Anom walked along the path next to the train tracks.
Sharp pebbles stabbed his bare feet.
He was used to it.
Dozens of cuts, dozens of times, they hardened on their own.
He didn’t bring the blue bucket this time.
His hands were empty, tucked into the pockets of his loose shorts.
His fingers felt the paper money in there.
Two ten-thousand-dollar bills.
One five-thousand bill.
Twenty-five thousand rupiah total.
The most money he had ever held at one time.
Usually, the money in his pocket was enough for one portion of takeout rice or two cigarettes.
After that, he was back to zero.
Today was different.
Today he had more.
Anom gripped the money inside his pocket, feeling the corners of the paper press against his palm.
It wasn’t about the amount.
It was about the feeling of safety.
The feeling that, for the next few hours, he didn’t need to think about where his next meal would come from.
Mpok Lela’s food stall stood between two old buildings that were almost falling.
The walls were made of plywood and used pallet wood; the roof was corrugated tin that had rusted at the edges.
Smoke rose from the back, where Mpok Lela cooked rice in a brick stove.
Anom pushed aside the cloth curtain covering the door.
The wooden floor under his feet was very smooth, worn down by thousands of flip-flops crossing it over the years.
He didn’t sit on the wooden chair with bricks propping up its legs.
He stood in front of the cashier’s table, waiting.
Mpok Lela came out from behind the kitchen curtain.
Her hands were wet, still holding a long wooden spoon.
She wiped the sweat from her forehead with the edge of her faded dress.
Her face looked tired.
The lines on her cheeks and forehead were deep, like a map from decades of waking up early and going to bed late.
She looked at Anom.
“Not all the food is cooked yet, and you’re already here, Nom?” Mpok Lela’s voice was sharp.
“If you want to borrow more, you’d better turn around now.
I haven’t shopped for tomorrow morning yet.
Money hasn’t come back in.”
Anom didn’t answer with words.
He pulled his right hand out of his pocket.
One by one, he placed the bills on the wooden table.
Neatly arranged.
Ten-thousand, ten-thousand, five-thousand.
Twenty-five thousand.
On the greasy table covered in glass rings, that small stack looked shiny.
“I want to pay off some of my debt, Mpok.”
Mpok Lela was silent.
Her eyes widened.
She stared at the money.
Then at Anom’s face.
Back at the money.
Her mouth hung half open.
For years, she had known Anom; this man could only pay his debts with small change coins or a crumpled two-thousand-dollar bill torn at the corner.
Never once had she seen Anom arrange money on her table like a dignified customer.
“Where did this come from?” Mpok Lela asked.
Her voice was no longer sharp.
Pure curiosity.
She didn’t touch the money, as if afraid it would disappear if her fingers touched it.
“Fish.”
Mpok Lela knew the price of Plecostomus fish at the market.
Five hundred to a thousand each, depending on the size.
She also knew how hard Anom worked in the drainage channel under the toll bridge.
Hours standing in black water that smelled like diesel, pulling nets full of trash, sometimes coming home empty-handed.
There was no way a lone fish catcher could collect this much money in a short time.
Unless he found something.
Or someone.
She studied Anom from head to toe.
Anom still stood there.
His shirt was worn, his shorts short and full of patches, the smell of mud still clinging to his skin.
But his eyes were different.
His eyes were calm.
He didn’t look down in shame like he usually did.
Mpok Lela had never seen that look in Anom’s eyes before.
She finally reached for the money.
Her chubby fingers counted each bill.
Twice.
She felt the texture of the paper, making sure the money was real.
After she was sure, she pulled a worn notebook from under the table.
Its cover was made from an old cigarette pack cardboard, its pages full of handwriting typical of market traders—scribbles of debt numbers that were never really fully paid off.
“The amount is enough to reduce half of your total debt, Nom.”
Mpok Lela wrote a new number in that notebook with a cheap pen whose ink was almost gone.
She let out a relieved breath.
Her shoulders dropped slightly, as a burden she had carried for weeks had finally lessened.
With this money, she could buy rice for next week’s stock.
She could sleep better tonight.
“Your debt is now half.” Mpok Lela put the money into a wooden drawer under the table.
The drawer lock clicked.
She looked at Anom again.
This time softly.
Soft, like she rarely showed anyone at this stall.
“Want to eat?”
Anom nodded.
