The Last Coin (30 page)

“Won’t steal your car, will he?” asked Andrew, grinning.

Uncle Arthur looked at him blankly. “Coffee?” he asked.

“Yes indeed,” said Pickett. “I’ll take a cup.”

Uncle Arthur regarded Andrew again, seeming to see him for the first time. “Aren’t you the nephew?” he asked.

“That’s right. Rose’s husband. Naomi’s nephew-in-law.”

“That’s just what you are. Of course. And you must be Spigot.”

“Pickett, sir. Beams Pickett. We met some months back, I think. On the pier.”

“Ah.” Uncle Arthur stared as if in disbelief at Pickett’s face.

“I remember the mustache.” He grimaced. “You were bent over cleaning a halibut, I recall, almost upside down. It looked as if your mouth were in your forehead for a moment, and that you had an inconceivable head of hair underneath it. Then I saw my mistake. It was a mustache after all. Fancy a mustache. Grotesque notion. Do you know that in my day they patented a device for burning off beards and mustaches?”

Pickett blinked, his hand going inadvertently to his face. “Did they?”

“A mechanical device. Reduced them to ash. Touted as the end to razors. It was a miracle of the future.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Pickett.

Uncle Arthur gazed at him, as if he suddenly supposed that Pickett
did
doubt it. “I sold them. Door to door. It wasn’t like vacuum cleaners. There was no live demonstration. Just a patented dummy. Head was stuffed with hair. You’d pull out a beard’s worth through holes poked in his chin, apply the machine to it, and immolate the beard. Made a terrible stink. That was what got in the way of sales. Set the dummy on fire once.”

“Huh,” said Pickett sympathetically, stepping into the living room of Uncle Arthur’s townhouse. It smelled like a barn. Arthur turned to Andrew, winked broadly, and jerked his thumb in Pickett’s direction. Andrew was mystified. He had no idea on earth whether the old man was playacting or was cockeyed with age. There was an atmosphere of shrewdness behind his eyes, of tired knowledge that gave the lie to the senility business. Andrew had faith in his own ability to read another man’s eyes. And Uncle Arthur’s talk wasn’t so very odd, either. It often seemed so because of the old man’s leaping from one bit of conversation to another; as if as soon as you broached a subject he would play the coming exchange through in his mind in an instant, and then leap ahead to some distant point, or some tangentially related subject. And there hadn’t been anything the least bit off-key about Uncle Arthur when he’d appeared at Moneywort’s shop. He hadn’t been engaged then in loony pursuits; on the contrary. It was his baffling activities, more than anything else, that made people wonder about him.

“Excuse me for having forgotten,” said Pickett, “but I’m confused about
your
name.”

“Arthur,” said Uncle Arthur, looking as if Pickett were insane.

“Arthur … ?”

“Eastman.”

“Ah, of course. Eastman. Somehow I had it mixed up with another name. What was it Andrew? It was you who told me, wasn’t it? When we were chatting about the old days, back in Iowa. I can’t quite get it Lique-something. That can’t have been it.”

“Laquedem,” said Uncle Arthur. “That was a good long time ago. I’ve anglicized it just a little.”

There was a scuffling back toward the hallway. Both Andrew and Pickett turned around, and there was another tortoise, bigger than the first, wandering out of the bedroom. Someone had painted a landscape scene onto its shell. Behind it was yet another, nosing along the light green carpet, thinking, perhaps, that the carpet ought to be edible, and that if he nosed around long enough he would find a patch that was.

Uncle Arthur stepped away toward the kitchen, and so Pickett, as if seeing his chance, slipped off down the hall. Following along, Andrew found himself in Uncle Arthur’s almost-empty bedroom. In it was an ancient pine table, tilted on wobbly legs, and an old straight-back chair that must have been almost inhumanly uncomfortable. In the center of the room lay a bed—an oversize cot. It might easily have been the room of a hermit. A third turtle peeked out at them from under the bed. There were two bits of ornament in the room: a short length of hempen rope hanging on the wall, so old and so fragile-seeming that it might have crumbled to bits at the slamming of a door. It was looped around and tied into a noose. And then over the bed, strung by more rope, were two old, earthy ploughshares, crossed and hanging from the ceiling.

