The Amazing Adventures of 4¢ Ned (Coinworld: Book Two)

by Benjamin Laskin

  Pete comforted her the best he could and told her that her condition wasn’t anything a little solvent couldn’t cure. He promised her that if they ever get out of there he’d help her get cleaned up. He didn’t know how he’d do it, but if saying so kept her from crying, that was good enough for now.

  It was then when lightning struck and Pete hit upon their answer. Sadie was a Morgan Silver Dollar, and that meant her backside held a big, beautiful bald eagle. If he could teach Sadie to achieve full animation, she could fly them out of there! She only had to get them to a body of water—a lake, stream, swimming pool, anything would do—and there he could call for help.

  Belief in bucking was the crucial first step in any coin achieving locomotion. Pete didn’t think this would be a problem, as Sadie had witnessed plenty of that firsthand. She saw what he could do, and she remembered what the evil nickel had done many years back.

  Sadie believed it could be done; she just didn’t believe she could do it, which was step two. Pete wondered if it was because of her age or the period she grew up in, but he knew of plenty of other 19th century coins that had mastered the art. Age was not an issue, and neither was a coin’s condition. He himself was proof of the latter.

  Pete spoke to her of the wonders that awaited her and the freedom locomotion would bring; how once she obtained the knack for bucking, it would be a piece of cake, as easy and natural as speaking. But no amount of convincing seemed to help.

  Days went by and Sadie remained afraid to try. Even chanting her mottos a hundred times didn’t help her. For whatever reason, her heart was just not into it.

  Pete even resorted to anger and threats, telling her that if she wasn’t going to try, then he had no choice but to leave her behind. He bucked stomping off, but his heart was too soft to put up with her whimpering and he returned after only a few yards.

  He slumped beside her, sighed and said, “Oh, Sadie, what am I going to do with you?”

  “I’m sorry, Paul,” she sniffled.

  “Pete.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe I was just never meant for locomotion.”

  “Hogwash, Sadie. I don’t want to hear such talk anymore. Were you meant to roast along the side of a road? Of course not. You were meant to purchase and procure, to fund and finance. Anyway to get you to market is a good way.”

  “Oh, I know that. I’m just afraid.”

  “Afraid of what? I don’t understand. It doesn’t hurt. You might feel a little ache in parts of your front and back on account that you’re using embossments you never used before, but it’s a good kind of sore, and passes after a couple of days.”

  “It’s not that, penny.”

  “Then what? Life is too short to be ruled by fear, Sadie. A fearful life is a regretted life. You don’t want that, do you?”

  She shook her head and bit her lip. A tear streaked her dusty face.

  “No, you don’t,” he reaffirmed. “Now, c’mon, we’ll start all over from the beginning. Baby bucks, Sadie. We’ll start with what you’re already comfortable with and build from there. Every new twitch and tug, yank and crank will help build your confidence.”

  “Paul?” she asked softly.

  “Yes, Sadie?”

  “If…if I do manage to do it. If I can learn to do this buck ‘n’ rolling business, and even fly like you say…” She looked shyly away.

  “Yes, Sadie? What is it?”

  “Will you promise…?”

  “Anything,” he said.

  “I-I don’t want to be alone again, Paul.” She sniffled and her voice cracked with emotion. “I was alone for so long. Until you came along, I never had a friend. If we leave here, I’m afraid you’ll roll off and I’ll never see you again.”

  Her confession brought a new round of weeping, which burst Pete’s little penny heart.

  “So that’s it?” he said.

  Sadie nodded with shame and embarrassment.

  Pete bucked up next to Sadie and patted her rim, and then he kissed her on the forehead.

  He stood and beamed her an adoring smile. “Not only will we remain friends forever, but I promise to introduce you to some of the nicest, most interesting coins you ever met. I’ll even throw a party for you. How about that?!”

  “You will? You’re not just saying that?”

  “I’m a Lincoln wheaty,” he answered proudly. “I might be 95% copper, but my word is sterling silver.”

  Sadie smiled at Pete and blinked away her tears. A new radiance shone from her grimy face.

