The Seventeenth Swap (4 page)

“Well, if it isn't my pal Eric,” said Mr. Lee, coming around the half-wall from the rear of the shop, leaving the machine panting like a big, noisy dog with its tongue lolling out and its tail thumping. He was a short, wiry man with big hands and black curly hair going a little thin in front. “What'll it be, more shoelaces already?”

“No, I was just wanting to ask you something—about your cigar boxes that you showed me once. Did you ever have any
tin
ones? Or do you only like the wood kind?”

“Tin ones?” Mr. Lee's dark eyes got the little spark in them that meant he was interested. “You don't mean Between the Acts? Little flat hinged box, gold-colored, about so square, with six holes in a circle in the bottom, red lid with black lettering, light blue revenue stamp?”

“I'm not sure about the holes,” said Eric, trying to visualize Angel's box. “I only saw it for a minute, and it was full of cocktail picks.”

“Full of
cocktail picks?
” echoed Mr. Lee with a bark of laughter.

Eric explained Angel's use of the box. “She said she found it at her Grandpa's.”

“I'll bet she did. In the attic at that. Those boxes went out just about the time I was cutting my teeth. Second World War stuff. What d'you think she'd take for it? Now, don't say cocktail picks.” Mr. Lee held
up a palm. “I'm not a drinking man and if I was I wouldn't set foot inside any rip-off cocktail bar.”

“Would you pay money for that kind of box?” asked Eric, holding his breath.

Mr. Lee thought about that a minute. “Would she take a dollar-fifty?” he asked Eric.

Eric's expectations deflated. “I don't know.”

“They're not worth more'n two bucks according to the list books—trouble is, I never yet come across one to buy. Tell you what—I'll give her better'n that in work. She need any shoes reheeled?”

“I guess not. She always wears tennis shoes, same as me.” Eric sighed. “She might not want to give that box up anyway. I tried to get it for you yesterday and she wouldn't listen.”

The little spark came back into Mr. Lee's eyes and became a fanatical little light. He drummed on the counter with his stubby, work-grained fingers. “Listen, Eric. Talk to her, will you? Sound her out. I won't deny I'd like to have that box.”

“She
usually does the talking,” said Eric doubtfully. “But I'll try.” He turned to go, then whirled back. “Oh, I nearly forgot. Mr. Lee, have you got any little scrap of new leather you'd give me? Or an old shoe-polishing rag?”

“An old—?” Mr. Lee chuckled and muttered, “What next, boy?” but after a moment's thought he headed for his workbench behind the partition. He came back with a thick curl of shoe-sole like the trimming from a giant fingernail, and an aromatic dirty rag. “There you are—you can have 'em if you'll tell me what you want with 'em.”

“I've got a friend who collects smells,” Eric
explained, and left the shop with Mr. Lee's crack of laughter following him.

He was getting hungry. A stop at Mulvaney's might fix that, besides producing more information. He crossed the street at the corner by the bike store, slowing as he passed to run a connoisseur's eye over the window-ful of shiny new Schwinns and racers, then walked into the covered shopping mall and through the big automatic sliding doors of the supermarket at its far end. His dad was filling in at Number Three checkstand, as he often did during the periodic little rushes when the handful of shoppers unhurriedly wandering the store simultaneously completed their purchases and became an impatient crowd lined up with loaded baskets. There was only one customer left at Number Three. As Mr. Greene waited for the computer-register to calculate the charges, he spotted Eric and raised a beckoning finger.

Eric hung around the Daily Special display—canned smoked oysters,
yuck
—until the customer departed with the box boy at her heels, and his dad turned off the Number Three light and joined him. Reaching into the pocket of his green cotton jacket, he produced a Canadian dime and a buffalo nickel, which he flipped to Eric with a smile.

Whenever Dad worked the checkstand he kept an eye out for oddball coins, replaced them in the cash register with ordinary ones of his own, and brought the funny ones home to Eric, who took them to Mrs. Panek next time he thought of it. Mrs. Panek's brother was a disabled veteran of the Korean war, who lived with her in the cramped rooms back of the little newspaper-magazine-card-and-candy shop created from
one of the old houses on Heron Street just up from the post office. He collected coins.

