Disappearance at Devil's Rock (24 page)

Tommy: “But sometimes.”

Arnold smiled. “Right.”

Tommy: “So coincidence is like connecting the dots?”

Arnold shouted, “Yes! Exactly!” He nodded his head and shook a finger at Tommy. “Tommy gets it. I had a feeling you would.”

Tommy laughed a goofy little laugh and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, as though he was drooling. Luis had gone quiet and plucked at the pull tab of his beer.

“Hey, I have something for you guys.” Arnold leaned back on the rock so he could get his hand inside his front jeans pocket. Josh was instantly terrified he was going to pull out a pipe or a joint or something worse, something he'd never consent to trying.

Arnold pulled out a small handful of change. He opened his hand and carefully plucked out a coin and tossed it to Luis.

Luis caught it with two hands. He held the coin close to his face, pinched between two fingers, and examined the front and back. After a thousand and one facial expressions, never settling on one, he asked, “What the hell is this?”

Arnold: “It's a hobo nickel.”

Luis: “A what? Whoa, it's all messed up. Shit—that looks like a zombie face.” He laughed. “It's a zombie face, isn't it?”

Arnold: “Yeah. Not my best work. But at least you can tell what it is.”

Tommy: “Hey, I know what a hobo nickel is.”

Arnold: “I thought you might. You're a coin collector, yeah?”

Tommy scratched his head. “Yeah. Wow. Or I used to be.”

Josh: “Wait. What? Since when?” He looked at Tommy and Tommy didn't really look back. Then to Arnold he said, “And holy shit, how'd do you know that?”

Luis mock-whispered across the back of his hand, “He's the seer . . .
or Tommy said he knew what the fuck a bobo nickel was, so it was a good guess.”

Arnold laughed. “Hobo nickel, dick.”

Luis: “I prefer Ricardo.”

Arnold threw his empty can at him.

Luis: “Not the face!”

Arnold: “Ricardo is partly right, but I guessed Tommy was a collector before today.”

Josh had both hands on top of his head. “But how'd you know? I didn't know?”

Arnold: “Hold on. We'll get to that in a minute—”

Luis: “Awesome. Great. Neat. So someone tell me why hobos are putting zombie heads on nickels?”

Arnold: “You tell 'em.”

Tommy shrugged and said, “People have been, like, etching images on nickels since what, the early 1900s.” He looked at Arnold like he was the teacher and wanted some sign of approval before continuing. “The metal in a nickel is wicked soft and easy to work with and, um, reshape?”

Luis: “Hobos. Is there anything they can't do?”

Tommy: “Yeah. I guess. They'd make them and sell them for food and stuff.”

Arnold: “Yeah, sort of. You know the word
hobo
doesn't mean ‘homeless,' exactly. Or it didn't used to. Ever see a picture or cartoon of a dude carrying a stick slung over his shoulder with like a bag at the end? That's a hobo, and hobos traveled long-distance from job to job. One of the guys, like a roadie, for my uncle, when he like went on tour with his revival tent, told me about the nickels, showed me how to do it, too.”

Josh: “So why do that to the coins?”

Arnold: “Pass the time, mostly. During the train rides between gigs they'd hack away at nickels. And, I don't know, because they could.”

Luis: “You made this?” He held out the zombie-headed nickel.

Arnold: “Yeah.”

Luis: “Where's your stick bag?”

Arnold: “Left it at home.”

Luis: “I'm just kidding. It's really cool. This is for me? Seriously?”

Arnold: “Yeah. Have at it. You're the zombie movie guy, right?”

Luis: “Nice. Thanks. Man, this zombie head looks like something you'd draw, T.” He threw Tommy the nickel.

Arnold: “You like to draw?”

Tommy shrugged. He always shrugged. He passed the coin over to Josh, who had his hand out. He said, “Yeah. A little.”

Josh looked at the nickel quickly, and it did look like one of Tommy's goofy zombies. He said, “Dude, shut up. Tommy draws all the time and he's awesome at it. Like seriously good.”

Luis: “He's fucking great. And he's gonna make famous comics or cartoons someday.”

Tommy hid his head inside his shirt and muffled his voice. “Thanks, but I'm not that good.”

Josh stood up and pointed at Arnold. “Hey, hold on! You didn't know this. You didn't
see
Tommy could draw. What happened?”