  “New friends,” Pete repeated, “and a cleaning that will make you the prettiest silver dollar at the party!”

  Although now on board, Sadie remained Pete’s most difficult student yet. It took days before she managed her first buck, and learning to stand more days still. She had great difficulty balancing, and without balance she’d never achieve rolling, and without rolling flight would remain impossible.

  Day after day they trained. Sadie strained Pete’s patience to the breaking point, but he saw she was trying, and so he ground his frustration between his teeth, grinned, and bore it.

  Sadie was oblivious to Pete’s frustration. She thought she was progressing quickly, and assumed every coin required days, if not weeks of training. Every buck brought a giggle of delight, and her lack of balance and constant toppling made her laugh. By this stage, Pete was laughing too. The well-meaning, cross-eyed silver lady endeared herself to him, and he got a kick out of her quirky ways. Even her calling him Paul ceased to annoy him.

  Sadie’s flip side held a proud bald eagle with spread wings. It hovered in the center of her back clasping three arrows and an olive twig. Sadie eventually managed to animate the eagle, something that thrilled her to no end. She learned its name was Ernie. To Pete’s amusement, he noticed that Ernie Eagle suffered the same defect as Sadie had, and was as crossed and googly-eyed as she was.

  Sadie didn’t notice, and was so thrilled by the bird’s animation that she wouldn’t have cared anyway. The two of them bwakked and squawked, shrieked and screeched for hours on end. Pete didn’t speak a word of Eagle, and he doubted Sadie understood much more than he, but the two gabbed like long lost friends.

  With Ernie Eagle on line, and Sadie now able to balance and roll long enough to attempt take off and flight, Pete thought victory was at hand, but it wasn’t to be. They had run into a sticky new problem: Ernie’s feathers were full of tar and he couldn’t flap his wings.

  Ernie tried pecking and chewing at the tar but although it helped somewhat, it also ended with sealing his beak shut.

  “Oh, dear,” Sadie moaned, “what are we going to do?”

  Pete didn’t know, but after more consideration, he decided there was only one thing he could do. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t pleasant, but he felt it was their only hope.

  The penny bucked to where the desert met the road and began searching for his tools. One by one, he gathered up dozens of cactus needles and sharp pebbles with his mouth. He dumped them beside Sadie who was awaiting her operation face down and Ernie-side-up.

  “Sadie, I hope you don’t mind, but I see no other way. I’m going to climb on top of Ernie and start operating.”

  “Will it hurt?” she asked.

  “It might a little.”

  “Hold on.”

  Sadie spoke to Ernie with her pidgin Eagle and explained to the bird that the penny meant no harm and was going to help him.

  “Okay, Ernie?” Pete said. “You’re not going to start pecking or clawing at me, right?”

  Ernie looked at him cross-eyed and nodded.

  “Good boy.”

  It was a slow, delicate operation that required hours of scraping, scouring, and spitting. With cactus needle or pebble in his mouth, he worked on Ernie feather by feather, quill by quill. He had to be careful not to get the tar on his lips and so seal his mouth like Ernie had done. He finished by cleaning off Ernie’s beak. To a passerby it would have looked like they were in an intimate
embrace. Pete made Ernie swear that if they ever made it back to civilization, he wouldn’t tell anyone about their make-out session.

  At last, Pete hopped off Sadie and told her to stand. She hadn’t learned to flip up onto her rim, so she had to do it the slow way—revolving on her rim until she obtained enough momentum to ease herself up.

  Pete rolled back to admire his work. “Okay, Ernie,” he said, “let’s see what you’ve got. But easy does it. You don’t want to break anything.”

  The bird squirmed like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. It inflated its wings feather by feather and slowly raised and lowered them, gradually increasing their motion. Within a few minutes he obtained their full range.

  Ernie screeched in gratitude.

  “Oh, Paul,” Sadie sang, “you did it! Ernie’s so happy!”

  Pete sucked out a particle of tar from between his teeth and spat. He smiled big and proud, unaware that all his teeth were now black.

  “Alrighty then,” Pete said, elated. “Now all we have to do is get you off the ground. Once Ernie is airborne, flying will come as natural as singing to a songbird. And lucky for us, we have no shortage of runway here. Plus, it’s as smooth and level as we could want.”

