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

by Benjamin Laskin

  “Yikes…”

  The room spun around him, a blur of lights, marble, furniture, stained-glass windows, and flabbergasted faces.

  The crowd gasped. Out of nowhere, a dazzling glint swooped in and snatched the nickel just feet above the snapping bill of an anxious mallard. A millisecond later a second winged and gleaming creature darted in, just missing the first.

  Swept across the lobby, and then up towards the mezzanine level, Ned let out a sigh of relief. He’d have liked to have waved goodbye to the Duckmaster and the fine folks of Memphis, but even if he had a hand, he was gripped too tightly in the eagle’s talon to have done so.

  “Good catch, Emma,” Ned said.

  “Erica,” came the reply.

  “Huh?” Ned looked up into the golden, grinning face of Dominique Double Eagle. He gawped, and then squirmed frantically to remove himself from the eagle’s clutches. Erica squeezed tighter.

  Unable to budge, Ned said, “Who are you? What did you do with Franny?”

  “The Peace Dollar is fine.”

  “If you harm one silvery hair on her head—”

  “Shush, Four,” Dominique said. “We’re not interested in her. We’re interested in you.”

  “We? We who?”

  “In good time, Four.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Nowhere. I’m saving you.”

  “Saving…? Why?”

  “Would you have rather been lodged in the gullet of a duck or stashed in some human’s pocket? I don’t think so. No, no, you have a much brighter future than that, my dear.”

  Hannah Half Dollar cursed herself for having missed Ned. By the time she had circled back around, the gold double eagle had already vanished from sight. Judging by people’s stares—those eyes not on her—Hannah deduced that the eagle had flown to the mezzanine level.

  She rose and pursued. With a glance she saw that the cloud of fighting eagles had dispersed. She whistled to Camille, who upon seeing Hannah, split from her loitering and flew to join her sister.

  The mezzanine’s ceiling hadn’t nearly the height of the lobby, and so the sisters had to speed zigzagging down the hall. They careened around a corner, and at the far end they spotted a partially opened window. Hannah and Camille exchanged frowns. They streaked toward the gap, their wings batting strong, swift strokes.

  When they neared they heard a whistle and the cry of, “Hannah! Camille!”

  The sisters recognized the voice and pulled up just short of the window. They hovered, and together with their eagle-eyed eagles, searched for the source of the voice.

  “In the planter!”

  Hannah turned and zipped over to a large potted rubber tree beside the entrance to a clothing boutique. Inside the planter she spotted Ned Nickel face-up on top of a brown leaf. She picked him up and left with him out the window, Camille Quarter behind her.

  “Do you know where they went?” Hannah asked, not ready to give up the fight.

  “They’re long gone,” Ned said glumly.

  “What about Franny?”

  “They took her.”

  “I’m sorry, Ned,” Hannah said. “It’s all my fault. I should have—”

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” Ned said. “We were ambushed, and none of us could have seen it coming.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We pick up our pieces and go home.”

  Hannah and Camille headed down Union Avenue towards the roof where they had last left the chief and Darla Dime.

  Camille pulled up alongside Hannah. “I don’t understand,” the liberty quarter said. “All that effort for a Peace Dollar? Who is Franny to them?”

  Hannah said, “And Franny is silver, not gold. All those eagles were gold.”

  “Strong too, and wicked fast,” Camille said. “We have a lot more training to do, sis.”

  “Who were they, Ned?” Hannah asked. “Where did they come from? How did they know what we were up to?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m afraid saving Coinworld just got a lot more complicated.”

  14

  operation cash flow

  The following day — Cranston, Rhode Island

  Cody Quarter observed Hugh Stewards from behind a fat dictionary on the shelf in the man’s small study. The 1951 eagle-backed Washington quarter was ten days into “Operation Cash Flow,” and already he had gathered a surprising amount of intel on The Hugh.

