by Joe Nobody
When Texas had first split, the new greenbacks were traded equally with U.S. dollars. Travelers, as well as those who resided along the border, could purchase practically anything using either currency or a mixture of both.
That had all ended with the Tariff Wars.
For a while, Texas money rose in value, sometimes worth $1.10 for each American dollar. Then the tide reversed, the greenbacks falling to slightly less than a one-for-one value.
Banks, big box stores, and those businesses catering to travelers on either side of the boundary still accepted both currencies, but there was often an exchange rate differential. The Wall Street Journal and other financial publications tracked the value, just like gold, silver, the Euro, or oil.
Zach had even seen advertisements for businesses trying to attract customers from the neighbors across the line. In an effort to pack their businesses, Louisiana casinos offered customers a one for one value when exchanging Texas money. Gas stations in Texas had once brokered the same deal with their U.S. buyers.
“On the way back home, I want to stop at one of those currency exchange stores. After the secession, I was too busy to take in my little stash of U.S. dollars, and I brought them along,” Zach informed his partner.
“No problem. You can buy me a present with the windfall.”
“Sure,” he replied with a sly grin. “Candy bars don’t cost anymore here than they do at home.”
Sam signaled their arrival at her hometown exit long before she flipped on the blinker. With a heavy sigh, she whispered, “Here we go,” snapping the lever on the steering column.
The berg of Fullerton, Arkansas proudly displayed its population of 812 via a small green highway sign as Ranger Temple guided her car off the exit ramp and onto the surface road. They turned again onto Maple Street a few miles later.
Now, Sam’s birthplace was not exactly a burgeoning metropolis by any measure. It laid claim to two stoplights, an independent grocery, post office, and a gas station/convenience store at each end of town. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it,” Sam announced, a hint of embarrassment in her voice.
“I think it’s quaint,” Zach replied. “You should see where I grew up in West Texas.”
They continued a short distance, heading off the main drag and into a 1950’s section of modest clapboard homes.
A few blocks later, Sam pulled to the curb and pointed with a nod of her head. “We’re here.”
Zach studied the homestead as his lanky structure unwound and stretched away the mileage. Subconsciously, his hand reached to adjust the badge and pistol that weren’t hanging from his belt. The missing hardware was an odd sensation.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” the dark-haired lass inquired. “I can drop you off back at the truck stop, and you can buy a paperback and cup of coffee. I’m only going to stay a couple of hours.”
“This is all covered in the ranger handbook,” he replied with a grin. “Besides, how bad can it be? I chase down rapists, murderers, pedophiles, and other felons for a living. A birthday bash can’t be all that intimidating.”
“You’re a brave soul, Ranger Bass. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Sam retrieved a wrapped gift from the trunk, complete with bow, ribbon, and card. Taking a deep breath, she plodded toward the front porch.
Tree roots had raised the sidewalk here and there, small patches of greenery peeking through the cracks. There were two concrete steps leading to the Victorian-style veranda, the wood creaking under Sam’s weight as she stepped up to knock on the screen door’s frame.
Zach took it all in, noticing the home’s siding had been painted a few seasons past. The prerequisite porch swing sported three swaths of peeling paint and hung from the slatted ceiling by noticeably rusty chains. There was a dearly departed potted plant dangling above the railing at the far end.
“Somebody get that,” came a voice from inside. “It’s probably those ‘Texicans.’”
The door opened, releasing a gush of refreshing air through the threshold. A middle-aged woman appeared on the other side of the screen wire, wringing her hands on an apron that covered a conservative, flower print dress.
“Samantha! Oh, I’m so glad you made it, dear!”
“Hi, Mom. I hope we haven’t missed the cake and ice cream.”
Zach lingered on the steps, observing mother and daughter exchange hugs and pecks. Then it was his turn.
Sam turned and indicated her guest with an open palm. “Mom, this is Zach Bass. He’s a co-worker of mine who decided to come along and keep me company.”