What could have been a look of annoyance flashed across Arnold's face. Josh wasn't sure. Arnold said, “Like I told you. I can't and don't see everything.” He picked another coin out of his hand and flicked it over to Josh.

Josh dropped it and the boys hooted and hollered at him as the dark, copper coin rolled around between his legs. It was a penny. And it looked like a normal penny, from the 1950s. “I got it, relax. Bad throw . . .”

Arnold said, “I started your nickel but didn't finish it yet, so you can have this penny. It's pretty sick. See anything weird about it?”

Josh: “No . . . oh, there's a like a big crack across Lincoln's head.”

Arnold: “Right through his forehead, and out the back.” Arnold pointed a finger into the back of his head. “Or maybe it starts in the back and goes out through his head. Kinda of a famous penny. An assassination penny. Get it?”

Josh: “Oh yeah. Shot in the head.” He passed the penny to Tommy right away. Tommy ran a fingertip back and forth across the penny, worrying at the crack in the head.

Josh tapped Tommy's shoulder, just in case he was getting ready to go inside his own head again.

Tommy said, “That's kinda creepy. Somebody carve it, make it look like this?”

Arnold: “No. Probably a crack in the die cast. Happens a lot.”

Tommy: “So weird how it's perfectly through his head like that.”

Arnold smiled. “Totally. Random. Coincidence.” He laughed.

Josh reached out and tapped Tommy's shoulder again. “Hey, since when are you a coin collector?”

Tommy: “I got started in fourth grade. My dad used to collect coins, and my mom decided to give me and Kate what he'd had, and I started adding to it. I didn't get too nuts into it or anything.” He gave the penny back to Josh.

Did Luis know this about Tommy's coin collecting? Probably not, given that Luis had yet to brag that he knew about it. Josh rubbed his finger along the crack in Lincoln's head like Tommy had. He couldn't feel it.

Arnold said, “Yo. Tommy. Don't drop it.” He tossed a coin.

Tommy caught it one-handed. He smiled and said, “Thanks,” in a little, lost voice, that made Josh feel awkward on his behalf.

Josh didn't wait for the coin to be passed over to him. He scooted over next to Tommy and looked over his shoulder. The heads side of the coin had a blank profile of a face and above the face was an oblong eye, very much like the eye on the back of a dollar bill. Even though it wasn't as detailed as the zombie nickel, the simple etching on this coin was more smooth and accomplished.

Arnold: “It was actually tougher to make that one than the zombie one. That one I got to use most of Jefferson's face. Here I had to wipe him out, totally, start over. And that eye was a bitch. Totally worth it though. Looks good, right?”

Tommy said, “It's great. Amazing.”

Arnold: “Do you know what it means?” He talked like there was no one else on the rock, no one else in the park.

Tommy: “No.”

Arnold: “Yeah you do. Think about it. Connect those dots.”

Tommy sat and thought. Tommy was one of those kids you could see think. He said, “So, the person on the coin, is, um, a seer?”

Arnold: “Yeah. You got it. And I'm giving you this coin because I think you're gonna be a seer. A real good one.”

Luis started cracking up. It was loud and fake and he slapped his legs, and Josh loved him for it. Josh and Tommy laughed a little, too.

Josh: “Kid is such a dick.”

Arnold laughed, too, and he sprang up onto his feet and scrambled over to Luis, started dead-arming his shoulder and jamming fingers into his ribs. Luis was still laughing, so was Arnold. Before now, Arnold hadn't made any kind of physical contact with the boys, and it was like a barrier or border had been crossed. Despite the laughter, there was an edge to the play fight, and it carried an all-too-familiar message of dominance, of pecking order.

Arnold shouted, “That's it! Off my rock, Ricardo!”

Luis laughed hard, screamed no, kicked out his legs trying to get his feet under him, and wriggled like a dog that didn't like to be picked up. Arnold had him all bottled up.