  Getting to the Stewards residence was dangerous, but not difficult. With November’s chill, The Hugh had begun wearing his wool, navy blue peacoat again. He had picked it up years back at a military surplus store in Providence for ten bucks. He thought the double-breasted coat snappy, and although he had lost one of the large metallic buttons on the bottom row, and the coat was a bit worn along its fringes, it was warm and still had a few good years left.

  When The Hugh nodded off one afternoon on his bench that overlooked Coin Island, Cody flew over to the napping man and alighted onto his lap. He settled on the spot where the coat was missing its button. The peacoat’s buttons were about the size of a quarter, and so Cody attached himself to the coat with the talons of his eagle, Ellsworth.

  Hiding in plain sight was risky, but Cody considered it less perilous than depositing himself in one of The Hugh’s pockets where he might be spent or, as occasionally still happened, pitched back onto the island, as into a wishing well.

  Unbeknownst to Hugh Stewards, his coin tossing had supplied Coin Island with several recruits over the years: mostly pennies, but the occasional nickel, dime, and quarter too. Cody himself owed his life to The Hugh, as did Cody’s pal, Harper Half Dollar, who The Hugh tossed onto the island four years earlier.

  Hugh Stewards could not have known what he had done for Cody and Harper, but the two coins never forgot it. Deirdre and the others thought it was Cody’s reputation as a fearless, can-do coin that made him volunteer for Operation Cash Flow. He let them think so, but for him it was personal. Cody liked the strange, lonely man, and felt he owed him.

  Harper would have volunteered too, but the mission called for an eagle on the reverse, and the Franklin Half Dollar’s tail-side depicted a clunky Liberty Bell. Although a clever and powerful coin, Harper’s size would have also made him more conspicuous and less able to secret himself away.

  When The Hugh arrived home that day he went straight into his small study. He hung his peacoat and walking cane on the coat stand between the door and an old, stuffed, leather reading chair, and took a seat at his cluttered desk. From the coat stand Cody had a full view of the office, which he soon learned was where Hugh Stewards spent a good deal of his time.

  Once a small guest room, Hugh had converted it into a study. Along the rear wall two windows looked out over the backyard with its elm tree and a weather-beaten woodshed. In front of the windows sat a heavy oak desk that Hugh had picked up cheap at a garage sale. Tall, standing bookcases rose along one wall, and on another hung a large corkboard onto which he had stapled a map of the United States. Dozens of colorful pushpins and tacks dotted the map.

  Because of the hefty desk, bookcases, old rolling chair, and coat rack, the room looked cramped and uninspiring. To Hugh, however, it was a sanctuary where he could escape the noise of the children, and the scratchy, rasping sounds of the radio, which it seemed to Cody Quarter, blasted all day long.

  Between eavesdropping on conversations, reading the man’s diary while the family slept, and other observations, Cody had gotten a good sense of Hugh Stewards’ life and routine.

  He discovered that to pay the bills, Hugh Stewards earned a meager income as a writer of second-rate adventure, horror, detective, and ‘weird’ mystery stories for various pulp magazines. By reading the man’s diary, he also learned that The Hugh sent out three short stories a week, crossed his fingers, and waited. Hugh didn’t sell a single story in the first two years he plied the trade. Undaunted, he studied the different genres and continued to hone his craft. At last he arrived at the point wher
e he averaged two sales a month. For a guy who never went to college, Hugh Stewards thought that wasn’t too bad.

  However, Cody also learned via snippets of conversation Hugh had with his wife, that over the past few years Hugh had seen a decline in the pulp fiction market, and so his sales. Mr. Stewards figured that the rising popularity and affordability of television was to blame—despite not owning a TV himself—but he spent no time lamenting it. Instead, he branched out in his writing and submitted articles about every topic under the sun to more magazines, and started on a novel.

  In addition to the paltry income he received from the occasional story or article he sold, Hugh collected disability for his war injuries. It was a token monthly amount, but every bit helped.

  Although Hugh did his best to support his family, it was his wife’s job as a full-time nurse in a Providence hospital that provided the lion’s share of their income.

