The Last Coin

by James P. Blaylock

  His hesitation made Pennyman tired, it seemed, and he couldn’t wait any longer for Andrew to fire a shot. He produced a penny from his shirt pocket, held it up in front of Andrew’s face, canted his head at it, and dropped it neatly into the bowl of his pipe, nearly covering the glowing coal. Andrew waited, wondering what in the world the man had in mind. Pennyman winked, and just as he did the penny caught fire—flared up just for an instant, then died, then seemed to be consumed into the tobacco. The penny had disappeared. Pennyman removed his pipe and bowed, acknowledging himself the winner.

  Andrew, being gallant, shook his hand regretfully, secretly seething at being taken in by the burning penny trick. Obviously it was a cheap gag bought for fifty cents in a joke shop—a penny pressed out of dry, copper-colored tobacco. That’s why he’d had it in his coat pocket instead of his pants pocket—so that it wouldn’t be crushed. Pennyman probably had a whole handful of such pennies that he hauled out and burned in his pipe to impress strangers and influence competitors in the world of import and export. He’d probably bought them in the Orient when he’d tired of learning to fold paper.

  “You’re a good sport,” said Pennyman, slapping his knee and settling back into the chair. “You’re—what?—playful. I like that in a man. You don’t find it often. Everyone’s so damned serious.” And he growled this last word out in order to make fun of it, then tamped his pipe and relit it, blowing an enormous billow of smoke toward the porch roof. “You’ve traveled, haven’t you?”

  “Well,” said Andrew, fuming, “not extensively. To the midwest. Or rather from the midwest. I spent some time in Canada, too. Rose and I manage to get away to San Francisco sometimes. We love San Francisco.”

  Pennyman nodded. “I have contacts in Chinatown. I’ve spent some time there myself. You haven’t been off the continent, though?”

  “Not besides Canada …” Andrew began. Then he stopped, catching himself in a stupidity and inwardly blanching. “No. I’d like to, of course, but, with the inn and all …”

  “How true.” Pennyman sighed. “You have a European air about you, actually. That’s why I asked. It’s the casual cut of your trousers, perhaps. Reminds one of the Provinces—vineyards, cobbled streets, bent old men in backyard gardens. Or, no, this is it—of the Mediterranean. Greek fishermen.” He paused and shook his head sadly, as if remembering. Then, in an inflated tone, he said, “ ‘I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.’ ” He squinted at Andrew silently, assessing him. Andrew considered poking him in the eye. Pennyman sat back with the air of a successful man, a man who has expressed himself tolerably well. “And your hair—that tousled look. Do you do that on purpose? I mean, is it contrived? It’s so … so … well, you. Do you follow me?”

  “Not entirely. No. I just don’t comb it, that’s all. Waste of time, combing hair.” He meant this last bit to sting, but even as he said it it sounded like a petty insult. Whatever game they were playing on the porch, Andrew was losing, and he knew it.

  “I mean to say that few men would have, well, the guts that it takes to wear their hair like that. That’s all. I admire the hell out of that. Blast the world! What does it know?” He shook his head again and stared at the floorboards of the porch, and his look seemed to say that he’d found out this truth too late in life, that his manicured nails and sculpted beard were nothing but vanity, nothing but a childish fear of letting himself go.

  Andrew saw through the whole despicable charade. There was nothing in Pennyman’s chatter, though, that would justify Andrew’s hitting him—bonking him on the conk. Or even of outright insulting him. Pennyman suddenly cheered up, as if he’d just then remembered where he’d left a twenty-dollar bill that he’d thought he’d lost, or as if he’d forgotten his name and it had just come to him in a flash. He produced a quarter again. “One more,” he said, waving it in the air. “Wait. Let’s be sporting about this. I’ll bet you a dollar that you can’t pull this one off, and as a handicap, I’ll let you watch the trick first. If you want to have a go at it, then we’ll both ante up a dollar. If you think you can’t hack it, we’re quits. What do you say?”

  “Go,” said Andrew, who, with fourteen hundred of Aunt Naomi’s dollars in his wallet, could afford to lose one. And he was clever enough at coin tricks. He’d take Pennyman’s money and walk away singing.

