The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [92]
“So, Son, what do you do for work?”
Over the previous month, Art had vacillated as to whether or not he should tell his father the truth. He didn’t decide until that moment.
“Well, I make money,” Art told him.
Senior just looked at him, waiting for him to elaborate.
“Counterfeit. Hundred-dollar bills. I sell most of it,” he said.
Senior just sat there, waiting for a punch line that would never arrive. Art stared right back at him, trying to gauge his reaction. “I wondered what he was thinking,” says Art. “Was he upset? Was he blaming himself? Deep inside, part of me wanted him to say, ‘No, son, you’ve got to stop. That’s not how I wanted it to be for you.’ I started to feel ashamed because I thought that’s what he was thinking. But I was wrong.”
“How long have you been doing it?” Senior finally asked.
“About ten years.”
His old man began firing off the usual questions: Had Art ever been caught? How much had he made? Was it difficult? How did he learn? Then he finally came to the question that everybody wants to ask the most, but is afraid to ask too soon.
“Do you have any on you?”
“Some.”
“Can I see it?”
Art ran out to the trailer, then returned a few minutes later with a bill and silently handed it to his father. Senior inspected both sides, rubbed his fingers across it, and held it up to the light. Art was now fully conflicted. “Even as I wanted him to get angry and tell me to quit, just as much of me wanted him to like it. I wanted him to see what I’d done for myself, that I’d created something beautiful. I know it sounds completely messed up, but I wanted him to be proud.”
Senior shook his head in disbelief. Art watched as the Glow blossomed over him like it did with anyone else.
“I can’t believe this isn’t real,” he finally said.
“Not many people can. Look close, and you’ll see it has everything. The security strip, the watermark. It’s all there. This is what I do, Pops.”
Art went on to tell him about Pete, about how he and Natalie had struggled to figure out the new currency, the trips to the malls. Senior just listened, shaking his head and smiling. “He never asked me to stop. And when I tell people the story, they usually think less of him because he didn’t. They see all those years of missed opportunities and realize that he had a big chance to redeem himself by telling me to quit—as if it could begin to make up for the fact that he’d been gone for all those years. Sometimes I think less of him, too, because that would have been nice, but I don’t dwell on it. The truth is that he really wasn’t any different than anyone else who ever held one of my bills in their hands. He got the Glow. It wasn’t any less surprising seeing it in my own dad, just maybe a little more real.”
The next question Senior asked was also one that Art had heard a hundred times, but somehow now it came as a surprise. He presented it in a joking way, his eyes bright with childish hope.
“Can you show me how you make it?”
Art laughed the question off without giving him an answer. Senior didn’t press him, but he did ask if he could keep the bill as a memento. Art told him that was fine, as long as he didn’t try to spend it or show it to anyone. Senior told him not to worry. He didn’t need the money.
SENIOR HAD SECRETS TO SHARE that morning as well. After they ate breakfast, he took Art for ride in his truck. They drove for an hour, skirting the Matanuska River before turning onto a dirt road that rumbled deeper into the mountains. At a spot a few hundred yards up that appeared completely random to Art, his dad pulled over and killed the engine. They left the car and hiked off into the bush, following a well-worn trail through rampant spring brush. A few hundred feet in, Senior stopped and began clearing away piles of old brush and sticks.
Moments later, Art was staring at a trapdoor.
His dad lifted it,