Mrs. Temple extended her hand, which Zach accepted softly while removing his hat. “Any friend of Samantha’s is welcome in our home,” she said politely.
“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate the hospitality.”
And then two men appeared in the doorway, both slightly younger than Sam. Round two of hugs and introductions were exchanged with Ranger Temple’s brothers.
“Where’s the birthday boy?” Sam asked after the greetings had died down.
“He’s in the living room, parked in his favorite chair, watching a football game,” Mrs. Temple replied with more than a slight hint of embarrassment. Or was it a harbinger of doom?
“Oh.”
“Please come in and make yourself at home. I’m about to put the finishing touches on supper. We’ll have cake afterward. Then we’ll open your father’s gifts.”
The home was furnished like millions of other middle class, small town residences. Clean and warm, with a scattering of memories and inherited pieces gathered over the years. Zach noted an oversized, ornately appointed china cabinet of some dark wood, dishes that had probably belonged to Mrs. Temple’s mother proudly displayed behind the glass.
Pictures provided the most prolific decoration, some on the walls and others housed in tilted frames adorning tabletops. Doilies were spread on practically every horizontal surface, competing for space with knickknacks, thingamabobs, and souvenirs. The interior decor was just as Zach had imagined.
The Texan was shown to the living room where he was introduced to the back of an older man’s head concentrating on a small television in the corner. The room was complete with an empty, overstuffed couch, matching love seat occupied by two teenage boys, and the sound of a football crowd streaming through the TV’s speakers.
Mr. Temple barely acknowledged Zach’s arrival. With a simple, “Hello,” Sam’s father didn’t even rise, extending his hand without peeling his eyes from the Steelers – Eagles game.
Zach accepted the handshake, returned the greeting, and took a seat on the sofa.
Soon afterward, both of Sam’s brothers joined the game spectators, one of them with a nice-looking woman in tow. He introduced her as his wife, and the two boys were their sons. Despite the polite exchange of social amenities, tensions remained high. A fog of stress and discomfort hung in the air like the lingering odor of sweaty gym socks, completely overwhelming the fresh aroma from the bowl of potpourri perched nearby.
At the first commercial break, one of the teenagers made eye contact with Zach and smiled. “Are you really a Texas Ranger?” the kid asked with a nervous tone.
“Yes, I am. I work with your aunt,” Zach responded kindly.
“Do you carry a gun?” the younger of the two lads questioned.
“Yes, most of the time,” hoping Mr. Temple had heard him loud and clear.
Mrs. Temple then appeared, a glass of dark brown liquid and a coaster in her hand. “Sam said you liked iced tea, Mr. Bass.”
“Please, call me Zach, ma’am.”
As Zach set the beverage on the coffee table, Mr. Temple remarked, “We’d offer you sugar with your drink, but it’s a luxury we just can’t afford anymore.”
He didn’t hear the part about the gun, Zach thought.
The Texan didn’t take the gruff old bastard’s bait, choosing instead to remain focused on the two youths. “Do you guys play sports?”
“Yeah,” the older replie
d enthusiastically. “Baseball and basketball. Mom won’t let us play football.”
“James Junior is a pitcher,” the proud mother chimed in. “Mark is a talented shortstop.”
Zach smiled and rubbed his chin for a moment. “I used to play a little baseball myself. It’s my favorite sport.”
“We brought our gloves. Dad said we could play catch out in the street after while… if we were careful.”
“Cool,” Zach said. “I’ll toss a few balls if you want.”
Supper was announced a few minutes later, everyone but Mr. Temple seeming happy to have a distraction from the cloud of silence hanging in the room. The dining table couldn’t accommodate all of the guests, so the kids were relegated to kitchen seating.
“I hope you like fried chicken,” Mrs. Temple commented to Zach as the Texan pulled back a chair. “I use my grandmother’s recipe for the breading. We’ve got mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans from the garden.”
“It looks wonderful, Mrs. Temple. Smells even better.”
