Thanks Again, Means a Lot

“Thanks again, means a lot.” The hooded man far younger than himself shook Ollie’s hand and stepped back into the car. The exhaust pipe sputtered as he pulled away and left Ollie coughing out long tendrils of dark soot. 

He shoved the thick envelope into his back pocket and stuffed his hands in those of his jacket. He spun on one heel and made his way back towards his own Volkswagen, the one that barely started. 

For a moment, once he was behind the wheel, he considered using the money to catch up on repairs. The thought quickly left him. He cared little for appearances, and as long as she took him down the road in one piece, that was good enough for him.

More likely, he would spend it on beer, he knew. Beer and a few lazy bets at his favorite bar downtown. The bribe wasn’t large enough to make him do anything really stupid, but enough to make sure his Friday night was a good one. 

Ollie worked for the mayor’s campaign. He had taken the job just two months ago as one of his random gigs, and to his surprise, both the candidate and his staff took to him. They had placed him in charge of advertising, convinced he could reach a genre of people the mayor himself couldn’t.

On the surface, it seemed like a compliment, but Ollie knew better. He grew up in the Northside of his city in a home more accurately described as a barrow. He knew his mother once, but eventually it became just him and dad, who worked long hours in construction.

The city was too large for one highschool, and so there was Northside and Southside. Parents who wanted the best for their children made sure they were sent to Southside, where the suburbs and white-picket-fence fundraiser families ruled. Every politician and business owner came from the Southside, surely coincidentally. 

Everyone agreed Northside as a community was a stain on the good reputation of the city. But, complain as they might, local politicians couldn’t take away the right to vote from the poor delinquents they so wished to disappear. And so, Ollie was named to the advertising committee.

“They call me ‘representation’.” He told his friend John one night over a beer downtown. “Looks good on paper, looks good on tv.” 

John laughed and agreed. “Oh yeah. Can’t believe you’re workin’ for that crook Nelson. He’d sell Northside to the devil if it meant he’d get re-elected.”

Ollie couldn’t argue with that. He’d met Fred Nelson a handful of times, and try as he might, he couldn’t deny that he was exactly who he seemed to be in all the interviews and campaign ads. Performative, smiley, jovial. The perfect man for mayor. A true Northsider knew better, though. Politicians were never on their side as much as they pretended to be. “Pays the bills though, the bastard.”

“You know, that position could help you with that. Plenty of folks looking to up their standing in the polls, change the tides a bit. Doesn’t matter if you work for Nelson or against him. Forget his salary, you can make some real money on the side.” John said.

John knew such things. His father had run a gambling ring since John was a toddler, and he spent most of his childhood observing drug deals and meddling with corruption. He was a great friend to Ollie, but he couldn’t deny that John was seemingly all that Northsiders were painted to be. He could keep up with Ollie in beers though, so all else seemed to melt away after a few bottles. 

That conversation had started it. At first, it was just a few bucks for small favors, a kind word to the mayor, to his secretary, to his wife. Then, all at once, he was being paid hundreds of dollars to create fraudulent votes, to sway and lie and falsify.

Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, it got to him. Things weren’t always this way. When he was a boy, his father never let him forget what they could have had. His grandfather was a Southside higher up, a big-time steel tycoon from old money. He was heading an empire, pulling all the strings behind the scenes of  the city. In a flash of bad-luck lightning, it was gone.

Or, more accurately, his father was disinherited. Not a penny, not half a thought. Ollie found that out after his father died and he did some digging. His father had told him for years that his grandfather was careless and corrupt, that he had lost all the money by being a reckless fool and had therefore doomed his descendants to lives of financial ruin. 

And so, by the age of five, Ollie hated his grandfather to his very core. The man was a mythical figure, a beast to haunt them in the background. Every time things got bad, someone got sick, a storm came through, it was the fault of his grandfather. 

As he got older, Ollie began to see the holes in his father’s stories. He always complained about their lack of money, but spent every spare night at the bar. That made little sense to Ollie then. How was it that his father couldn’t afford to fix the leak in his bedroom window, but he could afford to lose his week’s paycheck downtown in a single night?

That was a different time, a different person, he told himself. That Ollie didn’t understand what the world was. His father was angry and broken, but he knew how the world worked. It kept people like them on the bottom.

Sometimes, when the conversation lulled between him and John, or for a second as he took a swig, he realized what he had become. He cursed his father as much as his grandfather by the time he died, but now he knew that he had become him. He was wasting away working dead end jobs and blowing his money chasing the bottom of a bottle. Things hurt less when he was drunk, that much was true, but the problems were always there when he sobered up.

Once, his father had told him there was a bit of his grandfather in his veins. Ollie was deeply offended, but his father, in his slurred speech after a night out, explained that Ollie had an air of lost glory about him. A chip on his shoulder, an unconscious knowing that he was meant for a different life. Maybe that was what made the mayor and his staff choose him for the position, they knew he had once been like them. He wasn’t too Northside, just enough to carry the votes when election day came.

No one would find out about the bribes. He didn’t worry about that. There were secrets he had found out in his time on the committee that would save him if things went sour on a deal. Plus, the money he had made wasn’t enough to turn any heads, any important heads. The amount he carried was a drop in the ocean of the wealth of the Southside’s mightiest. He’d get a slap on the wrist if anything, nothing more.

He was supposed to meet John soon, downtown again. They always had a good time, that much was certain, but Ollie found himself wondering if he should go. The envelope felt heavy in his back pocket, and for some reason he found that it was suddenly uncomfortable to sit on.

