“I said I want some coffee!”

“Then you’ll have to give me eighty-five more cents, sir”

“I already told you, no. LET ME TASTE YOUR HAIR!!!”

“OW! Sweet stench of death, get out of here!”

“Muhahahahaha. If you shoot me down, I’ll become ten times more powerful. Tell your army to stand down.”

“My army? Oh, thank heavens. Officer!” implored the barista.

“All righty there, Horace. This is the last straw,” said the police officer authoritatively as he smoothly clubbed Horace, the Hobo King.

***

Several hours later, Horace woke up under his favorite highway.

“Gus!” shouted Horace as he abruptly darted to his feet and yanked his favorite knife from the inside pocket of his tattered military jacket.

“Who are you?” begged Gus, the taller, lankier, relatively clean-shaven hobo who had been nursing Horace’s wounds just fifteen seconds earlier.

“Gus.”

“That’s my name.”

“You stole my newspaper.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Give me my Beetle Bailey.”

“I need it now. He’s part of my family.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“I’ll kill you!” screamed Gus, as he smashed the blunt end of his half-full bottle against a concrete pillar.

“No! The happy times!” they both screamed, as they watched the precious $1.95/bottle Night Train fortified wine trickle down the storm drain. They both fell to the ground.

“It never even had a chance,” lamented Horace.

“What’d you do to get in trouble with the man this time?”

“Nothing! Apparently nobody in this town will trade you a cup of coffee for a shiny, hard-earned dime anymore.”

“No way. You got a dime?”

Horace spit a dime out of his mouth into his hand and beamed his toothless smile back at Gus.

“How’d you do it?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” taunted Horace. “If I told you, soon all the hobos would learn the secret. And there tain’t enough lemonade stands in this town for all of us to mug.”

“You done spun salt into gold right thurr,” said a frail, aging hobo who had just wheeled up.

“Old Man Jenkins,” gasped Horace & Gus in unison.

“A dime in the hand is money in the bank. Hang on to that,” mused the dying old hobo.

“I was thinkin’ about spending it on a woman and a song,” said Horace.

“Now you can’t grab hold of that. Be smart, hobo king,” offered the old man before he wandered to the side of the river and died.

“Dag! I guess you should hold on to that dime.”

“Shut yo mouth. Oldie means more to me than you ever will. And it’s two nickels. Step off!”

“So, what’re you going to do with that thurr dime?”

“I’m going to the bank.”

“You mean Moonshine Peat’s overnight loans?”

“No, one of them real banks. With purdy bank tellers.”

“You sayin’ I’m not purdy?” asked Moonshine Peat.

“Run away!” And they did.

***

The Hobo King waited by the side of the road, as Gus approached skeptically.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m hitching a ride on the Hobo Trolley.”
“You mean the subway?”

“No, they outlawed stabbing on the subway.”
“Dag.”

“It’s pretty cool. It’s this group of college students that drive hobos wherever they need.”

“What’s the catch?”

“They’re doing it to laugh at us.”

“So?”
“Exactly. Free ride, complimentary alcoholic beverages, and a lecture about accepting Jesus into my life or whatever. I shit in a KFC bucket, what the hell do I care about dignity?”

At which point a grey Buick LeSabre drove up, with the passenger extending his middle finger.

“This must be the Hobo Trolley. I’m off.”

***

Horace, the Hobo King, wended his way through the valley for many long nights. Eventually, he arrived in town at the monolithic First National Bank. He disembarked from the Hobo Trolley, thanked the young gentlemen who drove him solely for their amusement, and crept up to the imposing front doors of the bank.

He walked up to the front door, which was easily two times his size. Even though the door was made of glass, the lighting somehow prevented him from seeing inside. He grabbed both hands to the edges of the large wooden door handle and pulled with all of his might.

As he stepped into the bank, he was overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the thing. The ceilings that seemed to reach as high as the heavens. The stern security guards standing against giant marble pillars against the cold linoleum floor. The massive amount of space chewed up with ornate artwork and vases that must have cost more money than Horace would ever be worth. He walked to the teller’s desk naught but a squirrel with an acorn.

“Yes, I’d like to ‘deposit’ this money into your bank.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” said the teller as she yanked the dime from him and threw it into a slot.

“Uh, great.”

“Will that be all, sir?”

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“Is there anything I can help you with, sir?”

“Well, what happened to all my hard-earned money?”

“I don’t know, sir. Do you have an account with us?”

“What’s an account? I want my money back.”

“I’m afraid I can’t give out money to people who have not joined our preferred bank rewards program. You don’t even have an account, sir.”

