My Last Seven Dollars or Why God Owes Me Two Bucks

by Khach

It was the late summer of 2008. I had been back from Japan and on the East Coast for a little over a month by this time. Having sold all of my possessions, save for the boxes of memories I had stored with a friend in Alaska, my divorce was a little over nine months old and I was living on monthly payments from selling my computer business the year before.  

From New York, I took a train north and found myself hitchhiking from the coastal town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Old Orchard Beach was not showing me its best, as late season clouds in the sky had chased away the tourists that must have inhabited its beachfront restaurants and carnival and pier.  I was headed to Bangor. 

Once in that small town intuition directed me to a house to ask if I could lay out my sleeping bag on their porch for the night. The man who answered the door said that he owned the home next to his and that it was vacant, so I was welcome to spend the night on that porch. After I had spread out my sleeping bag he came over and said, “I don’t know what I was thinking, you can spend the night inside the house.” He opened the door for me, giving me use of the bathroom and a warm dry place to sleep for the night.

The next morning, I decided to buy a used tent. I immediately looked online for a Play it Again Sports store because I was familiar with them from Anchorage. The only one that I found online seemed to be out of business. When I inquired at the coffee shop where I was drinking hot chocolate and using the internet, I was told to go to Epic Sports. I resisted that, thinking I would still find Play It Again Sports. I had decided that I was going to take a bus to Bar Harbor and camp. I purchased a bus ticket for later that afternoon and when I asked the man at the ticket counter where I could buy a used tent he told me to go to Epic Sports. Still resistant, I asked him about Play it Again Sports and he confirmed that they were out of business. I walked over to Epic Sports and asked at the front counter about a used tent. 

I was taken upstairs and told that they only had one used tent. As soon as it was unrolled and set up I knew it was mine. The colors blue and yellow had been following me around and they are my favorites. This tent was of course yellow and blue. I had about $85 in cash after buying the bus ticket and I figured that I could spend $50 on the tent. I was taken downstairs and introduced to K, the manager who was working at the cash register.  I told her that I wanted to buy the tent but she was not able to find the price. She called the corporate office and was on hold with them for a long while. I started to get concerned because it was possible that it was going to cost more than I had. K explained that this tent had been a rental and that they usually sold for half the original retail price. I told her that I was on my way to Bar Harbor and asked her for another idea because I had about $50 to spend and only a total of $85. 

K. said, “Well you aren’t even close because this tent was $350 new. And why are you going to Bar Harbor if you only have $85?”

I started to explain to her about how I have been led to things my whole life. She was still on hold with the main office. I told her about all the amazing things that happened to me while traveling in Europe as a teenager and finally she said, “You know what? I’ve been on hold too long. I’m selling you this tent for $50!” She hung the phone up and rang up my purchase. Just then, the phone rang. The office was calling back to tell her the price was $175. She told them that it was too late she sold it for $50.

I smiled and headed out for my day. I went to the library and began to read because my bus would not leave till much later in the afternoon. While I was sitting there a man came to talk as he had noticed the book I had been reading. We had a long conversation about life and he told me that he was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and I told him that I was familiar with the organization. He told me that he was having lunch at a buffet with a friend and asked me if I would be his guest for the meal and that afterwards he would drive me to the bus station. I agreed and it was a nice treat. I was not in the habit of telling people about my financial situation. I was simply being me, clean clothes and a brand new backpack there was no way that I looked homeless, even though I was.

The bus arrived in Bar Harbor right in the middle of the Acadia National Park. There was a system of free shuttle busses that I could take from there throughout the park.  I rode a couple of them to get a feel for the area and just before dusk, located a place to put up my tent. Bar Harbor was expensive, so I would wait until morning to eat. I had plenty from the buffet lunch so kindly provided me. 

The morning was clear and sunny and not finding a grocery store, I wound up eating breakfast at a country inn on the water for about $20 leaving me with about $15. At lunch time I bought some bread and cheese for about $8. Standing in the deserted paddock where all the busses that went throughout the park connected, I realized that I had lost my water bottle somewhere. Across the street I saw a sign in a window: “Bottled Water $2”

I had the thought that I was not going to spend any of my last $7 on water.  I looked to my right and sitting on top of a covered trash can was a cold water bottle. In fact, it was sweating in the noon-time sun.  I had walked into the paddock alone. There was nobody standing anywhere around me and that water bottle was not there when I walked up. I was delighted. Had I really just manifested a water bottle out of thin air? It seemed I had. In fact I questioned this miracle until I did it again in a Long Island soccer field eighteen months later. But that is part of another story. 

I grabbed the water bottle looking across the paddock to make sure nobody had left it there and was on their way to pick it back up.  I got on a bus and took a tour of the park in the daylight. I was in a really good mood until later that day when I was sitting in the Bar Harbor library feeling sorry for myself because I only had seven dollars to last me about two weeks until the next payment was due from the business. 

I have a voice that speaks to me. It comes from inside my head and is that same voice that I read with. It is not an auditory hallucination. Call it the voice of intuition if you will. The voice said to me, “Do you want to stop feeling sorry for yourself?” 

“Yes,” I answered.

“Then give away your last seven dollars.”

“Fuck you,” I thought mouthing the words with my lips. A moment passed and the voice didn’t answer. “Ok, who would I give it to anyway?” I challenged.

“Someone who needs it more than you,” came the answer.

“How will I know?” 

“You will know when you see them,” came the answer.

That was the end of the conversation. I looked out the window into the now cloudy afternoon, half-expecting to see someone walk past in need of my seven dollars. It was going to be tough to find someone that needed that money more than me. So I figured I was safe.

