Dirty Laundry

A Quiet Reckoning

The older professional man walked down the crowded urban street.

A drunk or drugged up man had fallen off a scooter. Another man was picking him up off the sidewalk. It was unclear if he was also drunk or drugged up.

Rather than stop to help, the older professional man kept walking briskly.

Soon he passed a vagrant sitting on the steps of his office building, counting cash, a rather huge wad of cash. It resembled a small fortune.

A bizarre thought crossed the older professional man's mind.

"What if I grabbed it?

I don't need a gun. A knife might help, but I could just grab it.

How did he get it anyway? He probably stole it. Someone was robbed at gunpoint the other day."

Before he knew it, the older professional man reached down and snatched the man's money.

Even he was surprised.

Then he started to run as fast as he could, leaping over the broken scooter, taking a quick left down a garbage-filled alley.

The man who had been counting his wad was nowhere to be seen.

"Could it really be this easy?"

He sat by a dumpster and started counting.

$20, $40, $60.

$560 in cold, hard cash.

Dirty cash, slippery cash, even smelly cash.

It reeked of foul odor.

"How am I even going to spend this money? It smells so bad.

You can launder money, can't you?

I mean, really launder it."

He went home, filled up the kitchen sink with water, poured in half a bottle of dish soap, and dumped in the money.

He soaked and scrubbed it gently.

The water in the basin turned green and purple.

In no time, he was washing gray paper with his purple fingers.

Suddenly his wife and two elementary school boys walked in.

"What are you doing, Daddy?" They asked.

"Ah, uh…"

"It looks like fun, Daddy. Can we help?"

"Yes," replied Daddy. "I saw a documentary about Tibetan prayer flags. I thought we could hang some in the garden."

"How did you know I love prayer flags?" whispered his wife, rubbing his shoulder.

"What are we going to pray for, Daddy?" asked the older son.

"Uh…" paused the daddy.

"Forgiveness," he smiled.

A story by Pemba Umoja