Pickett glanced around nervously, seeming to Andrew to be looking for something telling. “This is a crime,” he whispered to Andrew, who shrugged.

“He likes it this way,” said Andrew. “He used to sleep on a gunnysack filled with coconut fiber, but Aunt Naomi made him switch to the cot. It was his only concession to comfort, as if he’s trying to expiate some monstrous guilt or sin. Part of his nuttiness if you ask me.”

“I don’t buy that,” Pickett said. “I don’t hold with nuttiness. There’s always something more behind it.”

The turtle came creeping out just then, angling toward Pickett’s shoe. Andrew leaned down to pet it, just as Uncle Arthur shuffled in bearing a coffee cup.

“They’re everywhere,” said the old man, gesturing tiredly. “Don’t mind them. They won’t hurt you. Did either of you know that squids, of all creatures except pigs, have the highest degree of innate intelligence?”

Pickett shook his head, accepting the cup of coffee—cold coffee, it turned out. The three of them went back out into the hallway.

“Ice?” asked Uncle Arthur.

“I don’t think so,” said Pickett. “Too early in the morning for ice. Pigs, you say?”

“No, squids. They’ve put them in lidded jars, science has, and the squids figure out within moments how to unscrew the lids. Give the jar to a child and watch him work at it.”

“Maybe if the child had suckers on his fingers …” said Andrew, reaching down to pet the painted tortoise, which had lumbered out into the living room proper.

Pickett shook his head in quick little jerks at Andrew, meaning for him to keep his mouth shut, to leave off with his jokes. “What fascinates me are pigs,” Pickett said, sipping the thin, chicory-flavored coffee. It tasted like ant poison.

Lying on an end table next to Andrew’s chair was a Xeroxed catalogue. “Gators of Miami,” it read across the top. On each page was a list of available, mail-order animals: hippos, giraffes, caiman, antelope, even elephants and wildebeests. You could pick them up COD at the air freight depot at Los Angeles airport. All you needed was a truck. Amused, Andrew thumbed through it idly until he came to a section on barnyard animals. Someone had filled in half a dozen of the blanks, as if to put in an order to outfit a farm.

“Nothing like a pig,” said Arthur.

Pickett slapped his knee. “That’s my feeling entirely,” he said. “I understand you can house-train them, like dogs and cats. There was a fellow over in Buena Park who taught one to count. He had a sow that would stamp on the ground, counting out numbers, and then grunt when she’d calculated a sum. It was amazing.”

“Makes you think about the glories of the universe, doesn’t it?” asked Andrew, clicking his tongue at the painted tortoise, which had lodged under the coffee table and was attempting to paddle itself free.

Uncle Arthur nodded sagely. “I’ve always been a friend to pigs,” he said.

Conversation waned. Pickett seemed to be grappling with some means of opening the old man up, but the talk kept going awry.

“Ordering animals, are you?” asked Andrew, waving the catalogue.

Arthur shrugged. “After a fashion. Years ago I set up for a time as a wildlife biologist. Took quite an interest in the migratory habits of certain animals, especially of swine—of feral pigs. Most people have no notion what happens to farm animals that escape the confines of the barnyard. They exercise certain—functions, perhaps. There’s more of them out there than you’d guess, living their own lives, out from under the yoke.” Uncle Arthur paused, gazing at Andrew shrewdly. Then he said, “Quite a race, pigs. Let one of them out of a barnyard and there’s no telling where he’ll go. Rather like letting loose a balloon with a message inside, if you follow me. Liable to end up in the most puzzling lands, largely because of air currents, of course. Feral pigs are the same sort of phenomenon, except that they’re indifferent to air currents. It’s another sort of—what?—force, let’s say, that drives a liberated pig. I’ve written a monograph on the subject, in fact. But that was fifty-odd years ago.”

Pickett nodded sagely and winked at Andrew. “Quite a history in pigs, isn’t there?”

“A deep one, sir.”

“By golly, Andrew,” said Pickett abruptly, as if he had just then remembered something. “Wasn’t it a pig that brought the spoon around to Naomi’s farm? Tall tale, I suppose?”

“No, the gospel truth or so I’ve been told. You haven’t heard that story, have you, Uncle?”