  Katherine met and married Hugh in 1944, when she was twenty-three. When he went off to fight in Korea and returned a year later in 1951 broken in body and spirit, Katherine was instrumental in his recuperation. She promised him that she’d get him back on his feet again, and that they would go dancing, maybe not the jitterbug, but at least the foxtrot. Between her gentle touch, soft brown eyes, and sweet smile, that was all the encouragement and motivation he required to fight back from the brink of death.

  Katherine Stewards also taught chorus at the local elementary school, helped put on its Christmas plays, and supplemented the family income with piano lessons. She was always busy, but Cody Quarter never heard her complain.

  Cody found Hugh Stewards to be a man of regiment and routine: up at five-thirty each morning no matter the day, and in bed at eleven every night. He wrote in the morning and read and studied in the evening. Light yard work, a small garden, books, periodicals, newspapers, and time spent standing sentinel at Coin Island filled the rest of his day.

  Easygoing, slow to anger, cherishing harmony in the home, and deeply in love with his wife, Hugh cultivated patience and good will. He knew how hard his wife worked and appreciated everything she did. He demonstrated his gratitude in a myriad of little ways. He picked her flowers. He helped with the housework. He massaged her feet and shoulders, and he praised her lousy cooking: something that amused their two children, who expressed their dissent with brow-lifting and eye-sliding smirks.

  Believing discipline was important—something he picked up in the Army—Hugh required that the children be responsible for several small household chores; among them, clearing the supper table.

  Hugh, however, volunteered each evening to do the dishes himself; a task his family happily allowed him. He liked the feel of the warm water and suds on his hands and wrists, the scraping and scouring, and he derived satisfaction in returning the cheap dishes and silverware to their relative shine. Hugh thought he did some of his best thinking while washing dishes. He found the ritual trance-inducing, and reveries came quickly during those minutes. He dreamed up many of his pulp stories with a sponge in his hand.

  Mr. Stewards enjoyed his morning coffee, his half a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and a glass of brandy after dinner. His moderate intake of coffee, cigarettes, and brandy were his vices, but they provided him great comfort, and the small pleasures gave him something to look forward to.

  He dutifully attended his son’s little league games, his daughter’s school plays, open houses and PTA meetings, and every Sunday he went to the small church down the street with his family.

  Twice a day he walked Shadow, his half-blind, half-deaf Black Lab whose hips were no better than his own. The pair made a pathetic but endearing sight, and Hugh thought no one understood his difficulties better than Shadow, who spent the better part of each day curled up on the throw rug in Hugh Stewards’ study.

  The Stewards family wasn’t without its troubles, however.

  Brian wanted a new bicycle and Sue begged for a television. Hugh knew that Katherine hadn’t bought a dress or pair of shoes in two years, and although she didn’t complain, he felt like a louse about it. The family hadn’t taken a vacation since their 1954 camping trip when Hugh stumbled across the funny coins.

  The kids squabbled, and Katherine’s mother, who they suspected was going senile, was a constant source of irritation. The house needed repairs and his car needed new tires and engine work. The cost for Shadow’s worsening health mounted. The monthly bills never let up and only seemed to get harder and harder to meet.

  Hugh’s medication took a large bite out of their budget, something he felt guilty over, all the more so since he had stopped taking his pills a year ago.

  Cody realized that the colorful pellets Coin Island Border Control saw The Hugh dump into the lake were not fish food as suspected, but his medication. Hugh didn’t have the heart to tell Katherine about his decision because of her faith in doctors and modern medicine. He feared that out of her concern for him, she might go behind his back and report on him to his doctors. They, in turn, might have viewed his actions negatively, and so prescribed more powerful medication or taken more drastic actions, and Hugh didn’t want that.

  The first few weeks of abstaining from the medication were the hardest. He didn’t realize how powerful the drugs actually were, and the withdrawal symptoms seemed worse than the depression and anxiety they were meant to address.

