Just like that, the flame of adrenaline sputtered out leaving Henry Thomas bone-tired, looking only for the warmth of Emma’s chicken noodle soup and the feeling of her hands ministering to his bruised and battered skin.

After all these years trying to get to the top, it was fitting that his first, and only, win would be in the final fight on his birthday.

He stepped out the door to noiseless solitude in the arena’s back alley. Looking up at the sky, barely visible between the buildings, he saw a star twinkle.

I wish Emma would make me a birthday cake, he thought. Emma, who worked for the local baker, made the best chocolate cake. Usually for others, this time, with his winnings, the cake would be for him.

He smiled from ear to ear. A winner’s smile. His pockets were full of winnings and he would make it home for supper. If he caught the bus. Now.

Shouldering his gym bag, Henry leaped off the stoop. Pursing his lips, he started whistling as he made his way down the alley.

“Hey, Henry, is that you?” A weak voice near a dumpster stopped him in his tracks.

“Spud? What are you doing out here?”

“Aw, man, I got waylaid. Those boys who bet on me.”

Henry walked closer to the voice and saw Spud Taylor, the boxer he’d just defeated, leaning against the trash receptacle. Henry had opened a cut above Spud’s eye in the first round and split his upper lip in the second. In the locker room, Henry saw a darkening bruise under Spud’s chin, the result of the uppercut that put him on the mat.

Now? Spud had blood on his clothes, his eye was sealed shut, and he held his ribs with both arms.

“Spud? We need to get you to a hospital.”

“Can’t do that, Henry. I can’t pay no hospital bills.”

“Spud, you’ve got broken ribs.”

“Hospital won’t fix them. I just need to get home. Verity will know what to do. Please, man, help me get home?”

From the sound of Spud’s voice, Henry feared those broken ribs had punctured a lung. Spud Taylor was in trouble.

Before he got ten steps away on his quest to find a taxi that would take them to their neighborhood, Henry heard a muted clank of metal on pavement. He turned back, expecting to see Spud on the ground. Instead, he saw a green cloth bag and noticed a child sprinting away.

He reached down and grabbed the bag. Dropping his gym bag, he shouted, “Stop,” and broke into a sprint to catch the small person in front of him. In a matter of seconds, he grasped the back of a jacket and the collar of a shirt, holding the squirming boy off the ground in front of him.

“Wait, I’ve been calling to you. You dropped your bag.”

The squirming stopped and Henry watched small hands pat up and down the jacket, then move to do the same to the pants beneath.

“Okay,” said a voice that was tiny but not childlike. “You got me; you got my sack.”

Henry released the tiny body, letting it drop the short distance to the pavement.

“That’s what I was saying. Here. Take it. It’s yours.”

In complete silence, the kid turned to face Henry who realized the child was an adult.

“I’m s-sorry, s-sir,” Henry stuttered. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I didn’t see you were an adult. Here’s your bag.” He held out the green sack.

“Leprechaun rules say that recovering gold lost fair and square entitles the finder to free use of said gold for the next year.”

“Excuse me? Leprechaun? You’re a leprechaun?” Henry smiled.

The scowling little man, arms akimbo, said, “Yes, a leprechaun. One of the little people. From the old sod, although I don’t believe you’re from the same old sod I’m from.”

“I beg your pardon. Again. Here.” He pushed the bag he still held closer to the leprechaun.

“No, I can’t take it. By the rules. It’s yours. Use it wisely. Return it to me in one year. Right here. I’ll take it and you can tell me what you bought with it.”

The little man disappeared, leaving Henry gawking.

He recovered his senses and opened the heavy bag. His eyes widened at the glint of gold. Reaching in, he pulled out a handful of shiny disks. When the gold passed the edge of the bag, they changed to $20 bills.

Henry Thomas looked at the man slumped next to the trash bin and realized Spud was saved.

In the cab, Henry worried about paying the hospital bill. Two raggedy, beaten up guys would alert the security guards, but, when they arrived, a pair of doctors coming in from the arena recognized them.

With the doctors vouching for him, Henry pulled his winnings from his pockets and offered them to the admitting clerk. A hospital administrator came to take the money, giving Henry a receipt. Someone would be at Spud’s house the next week to settle any remaining debt. Henry waited for emergency staff to examine Spud. They bound his ribs and bandaged his cuts.

A cruising taxi took them to Spud’s house. Henry delivered Spud to Verity with instructions not to worry about anything. He’d cover the bill.

The cabbie dropped him off in front of his own home. Before Henry went inside, he moved money from the green sack to cover the winnings he’d used to pay for Spud. He stuffed the now empty bag into his jacket pocket.

Emma was beside herself with worry, but Henry told her about taking Spud to the hospital. Instead of telling her about the sack of gold, he spun a story about two doctors taking care of Spud out of the goodness of their hearts. She wouldn’t believe an empty green bag had ever held gold.

“It was a miracle you found those doctors.”

“Yes, it was.”

When he handed her his winnings, she said, “Another miracle,” and they both laughed. She promised him the cake, fed him his soup, and ministered to his cuts and bruises. He slept like a baby.

Henry awoke the next morning to an empty house. He turned to look at the alarm clock and every fiber of his being screamed, “Stop, stop, stop.” Laying back on his pillow, he gazed at the sunlight coming in through the curtains.

