Ivory Exodus

An alternate future, for better or worse, how possible would it be?

Small footsteps quietly made their way over the sidewalk, heading toward the nearing bench and its occupants. The youth let his eyes look out over the roadway, the land beyond, then back to the ground in front of him. Thinking of where he was going suddenly diminished, as he spied the small, obscure disc on the ground. He looked at it puzzlingly, then moved in to see it closer. He was now in hand's length, so he reached out to touch the object. It was small and moved when he pulled at it, so he picked it up, this tiny item of dingy gray color. He had no idea what he was looking at, this cold, perfectly round piece of metal.
He held the circle in his hand, looking down to see if there were more. He detected none, and made his way to the others, still seated. One of them was watching him.

"Found something, DeFrancis?" the person asked him.

"Yea, but I don't know what it is," the child replied. He held the circle up for the man to examine.

"What is it?" a woman sitting on the bench inquired at such a small item causing such confusion.

"It's a small disc and it's got . . . . an image of a woman on it," the young man said to her as he stared at the circle with a furrowed brow. She looked at it in confusion as well.

"Where did you find it, DeFrancis?" she asked the boy as she now held the item.

"Over there on the ground," he replied.

"You ever see anything like that, Mr. Ja'Quan?" the woman asked and extended her hand out to the elderly man. He seemed rather uninterested in even looking at it, then slowly turned his eyes to see the circle. His eyes fixated on the circle, and gradually he reached out to take it from her fingers.

"I've never . . . " he started, his mind trying to recall if he had held such a piece before and what it might have meant.

"That's a coin, Laneen. That's money," Mr. Ja'Quan said assuredly. "I think I may have seen it once or twice before."

"I've never seen money like that," they young man slightly laughed and looked to the child.

"Who is she?" Laneen asked. "Do you know?"

"That was . . . " he turned the coin over in his fingers as tho searching for some familiarity having held the object before in his life. "That's Washington. I think her first name was Martha. Martha Washington."

"Who was she?" DeFrancis asked.

"She did something important in settling this nation. I think she sailed the ship here or something." He handed the coin back to the child.

"She's a white woman," Laneen stated.

"Yea, seems to me she was one of the first white people here or something. Can't recall all that now. That was back when there were lots of white folk here."

"Is that true?" the fellow asked.

"Oh, yea. There used to be lots of white people around here. All over the place. You couldn't swing your hand and not hit a white person."

"Wow," Laneen silently spoke.

DeFrancis looked at the coin once more. "Was she their momma?"

"I don't know," Mr. Ja'Quan answered. "I think so. She was the first white woman. Don't know who the first white man was. Strange to think of my grandaddy telling me all that now. He said he couldn't recall hardly seeing any white people when he was growing up."

"What happened to them?" DeFrancis inquired.

"They left," Mr. Ja'Quan answered. "From what I understand, they all just packed up and went back to their old country, where they all came from."

"I heard there are still some white people up north, in Canada."

"Oh, yea, very few stayed, so that would be their decendents."

DeFrancis flipped over the coin in his hand. "Didn't they like it here?" he asked.

Mr. Ja'Quan sighed and responded, "from what my grandaddy told me, they seemed happy, or they acted happy, but they just couldn't get along with anybody."

"Like who?" the young man asked.

"Well, Reggie, they was white, so they couldn't get along with black people, brown people, red, yellow, no matter how hard they tried or insisted they did. Something just took them over after time and they were back to being distrustful. It was sad to watch really."

"What did we do to them?" asked DeFrancis, as he sat on the curb before the trio.

"Oh, we didn't have to do anything to them, DeFrancis. They just couldn't get along with anybody. They really didn't get along with each other."

"I brought some white people up on my phone once," Laneen quipped. "I guess they were off back in their country. It seemed important to them that they just not understand what I was saying."

"Oh, we've maintained contact with them back in their homeland. Keepin' an eye on them more than anything. People still try to deal with them, speak with them about things."

"Do they seem happy now?" Reggie asked.

"I guess as happy as white people will ever get. Some people didn't want them to go. Asked if there was anything they could do to make them stay, but as more and more white people left, many of those left behind didn't like being in such a perceived minority, so they up and left, too."

DeFrancis tumbled the coin over in his hand again. "So they put their momma's picture on a coin?"

"She was very important to them, it seems. Washington. Like a state, monuments and buildings. And their money. They loved that above all else. They had to have their money. I don't think she did as much as they wanted people to believe."

"Isn't she carved on a mountain somewhere? I think I heard about that."

"No, that was those four guys from the white people's homeland; George, John, Paul and somebody else. All the white people returned to just be with them, where they were from."

"Is it far away?"

"Across the ocean. Strange to think how they wanted all of this to be their new white land, then they decided they just couldn't share it with someone else. They'd prefer leaving than trying to get along with somebody else."

"What's the bird for?" DeFrancis asked.

"Bird? Oh, let me see," Reggie said reaching for the coin again. He laughed a bit, "yep, there's a bird there."

"Oh, Lord, the bird," Mr. Ja'Quan spoke. "They liked something about the bird. I can't recall what. Something about when they went hunting. Something like that."  

"DeFrancis, here comes the bus. Drop that filthy coin and get up off the curb," Laneen instructed.

DeFrancis looked at the woman on the coin one more time, flipping it over in his small fingers, and dropped the coin to the road, where it rolled into the sewer opening.

"Come on, DeFrancis," Reggie instructed. "Puttin' their momma's image on a coin to give her value. What a way to go," and he followed behind DeFrancis and the other two to get on the bus.

Once everyone was seated, the bus drove away to its next destination.