  Not wanting to worry his wife, he did everything he could to hide his disorientation. Try as he might, however, her trained eye sensed he was acting differently, but as long as he wasn’t behaving morosely or suicidal, she kept her suspicions to herself.

  In time the drugs exited his system and Hugh felt his old self again. In fact, he felt better than his old self—a self that was plagued with angst and reoccurring nightmares. He felt…normal, and no one was more surprised than Hugh Stewards.

  Maybe he felt better than normal, though he had to admit that ‘normal’ was something he hadn’t known for a very long time. Hugh couldn’t remember feeling so clear-headed and energetic, at least not since before his war injuries. Even the pain in his leg had lessened. He felt friskier too—a surprising and welcome change for Katherine, and one that put a new bounce in her step and made her feel ten years younger.

  Were the drugs the doctors prescribed so mind-altering and soul-crushing that he had been living the life of a zombie for the past ten years? He didn’t doubt that, but there was something more going on—something that began as a coin-sized light in his soul, and seemed to grow bigger and brighter by the month.

  But what had changed, really? he wondered. Had he substantially altered his routine?

  Hugh thought about it, but other than more frequent and giggle-inducing late night frolics with Katherine, he couldn’t come up with anything. He slept no more or no less than before. He made no new friends. The psychologist he saw once a month offered no new breakthroughs into his troubled soul. Money was in the same short supply as ever. His kids bickered as much as always, and Katherine’s cooking had definitely not improved.

  What gave?

  Only one explanation made sense to him—it had to have something to do with Coin Island. Was it the strolls and fresh air his visits afforded him? Was it the peace and calm he found sitting on the bench beside the little scrap of land? Was it the nostalgia from his childhood?

  He wrote them all off and concluded that the reason behind his rejuvenation was even smaller than the island. Much, much smaller. It was nickel-sized. The coins; it had to do with the coins.

  One reason he weaned himself off his medication was because he thought it was causing him to hallucinate. The thought terrified him more than any of the weird happenings he regularly witnessed surrounding the island and its magical coins.

  But when the drugs and withdrawal symptoms released their grip on him, the wonders continued. He hadn’t been imagining things. The miracles were not drug-inspired. Sure, he could still be nuts, but he reasoned that if he were, then he’d be hallucinating things all day long, and he didn’
t. What he witnessed only happened around Coin Island.

  His sanity in check, and now convinced that he was no crazier than anyone else he knew, questions nonetheless remained. What were these coins? How did they get this way? Why Coin Island, and was it the only place such happenings were occurring? How come only he seemed to notice? Were there others like him who suspected the existence of Coinworld?

  The coins seemed to act with deliberation. Did they have a purpose or some goal? Why were the flying quarters and half and silver dollars transporting all these pieces of junk? What were they building? Were they good or evil? He couldn’t really say. They never harmed him in any way, so he had no reason to suspect them of malevolent intentions. Still, he couldn’t deny the occult-like aberrations at play.

  The questions went on and on, and he hadn’t a single answer for any of them. Every question, he believed, had to have at least one answer somewhere. It could be the wrong answer, but if one kept an open mind, even a wrong answer could lead to a better answer. One never learned less from a wrong guess; only from a wrong conviction stubbornly adhered to.

  He had to start somewhere. Observing the coins wasn’t enough. Confirmed in his belief that his eyes weren’t lying to him and that he hadn’t gone mad, Hugh Stewards decided he had to approach his subject like a scientist, or maybe in this case, a biologist, which meant first becoming a numismatist. Four years ago he didn’t know there was such a person or what the word numismatics even meant. He quickly learned, however, that the field was well established and far more interesting than he might have imagined.

  Hugh Stewards could not have known back at that Springfield campsite four years earlier what momentous events his son’s discovery would free upon the world, or the part Hugh would play in them. He never would have guessed those little coins would not only bring him back to Coin Island, but back to himself. He also didn’t know that one day Coin Island would come to him.