As everyone was settling in with napkins and silverware, Mr. Temple spoke for the second time. “Normally we’d have steak for my birthday, but since you Texans decided the rest of the country wasn’t good enough for you, the price of beef has skyrocketed, and we can’t pay for it anymore.”
Again, Zach ignored the prod. Sam didn’t.
“Dad, I keep telling you that I had nothing to do with the secession. Zach didn’t either. We are just two people… two votes. You know… democracy and all that. Please, can’t we just let it go for today?”
“Easy for you to say, sis. The whole mess keeps getting rubbed in our faces,” piped in the younger brother. “You know, I got laid off last week. My boss said that with the price of gas, we couldn’t afford to do deliveries anymore. No deliveries means no drivers needed. Who knows where I’ll find a job now?”
Zach dipped a spoonful of green beans onto his plate, passing the large serving bowl onto a grimacing Ranger Temple. “I am sure sorry to hear about your job,” he said. “Maybe it’s a good omen. Maybe you’ll find something better.”
And so the meal continued, periods of silence interrupted by open hostility and frustration about the secession. None of the Temple family had anything good to say about the split; no one could think of a single, positive attribute.
Throughout it all, despite numerous attempts to draw the visitors into a debate, Zach played Mr. Diplomat and avoided confrontation. The Texan had to admit; even he was surprised by the bitterness brazenly exhibited around the Temple dinner table.
When everyone had finished, the men rose and headed off for the living room and football game while the ladies scurried here and there with dishes. Deciding he wasn’t going to be sexist, Zach attempted to help with the plates, but Sam waved him off. It was girl time. Non-male conversation would soon flood the kitchen.
Retiring to the couch again, Zach had just gotten comfortable when the announcer’s voice said, “Stay tuned for the Cowboys – Packers game immediately following our broadcast from Pittsburg.”
“They shouldn’t let the Texas teams stay in the NFL,” Mr. Temple hissed. “Let the damned traitors get their own football league. They can change the rules to whatever they like, just like they did during the secession.”
The remark was so biased and harsh that Zach couldn’t help but look up at the man. It was clear Mr. Temple was spoiling for a fight, the flames of conflict burning brightly behind the old gent’s eyes.
Having suffered through a belly full of snarky, tainted viewpoints during dinner, Ranger Bass was sourly tempted to deliver what his host desired.
But Zach held his tongue.
The ranger was rescued by the two boys, each sporting a baseball glove. “Mr. Bass, do you want to play catch?”
“Sure,” Zach replied happily. “Love to. Some fresh air would do me good.”
Harold peered up from the counting machine, pulling another stack of $10,000 from the exceptionally accurate device. Using a damp sponge, his deft fingers quickly dabbed, and then wrapped a multi-colored, numbered strip of paper around the stack.
Harold had been handling money since he was an awkward teen.
An uncle had taken pity on the unpopular lad. Noting his nephew’s pudgy build, thick glasses, and clear lack of physical prowess, he’d introduced Harold to numismatics, or the collecting of currency.
At first, the young teen had gravitated toward coinage, but that had later developed into a love of paper money. The softer currency wasn’t as highly sought, and Harold found that he felt a deeper relationship with bills.
A social klutz, Harold had longed for, but never experienced a strong connection with other human beings. But all that changed the instant he held a bank note of any denomination, the folding money fostering an association that was as close to intimacy as he had ever known. He could visualize where the greenback had been, who had held it, and what it had been used to purchase. Paper currency seemed to resonate all of these things with far more intensity than its metal brethren.
When the Louisiana legislature had legalized gambling, it had been a godsend for the enthusiast. Casinos handled far more currency than banks, department stores, or any other type of business. He’d applied and been hired at Lake Charles’s first riverboat gambling hall.
Harold’s knowledge of paper money wasn’t lost on his managers. At least once a week, he would approach his boss carrying an example of a five, ten, or even one-dollar bill. “I would like to exchange this. It’s one of the Denver mint’s flawed C-series, and I don’t own one in my collection.”
