Every morning was just the same as every other morning. Dollar Man sat by the gate of an old church and begged passers-by, mainly churchgoers, for a dollar. He always wore a raggedy old brown coat and a pair of worn-out, faded jeans. He always held in his hand a dirty plastic cup and the first thing he always said to anyone who passed by was, “Can you spare some change please?” If he were lucky, people would stop and drop some change into his cup.
When the sun went down Dollar Man would get up from his spot and walk away with a smile on his face. No one ever guessed why he was smiling. They could not seem to understand how a man could be satisfied with a few worthless coins in a dirty plastic cup.
Dollar Man went on like this for years until two curious little boys asked their mother about him as they passed him by the gate and up the stairs leading to the church. “Mummy, what do you think Dollar Man does with all the coins he collects?” eight-year-old James asked curiously.
“Yeah, he should have enough money to buy some new clothes by now,” added six-year-old Sam. “I heard our Sunday school teacher say that Dollar Man has been begging for money in front of the church for years and years.”
The mother sniffed impatiently. “Will you two please stop talking about that beggar? Nobody knows and nobody really cares what he does with the money he collects. Now I want you boys to go sit on the front bench quietly while I go and speak to Pastor Baker before the service begins.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boys replied in unison. But their minds were still on the beggar.
One evening, when the service ended and their mother was busy talking to a couple of members of the church choir, the two boys sneaked out of the church and followed Dollar Man as he made his way home. They could hear the coins jingling in the old man’s pocket and they were very curious to see where the beggar lived and what he did with all the coins he received.
It appeared that Dollar Man lived in an old broken down one-room shack not too far from their church. The two boys sneaked up to the only window of the shack and looked cautiously inside to see what Dollar Man was doing.
The beggar lit a candle and placed it on a rickety old table. He placed his dirty plastic cup beside it and then took out the coins he received from his pocket. He pulled up a chair that was just as rickety as the table and sat down carefully. He took out his glasses from the inner pocket of his raggedy old coat and set them just on the tip of his nose. Then he began to count the money.
As he counted each coin the more excited he grew. His voice grew louder as he counted the coins and when he had finished he jumped out of his chair and danced around the shack repeating over and over in a sing-song voice, “I’m rich! I’m rich! I’m rich! And nobody suspects a thing because I’m rich! I’m rich! I’m rich!” He beat his chest and laughed out loud.
The two boys watched in silence, covering their mouths to keep from laughing. They glanced at each other and one knew immediately what the other was thinking: How could this shabby old man think that he could possibly be rich from a few coins people gave him? They continued to watch what Dollar Man was going to do next.
The beggar took off his worn-out brown coat and the boys were shocked at what they saw underneath. Dollar Man was wearing a clean light blue shirt made from some silky material. And when the beggar took off his faded, worn-out jeans, underneath he wore a pair of clean black trousers! The children could not believe what they saw. They just crouched outside of the shack staring with their mouths wide open. But that is not all they saw.
Dollar Man opened the door of a wardrobe and on the floor was a large expensive-looking trunk. He opened the trunk and the candle illuminated the millions of coins he had collected and placed in that trunk for many, many years. The boys looked on in wonder as the beggar placed more coins into the trunk for which people had dropped into his plastic cup that day.
“I can’t believe it!” James whispered. “He’s really rich! And all this time he’s been fooling everybody into thinking that he’s a poor old beggar.”
“What he’s doing is wrong,” replied Sam. “He’s lying about being poor and tricking other people into giving him money. I remember learning about that in Sunday school last week. The teacher said that what he’s doing is called dec… decep….”
“Deception,” James hissed angrily. “Somebody’s gotta stop him!”
“Yeah, let’s go tell Pastor Baker about Dollar Man,” Sam suggested.
“Okay. Let’s go,” his brother agreed.
As they turned around to leave, a twig snapped loudly and the boys froze in fright. Dollar Man was startled by the noise and quickly closed his trunk of coins and shut the door of the wardrobe. “Who’s there?” he called. He looked out of the window and spotted the two boys. “Hey, you kids, get back here!” he growled.
“Let’s get out of here!” cried James and the two boys ran away from the shack as fast as their two little legs could carry them.
“How dare you spy on me!” Dollar Man shouted as he chased after them. “Come back here, you little brats!” He chased the two boys until he came in sight of the church and then he stopped to catch his breath. “Kids,” he muttered under his breath, “they ain’t nothing but trouble.” He turned around and went back to his shack.
The next Sunday James and Sam went to church with their mother. They never told Pastor Baker or anybody else what they saw when they followed Dollar Man to his shack. They were too afraid. But this particular day was different from all the rest. They approached the gate where they had to pass to get up to the church and Dollar Man wasn’t there! The two boys looked at each other and asked in unison, “What happened to Dollar Man?”
The boys’ mother looked down at her sons in annoyance and said, “James, Sam, will you both forget about that silly old beggar? Nobody knows what happened to him. I, however, am very relieved that he’s gone. Come along, children. Service is about to start.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the two boys as they followed their mother reluctantly up to the church.
When the service ended and the boys’ mother was occupied talking to Pastor Baker, the boys sneaked away once more and headed straight to the shack where Dollar Man was the week before. They approached the spot, but to their amazement, there was no shack! The rickety old table and chair, the wardrobe, the trunk, and the shack itself were all gone! It seemed like they all vanished into thin air!
“He’s gone,” said James.
“He just disappeared into thin air,” said Sam.
The two boys stared in amazement at the spot where the old wooden shack used to be. They did not say anything to each other, but they both had their own ideas, as wild as their imaginations were, about what became of the beggar.
James thought Dollar Man packed up everything, traveled to another country by ship, and bought his own island where he lived by himself eating tropical fruit and drinking coconut milk all day.
On the other hand, Sam thought that aliens kidnapped Dollar Man and they forced him to reveal secrets of the government so that they could take over the whole planet.
Whatever theories they had of the beggar’s disappearance, they never laid eyes on Dollar Man again.
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