Matecumbe Read Free Page A

endless. She worried constantly about the heating bill and keeping her girls warm.
    Luckily, Mary Ann was good at finding money. By keeping her eyes focused downward whenever she walked on sidewalks or crossed streets, she was able to spot coins that had fallen from pockets or purses. She picked up pennies and nickels totaling about two or three dollars a month. Mary Ann even trained her girls to look for money in the coinreturn slots of public telephones and vending machines. The girls found quarters and dimes mostly, and this total hovered at about eight dollars a month.
    From the proceeds of her found money, Mary Ann would occasionally play a ten-cent “street number” with her neighborhood bookie. She never hit a jackpot.
    From fall until early spring, she’d send the girls out to look for firewood. They’d pack the tiny kindling, branches, and broken pieces into bundles and sell them to neighbors. Their best firewood customer, however, gave up on the Pienta family’s haphazard product when he moved and bought an impressive, 12-room house in the fashionable section of town.
    “I’ll just be using mahogany, oak, and white birch from now on,” he told Mary Ann’s children. “They look prettier on the woodpile, and they burn a lot longer in my fireplaces.”
    One of Mary Ann’s biggest frustrations was not being able to get any of the big credit cards, even though she’d applied for a number of them. She heard the refusal reasons numerous times. “Your earnings are too low, your expenses are too high, and your husband once filed for bankruptcy.”
    One Saturday she found an expensive brown leather wallet right outside the confessional at church. It had a name monogrammed in small gold letters: “Paul Reynolds.”
    She was the last person left in the church outside of the priest who was still in the confessional, so she quickly slipped it inside her purse and ran from the church. After she had reached home, she found over $200 in the wallet. There was even a crisp new $50 bill. She had never seen a $50 bill before. Mary Ann sat and stared at the wallet for hours.
    She knew she could use the money. Her work shoes were beyond resoling, and Melissa needed new medication for her asthma. From the quality of the wallet, it appeared that the owner certainly could afford to lose it and buy another one.
    Still, she knew she couldn’t keep it. Stray nickels and pennies were one thing, this was really stealing. She’d always made it through tough times before without resorting to dishonesty. There was no identification in the wallet other than the gold monogram, so, after exhaustive contemplation, she decided there was only one thing to do.
    She reached for her coat and took the wallet back to the church. The doors were now locked, so, instead, she knocked with painful hesitation at the next-door rectory, a small older building where the pastor resided. She felt her heart beating quickly as she stood there, hearing nothing inside. Her eyes wandered upward, resting on a small cupola above the roof of this stone, stately structure. Two birds chirped over her head, then danced on the eaves, seeming to add a touch of poetry to the façade.
    Pastor Stevens answered the door, and for a moment Mary Ann stood dumbfounded, unable to explain why she had rung the bell. Pastor Stevens saw her consternation, took her arm and said, “Come in, Mary Ann. What brings you out on such a cold night?”
    Mary Ann took the wallet from her purse sheepishly and handed it to Pastor Stevens.
    “I found this wallet earlier in the church, Father. And even though we can desperately use the money, I just can’t keep it. It would be stealing, and I could never live with myself knowing I was reduced to that.”
    Pastor Stevens thanked Mary Ann for her honesty, and promised he wouldn’t divulge her identity when he found the wallet’s rightful owner.

    Going to church was a Sunday morning ritual for Mary Ann and the girls. The wearing of hats,