The numismatist had also identified his share of fake bills.
When laser printers became household items in the 1990s, Harold had stunned his supervisors by identifying counterfeit examples that had passed every other step of the casino’s authentication process. Even the New Orleans branch of the Secret Service respected his expertise and skill.
People had been caught modifying $10 bills by adding an extra zero using their printers. Some felons were even more adventurous, modifying $1 bills with two zeros and changing the presidential portrait.
As he prepared to run yet another stack through the counting machine, Harold’s fingers detected something not quite right with the $100 Texas greenback on top of the stack.
Setting the bill aside, he continued with the task at hand, loading the machine so the tally could proceed.
His first step was to remove a rather large magnifying glass from a nearby drawer. He knew immediately he had found an anomaly. Printing presses left a rounded edge to even the thinnest line of ink, a result of the high pressure against the surface of the paper. These bills had a square edge.
With the enlarged image reflecting off his eyeglasses, Harold flipped the bill over and continued scrutinizing every minute detail. While an excellent reproduction, it was clearly a fake.
Now intrigued, he pushed back his chair and carried the specimen to a corner microscope. After plugging in the seldom-used machine and switching on its exceptionally bright bulb, he slid the suspect bill under the metal clips and lowered his eye. “You were created on a laser printer,” he whispered to the forgery, “and a damned good one at that.”
The intense magnification uncovered additional flaws. The holographic stripe was supposed to have the serial number embedded. It did not.
Now absolutely convinced he was holding a fake, Harold returned to the metal buckets of money spread out on a large table. He began looking for Texas $100 bills.
Within an hour, he’d collected over $2,000 of bogus samples. And that was from just a small selection of the daily cash flow.
Shuffling to a nearby phone, he dialed the casino manager’s extension, nervous about delivering the bad news.
“Mr. Taylor’s office,” the receptionist’s honeyed voice chimed.
“Hi, this is Harold down in counting. I’ve uncovered some counterfeit bills… quite a few. I think Mr. Taylor needs to come downstairs.”
“I’ll let him know immediately,” she replied, now with a more serious voice.
A short time later, the casino’s headman appeared inside the basement counting room, two of his security men in tow. “What have you got, Harold?”
Glancing up from the boxes of money, the collector spurted, “Somebody has dumped quite a load on us, sir. So far, I’ve been through only a small part of the morning shift’s receipts and found nearly $3,000 in forgeries. Well, actually they’re quite good imitations, but they are counterfeits nonetheless.”
Handing over a sample for his boss to inspect, he continued, “They are nearly impossible to detect, sir. An excellent phony bill, complete with unique serial numbers and a holographic stripe that requires a microscope to detect.”
“Slow down, slow down,” the boss stated calmly. “What we need to know immediately is how can our people on the casino floor identify the fake money?”
Harold shook his head, “I don’t see how. It passes the iodine pen test with flying colors. The texture is perfect, as is the watermark.”
“It’s really that good?” asked one of the security men, holding up a bogus greenback to the light and squinting to discern any discrepancy.
“Yes, it’s really that good. I did some quick math, and if my projection is correct, we’re looking at over $30,000 in fake bills from just the first shift alone.”
“I’ll get on the network and warn the other casinos right away,” perked the security chief. “If they’re hitting us, they’re probably dumping on everyone else as well.”
The boss sighed audibly, “And I’ll make the call to the Secret Service in New Orleans.”
Evidently, Sam needed a change of atmosphere as well, soon joining the trio of ball players out in the street.
“How’s it going?” Zach asked, jumping to retrieve a high throw from the shortstop.
“Better than I expected. They’re all being polite since I brought company. Other than a dozen questions about our relationship, the kitchen was relatively calm. I see you’ve retreated to the street, however.”
“No problem,” Zach stated with ease. “Your dad keeps trying to pick a fight, but I’m a guest in his house. And where I come from, it would be rude to start a brawl inside a man’s home.”