  Pinning the quarter flatwise between both forefingers, Pennyman pressed the edge of it dead center on his forehead, right at his hairline, and then, with his fingers acting like axles, he rolled the quarter down over his nose, across his lips and down his chin. That was it—a manual dexterity trick. Pennyman half stood up and dropped the quarter into his trouser pocket.

  “You’re on,” said Andrew, fishing out a dollar.

  Pennyman pulled a bill out of his shirt pocket, waved it, then thrust it back in, as if to imply that he was certain it would stay there, and that in a moment Andrew’s would keep it company. “Have one of mine,” he said, producing yet another quarter from his coat pocket and handing it to Andrew, who pinned it at once between his fingers, jammed it against his forehead, and rolled it down his face slowly. Just like that, right off the end of his chin. He could have driven it down into the collar of his shirt if he’d wanted to, and he gave Pennyman a look that seemed to say so. Pennyman frowned and shrugged, then handed across his dollar. “It’s not many people can do that,” he said. “You’ve got a steady hand, sir; a steady hand.”

  “Look,” said Andrew suddenly, staring at Pennyman’s quarter, which he still held, “it’s silver. Don’t lose it.”

  “Is it?” asked Pennyman, acting astonished. “Well I’ll be damned …” He held it out so that the dim porch light glinted off the curve of George Washington’s head. “Would you look at that? How much is it worth, do you suppose, a dollar?”

  “I’d suppose,” said Andrew, shrugging. “Something like that.”

  Pennyman widened his eyes in mock astonishment. “Imagine,” he said. “A whole dollar.” He put the coin away, sat back, and smiled, as if the smile were meant to suggest that it was Andrew’s turn to dream up the next bit of front porch sport.

  Andrew caught sight of the newspaper just then. Partly visible beneath the origami fish was the ad about the treasure hunt. He picked it up and read it, swearing that he wouldn’t say another word to Pennyman until Pennyman said something to him—something civil. He could find nothing in the ad that explained the real purpose of the hunt. It was some sort of promotional gimmick, apparently. A charity of some sort, based locally, had leased the farmland for a night. Ah, there it was—the fine print. It would cost five dollars for adults, three for children. How many cars, full of people, would drive up, spades thrusting out of tied-down trunks, only to discover that they had to pay to dig for treasure, that they could dump all the five dollars and the three dollars in a box and have their own treasure without dirtying their hands? But it would be too late for them. They’d have to pay, or their children, intent upon digging gold in the moonlight, would wail the tops off their parents’ cars.

  It seemed the money was going to a good cause, though, although what that cause was the ad in no way made clear. It had slightly liberal political overtones—world hunger, world peace, world sanity—all too nebulous to define clearly.

  “What do you make of that?” asked Pennyman suddenly, startling Andrew into dropping the paper.

  “What? I mean, I don’t know. Looks like fun, I suppose, digging treasures and all. Just the sort of thing I’d have liked as a child.”

  “I knew it when I saw it. I said to myself, here’s something that Andrew Vanbergen would appreciate. It would appeal to …” He stopped and smiled. “I bet you read Stevenson, don’t you?”

  Andrew nodded, wondering what would follow.

  “I knew it. Treasure Island. I read it when I was thirteen. I was attracted to his essays, too, as a boy. Nothing brilliant in them. I can see that now. But they shined when I was a lad. All that adventurous optim
ism and moody reflection. Playing at soldiers with wooden swords—that’s what his writing always reminded me of. Yes indeed. All style though. Not much substance. Great for children. To hell with substance, in fact. Let’s ban it. Let’s all read boys’ books again and go off pirating, eh?” He nodded his head vigorously, then broke into a snatch of piratical talk, saying “aargh,” afterward, which, if Rose hadn’t shouted just then from the kitchen, might have cost Pennyman his life. Seething and grinning past his teeth, Andrew nodded at him and walked away into the house muttering, leaving him there.