  Pete jogged rolling beside Sadie instructing her in the art of liftoff. Having watched Camille and Hannah do the same for new recruits many times, he knew the basics.

  Due to Sadie and Ernie’s cross-eyed situations, traveling straight proved a problem. He kept to her left because she continually veered onto the highway, and he had to nudge her back. Pete suggested that Sadie look left and Ernie look right, and that by doing so they might balance each other out, similar to the way a torpedo worked underwater.

  It felt to Pete as if they had rolled for miles before Sadie and her eagle could work in unison well enough to gain the requisite speed for liftoff, but they finally did so.

  “Weeeee!” Sadie cried, as Ernie flapped his magnificent, filthy wings, carrying her higher and higher.

  “Don’t forget to pick me up!” Pete laughed. He observed the silvery disc soar through the sky. They were as graceful as Orville and Wilbur Wright’s experimental aircraft “Flyer,” but they were doing it.

  Ernie circled thirty feet above, and circled some more, and kept circling, until Pete realized the cross-eyed coin was stuck in a perpetual loop.

  “Oh, brother,” he groaned.

  And then he noticed that the silver dollar had attracted the attention of a lone falcon soaring high above them.

  “Sadie!” he shouted. “Watch out above! Come down! Land! Land!”

  Pete hopped and flipped to get their attention and shouted some more, but Sadie and Ernie remained oblivious to both him and the predator above.

  The falcon dove and sped like a missile towards the unsuspecting coin.

  “Oh, no!” Pete girded his coin loins and summoned his inner wampum. “Opa!” he cried, and blasted skyward.

  Talons outstretched and screeching, the falcon zeroed in on its prey. A split moment before he was about to snatch Sadie and Ernie from midair—clink!

  Pete smashed into the silver dollar, knocking it away like a billiard ball. The falcon screamed past.

  Ernie tumbled head over tail scrambling to regain his balance, as Pete plummeted earthward like an anvil.

  Pete smacked into the highway and bounced into oncoming traffic. He dodged a westbound Chevy pickup and then an eastbound Oldsmobile, but his luck ended when the radiator grill of a ’55 Ford Thunderbird convertible vacuumed him up.

  The car carried Pete a mile down the road before he extricated himself from his chrome fetters and dropped back onto the highway. He bucked hobbling to the side of the road, narrowly escaping the crushing tire of a Mack truck.

  Pete grunted and staggered onto his rim. He stood wobbling and looked down the highway, searching the sky for a sign of Sadie and Ernie. He didn’t see the falcon and wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing, because he didn’t see his friends either. If they were still up there, he thought he ought to be able to see the glitter of the bright sun off the coin’s sides in the cloudless sky.

  He sighed. If they weren’t in the air, they could be anywhere, including miles away in the clutches of the falcon.

  “Sadie…Ernie,” he moaned. “So close, yet so—”

  “Weeeee!”

  Plucked up from the ground from behind, Pete went sailing off in Ernie’s talon.

  “Paul, you bad boy,” Sadie scolded. “What are you doing way over here?”

  “Sadie, you made it!”

  “What are you talking about? Of course, we did.”

  “But you were almost snatched by a bird.”

  “Bird? What bird? Really, Paul, sometimes I wonder about your mental health.”

  After weeks of delay, Pete grinned into the wind and whispered a prayer of thanks to the Great Minter who had seen him through yet another perilous adventure.

  9

  rock star

  November 1958 — Grand Canyon Bullion Base

  Ernie and Sadie flew above Highway 66, weaving from edge to edge like two drunks. They didn’t know where they were going, but by following the highway they could maintain a semblance of direction, only they were headed in the wrong direction.

  “Wrong way, Sadie.”

  Sadie laughed. “Wrong Way Sadie, that’s me!” She instructed Wrong Way Ernie to turn around and head west.