The old man shrugged. “It’s true enough. Old silver spoon.

Very curious. I wouldn’t touch it with a dung fork. And neither should you boys. Don’t, for God’s sake, eat from it. Leave it alone. Pig didn’t want it, did he?”

Pickett shook his head.

“Does anyone want it?” asked Uncle Arthur.

“What?” asked Andrew, thinking that the old man was speaking generally. “
Want
it? I don’t suppose so.”

“Only Jules Pennyman,” said Pickett, and he looked at Andrew in such a way as to imply that he’d purposely ripped the lid off the conversation.

“Pennyman, is it? And has he got it?” Uncle Arthur yawned suddenly, as if he were beginning to find the conversation trivial and tiring.

Andrew shook his head. “Not at all. He …”

“Then keep it that way.” The old man took out a pocketknife and began very slowly to pare his fingernails. He looked up suddenly at the open front door. “Damnation!” he cried, standing up. “Another one’s got out.”

Sure enough, there was the painted turtle, having heaved itself free of the coffee table, gone out through the door, and making away across the lawn. The third turtle teetered on the threshold, inches from freedom.

“I’ll fetch him,” cried Pickett, springing up.

“Put him in the car,” Uncle Arthur said. “On top of the other one. I’m taking them out. For air.”

In minutes three of the tortoises lay in a heap in the box, and the fourth sat on the passenger seat. Pickett sorted the boxed tortoises out so that the biggest was on the bottom. Together they made a little pyramid of turtles, like an icon to a pagan god.

“Quite a load,” said Pickett. “Where are they going again?”

Uncle Arthur buttoned his tweed coat, then hauled out his pocket handkerchief and dusted off the car fender. “Out and about. Bit of a constitutional and all. Naomi tells me you boys are coming along to the treasure hunt.” He climbed into the cab, putting on a pair of thin leather gloves with the fingertips cut out of them.

Pickett looked baffled. “Treasure hunt … ?” he started to say, but Andrew interrupted.

“That’s a fact. I’d forgotten all about it.” He wondered wildly how in the world Aunt Naomi knew about their going on the treasure hunt. It must have been the overheard conversation on the front porch again. But why had she thought it necessary to inform Uncle Arthur?

“Do an old man a moderate favor, will you, boys?”

“Absolutely,” said Pickett.

“Carry your pig spoon along to the treasure hunt. I’d like to have a look at it. I haven’t seen it in heaven knows how long. It would bring back memories, to tell you the truth.”

“Sure. Of course. If you’d like to see it,” said Andrew. “I can bring it around tomorrow—later today, if you want. There’s no need to wait on something like that.”

“No, no.” He shook his hand at Andrew, almost wildly, and his face seemed to pale. “I don’t want it. Keep it tight between now and the treasure hunt. It’s on the night of the hunt that I’ll want you to fetch it along. We might have need of it. And not a word of this to Pennyman or anyone else. You two can’t leave town for a couple of days, can you? Take it with you?”

“Impossible. The cafe is opening tomorrow night. And we’ve got to get the chef’s hats ready. We’re being filmed by KNEX—a little promotional gag I’ve cooked up. Why?”

“Nothing. Keep it tight, though. Don’t trust Pennyman.”

“Not very damned likely,” Andrew said. “What do you know about him?”

“That he’s no damned good. He and I have had our differences. But don’t tell him I said that. Don’t mention me at all. He doesn’t know that we’ve had any differences. Don’t mention turtles or pigs or anything at all. Mum’s the word.” Uncle Arthur winked in the manner of a secret conspirator and started up the humming little electric engine. There was a click, and the car navigated back out of the parking stall and weaved away down the drive. Halfway to the street, as if heeding an impulse to take a shortcut, the car shot off across the lawn, bumped over the corner of a brick flowerbed border, and banged down the curb. The car wobbled on its miniature tires, then hummed away out of sight, heading southeast.

“Let’s go!” shouted Pickett, and immediately he was off and running toward the Metropolitan. Andrew followed, swept up by Pickett’s urgency, and the two of them flung the car doors open and slid in, Andrew firing up the engine and the car leaping into the empty street in a cloud of black exhaust.