Vincent

By Susan Gale Wickes

Vincent was alone the night the angels came.

He hadn’t eaten for days. He’d simply decided one fall morning to stop spending money on ‘frivolous’ things.

Like a squirrel storing nuts for a long, cold winter, Vincent’s stockpile was stuffed in coffee cans, hidden under floorboards, buried in the backyard. Money became an obsession, his only true pleasure.

They found him in the spring, a crisp hundred dollar bill clutched in one hand. “Probably the only one he had,” the coroner said.

Truth be told, it wasn’t. There were plenty more. I should know. I’d been digging them up for months.