Bracing himself against the ache of sore muscles, he arose. He had household chores to do before he went to the gym. That’s when Henry remembered the green bag. Smiling, he imagined what the leprechaun would say when Henry returned the empty sack with a tale of hospitals and injured friends rather than selfish expenditures.

Dressed and ready for his tasks, Henry went to the living room, looking for his jacket on the back of the chair where he’d left it the night before. He found it on the floor where it had fallen. As he picked it up, he felt the heaviness of the no longer empty green sack.

Henry opened the bag and stared at the gold inside. I spent it all on Spud, he thought. I know I did. Yet, here was the sack, full again.

What was he to do with all this gold? He would start his new job next week. Emma was secure at the bakery. There was nothing the green bag could offer them, except savings.

But, he couldn’t take it to the bank. Where would someone like him find gold or, remembering the transformation of the previous night, $20 bills? He walked the bag back to the bedroom.

On Emma’s nightstand was her childhood piggy bank. They put their spare change in the cookie jar on top of the refrigerator so the elderly pig was empty. Henry opened the sack and took one gold coin in his fingers. Pulling it from the sack he watched it change into a $20 bill. He pushed the folded banknote through the pig’s slot, hearing it clang as it dropped.

Turning the pig over, he unplugged it, and pulled out a metal slug which transformed into the $20 bill again. He returned the money to the bag.

The gold would not be saved. It was to be spent. They had no need of it. But, Henry thought, I know many who do.

He sat on the bed, thinking about the miracle he held in his hands.

While tidying the house, Henry wondered whether the replenishing green sack was a fluke. Maybe the bag didn’t know that its ownership had changed hands.

The idea sounded ridiculous when he said it to himself, but so did the reality of a self-filling bag of gold. Just in case his idea was correct, however, Henry decided to give all the gold to the one place he wanted to help before the sack learned the truth of the matter. The soup kitchen.

When Henry first came to the city – a teenager with no family, no money, and no prospects – he’d stumbled, starving, into a cafeteria that fed the poor. With food under his belt, he’d swept and mopped the place after hours, earning a roof over his head.

From among the volunteers, he’d met Emma, his trainer, and the university’s head librarian. Henry owed the kitchen his life and his self-respect. He had given them pennies when he had them. Now, he would give more.

But, he had to do it in secret – anonymously. A donation of gold would be looked on with suspicion even by people who knew he was no thief. He didn’t need anyone to know it was him.

He knew the neighborhood well. Henry went to the kitchen at the precise moment when there would be no lines, no deliveries, and no staff smoke breaks. He poured the contents of the sack into the donation bin, watching as gold changed to paper money when it fell out of the bag into the receptacle.

He put the empty bag into his pocket and went home to Emma.

The next morning, with more gold in his pocket, he began his quest to give back to his community that had given him so much.

He started his day visiting Spud Taylor. Verity greeted him at the door with a hug.

“He’s asleep, Henry,” she said. “He’s doing well. A hospital social worker came by to check on him. She said the bill was paid in full and we didn’t have anything to worry about. I can never repay what you did for Spud, Henry. ‘Thank you’ doesn’t feel like enough.”

Henry shook his head. “I didn’t do anything for Spud that he wouldn’t have done for me.”

“Yes, Henry, you did. He wouldn’t have given up an ounce of his prize money for any reason. Not to you or anyone else. I love him, Henry, but that’s the truth.” Verity sat looking at him, tears in her eyes. “When I went to buy orange juice this morning, I heard someone gave the soup kitchen a boatload of money. I told Spud and all he can talk about is going out to try and find him. Get himself some easy money.”

Henry looked down at his hands folded in his lap. He didn’t think word would get out so fast.

Looking at him, Verity started crying. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said any of that. I don’t want you regretting what you did for us.” Verity’s voice broke.

Henry looked up. “Nothing you say can make me regret helping Spud. Yesterday was my birthday. Helping the two of you was a special gift for me.”

Verity smiled. “I only wish it was your birthday every day, Henry, so others could see how good you are.”

Back on the street, Henry replayed the conversation in his mind. Without thinking, he’d told Verity the truth. But, now Henry was troubled. How many Spuds were looking for him? How many wanted easy money?

He found himself standing in the shadows, looking at the passersby hurrying by. He searched for signs of darkness in their souls. What he saw was people, his people, on their way to work, taking their children to school, sweeping their storefronts, greeting the start of another day.

Henry mentally shook himself. As a boy, coming to the city, he’d been scared and alone. Too many hands had offered him aid and comfort when he’d had nothing. Those hands wouldn’t harm him now, even if they knew he carried more gold than any of them had ever seen.

Henry stood straight and stepped into the morning light. It could be his birthday every day. For a year. That was the promise made by the stranger in the alley.

A donation box, a mail slot, a coat pocket, a shopping bag – he would take advantage of any opportunity to give his birthday present to everyone he could touch.

Henry walked down the street, considering his next stop. The fire station raised money year-round for their Christmas toy drive. After that, well, he had his plan.

Fingering the green bag in his pocket, Henry Thomas looked forward to seeing the leprechaun on his next birthday. He would have, not one but many, stories to tell him.