The Twenty-Dollar Bill
At five o’clock in the morning, the kitchen light was already on.
Brandon Sullivan stood barefoot on the cold linoleum floor, staring at the old oven door that refused to close properly.
Behind him, his grandmother sat at the kitchen table.
Maylene Sullivan was sixty-eight years old, though Brandon sometimes thought she looked older when she was tired. She wore a faded blue robe and kept a small notebook beside her blood-sugar testing kit.
She pricked her finger, waited for the machine to beep, and looked at the number.
Too high.
Again.
She wrote it down.
Brandon pretended not to notice.
He opened the oven door, removed a screwdriver from his pocket, and crouched beside the hinge.
A few seconds later, he tightened the loose screw.
“There,” he said. “Should hold until payday.”
Maylene looked over her shoulder.
“You don't have to repair everything in this house, baby.”
Brandon smiled.
“Somebody has to.”
He stood and wiped his hands against his old work pants.
The apartment was small. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen barely large enough for two people to stand in comfortably. The paint was peeling around the window frames. The refrigerator made a strange humming noise at night.
But it was home.
Brandon crossed the kitchen and reached for his backpack.
Before leaving, he checked his wallet.
Thirty-four dollars.
He opened the rent jar.
Then he looked toward his grandmother.
She was studying her notebook.
Brandon quietly pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and slipped it beneath the other money.
He had barely turned around when Maylene spoke.
“Brandon.”
He froze.
He knew that voice.
Not angry.
Worse.
Disappointed.
He slowly turned.
Maylene was standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Bring that back.”
“Grandma—”
“Bring it back.”
He returned to the counter and removed the twenty-dollar bill.
Maylene waited until he placed it in his wallet.
“Our family doesn't take what it didn't earn,” she said.
“I know.”
“And we don't take money from our children to pay our bills.”
“I'm not a child.”
“To me, you are.”
Brandon lowered his eyes.
Maylene walked toward him.
“The medical bill is mine.”
“But it's getting bigger.”
“I know.”
“And you need your medicine.”
“I know that too.”
She placed her palm against his cheek.
“I don't need you to save me, Brandon.”
He looked at her.
“I need you to become a man I can be proud of when I'm gone.”
His throat tightened.
“That is how you repay me.”
Brandon nodded.
“Yes, ma'am.”
Maylene kissed his forehead.
“Now go to work.”
He picked up his backpack.
His bicycle had been broken for two weeks. The chain had snapped, and he couldn't afford a replacement yet.
So Brandon walked.
Twenty-two blocks.
Every morning.
At the gas station on the corner, a woman watched him while he bought a soda.
“You work around here, son?”
“No, ma'am. I'm just a customer.”
She looked at his coveralls, then at his face.
She said nothing.
Brandon walked away.
Three blocks later, a patrol car slowed beside him.
The officer looked at him.
Brandon looked back.
The patrol car continued.
He kept walking.
He had been experiencing moments like that since he was twelve.
He had learned not to react.
At Hartman's Auto, Cole Hartman was already under a Honda Civic.
“You're early,” Cole said.
“Bus didn't come.”
“It doesn't come for another hour.”
“I know.”
Cole rolled out from beneath the car.
He looked at Brandon's backpack.
“Eat breakfast?”
“Yes.”
It was a lie.
Cole knew it.
Neither mentioned it.
Brandon changed into his coveralls and went straight to the back of the garage.
There sat a 1986 BMW motorcycle nobody wanted to touch.
The engine had a problem.
Everyone else had given up.
Brandon hadn't.
Machines made sense to him.
People didn't.
Machines broke for reasons.
A loose belt.
A damaged bearing.
Bad timing.
A clogged fuel line.
You found the problem, fixed it, and the machine worked again.