  He obligingly flipped off the front porch light so that Pennyman could do all the wombing and tombing he wanted. The man had figured out, somehow, that Andrew was keen on going to the treasure hunt. How he’d figured it was impossible to say, but he’d purposefully been making sport of him, that was sure. All that talk of adventure and tousled hair. The idiot. Nothing brilliant! No matter that most of it happened to be true and that Pennyman was full of lies and falseness. That’s why Pennyman despised it. That’s why he despised Andrew, for that matter. The truth always appeared despicable to the eyes of someone inherently false. Well to hell with him! The man wouldn’t frighten him away from the treasure hunt. Andrew would be there and would take Pickett along. He’d talk Rose into going, by God. They’d bring a midnight lunch, a bottle of wine. Cheese. Smoked oysters. Sardines. Baskets of strawberries.

  “What?” asked Rose. “Run this plate up to Aunt Naomi, will you? Mrs. Gummidge has gone out.”

  “Yes. Nothing. I was just talking out loud.”

  “Sounded like you said something about oysters. Remember when we had that picnic on the bluffs in Mendocino and ate smoked oysters and chocolate?”

  “Yes,” said Andrew, smiling. “You liked that. You were happy then.”

  “I’m happy now,” she said, then stopped, looking at him as if puzzled. “What’s that on your face?”

  “What? On my face?”

  “Look in the mirror.”

  He peered into the mirror over the kitchen sink. There, running down his forehead and nose and chin, dividing his face evenly in half, was a line of graphite or charcoal dust or something. In an instant it was clear to him—the quarter trick. Pennyman had hoaxed him, had played him for a fool. Pennyman had rubbed the serrated edge of the quarter across a pencil lead, perhaps, then tricked Andrew into rolling it down his face. Andrew would kill the man, he’d … Suddenly he remembered Johnson, smearing through an identical line with a torn napkin at the Potholder. He slumped, wondering what it meant, nearly putting his hand into Aunt Naomi’s chicken.

  “What on earth is wrong?” asked Rose, pulling out a chair.

  Andrew waved her away. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I was shaken to see it, that’s all. I’ve apparently interviewed a man at the chefs’ school in Bellflower while all the time I’ve looked like a fool. Heaven knows what they made of it.”

  “I don’t know quite what to make of it, actually.”

  “It’s nothing. An experiment, that’s all. I was reading psychology. Certain sorts of madmen have faces which are utterly symmetrical. Sane people don’t. There’s subtle differences—one eye squints, maybe, or one cheek angles toward the chin just a hair steeper than the other. But madmen … cut their face in half—or rather a photograph, say—and flop the halves over and … Well. It’s fascinating, really.”

  Rose nodded while he talked, as if she were sympathetic to the notion of cutting photographs of madmen’s faces in half, or whatever it was that Andrew was suggesting be done, and as if she saw very clearly why Andrew, after having come to understand the peculiar facial characteristics of lunatics, had drawn a line down the middle of his own face and gone out on the town. “Naomi’s food is getting cold,” she said, patting him on the arm.

  Andrew started to wipe his face clean with the dish towel, but Rose snatched it away and handed him a paper towel, tucking the dish towel through the handle on the refrigerator door. “I just took it out of the drawer,” she said. “I wish you’d get into the habit of using paper towels instead. It just makes more work using tea towels all the time.”

  “I will,” said Andrew. “I lost my head.” He rubbed away with the paper towel, smearing the line. To hell with it; he had to take a shower anyway. He felt as if he’d been wearing the same clothes for a week. Damn Pennyman. Andrew would work the nailed-nickel trick on him tomorrow—in public. He’d laugh out loud and point; then he’d twist Pennyman’s nose for him and send him packing. They’d do without his stinking two hundred dollars. He gave up and dropped the wadded paper towel onto the countertop, then went back out into the living room, carrying the plate for Aunt Naomi. Inconspicuously, he peered out onto the porch. Pennyman was gone.

  The door to Aunt Naomi’s bedroom was ajar, although the room was dim. Assuming she was awake, Andrew pushed the door farther open with his shoulder and stuck his head in. “Dinner,” he said cheerfully. The bed was empty. Naomi sat in a chair, staring through the little gable window that looked out toward the ocean. There was the muffled boom of waves breaking, punctuated by the footfalls of someone walking on the sidewalk below, but nothing could be seen through the open window except hovering gray mist. A cat rubbed against Andrew’s leg, pretending to be friendly.

