The Price Of Gold (Fiction, 2002)

Satire ’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet to run amok, and tilt at all I meet.
Alexander Pope


The Price of Gold

Big John O'Malley was the most contrary man in all of County Cork. If you told him the sky was blue he'd ask you to prove your point. It's not that Big John wasn't friendly; he was always the first man to buy a round at the Bull and Talon, it's just that he was a skeptic by nature. There wasn't a thing Big John could do to change his doubting ways. His father was an unbeliever as was his father before him. Each O'Malley male had been a doubter from as far back as anyone could remember.

One day, Big John was tending his sheep when he came upon a bucket filled with rain water. John went over to this bucket, intending to kick it over, because, well, John was also a little cantankerous. However, before he could put his crotchety plan into action, he made a discovery. At the bottom of the bucket was a round, flat, gold colored object. Big John, not being a man of wealth, had a powerful need for money. The shine given off by this object obviously reminded John what his pockets were light of, and thus it was of singular interest to him.

Big John, a strong hard working man, still had his qualms when it came to getting his hands wet. Rolling up his sleeve, he turned his head to the right so as to suffer the indignation of his partial ablution. Big John then squinted his eyes, reached gingerly into the water and grabbed the golden object.

Holding his bounty before him, Big John noticed something rather odd...a coin with a hole? He looked closer and was quickly reminded of his luck, which was, to put it mildly, none. Sure enough, upon closer inspection, all that Big John possessed was a dollar sized, brass washer. He was about to throw the washer back into the bucket when the skeptic in Big John noticed a peculiar thing. The water surface of that pail was nearly still. A moment ago his hand had been rifling through it and now, moments later, only a slight surface ripple gave hint to its former turbulence. To an unobservant man, there would seem to be nothing unusual to water settling in its due time, but to a man like John, in need of a theory of life, that observation made all the difference.

Part philosopher, part inquisitive fool, and all man of unreason, John gazed at the bucket as if struck by a wondrous thought. His eyes twinkled in a sort of revelers pronouncement and he suddenly had, what we might lightly term an epiphany, but which John, less given to definition, simply declared, “an eye opener"

Big John, stood dumb-founded by his finding. It took a few moments for him to fully grasp the philosophical import of his discovery, but after a moment of intense cognition, John knew he had to impart his new found theory with his fellow philosophers at the Bull and Talon.

As Big John entered the pub, the first of the deep thinkers to meet him was Paddy O'Rourke, a retired stone cutter with a red face and ruddy complexion. Paddy was affable to a point. Meet him when he first entered the Pub and you'd find a friend who'd talk your ear off, but, treat Paddy to one too many pints of lager and he became, first maudlin and then eventually down right belligerent. Paddy, it would seem, was entering the contentious phase of his evening, having imbibed a few too many of Smithwicks Finest ale, and he was not in the mood to listen to his old friend's philosophic finding.

"Paddy my good man. I have a most 'plexin' story to tell ya." Big John began, head-over-heels, into his amazing bucket tale. Before he had completed his enlightened story, a small crowd of fellow philosophers had gathered around to hear their colleague tell his abstruse findings.

"So we're to believe that a bucket encompasses the world" commented the fuddled Paddy, who, surprisingly, had until now, listened patiently to Big John's tale. "Yes indeed Paddy, the bucket is the world and the water I would dare say is all of you. I'm the hand and well the nothingness that remains, that would be the world after I'm gone."

At the completion of Big John's philosophic exposition, the ruby faced Paddy broke out into a laugh which was soon followed by a chorus of merriment from the other Bull and Talon patrons.

Big John, observing that he was the only meta-physicist in a pub full of rationalists, became angered and would have floored his friend Paddy there and then had it not been for the tavern keeper Lanny Doyle who yelled over to Big John to, "ease up on Yer philosophizing and have one on me". Those were the magic words to the parsimonious John, who never turned down alcohol or a free meal, and thus his contentious nature was quelled.

Big John and his fellow mates all gathered around the bar to toast John's health. To show that there were no hard feelings, Paddy bought the second round and Mike Shannon, a man quick with a joke and free with his money, (to his wife's wrath) bought the third. John, feeling better about his fate and therefore his drinking mates, bought the rounds that followed.

At about the time of the sixth round John's amazing discovery started to re-surface as a topic of conversation. John insisted on the veracity of his findings and the rationalists all jovially insisted that John was mad.

Finally at the completion of the tenth round, Big John, unable to convince his fellow philosophers of his meaning of existence, determined it to be time to take leave and head for home.

It was a clear moon-lit night and John had no difficulty seeing his way along the short trek homeward. Teetering unevenly, he cursed his mates, his life and the day he was born. About half way along his journey, he approached a wooden bridge. As a boy John had often jumped from this bridge, into the icy waters. He remembered how invigorating the sudden rush of cold water felt and the nostalgic farmer decided to sit on the bridge railing and try to think out his new found philosophy.

Surely his mates should have understood the situation. “Yure here, and then yure not. The memory that ya make after you’ve gone is nil”. "The world is a bucket, damn it all!” “Can't they see that the world is a damn bucket!", and with that last declaration, Big John, noticed a shiny yellow object reflecting in the river. John became engrossed at the prospect, and in his confused state, thought of gold. He leaned forward and peered intently at this glistening object. Unable to discern clearly, he leaned further out on the railing, hoping to better see the nature of the object. Forgetting his precarious position, Big John lost his balance; he waved his arms momentarily, grasping elusively for the rail. He gave one short gasp and fell from the bridge into the icy river. The ripples slowly widened, making the moon’s reflection shimmer on the water’s surface. In a few moments the undulations dissipated and it was as if John had never fallen in.

The next day, John's body was dragged from the river. Being an unbeliever, he was buried on the outside of the Catholic church graveyard. Out of respect for the dead, Paddy O'Rourke and one or two other locals attended the funeral, but after a few days, no one ever mentioned John O'Malley's name again.

In death, Big John had proven his philosophy of life.