Tommy ran over, bear-hugged Arnold from behind, and tried to pull him away. Josh was the last to join the fracas, and he hesitantly grabbed one of Arnold's forearms, which was surprisingly thick with muscle. The wrestling pile broke up, and the three boys scattered to different ends of the rock, Arnold in the middle. Everyone laughing and talking trash, and Arnold went after Josh first. He knew Arnold would go after him first. It didn't take a seer to anticipate that. Josh got low, and leaned a shoulder into Arnold's chest. Arnold overpowered him and slid him back to the edge of the rock like he was nothing more than a garbage barrel being brought to the curb. Josh twisted around so that he faced away from Arnold, and to Josh's horror, his feet were on the edge of the rock and his torso was hanging out over it, leaning way past the tipping point. Arnold said something, a growl, and Josh couldn't make out what he said, and he screamed, “No!” at the moment when he was sure he would fall into the rocks that were twenty feet below him, his frenzied brain going into emergency planning, mapping out where to put his hands and feet when he landed to minimize damage. But he didn't fall off the rock, he stumbled backward away from the edge. He wasn't sure if Arnold had pulled him back or had simply left him to go battle Luis and Tommy again.

Josh sat down next to his backpack. He had a bloody raspberry on his knee. He didn't remember scraping it on the rock. For the second time that afternoon he fought back tears. He opened the second-to-last beer and took a sip. He still hated it so much.

Multiple voices shouted, “Okay,” and “All right,” and someone announced that it was, “Too fuckin' hot for this shit,” and then the wrestling match was over. The other boys returned to their corners,
laughing and saying
ow
, and proudly describing their future badges of honor, where they had scrapes and would have bruises.

Tommy walked past Josh and gave him that sad, sheepish smile that said,
We'll be all right
. He sat down next to Josh, pulled out the seer coin from his pocket, and said, “This is really cool, thanks, man.”

Arnold was still breathing heavy from the wrestling match. He brushed off his arms and T-shirt. He said, “Add it to the collection.”

Tommy: “I will. But—”

Arnold: “But what?”

Tommy: “I'm not a seer. I don't even think I'd want to be one.”

Arnold: “I can't help you with the last part. But you are. Hey, let's try it out, yeah?”

Tommy: “Try what out?”

Arnold: “You seeing.”

Tommy: “How?”

Arnold: “You're going to tell me how I knew you were a coin collector.”

Luis: “I know! I know! You were dropped on your head as a baby and it gave you superpowers.”

Arnold gave him the finger and said, “Seriously, Tommy. Think about it. And tell me. You can totally do it.”

Luis: “Yeah, bruh, let's hear it!”

They all watched Tommy, and nothing in the world could've possibly made him more uncomfortable. Josh wanted to tell Arnold to leave him alone and for Luis to stop staring, but Josh couldn't help but stare, too. Tommy fidgeted, rocked in place, looked around like he wanted to make a break for it, but then he slumped, a prisoner resigned to no hope of escape.

They waited for him to say something. They waited for a while. Tommy finally picked up his head and looked Arnold straight on. He never looked at you straight on, not with a serious look, anyway. Ev
erything was a glance, a shy smirk, or a look from the side, or slightly tilted. He said, “That second time we met you at the 7-Eleven. You gave me five bucks and I got a Twix for me and an energy drink. After I paid, I walked back out and was looking through the change. I did it quick, but I remember checking a few dates, like maybe there was an old coin or something in there. You joked if I was keeping the change. That's it. Right? Only a coin collector looks hard at his change like I did.”

Josh had never heard Tommy talk like that before. He sounded how most adults sounded to him; measured, guarded, but oddly confident, as though they believed in what they were saying more than they believed in themselves, and it sounded sad, too, because the truth always had negative implications, and underneath, a sense of there being more than what was actually said.

Arnold said, “Goddamn, you nailed it, T-money.” He laughed. No one else did.

Tommy exhaled, like he was exhausted.

Josh looked at his bloody knee, which had started to sting and throb, and said, “Come on. That's not seeing. That's, what, remembering, and, I don't know. It's—”

Luis jumped in with “—deduction.”

Josh: “Right. Yeah. What he said.”

Arnold waved his hands at us like they couldn't possibly be more wrong. “That's how seeing starts, boys. You gotta make those first connections. It takes a little work to find how those early coincidences aren't so coincidental, and then—then you're able to do it enough and it all opens up for you.”

No one had an answer for that. Josh thought he made sense and wasn't making sense at the same time. He tried to do as Arnold said. He tried to connect the dots as to where Arnold came from and why Arnold would hang out with them, three unpopular eighth-graders-
to-be. Josh got up and sat with his back against the gnarly tree and quickly poured out some of his beer behind him.