  “Chicken a la Rose,” said Andrew, setting the tray down. “And rice, too, and—something. Looks like eggplant, maybe, in little squares.” He smiled at the back of Aunt Naomi’s head, wondering if the woman was alive or had died in her chair. He caught himself inadvertently petting the cat, so he gave it a hard look and stood up. “See anything out there?”

  “Too much fog,” said Aunt Naomi, not turning around. “I love to watch the ocean. I wish there were a widow’s walk on the roof. I’d spend all my time out of doors, watching.”

  “For what?” Andrew asked. “Your ship coming in?”

  “It went down years ago, I’m afraid. But there’s no telling what might be out there waiting. Have you read this business in the newspaper about the whale trying to swim up the Sacramento River? What do they call him—some foolish name. If they understood it they’d laugh out of the other side of their mouth. I wonder where they think he’s going.”

  “I don’t know,” said Andrew, trying to think of something funny to say—some ridiculous destination for the off-course whale. If it was off course. Aunt Naomi didn’t seem to think so. He wasn’t much in a joking mood, though. Somehow the presence of the old lady, staring out into the fog and talking about things lurking in the sea, took the edge off his sense of humor. It occurred to him that in a moment she’d turn around to confront him, her face a grinning skull, like something out of a late-night horror movie.

  She swiveled round suddenly, regarding him strangely, then gasped and half stood up, as if he were the grinning skull. He reached down and flipped on the bedside lamp, but the sight of his illuminated face made her recoil even more, and for a moment he was certain that she was going to topple backward out the window.

  “Who’s done that to you?” she asked.

  Andrew was at a loss. He touched his cheek and shrugged. “Pardon me?” he said. He’d humor her. That’s what he’d do. It was instantly clear to him. She’d gone round the bend. She was seeing things. She looked straight at him and saw—what?—her long-dead husband, perhaps, or Saint Augustine, or her old grammar school principal. He couldn’t deal with this sort of thing at all. He shouldn’t have to. She was Rose’s aunt, after all. He’d get Rose up here. She’d know what to do. She was a marvel in this sort of situation. She’d say it was the ‘possum business, though, that had driven Aunt Naomi crazy. If it was ever discovered that he …

  “The line on your face,” she said. “Who did that to you?”

  The line, thought Andrew. Of course. She hadn’t run mad. “No one did it to me,” he said. “I was reading a book about schizophrenics. Strangely frightening business, really, about symmetrical faces, and …”

  “Books. You weren’t reading books. Someone did
that to you and you don’t have the foggiest notion why. You’re like a child. Tell me. Who was it? It’s smeared, isn’t it? It must be smeared.”

  Andrew was seething again. Who was she to call him a child? She was driven half-wild by his having a line drawn down his nose, and she was calling him a child. But she’d given him two thousand dollars just that morning, hadn’t she? He thought hard about the money in his wallet, about the trunk full of liquor, about the chances of wrestling another thousand or so out of her in a few days, after he’d introduced her to the French chef from Long Beach. It was best not to take offense. Old people as often as not didn’t mean any offense to be taken. And she was right, wasn’t she? “Mr. Pennyman,” he said. “Yes, it’s smeared. I’m just going in now to wash it off.”

  “Pennyman!”

  “That’s right. A little gag of his. A quarter rubbed in pencil dust. Very funny. Kid’s trick, actually. We were horsing around on the porch.”

  “Yes. A silver quarter.”

  Andrew stared at her, washed by an entirely new wave of emotion; nearly drowned in it. “How did you know that?”

  She waved the question away. “I knew it. Stay away from him. Everything he says to you is significant. There’s no such thing as a casual conversation with a man like Pennyman. I know who he is now. Take my word, and steer clear of him. And here,” she said, dipping her napkin into the water glass beside her bed, “see if you can wipe that off.”

  Andrew grinned and took the napkin. Humor her, he thought. Don’t say anything. He rubbed at the line, then looked at the smudged napkin. Peering into the mirror over the dresser, he wiped some more until the mark was gone. He handed the napkin to Aunt Naomi, thanked her, and turned to leave.

  “Wait,” she said, peering at him closely. “Do me a grand favor, will you?”

  “Anything,” he said.

  “Fetch that old silver spoon from the china cupboard. The one Rose calls the pig spoon.”