Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

Here’s the church, here’s the steeple , he mused. Open it up, where are the people? Across the street in the bar. Open it up, there they are.

Elbow to elbow with some old boys at lunch. The man next to him finished up and left, and a sot dropped in at Pete’s side, alcohol fumes pouring off him. The bartender set both palms on the bar and asked the drunk did he want him to come out from behind the bar or did the drunk want to leave of his own volition. The man drew a circle on the bar with his finger, pounded it with a fist by way of a hex, and spun off his stool and out the door.

Pete held up his beer glass.

The bartender returned with a fresh lager mildly bubbling. Pete dug crushed bills and coin money from his jeans. Counted out the amount with his index finger, stopped and picked up a quarter. There was a hole bored through Washington’s temple.

“You seen these?” Pete asked. “I got a bunch of these with holes in ’em at home.”

“May I?”

Pete slid it over, and the bartender held it up, handed the coin back to Pete, and went and said something to a fellow a couple barstools down. An old boy leaned forward to get a look at Pete, then rose from his stool and waddled over, removing a tucked-in napkin from his plaid shirt.

“This is Gene,” the bartender said.

“Can I see?” the man asked.

Pete handed the coin over. The man held it up to the neon light on the window and squinted at it. He showed some feature of the coin to the bartender. They murmured like a pair of diamond merchants.

“Give you three dollars for it,” the man said.

Pete laughed.

“It’s a quarter.”

The man set the shot-through quarter on the counter and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. Three old dollar bills that fell over his fingers like pieces of faded denim.

Pete covered the coin with his palm.

“Well, let’s just hold on,” he said. “You start out at three, maybe I can get you up to five.”

The man sighed out his nose and had a little trouble negotiating the old dollars back into his wallet.

“I’m just joshing.” Pete slid the coin toward Gene. “You can have it.”

When Pete wouldn’t take the man’s three dollars, he handed them to the bartender for Pete’s tab. He removed a small cloth pouch from his jeans, and dropped the coin inside.

“How many of those you have?” Pete asked.

The bartender and Gene shared a quick knowing glance, and then Gene emptied the little sack onto the bar. Dimes, nickels, pennies, quarters, all of them shot through.

“That’s about eight bucks in broken money,” Pete said.

“I’m of the opinion that these are a warning.”

“A warning of what?”

The man scooped the coins back into the pouch.

“Trouble.”

“From?”

The man looked up from the pouch at Pete.

“The man who made them.”

“Who’s that?”

“Goes by the name of Pearl.”

“Not a Jeremiah Pearl,” Pete said.

“You met him too?”

“Yeah. For my work.”

“Me too.”

“No shit.”

The man nodded, exchanged another silent communication with the bartender.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Pete asked.

Gene pulled closed the pouch, said maybe they should go to his shop instead.

The early afternoon light swept in the open door and then the fluorescents lit the place in full. A rack of leather jackets, stacks of speakers and stereo components and turntables, a display case of bone-handled knives. One wall was given to taxidermy, deer and whole foxes in posed dioramas with dusty eyes and spiderwebbing among the antlers. There were scimitars. Columns of paperbacks. A Nazi flag among other flags.

Gene explained that he’d been in the pawn business thirty years, inherited the building from an uncle. He ducked into a back room, returned grunting with several large plastic tomes, which thudded on the glass.

“What are these?” Pete asked.

The pawnbroker loped out from behind the register with his key and locked the front door, and pulled the roller blind all the way down. He took a stool behind the counter. He looked mildly insane. He had the same strange gray eyes of certain huskies or goats. He explained to Pete that he’d already told all of what he was about to say to the local cops, but that nothing had come of it.

PEARL HAD FIRST COME in the summer last. Not looking too hot, neither. The beard on him blown out and thatched with bits of leaves and sticks like he’d just crawled out of the brush. It’d be no surprise to hear chirping issue from it. Pearl was got up in a black outfit that on inspection was a dark medley of filthy flannel shirts, denim pants, and a leather or canvas coat, you could not tell. Boots black and black laces too. The pawnbroker could smell him when he opened the door, a pungency of smoke, and up close stinking like an outhouse.

“Was his boy with him?”

“Outside. He come in once to say he saw a police car, and what did he want the kid to do should the cop come back. His old man told him to wait inside by the door.”

“How’d the kid look?”

“Compared to the old man, about near a regular human being.”

“His clothes? You mind if I write this down?”

Gene nodded it was fine, and Pete pulled his small notepad from his jacket. Helped himself to a pen from a cup on the glass display case.

“The clothes was probably cut down for him. Big baggy man-pants cinched up with a belt, you know. He had on a down vest, I remember. One of them thermal underwear shirts. He looked okay, I guess.”

THE PAWNBROKER TELLS. Pete writes. That Pearl looks at the coins in the cases and not seeing what he wants, asks does the pawnbroker have any buffalo nickels. Gene fetches out a box of them he has in a drawer, more valuable coins than those under the glass. Gene sets the box on the counter and Pearl paws through the coins, nodding. Pleased. Asks does he have any more. Gene says nah, but they aren’t too rare. That Pearl can go into any pawnshop, there’s probably a box under the counter just like this one.

Pearl says he’ll take them, but only if Gene gets some more. Says he can’t be going around to pawnshops all over the place.

“What did you say?”

“I say, Sure, fine, whatever . He’s stinking up the place. I just want him out.”

“I see.”

“But here’s the queer part: he pays in gold. From a little satchel of Krugerrands and Canadian Maple Leafs.”

“He doesn’t have any cash.”

“He don’t want any cash. Won’t let me make change on the Krugerrands.”

“What’s he say?”

“That he’ll take his change in buffalo nickels. When I get more.”

“And it’s weird to trade rare gold coins for less rare buffalo nickels?”

“Yes.”

“He give a reason?”

“Well, hold on and let me get to it.”

“Sorry.”

PEARL’S BACK A FEW weeks later. Gene has another box of buffalo nickels he’s managed to pick up. No kid this time, Gene doesn’t ask. Pearl doesn’t reek as bad or maybe Gene’s just expecting it. But this round it’s like Pearl’s had a couple pots of coffee. Pacing around the place, idly fingering the pawnbroker’s wares, expounding. About money. The history of money. Starts all the way back at the Byzant, the original gold coin. Does the pawnbroker realize how much gold in circulation is as old as that Byzantine coinage, Spanish doubloons, Aztec sovereigns. Imagine this. Seems to wait to see if the pawnbroker does, in fact, imagine it.

Does the pawnbroker realize that no metal has such little real application as gold? Unless you count the generation of greed an application.

The pawnbroker says to him, I thought you were here for buffalo nickels.