Later that evening found me back in the paddock getting on a bus that would take me back to the place I had camped the night before.  I swung my backpack off my shoulder and sat it in a seat nearest the window. As I turned to sit I saw him. He was young, maybe seventeen years old, in very dirty clothes and carrying a guitar case wrapped in duct tape. I knew instantly that he was the one I was supposed to give my last seven dollars to. He turned and began to walk across the paddock away from the busses and I had the thought that I needed to get off the bus to follow him.

At that moment the voice said clearly, “No! Watch this!” and from about fifty feet away as if someone had called his name, he did an about-face and walked right over to and boarded the bus I was on. I already had the money out of my wallet as he walked past me, and I put it in his left hand. In that same moment something strange happened. Words came out of my mouth, but I was not the one speaking them, they passed through me. “Tell no one,” I heard from my mouth, not preceded by thought.

The boy smiled at me from ear to ear and then went and sat down in the back of the bus. The voice then told me, “Now, get off the bus.” So I got off the bus. Then, the voice told me to get on another bus. I was not thrilled about that because this bus would take me out of the park altogether. There was a small argument about not having a place to camp for the night but I had seen whatever this ‘voice’ was, turn a kid around and bring him to me so I was kind of listening at this point. 

The bus took me all the way out of the park and dropped me on a highway. Then, the voice said, “See that farmhouse across the road? You will camp there tonight.” I argued about being on this side of the wide highway already and not wanting to cross. Staying on the side where the bus dropped me, I knocked on a door of a house by the water-side of the highway. A man answered and I asked if I could spend the night camped on his lawn and he said that his mother was not home and he could not give me permission. That was the end of the conversation and he closed the door right away. At the next house I was practically chased off the porch by a very old lady that was insulted that I would even ask about camping on her property. 

Walking away from her place the voice asked, “Are you ready to go to the farm house now?” I made my way across the road and walked down the long dirt driveway. Before I even made it up the steps I was greeted by a woman with a smile. I asked her about camping on the property and she said, “Sure, but you will want to camp a bit closer to the road because we are lobster fishermen and we will be up about 4 a.m. on our way out and we will wake you up if you are close to where the trucks are parked.” 

I thanked her and turned to walk to where she had pointed to pitch my tent.  As I walked back towards the road I noticed that there was a small strip mall with a house behind it off to my right. As I was pitching my tent I heard the voice of an old woman, “Aren’t you afraid of bears?”

I looked up, and standing on the back porch of the house behind the strip mall was a short woman with dark black hair. Her voice sounded older than her face looked. 

“Not afraid, but I respect them. I am from Alaska,” I answered.

“Oh Alaska, I just moved back here from Montana. What are you doing here?” she emphasized the word ‘here’. 

“I am just traveling through,” I told her, explaining that I had sold my business and was a free man now, but I’m not sure what words I used. 

“Come over here please,” she waved me towards her. I walked to her, even though she was very short, she looked down in to my eyes from her place up on the porch. “The Spirit told me you were coming today. I saw you earlier this afternoon, in The Spirit, before you got here. I am going to help you and you are going to help me.  Tomorrow morning you will come here for breakfast at 7 a.m. Then you will move your tent here on my property where you will spend the next two nights. I need you to do some things for me and I am going to feed you each day. On the third day you will leave.” I looked at her with what must have been a question on my face. “You are here to fix my computer and move some furniture for me. We are going to share with each other.”  

I had seen it all this day so I was not questioning anything at this point. The traffic on the highway quieted down, the sun went behind the tall dark pines and the water across the highway began to simmer off some mist that happens in the late summer when the water can be warmer than the cool night air. I slept soundly that night, looking forward to breakfast. 

At 7 o’clock I was on the porch and she came to let me in the back door. The food was already cooking and she fed me a lot. I spent the day getting her connected to the internet so she could keep in touch with her children. I moved several pieces of furniture for her and did several chores around her home. Her name was T. and she was a prolific painter and artist. I connected a VCR for her to a small color television and she insisted that we watch the movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which had been in the back of my mind since first hearing the soundtrack sometime in the late 1970’s.

Over the next two days we talked for several hours. On the evening of the second day I realized that T. was a character from a book I had began to write the year before and chills went up my spine. She was the only character in that book that I did not have a real-in-my-life model of at that point.  

Late, the morning of the third day the wind was blowing and it was blustery and it was fall in Maine. T. looked up at me from the breakfast table and said, “Today is the day you go.” I nodded. 

I was having the urge to call the guy in Alaska that I had sold my business to the previous year. I could not get any cell reception in T.’s house, so I walked out the back door and through waist-high grass to find to a high spot where I might get a cell signal. And there fifteen yards from the house, in the tall grass, on a seed head that was blowing back and forth was a five-dollar bill folded in thirds. As I grabbed it and stuck it in my pocket, looked up at the sky and said, “Thank you, and you owe me two bucks!” Having already forgotten about the free bottle of water that I got that would have cost me $2 the day before.

The phone rang and James answered and seeing it was me he started right in with, “I was just getting ready to call you. You know how my wife always checks the mail? Well today something was telling me to check it, so I did and there is a check here for you from the IRS. Were you expecting that?”

“No, I owed money in 2006 and had no liability in 2007 so I have no idea why I have a check there.” I asked him to open it. It was for a little over $250. 

“I am headed to the bank right now do you want me to deposit in your account for you?” James asked.

“Yes!”  I was overjoyed.  So the gap was covered waiting for the next payment and with the five dollar bill I had enough to buy a pound of Fig Newton’s to tide me over until I could get to an ATM.

It was not until years later that I realized God did not owe me two bucks, that was the price of the water bottle.