  Coin Island was too distant to attempt with such novice pilots, so Pete thought it best they head to the closest bullion base. As Route 66 passed through Flagstaff, Arizona, that made the Grand Canyon Bullion Base the natural call. They’d be able to spot the immense canyon from the air, and then it was just a matter of following the winding Colorado River at its bottom until they came upon Havasu Creek. Pete hadn’t been there since he helped Darla Dime establish the base, but he was confident he’d remember the way.

  Pete was eager to see the darling dime again. He hadn’t seen her since he left her in charge of the base, and he missed her smiling face and easy laughter. They had so much catching up to do! Story swapping was a coin’s favorite pastime, and he had collected a ton of tales since he last saw Darla, as he was sure she had done as well.

  He remembered that Kipp Quarter was also stationed at the Grand Canyon base. Pete had been Kipp’s mentor and put in charge of the quarter’s animation. Next to Ned, he considered Kipp his closest pal. Pete smiled recalling how Kipp would swat any new recruit who mocked Pete’s beat appearance, or tried taking advantage of his good-natured disposition.

  Pete could hardly wait, and had he been flying with experienced pilots who could see straight, he’d have insisted they save a day’s journey by traveling as the crow flies, instead of as a half-blind, tar-encrusted eagle.

  When the three of them crash-landed on the base—Ernie had never landed before—Pete was saddened to learn that Darla wasn’t there, that she had been called back to Coin Island for an important mission.

  The Grand Canyon Bullion Base was large and sprawling, about the size of three Coin Islands. It was set up on high ground against a canyon wall and overlooked Havasu Creek. They’d have liked to have been closer to the water to take advantage of what it might offer the camp, but torrential rains far upstream made the creek unpredictable. One rampaging flood could wipe out the entire base.

  The camp was tiered with a lower, middle, and upper level. The eagle runway sat on the lower level, or level one. The middle level, level two, held the main camp and barracks, the camp’s headquarters, and its CBS. The stadium and main training grounds covered level three. The base contained the same facilities as Coin Island, but because of its remote location, natural barriers, and secluded placement, the camp’s founders saw no need for walls or other defensive measures.

  It was Damian the ’53 Roosevelt dime who broke the news of Darla’s absence to Pete. Pete was bummed, so much so that he wondered if he didn’t like Darla even more than he thought he did.

  Damian
noticed Pete’s disappointment and wondered what an ugly penny like that before him could possibly have in common with a looker Mercury dime like Darla. Damian, a dime himself, and so smaller than Pete, raised himself up to his full measure and smiled at the dark, chewed up and dinged penny.

  Pete thought he detected a smugness in the dime’s grin, but that was hardly unusual. Pete knew he rarely made a good first impression. He offered a bright, friendly “Hello!”

  Damian looked Pete up and down, and squinted in amusement. “Beat, aren’t you, penny?”

  “Beat Pete, if you like,” he answered with a smile. “Pete Penny.”

  “You’re Pete Penny?”

  “You’ve heard of me?” Pete said. Every redeemed coin had heard of The Four, of course, but who would have heard of one-cent Pete?

  “You’re a rock star,” Damian said. “Everyone’s heard of you.”

  Pete chuckled. “Now I know you’re just pulling my wheat stalks.”

  “Just one of them, wheaty. What happened to your teeth?”

  “Huh?”

  “They’re black.”

  “Aw, jeez. Really?” Embarrassed, he sucked at his teeth. He smiled. “How about now?”

  Damian shook his head. “Sorry, but don’t worry. I had a special spa built here that will clean you up.” He painted Pete with his eye and frowned. “Somewhat anyway.”

  “Really, a spa? Sadie and Ernie will be thrilled to hear that!” He was glad he’d be able to keep his promise to Sadie that she’d get a good cleaning.

  “The cross-eyed pair you tumbled in on?”

  “That’s right. My unsightly teeth are due to…never mind. A spa, wow.”

  “I like my coins looking their best,” Damian said. “Good for morale, and you know what they say, clothes make the man.”

  “But most coins don’t have much in the way of clothes, and some—like you—don’t have any.”

  A snarl wiggled across Damian’s lips. “Slow-witted, aren’t you? Taking a little pride in your appearance, I’m saying. But I see that’s never been much of a concern of yours.”