“Maybe I'll walk up to the Paneks' now. Only—is it okay if I dump my books here while I'm gone?” Eric asked his father.

“If Marvin says so.”

Marvin wouldn't mind. Giving a heave to his bulging ring binder and three outside reading library books, which were becoming a real drag to cart around, Eric headed through the bins and fruity pyramids of the produce department to the swinging doors at the rear of the store. Beyond them, in a cement-floored area stacked with boxes and untidy with vegetable trimmings, Marvin was unloading crated lettuces from a truck backed up to the open bay, and exchanging jocular insults with the driver. They had to yell over the throttled-down blare of rock music coming from the little radio on a shelf. Eric set his books down in a safe corner, unkinked his shoulders with relief, and glanced, he hoped not too obviously, toward the broad wooden counters flanking the sink, where discards were set aside.

“Them Golden Delicious got to be throwed out,” Marvin called helpfully, swinging a final crate to the floor and waving all-clear to the driver. As the truck's motor roared, he sent the big door rattling along its rails and came toward Eric, wiping his hands on his apron front. He still looked more like a high school linebacker than a department manager, to Eric's prejudiced eye, but the bitter resentment he'd felt at first on his dad's account had given way to a grudging admission of Marvin's competence, and finally to a reluctant liking. You just couldn't stay mad at
somebody as big as a moose and friendly as a cocker spaniel. “Go ahead,” he was urging Eric now, pushing one of the big knives toward him. “Take a couple apples—just trim them bruises off. Want a limp carrot?” He was already scrubbing one under the tap. “How's school going? Learn any new jaw-breaker words today?”

“ ‘Metaphorically',” and ‘lackadaisical',” Eric reported, slicing off the crushed end and biting into his first apple. He pulled his Language Arts word list out of his ring binder and handed it over in exchange for the carrot.

“Wowee!” Marvin exclaimed, holding it gingerly in wet hands and shaking his head over it. “How about that ‘reprehensible'! What's that mean?”

Eric only grinned and ate his apple. Marvin had great dramatic gifts. His speech might sound like the locker room, but Eric happened to know he'd graduated from Iron Mountain High with honors.

“Marvin,” he said when he'd returned the list to his notebook and started on his carrot. “Do you know anybody who collects rocks? Good ones, I mean. Like thundereggs.”

“A rock hound, hm? No, I guess not. I know somebody collects campaign buttons—that do you any good?”

“What're they?”

“You know—them big round things you pin on your lapel that say ‘Joe Blow for Mayor.' Stuff like that. They're all over the place in election years. Old Jake, in the meat department, he's got 'em clean back to the first Roosevelt campaign. Must have hunnerds.”

“You mean Mr. Forrester?” Eric said in some awe. He had never heard the formidable head butcher
referred to in any less respectful terms. “D'you think he'd pay money for one, if I could find a good one?”

“Depends how good it is—and whether he's already got one like it. I'll tell you one thing, though.” Marvin started wrenching lettuce crates open. “People'll pay money for just about anything—so long as they want it bad enough.”

He heaved an opened crate onto a shopping basket, and whistling expertly along with the rock band, bumped the swinging doors open and went through. Eric followed, waved goodbye to him at the lettuce bin, and started out of the store. He was intercepted once more by his father, now stamping prices on canned goods at the top of Aisle D.

“Might as well get my newspaper while you're at it,” he told Eric, digging a handful of coins from his pocket and selecting a quarter. Then with a closer look, he picked out a penny, too. “Must've come by this one honest,” he said with a grin as he handed both coins to Eric.

“Wow, thanks!” Eric said, and went on his way, studying the penny. It was the kind with wheat on the reverse—Mrs. Panek's brother liked those. He'd probably like the nickel and the Canadian dime, too. He liked nearly anything. “It gives him something to do,” Mrs. Panek always explained sorrowfully.

Until today, Eric had always just swapped Dad's funny coins to her for other ordinary ones, sometimes receiving a candy bar as a bonus.

