Fool's Gold

            

By: Melissa Zeigler

“That mine’s totally spent,” he told me as we rode away from the Miller’s on the wagon. He was chuckling like he normally does after a night at the saloon.

“What do you mean it’s spent?”

“The fella who sold it to me last year warned me there was nothing left in her, but being the old fool that I am, I bought the mine anyway.”

This was news to me. Of course I knew that the mine had struggled this past year but I thought it was purely because we were amateurs, not because of the mine itself.

“So how come you told the Miller’s you were upset to have to give up such a gem?”

“Come on boy, do I really have to explain that to you?”

He was right, I knew. I asked more out of shock than anything else. My dad the swindler struck again! After all the years of selling fake remedies and stupid gadgets that never worked the way they should why would he have suddenly changed his tune?

“Where did you get the gold you showed them?”

“That was fool’s gold,” he said, all smiles.

Boy he fooled them; he even fooled me.  I thought he had finally had a change of heart. I was wrong.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Should I tell him? It’s not like he’ll care. We’ve had this same argument at least a hundred times over our years. But he needs to know that what he did was dishonest. He must already know though. It’s not like he couldn’t, right?

“Boy I asked you a question.”

I wanted to tell him exactly how I felt. That I loved him because I had to but that I hated the kind of person he’d become since mother died. Mother, how I missed her.  Only one more year and I’d have enough money saved that I could run away from him as fast as my feet would take me. One more year… But that wasn’t now. For now I just had to play along.

“Answer me boy.”

“Nothing’s the matter, I’m just a little hungry is all.”

We sat in silence for the rest of the ride. My father the swindler, and me, his cowardly accomplice, on to the next town full of unsuspecting victims.