a discarded mine still had gold left, though it may be hidden deep in the earth. Following his nose, he could track down gold through rocky streams and through layers of granite. And then when he found the metal they dug for, in big chunks, or in piles of the glittering dust, then he would rise up and dance, celebrating his new wealth.

Those were the best days for Chico, the joy from his father acted like the magical, electric lights new to their town.  His excitement, an electrical charge, fizzed and sparked, brightening Chico’s whole world into beautiful multicolored parties, and elaborate meals fit for kings.

But he knew as well it was the beginning of the end.  For along with his nose for gold, his father had a taste for whisky. And of course, why not celebrate today, when the future was murky, and the present was all so clear.  

In luck, or out, they were always hungry, always broke. Their neighbor, a farmer and poor too, would offer what vegetables he had, but Chico’s father, a proud man, would only accept beans, and paid him back in labor.

They would go weeks without finding anything then Chico’s father would smell a strain, and find the glittering shiny metal in the bottom of his pan. In his wild celebrations the money disappeared like a flash flood, leaving Chico and his father with only the dry taste of hunger in their mouths.

 So Chico played in the alley with the other street boys, waiting for their fathers to come staggering out when the last of the dust or coins were gone.

“You should talk to your father in the morning before he starts his drinkin’. Get him to hide the money from himself.”  A boy said, his eyes wide with hard won experience. “That’s what my father did.” His dirty, thin face nodded, uncombed hair flying.

 “Then why are you here?” Chico  asked, "Your father is not inside?”

 The boy looked down and kicked a rock, hard. “He found it. But next time, I’ll hide it, and better too. When he has money again…”

In the morning when the man was too sick to get out of bed, Chico offered to hide the money next time, instead of letting it fall into the hole in his stomach. The father grimaced and rubbed his angry belly. “Maybe that’d be better, son.”

But next time took a month, and it was a hungry month, of scraping by on beans, and thin soup.

 Then his father sniffed a seam, and following it down a gully, he made a strike, and they both danced and pranced, twirled and whirled, until they fell down with exhaustion.

 “Remember our plan, Father.” The boy pleaded, fingers clasped together in hope for something different this time.

He barely heard the small boy at his side in the roar of the whisky calling to him, his mouth watering already for the first sip.  With effort, he turned to bend down, face to face with the small boy.

“Ok, son. I’ll take some gold to town to buy food, but most I will leave with you.”

 His hands shook when he handed the gold nuggets over to the boy.  “Hide it well, you know I have a nose for gold.” He turned back once, but gritted his teeth and left, walking toward town.

After his father left, Chico searched for something to hold the treasure, finally putting it in the perfect sack, one that once held the salt pork.  He realized saving for the future, was almost as exciting as finding gold. He felt the stirrings of something in his heart, a thing with feathers, that sang a bright tune without the words.

 Deep in the rocks the boy squirmed and squeezed, hiding the bag from sight. Chico felt pride in his effort, and then even more the next week when his father asked for more money to buy food. It wasn’t lost down the hole in his stomach!

“Food costs keep going up, we need more dust for the same items.”  He grumbled, but with a grin for Chico and his plan.

 With a smile and a skip in his step, Chico ran to the rocks, his mouth watering at the thought of the food his father would buy, the meal they would have, fit for princes if not kings.

Though the boy had hidden the treasure out of sight of man, the dogs were another matter.  Maybe they had a nose for gold too, he thought as he came upon the ripped bag in bits and pieces on the rocks, the treasure scattered to the four winds.

 The boy brought back the tattered bag, and flecks of gold dust intermixed with dirt. His father saw the fear in his son’s eyes, and the despair he recognized so well.

 “It’s all right.” His father said, his rough hands on Chico's sobbing shoulders. “We know how to survive. I will get another strike and we will be on top of the world!” His father patted Chico on the head. “But, until then we’re going to need more beans.”

 The farmer spoke to Chico when he went to pick up a bag of beans.

“Your Father has tried gambling, you have tried to hide the money, why don’t you invest it?"

 “What is in- vest, is it clothes?” Chico asked, rubbing at his torn pants and thin, too-large shirt.

 “No.” The farmer laughed.  “Think of your money as seeds. Stored seeds do nothing, and can be lost.” The boy looked down at his hands, remembering.

 “You can just eat the seeds,” The farmer continued. “But it is not filling.” His hands demonstrated, planting, then collecting a field of crops.

 “However, if you can be patient, and have hope, you can put the seeds to work, invest them, and they will bring a bountiful harvest.”

    “The Farmer makes no sense.” Chico’s father said when the boy spoke to him about  the idea.  “Gold is a metal, you can sell it for coins, buy drinks with, or food.”  Chico’s father shook his head.  “It is not a living thing that grows!”

“Please, Father let us try.” The small boy looked so much like his mother, the same dark brown hair, the same large eyes, filled with a vision of a better life, and his father couldn’t say no.

The farmer and Chico’s father sat down and worked out a deal. Chico had to encourage his father, pushing him to see past today, into some mythical future.   Most of the next strike of gold went to the farmer, who used the dust to buy better tools, more seeds for his farm.

  A few months later when the harvest came in, the farmer sold the crop, and brought back bags of coins, along with fruits and vegetables to Chico and his father’s small hut.

“You are a wise one, Chico.” His father smiled at the coins spilling out from the bag. “And we have both learned gold can be a living thing.  If we treat it like seeds, spread it out so it will grow and not waste away.”

 Chico’s father laughed with joy, and they both  taught the farmer their dance, twirling and whirling as they celebrated into the night.