Charlie's Lump Of Gold

Charlie waited as the men in suits discussed his small lump of gold. He had found it tangled in the roots of a great oak tree that had fallen high on a remote mountain; now it sat on the polished wooden table somewhere deep in Wall Street. They were coming to the same conclusion he had heard so many times already. “An interesting find, really, but we’re not interested.” Charlie took the lump and shuffled out into a snowy New York night. He thought of the mountains, his buried mother, the starlit night – and the gold burned in his pocket.