He sat in the wooden chair he usually sat in.
His back touched the backrest.
For the first time in a long while, he didn’t feel like a beggar living off others.
His dignity, buried for years under piles of debt and poverty, was starting to surface.
This change wasn’t big.
Just a stall owner asking, “Want to eat?” without adding “but don’t borrow more, okay.” But for Anom, that was enough.
Mpok Lela moved to the rice steamer.
Hot steam billowed as she lifted the lid.
She scooped a big portion of rice.
She put it on a tin plate that was slightly dented at the edge.
Then she took a piece of fried chicken.
The biggest piece.
Two eggs cooked with chili sauce, red and blazing with sambal that soaked into the egg whites.
One spoon of fried liver in spicy sauce, an expensive side dish she usually saved for regular customers who paid cash.
She arranged all the food neatly on top of the rice.
“Eat while it’s still warm.”
Anom accepted the plate.
Heavy.
Full.
He had never gotten this portion from Mpok Lela before.
Usually, he was only given white rice with fried tempeh and simple sambal.
Now chicken, eggs, and liver sambal sat in front of him.
Mpok Lela said nothing.
Anom knew this wasn’t a gift.
This was recognition.
Recognition that he was now different.
Not because he was rich, but because he was paying his debt.
Anom ate slowly.
The rich coconut taste of the rice melted on his tongue.
The spiciness of the sambal burned his throat.
He enjoyed every spoonful.
No guilt.
No burden of debt hanging over his head.
Between bites, he remembered Inem.
The woman under the toll bridge.
The clear water in the blue bucket.
The shiny fish.
The wound on his palm that healed overnight.
All the luck he was experiencing now came from that woman.
Anom gripped his spoon tighter.
He owed Inem.
Not money.
But something bigger.
Mpok Lela sat across from him with a glass of warm tea.
She watched Anom eating calmly.
Not in a hurry.
Not like someone afraid their food would be taken by someone else.
“Did you help carry goods at the market, Nom?” Mpok Lela asked, unable to hold back her curiosity.
“Or did you join Mr.
Haji Duloh’s team at the new warehouse?”
Anom shook his head.
“I just catch fish, Mpok.
Still in the same place.
Maybe the fish there like me right now.”
Mpok Lela was quiet.
In this neighborhood by the train tracks, miracles never happened.
People believed more in hard work or in stolen goods.
But Anom didn’t look like a thief.
Anom didn’t look like someone who had just gambled and won.
Anom looked like someone who had just found something he couldn’t explain.
“You look different, Nom,” Mpok Lela murmured.
Her voice was soft.
“Not just your pocket.
The way you sit.
The way you look at people.
You’re like someone who just found something valuable.”
Anom stopped eating.
He looked at his palm.
The red line from the cut had disappeared completely.
His skin was smooth where the knife had sliced him the night before.
He remembered Inem’s cold fingers touching his wrist.
He remembered the night air suddenly smelling like wet soil.
“Maybe, Mpok.”
He continued eating.
Finishing every grain of rice.
Nothing left.
The sun set.
The sky outside the stall turned dark orange.
Anom drank his bitter tea in one gulp.
The tart taste soothed his throat, hot from the sambal.
He stood up.
Took the dirty plate to the back and placed it in the dishwashing bucket.
A small thing.
But Mpok Lela noticed.
Anom no longer acted like someone who was overlooked.
He was starting to show respect for the place that fed him.
“Thanks, Mpok.”
“Thanks if you pay it off, Anom.
The other half is still in this book.” Mpok Lela smiled.
Rare.
“Don’t forget to bring even better fish tomorrow.”
Anom smiled slightly.
He stepped out of the stall.
The night air greeted him.
Cold.
He walked along the train tracks toward the toll bridge.
The concrete pillars stood before him, black and huge, like sleeping giants.
Car headlights from the road above passed quickly, creating shadows that moved on the ground.
Anom arrived.
Inem was still sitting in her usual spot, under pillar number thirty-four.
She was curled up, chin on her knees, eyes staring at the water.
Anom didn’t say hello.
He sat at a distance, on a broken piece of concrete.
Watching her.
The money in his pocket was half gone.
But the weight in his heart felt lighter than that morning.
“Inem, can we get more fish tomorrow?”
Inem didn’t answer.
Anom knew she heard him.
The night air under the toll bridge felt warmer than usual.