Without starting the car, he turned the overhead light on and pulled the envelope out. It was wrinkled and poorly sealed, but he ripped it open. Inside, a thick stack of twenty dollar bills was bound together with a rubber band. The smell of money rose through the car to meet his senses. 

It wasn’t the first time he had had a moment like this. Sometimes the thoughts got to him, grabbed hold of his mind and wouldn’t let go. His consciousness was swallowed by memories. Normally, he would drive hastily to the bar to meet John, or, if necessary, take a seat by himself. He found that drinking helped him most when he couldn’t seem to clear his head.

But that wasn’t to say that drinking did clear his mind. No, it merely distracted him from the thoughts temporarily. They were always there in the morning, creeping in the back of his head threatening to strike again.

He let his head fall back against the headrest and closed his eyes. He wondered where the man who gave him the money had driven off to. Maybe he headed to celebrate in a bar too, happy that the deal had gone well and the bribe was secured. 

But the deal hadn’t gone well. Not for Ollie. All it had done was bring his grandfather’s ghost back to him, and Ollie felt him sitting in the passenger seat.

He didn’t dare open his eyes for fear that he would see him sitting there. Instead, he blindly reached for the glovebox and pulled out what he knew to be the newspaper clipping. He turned so he was facing out his window, away from the ghost, and looked. 

Dorian Hathaway, Southside’s Man of the Year.

They shared the last name, but when Ollie looked in the mirror he saw none of this man. From his nose to his smile, all the resemblance had been lost in just two generations. Even his father had a different look, though Ollie’s memories of him were beginning to fade. His father refused to be in pictures, and so he only lived within the walls of Ollie’s mind. But Dorian Hathaway was a figure, an inspiration. Everywhere Ollie went, there was something to remind him of what their family had been.

Ollie had read somewhere that it was Dorian’s own father’s genius mind that led his son to specifically steel wealth. They built an empire together, and when he died, Dorian ensured it continued to thrive. He married a woman from a family who rivaled their own status, and soon they had two children, Ollie’s father, and a daughter, Ollie’s aunt.

Ellen Hathaway was the one who inherited the millions. Ollie looked, but she had left the city long ago. She dropped off the map, along with all the money Ollie’s father insisted was theirs.

As documented as his grandfather was, there was nothing on his son or what happened to their relationship. Ollie could only assume he had wiped any record of him before he died. 

But all that didn’t matter. It didn’t make his life easier now. Even if his father was right, and there was some faded glorious quality to him, it didn’t put money in his pocket or food on his table. What did the past matter? What did any of this matter? 

Why should he feel guilty about accepting bribes? Why should he hesitate to work against a man of questionable morality anyway?

His life was his life. There was no switching. He could change small things, sure, but the framework of his existence was set in stone when he was born. He was forced to live within his bounds. 

Just drive to the bar, get a drink. He turned to his right. The ghost was gone.

He turned the key in the ignition and drove downtown taking the same roads he had all his life. His car sputtered along, groaning at his harsh use of the gas and brake. He pulled onto the side of the road in front of the bar. He noticed John’s truck already parked in front of him.

He was counting the seconds until the alcohol touched his lips. Aching for it. He knew then that the thoughts would cease, and he would be able to breathe again. The newspaper clipping still sat on his knee, wobbling as the car shuddered to a stop. 

There was a quote just below his grandfather’s picture that he had read a hundred times. Beneath the smiling old man in his knit sweater, standing proudly in front of a seaside view, a small line of text read; “I’ve learned it’s better to sit back at the end of the day and be able to say you didn’t just watch.”

Later in the interview, his grandfather explained his statement. “My father taught me that our lives, our world, doesn’t mean anything if we don’t touch it, change it, mold it. He and I went down the road of steel, but anything goes. There are no rules for satisfaction. As long as you don’t watch, don’t wait. If you spend your time letting life happen to you, you’ll find you never lived at all.”

When he was angry, Ollie told himself his grandfather didn’t know what he was talking about. He was a rich old man without any real problems in his life. He had never faced poverty, never understood what it was like to struggle and suffer. What did he know about how to live life? Some people never got the chance to change their world, to touch it. 

But where did that leave him? 

He sat in silence for a moment, both the world and his mind quiet. 

Ollie was overall healthy, strong, with a sense of work ethic. He got most of the odd-jobs he applied for even though he didn’t have a college degree. People seemed to like him. He was a good talker, handsome enough to land a date every now and then, not the smartest but he had good instincts. So…this barrier that he had put in front of his happiness, his satisfaction with life, what was it?

Money was the only thing that came to mind. The only observable difference between his grandfather and himself, aside from facial features and fashion sense, was money. 

But when he looked down, he had an envelope of cash sitting between his legs. So, another question within him asked, was it money, or the amount of money that mattered?

All was quiet, and instead of the deafening sound of his own thoughts, he was left with two options. He could either go inside the bar and meet John, have a few laughs, and spend the money, or drive home and stuff it in the drawer of his nightstand for something else, something he didn’t know yet.

He stared at the envelope for a long time. There was much more between the pieces of paper than money, he knew. He felt his grandfather’s ghost beside him again, and his father too behind.

 As if by fate, there was a knock at the window. John peered inside, an obviously drunken smile on his face. “You alright in there, Ol?” His muffled voice called through the glass.

Ollie’s face never changed, but he rolled down the window. “What is it?” He asked.

John looked at him, obviously confused. “Are you coming inside? Or are you just gonna sit there on your ass?”

Ollie took a moment and examined John’s face, saw the addiction and corruption written in the lines. “Thanks again, means a lot.” He said, rolled up the window, and pulled away into the night.