Life pulled me and Betsy apart after the night when I helped deliver her twins and she spent the time between grunts talking about immaculate conception. She named one Bill and the other one something else just to tell them apart.

I rolled through town a time or two after that night, always taking pains to avoid noticing the work Betsy got up to when the lights got low. Bill and the other one were sent out to the park when Betsy knew the work would get loud, and it often would get loud.

Now, Betsy didn’t like Bill’s brother much, and she had a way of talking about her second son that made anyone who could hear her not like him much either. She liked Bill, though. Showered him with love and gifts, both of which would be whipped away the second they were shared with that other, lesser, specimen.

All that said, Bill was his brother’s De Facto keeper since Betsy didn’t want to do it. And Bill loved his brother, though he hated every bit of himself that felt that way and laid awake most nights trying to kill that part of him. So one night, Betsy’s work was too get loud again and she sent Bill and Bill’s De Facto ward to the park to play.

That ward was swinging when a Stranger asked the keeper, “You ever seen a two dollar bill, kid?”

Bill hadn’t, and The Stranger showed him the legal tender.

“How’d you like to keep it?” Said The Stranger and, frankly, Bill knew that his Mother needed the money. When she wasn’t showering him with affection, she was talking about her two problems: too little money and too many sons.

So Bill nodded yes.

“Take it,” said The Stranger, and he crumbled the bill in the kid’s hand, “Take it all the way home.”

But when Bill went to call out to his brother, the stranger put a finger over his lips, “And leave your brother here,” he said.

Now Bill’s mother, who used to be a friend of mine till life pulled us apart, only ever talked about two problems. So he turned and he went home, and no one ever mentioned that other brother again.

Heaven bears the weight of our worth in Silver and Gold.