What you Pawn I will Redeem
This was an interesting story because it was told in 2nd person but the main character, Jackson, wasn’t all there. Jackson definitely seems to be living with some kind of illness which could very well be a result of the amount of drinking he does and the lifestyle in which he has. There are various points where we lose sight of a character because they disappeared and later he hears that something traffic happened to them yet we don’t know the truth. He loses track of everything and, although he was supposed to be saving a thousand dollars in total during the story, he always ends up spending what he just made. The cop near the end gave him $30 and told him he bet he would spend it on alcohol versus making it $1000 to buy the regalia. His problem might just be he’s a homeless alcoholic. The author gives the impression Jackson has been homeless for a long time, he doesn’t seem to have much of a grasp on time or where he is. On top of losing his friends, he couldn’t find the pawnshop near the end and for briefest of moments I expected a reveal to be that he was making everything up and the story was all in his head. These changes in environment and character relations make anything else he claims nothing more than hearsay and we never know what to believe. Another part I was considering was that somehow Jackson would have found the money to purchase the regalia, but then it dawned on me that he kept the same $5 from the day before and the real test was to see if he could actually hang onto any of it. For Jackson, having had the same $5 he initially had for the regalia was a feat in itself. I think that little piece of the story said something to how much the regalia was worth to Jackson at the end.