part0011

A s the chief predicted, it wasn’t long before Ned returned to the outside world, but he did so in a most unusual way.

The proprietor of the Deadwood general store was a kindly old Indian with rimless spectacles and long, gray hair tied back in a ponytail. He always dressed in dungarees and a blue work shirt, wore a turquoise-embedded bolo tie, and tipped his white felt cowboy hat to every customer who entered his store.

When the collector who had tracked Ned to Deadwood showed up inquiring about a 1938 nickel, however, the Indian grew suspicious. The stranger never mentioned anything about Ned’s four-cent denomination; only that he wanted the coin to complete his collection. He offered the Indian $10 for the coin. Despite the Indian’s insistence that he possessed no such coin, the man returned day after day to badger the storekeeper, and each time with a new excuse and a bigger offer .

The Indian was not a coin collector, nor did he care to make a fast buck. He felt strangely protective of the nickel, and something told him not to trust the stranger. The Indian tried to convince the man that he owned no such coin. As proof, more than once he pulled out the drawer to his register and allowed the collector to ferret through the change for himself.

The proprietor’s ploy failed to satisfy the collector, and certain that the precious four-cent nickel was on the premises somewhere, the collector devised a plan to get a better look.

One evening shortly before closing, he entered the store behind a group of boisterous tourists. In order not to draw attention to himself, he changed from his usual gray suit to jeans and a sweatshirt, and swapped his derby for a White Sox baseball cap. While the owner was distracted by the throng of customers, the wily collector hid himself in a corner near the back of the store under a pile of colorful Indian blankets. An hour later, after the proprietor locked up for the night, he stole out of his hiding place and went prowling for the precious nickel.

The collector found the shoebox on a shelf in the back room. Inside he saw a shiny nickel. It stood out from the other mauled and tainted pieces like a brilliant diamond among flakes of coal. The thief reached in, snatched up the gleaming coin, and turned him over to confirm that he was indeed the magnificent four-cent nickel he had seen back at the Mount Rushmore souvenir shop.

“I wasn’t dreaming!” the collector exalted in a suppressed whisper. He swallowed Ned within his sweaty palm and raised a clenched, victorious fist to the ceiling. “I’m rich!”

The coins gasped and trembled in fear. They could all smell a collector. How would The Four fulfill his destiny if he were stuck for eternity in a coin-collecting book? Pressed into one of those holes he wouldn’t be able to budge, to say nothing of buck ‘n’ roll.

“Chief,” cried Betty the Barber quarter, “what can we do?!”

“Four,” the chief shouted. “Can you move?”

“No,” returned Ned’s muffled reply. “I can barely breathe!”

“You must escape,” the chief declared. “The world is depending upon you!”

“But how can he?” Harvey, the lisping, whistling fifty-cent piece sputtered. “The collector ith thqueething him tighter than a penny-pinching thkinflint!”

“Four,” the chief said, “remember, you live within new boundaries now. The old laws and traditions have fallen away. The Great Minter has permitted you to trespass certain taboos.”

“Speak English, Chief!” Pip Penny said urgently. “This is no time for philosophizing!”

“In other words,” the chief called out, “bite the schmuck!”

Because coins were gentle creatures and believed that all humans participated in the Great Minter’s master plan, there was an unwritten law that a coin should never harm a person. Even bad people played a part in a coin’s journey, transporting coins from here to there, which was what coinage was meant to do. However, according to the chief, unusual coins and instances called for unusual behaviors.

Ned opened his Jeffersonian mouth wide and bit into the collector’s palm like an angry alligator.

“Ow!” the man yelped, dropping Ned to the floor. He gaped in bewilderment at the beading drop of blood on his palm.

Ned bounced twice, slammed into the leg of a table, and then went into gyration mode to aright himself. The collector fell cursing onto hands and knees and began a desperate search for the nickel. As the man crawled on the floor, Ned snuck rolling behind him and slipped into the shadows beneath an antique cabinet with carved feet in the shape of eagle claws.

“Roll, Four, roll,” shouted the box of coins. “Roll for your life!”

“But I can’t leave you guys behind,” Ned answered back.

“Forget about us!” Norman said.

“We have each other, Ned,” Dinky the dime squeaked. “Do what you have to do!”

Betty the Barber quarter cried, “Roll, Ned! Roll like the wind!”

“Embrace your destiny, Four!” the chief called out. “Remember your mottos, and may peace be upon you. We shall meet again!”

