On POT OF GOLD

March 17th

On POT OF GOLD

The Publicist – Chapter 3

The publicist, lugging a surprisingly light pot of gold on his back, strode easily down the dusty road heading out of Rock Pile, WY. Accompanying him was a small black child.
“What do you got in that pot, Mr. Getz,” asked the black child.
“Gold, my son,” answered the publicist, “Lots of wonderful gold.”
“Did you find it at the end of a rainbow?” asked the black child, “Are you a leprechaun?”
“Nope,” answered the publicist, “I found it by investing in constuction and remodeling companies, and reaping the profits when a publicity boom hit this fair town. But I am a leprchaun.”
“You’re pretty tall for a leprechaun,” commented the black child.
“That’s true,” remarked the leprechan publicist, “I’m the tallest in my leprechaun family. But because everyone expects Leprechauns to be short and angry, I get away with it.” Then he said, with an Irish accent, “That and I don’t speak in an Irish accent anymore.”
“So you scammed our town pretty good, huh?” scowled the black child.
“Not really,” smiled the publicist, “I invested, and then I worked to make my investments improve.”
“Isn’t that, like, insider trading?” asked the black child.
“No,” replied the leprechaun, “It’s more like investing in your own company.”
“But everyone in the town is dead, or broke,” countered the black child.
“Well I can’t help that,” evaded the publicist.
“Little Bob shot himself with a shotgun when his bar went a million dollars in debt by installing fountains that sprayed liquid gold,” said the boy.
“Well, I don’t know who would have told him to do that,” said the publicis huffily.
“And Big Bob’s Haggis emporium literally collapsed in on Big Bob when he took out the walls because they weren’t upscale,” the black child reminded the man.
“That was fairly preposterous,” admitted the leprechaun, “Still, nothing that can be directly tied to me.”
“What about the fact that because those bars were so popular, everyone in town spent up all their money buying drink?” asked the black child, “all that money was invested in renovations, which you got as dividends on your stock, which you changed at the bank for gold, and now it’s in your pot!”
“Well, you seem to have a handle on it,” said the publicist, “now why don’t you run along.”
“One last question:” posed the child, “What are you gonna buy with all that gold?”
“Cigarettes, of course,” answered the leprechaun.
“You don’t smoke a pipe?” asked the child.
“Nope,” answered the leprechaun.
“You are the least leprechaun-like leprechaun I’ve ever seen,” said the child.
“What about these sideburns?” asked the leprechaun.
“They could be bushier,” evaluated the child.
Five minutes later, the black child killed that leprechaun. No one knows why – it wasn’t for the gold, that pot is still there, full of gold, beside that dusty trail. Maybe it was revenge for destroying the boy’s hometown, although everyone in the town was awfully racist towards that boy. Maybe it was because the boy was disillusioned when he finally met a leprechaun, his favourite of all the faeries, and the leprechaun turned out to be a nasty, tall, Amercian-accented crook. Or maybe his teachers had emphasized the evils of tobacco a little too much, and the boy took the lesson too much to heart. Maybe it was none of those things. After all, kids these days are sociopaths more often than not, killing people and things for kicks, just as they’re told to in their video games. I guess we’ll never know.