“What’d you do with my money?”

“I’m sorry, sir. Have we met? SECURITY!!”

***

Horace awoke several hours later in a ditch.

“Another Night Train morning,” he thought, before he noticed the throbulent wound on his forehead. Suddenly it all came back to him. The years of neglect. The lack of desire to hold a job. The smell of corrugated cardboard. Yes, he was a hobo, and he was doggone proud to be one.

He also remembered the unseemly way the bank’s ruffians had threshed him up. This was not going to fly.

First thing he did was to find himself some proper clothes. As much as he enjoyed his tattered top hat that was bent at an angle, it wasn’t going to get him anywhere but a homeless shelter. He walked into the nearest Laundromat, punched out a couple of passers by and removed a spotless pair of knickers, along with matching suit and tie.

He kept his scruff, since he was a hobo after all. He wasn’t going to betray the hobo’s code and shave.

***

All spiffed up, he approached First National Bank. He took some time this time to read the hobo markings on the outside of the building. Thanks to previous generations of hobos that gave their lives to the cause, he learned that the owner of this place was insecure and that there was money inside. Horace, of course, knew this, since they stole his dime earlier.

He walked in confidently and approached one of the tellers, a different one from last time.

“I’d like to make a deposit,” declared Horace.

“Sure thing, sir. How much would you like to deposit?”

“Billions. That’s right. Billions upon billions of dollars. I may actually be the wealthiest man in the nation.”

“Oh! I’ll grab the manager immediately,” said the teller as he fainted. The manager popped up behind the desk before the teller could hit the ground.

“Hello there. My name is Fairweather Augerlager, the manager of First National Bank. Please, sir, why don’t we step back into my office.”

At this point, Fairweather unlocked a couple of padlocks allowing the counter to slide back, allowing Horace into the recesses of the bank. The two of them strolled past desks of telephones and computers, and back into Fairweather’s private office.

“So… I understand you want to make a donation to our bank?”

“Uh, you mean a deposit?”

“Right, a deposit. So, how much were we talking about?”

“Oh, you know. Billions.”

Fairweather fell out of his chair. “Billions?”

“That’s right. Billions. I am a wealthy heiress/entrepreneur. I made my billions doing some kind of business with Saudi Arabia.”

“Saudi Arabia. Wow. It sounds like you’ve done very well for yourself.”

“Oh, and how. I could buy and sell you. In fact, I might.”

“So, tell me. There’s a dozen secret Swiss banks you could dump your money into. Why choose our small bank?”

“No. You tell me. Why should I pick your crappy bank? I’m getting second thoughts right now. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll crush your bank. Do you mind if I make a quick call to my destruction branch?”

“Now, hold up a second there,” barked Fairchild, before he laughed nervously. “We have a lot of services to offer you here at First National. We charge only half the ATM fees of our competitor banks, for instance.”

“Listen up and listen good. I don’t like you, and I don’t like your bank. If you don’t give me a reason to drop my money in this hellhole, I’m going to walk out of here and tell all of my wealthy friends to pretend you don’t exist. Bam!”

“Wait!” gasped Fairweather as he removed a heretofore unnoticed pair of glasses. “Let me level with you. Our bank is barely profitable as it is. The only way we manage to stay afloat is by making it as hard as possible for people to get their money out. We need something. We need anything to keep us afloat.”

Fairweather bent his head down.

“Okay, perk up there sailor. I’ve got a plan for us. I’m about to expand into a revolutionary new business venture. Wireless, uh… alcohol. Yup. Wireless alcohol. It’s gonna make me millions. But we need some business partners. Why don’t you hop aboard. All we need for starters is for you to drop a hundred thousand dollars to prove you’re serious. And, in return, you’ll get forty percent of the profits.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Why do you have to ask stupid questions?”

“Hold up, there. Forty percent?”

“Thirty percent.”

“OK! Wait. A hundred thousand. All right, you’ve got yourself a deal,” said Fairweather, not noticing that a hundred thousand was a conveniently round number.

It’s fairly obvious to anybody reading this story that Horace was not in fact a wealthy heiress/entrepreneur. Instead, he had finagled this unwitting bank manager into unloading several hundred thousand dollars over to a hobo with a nice coat. Horace may not have had a fancy business degree, but it didn’t really matter. Once you’ve got money, it’s a fairly simple task to turn it into more money. And that’s just what Horace was going to do. To what great heights will Horace the Hobo King rise?

To find out, read the conclusion in an upcoming issue of the Audience of Two magazine.