“What a hideous bunch of scrap metal,” he mocked.

He lifted Betty the Barber quarter for closer inspection and recoiled in horror. “Ugh, a horrid little hag, aren’t you?” He tossed her back like a fisherman having reeled in an old boot.

Next, he hauled up Harvey the half dollar. “Good gawd, another eyesore,” he said. He dropped Harvey like a diseased rat.

But there was one coin of some value. He plucked out the buffalo nickel and dropped Chief Iron Tail into the coin compartment of his billfold.

Before the thief zipped him up, the chief shouted, “Gam zu l’tovah !” This too is for the best!

And that was where Paddy Penny ended his story. The colonel told Paddy that a biker gang pulled into the Eureka gas station and held it up. One of the bikers’ lady friends discovered the two coins on the floor of the restroom. The woman pocketed the colonel and used Ned to purchase a Kotex from the vending machine on the wall.

No one knew how long Ned remained in that Kotex machine. The gas station was on the loneliest road in America, after all. For the colonel, that was the end of Ned Nickel. But for Coinworld, it was just the beginning of the legend of The Four.

Once Pete was freed from the mason jar and re-entered the marketplace—the Indian lad had been saving up for a bicycle—he traveled from hand to hand, pocket to pocket, and cash register to cash register.

Wherever Pete ran into his fellow coinage he inquired if any had ever heard of 4¢ Ned. None had heard of Ned, but increasingly, a penny here or a quarter there, told him that they had heard whispers of a mysterious nickel known as “The Four.”

Pete listened to their wild tales with interest, but he never mentioned his acquaintance with Ned or anything about “palm jumping,” that wondrous transporting ability he had witnessed years back in the Wyoming saloon. That was a cent thrown too far, Pete figured. No one else mentioned it either, and so he began to doubt his own memory.

As the months passed, Pete heard more and more fabulous stories about “The Four.” Coinworld loved the idea that there was a champion among them: a fearless Supercoin capable of amazing feats that transcended the laws of coinage, and who moved within the human world as something other than part of a financial transaction. Pete dismissed most of the stories as third or fourth-hand hearsay, or the wild jabberwocky of coins looking for attention. Coins loved to tell tall tales, after all.

What Pete envied most about the nickel was not the stupendous abilities ascribed to him, but that 4¢ Ned had a purpose above and beyond that in which all coins participated. Pete had always believed that all coinage had a purpose of sorts. As vehicles of commerce and exchange, coins gave people the power to purchase and to lift themselves from poverty. They provided comfort and entertainment. And when used to educate, inspire, or heal—coins ennobled. It was a meaningful life, Pete thought, more so even than that lived by many humans. He shouldn’t complain.

But Ned Nickel had lifted Pete’s eye to new horizons. He wondered if there wasn’t more to Pete Penny than a little copper and zinc, two stalks of wheat, and Mr. Lincoln’s sagacious face. After all, wasn’t every coin inscribed with the same holy words—E PLURIBUS UNUM, IN GOD WE TRUST, and LIBERTY? If Ned Nickel could take those lofty mottos and make something of himself, why couldn’t he?

Those were Pete’s thoughts in lonelier moments, when he found himself separated from his fellow coins for one reason or another.

But not all isolation was the same. Pete always regarded people as interesting and amusing creatures, so even when he spent spells at a time forgotten on a shelf, face-up on a sidewalk, or lost under a bed or the seat of an automobile, he usually had the company of one or more persons to entertain him.

He saw people at their most intimate times, both happy and sad. He laughed at their corny humor and shed little penny tears at their misfortunes, which were as numerous and varied as all the coins in the world. Sometimes he shuddered at their cruelty too, and he often wondered if people would behave a little better if they knew coins were silently applauding their good deeds and frowning at their bad ones.

The months rolled by and eventually Pete landed in the pocket of a chubby, curly-headed, eight-year-old boy named Tommy. Tommy found him on the floor near the pinball machines in a bowling alley in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

“A lucky penny!” Tommy proclaimed. Upon closer inspection, his smile sagged into a frown. “Boy, what happened to you? Rough life, huh?”

The boy stuck Pete into the small coin pocket of his jeans, and then he promptly forgot about him. Two passes through the wash later, and looking a tad better for it, Tommy rediscovered Pete one fateful Saturday morning while walking with his father towards the entrance of the Philadelphia Convention Hall.