Today, for the first time, it occurred to him that a wheat-sheaf penny might be worth more than just one cent. Lots, lots more. Coins were like stamps—the rare ones brought big prices. The wheat-sheaf ones
hadn't been made since the early 1940s, Dad had said so. After that they'd made them out of zinc—for just one year, 1942 or '43, Eric could never remember which—but it was Dad's birth year. He always said he was born in the year of the zinc penny.

Eric wondered suddenly—with a sinking feeling—if he'd ever handed over a
zinc
penny to Mrs. Panek for just one cent. Mrs. Panek wouldn't have noticed—she knew no more about coins than he did, mainly that some were odd and most were not. But her brother would know, all right. The zinc ones
must
be scarce if they'd made so few of them. Just one might be worth the whole price of the boots.

The very thought made him hurry, though he had no idea what he'd do about it if he
had
let go of a fortune without realizing it. Maybe Frank—that was Mrs. Panek's brother—would at least give the penny back to him, so he could take it to a coin shop to sell. But maybe Frank had sold it himself by now. Maybe for twenty or thirty dollars. Maybe . . .

He had got about that far when he ran up the four rebuilt steps and past the newspaper-vending rack to the door. It wasn't like any other door he went through regularly, being carved and ornamented under its layers of smart blue paint, and set with a pane of glass etched with the picture of a deer in a forest. Mrs. Panek was behind the counter, bent over to get out a pack of cigarettes for her customer, a man in a gray running suit. When she straightened up, she was half a head taller than he was.

“You shouldn't, really,” she told him sorrowfully—she nearly always sounded sorrowful about things. “They're so bad for you.”

The man gave her a faintly startled look, muttered, “Yeah, I'm gonna quit one of these days,” and jogged out of the shop and away, pocketing his cigarettes.

“Now, I hope he means that,” Mrs. Panek said with a sigh. “Eric, honey, what'll it be for you today?”

Eric dug in his pocket for the Canadian dime, the buffalo nickel, and the wheat-sheaf penny. “I brought your brother some coins, and—and I—wanted to ask him a question.”

“Why, sure. Lemme see if he's waked up from his nap yet. He hasn't been too perky, last few days, I dunno what it is; this weather, maybe . . .”

As she spoke, she edged through the curtained doorway behind her, her hips nearly touching at both sides. She was shaped exactly like a mammoth pear on legs. Eric waited, staring around the familiar little shop with its revolving card rack, its opened cartons of candy bars in the glass case, its stack of
Wall Street Journals
on the counter weighted with an old metal thing that looked like an iron without a handle. He was already feeling ashamed of himself for even imagining that Frank might have cheated him. He'd probably never even brought a zinc penny in here, and if he had—

“He's awake,” said Mrs. Panek, reappearing. “You go right on back, honey, and take him your coins. Watch out for the mousetraps—I got 'em all over the place. Pesky things steal my bait if I use cheese, and won't touch it when it's bacon. Frank says I'd ought to get a cat, but I don't know, some cats are lazy, and the toms, they prowl . . .”

Leaving her to argue it out with herself, Eric slipped past the end of the counter and between the
drooping, dusty-smelling curtains, and walked down the narrow passage to the sitting room at the back, which always reminded him of a sort of cozy, overstuffed nest. Mrs. Panek had moved Frank here when her husband died, trading her walnut orchard for this house and business, leaving behind ten rooms, a barn, and fifty years of memories, but almost none of her possessions. Consequently this room was full of everything—two or three of everything. Every surface was crowded with objects, every wall with pictures, and there were several little rugs on top of the big one.

Frank sat hunched in his usual armchair, with one of his coin books open across his knees. He was a big, gaunt man with skeletal hands, but his eyes were lively. He peered up at Eric from under his eyebrows—his back wouldn't straighten, hadn't for thirty-two years—and smiled a greeting.

“Set down, set down. Sis says you got me another good penny,” he said in his funny wavery voice.

“Couple of other things too.” Eric handed him the coins, sat on the end of the sofa where there weren't any little pillows, and watched him as he held his magnifying glass over the penny, murmuring, “Good. Nineteen forty. I need that,” and nodded in a satisfied way over the others.

Eric cleared his throat. “That book you've got there—does that tell you stuff about what coins are worth? I mean certain ones?”