The Impossible Coin (The Downwinders Book 2) (4 page)

Winn was itchy all through school
the next day. He found Brent during lunch break, and told him he wouldn’t be
able to go exploring that night. Brent seemed disappointed but didn’t make a
big deal of it, for which Winn was grateful. He wanted to tell Brent about the
coin, but not before he got it back and figured it out.

The clock seemed to tick so slowly
during the last hour of school. Winn imagined small animals discovering the
nickel in the grass and carrying it off. Then he imagined other kids finding it
before he could get home. Just his luck someone like Gale would find it. Gale
already had more cool stuff than most kids in the trailer park. It would be oh
so typical if Gale found it and kept it.

Nah,
he thought, watching
the large hand of the clock on the wall, seemingly stuck in position.
No one
ever goes behind our trailer, by that tree. Hardly ever. And it’s just a
nickel. Who cares about a nickel anyway?

He remembered the incredible
peacefulness and satisfaction the nickel caused to pass through him, and he
yearned to hold it again and feel the waves of pleasure and joy. School was
like a prison, keeping him from the coin. He had to get out of here. He raised
his hand.

“What?” the teacher barked.

“Can I go to the restroom?”

“School is out in five minutes, so
no, you can go after,” his teacher replied. “Keep studying.”

Winn turned to look at his open
book. There, the preamble to the Constitution was staring back at him. He was
supposed to be memorizing it. He didn’t fully understand what domestic
tranquility was, but he was confident that justice was being denied to him. In
a just world, he would be out of school already and searching for that nickel. He
kept running the words through his mind, but they weren’t sticking. When he got
to “secure the blessings of liberty,” it made him think of the guy who said,
“Give me liberty, or give me death!” That seemed very appropriate at the
moment.

Once the bell rang, he grabbed his
backpack, careful not to pull on the strap that was beginning to break. He
raced to his bike, unlocked it, put his headphones on, and pedaled home. He was
able to knock back the first three tracks of
Thirteen Tales from Urban
Bohemia
before he skidded his tires next to his trailer and launched himself
toward the base of the tree.

He searched while the rest of the
album played. As the tenth track drew to a close, he began to feel that one of
his imagined scenarios had come to pass. Someone or something had found the
nickel, and now it was gone, forever. He felt like he’d lost something really
important, and it irritated him that he lost it because of his own
carelessness.

He pulled the headphones from his
head and slipped them over the CD Walkman on his belt. He grabbed the mini mag
lights from his backpack and walked down the trailer court drive toward Marty’s
house. He could use some lemonade. Marty didn’t make it like his wife used to,
but he kept cans of it in his fridge. And he could tell Marty about the coin.
Maybe he’d have some ideas.

As he walked past Gale’s trailer,
he could hear the explosions coming from his open window.
How lucky is he?
Winn thought.
Not only does he have a PS2, he gets to keep it in his
bedroom. Play it whenever he likes. Me and Brent need to find that hidden gold
mine, so I can get a PS2.

He made his way past several
trailers and open spaces, eventually winding up at Marty’s fence. He reached
over the gate and lifted the latch, letting himself in. Marty’s front yard,
small like every yard next to a trailer, was perfectly maintained. He had one
of the few patches of real grass in the entire court. Marty had placed stepping
stones like little islands in the sea of grass, so people wouldn’t trample his
carefully grown lawn. Winn used them to get to the painted wooden steps Marty
had built in front of their trailer door, and knocked.

“Winn!” Marty said cheerfully as
he saw his guest. “Come in! Want some lemonade?”

“Sure,” Winn said, stepping into
the trailer. He looked around. The outside had always been Marty’s domain, and
he kept it immaculate. The inside had been his wife’s area to control, and it
had always been cluttered. Winn noticed that Marty had started to de-clutter
the place. He imagined that it was hard to do, since all the items probably
reminded him of his wife.

“Have a seat, young man,” Marty
said, motioning to the dining table. Winn remembered the first time he sat at
the table; it had been stacked high with magazines. Now it was clear. He placed
the two mini mag lights that Marty had loaned him on the table.

“Here ya go,” Marty said, placing
a cold can of lemonade down in front of Winn and cracking open one for himself.
As he lowered himself into a chair opposite Winn, he held his back. Winn could
tell he was in pain.

“You OK?” Winn asked.

“Just a little back trouble,”
Marty answered. “Been getting worse lately. What’s up?”

“I’m kinda bummed.”

“Really? Why?”

“I think I lost something
important,” Winn said, looking dejected, as though he was confessing to a crime.

“What?”

“A nickel.”

Marty laughed. He reached into his
pocket and removed some change. “Here,” he said, searching through it. He
grabbed a nickel and placed it on the table in front of Winn. “My compliments.
Feel better?”

“No,” Winn said, looking down at
the coin. “This wasn’t an ordinary nickel.”

“Really?”

“I found it when Brent and I went
exploring in a cave in the canyon. I swear it wasn’t in my pocket before we
went in. The only thing I had was the flashlight. When I came out, the nickel
was there.”

“You probably didn’t realize it
was there before you went in,” Marty said, sipping at his lemonade.

“No, I think I got the nickel
somehow while I was in the cave,” Winn said. “I felt something funny when I was
in there, so I dropped into the River to check it out. I saw a priest. He spoke
in Spanish. And there was another guy who looked messed up. He was holding a
mountain lion, draining out its blood.”

“Ah, damn,” Marty said, looking to
the side and rubbing his day-old stubble with the palm of his hand. “I shoulda
warned you about caves around here. You didn’t tell me you were going into
caves. I shoulda asked when you wanted to borrow the flashlights, but I didn’t
want to be too snoopy.”

“What’s wrong with caves?” Winn
asked, picking up the nickel and holding it.

“Well, you know when you enter the
River, how you can see things that other people can’t?” Marty said. “Well, if
you went into a cave in, say, California, and you dropped into the River, you’d
see certain things. Ghosts, if there are any. Maybe some strange creatures that
live in caves, that kind of thing. Well, here things are a little different.”

“Different? How?”

“Well, years ago, the government
was building atomic bombs. You remember, like the ones we dropped on Japan in
World War II? Have they taught you about that in school yet?”

“I saw a thing about it on the
History Channel.”

“OK, so you saw that huge mushroom
cloud that rises up into the sky after the bomb explodes?”

“Yeah, I saw that.”

“Well, it’s full of radiation,
caused by the bomb. And all that radiation has to go somewhere, as the cloud
breaks up in the atmosphere.”

“It would be all broken up before
it reached here from Japan,” Winn said.

“Well, you’re right,” Marty said,
“but the damn politicians decided to keep building bombs, and they wanted to
test them out, to see how much damage they caused. So fifty years ago they went
to a place in Nevada, way out in the middle of nowhere, and blew up hundreds of
those bombs, just to see what would happen. And each time they blew up a bomb,
a giant mushroom cloud rose up into the air, and all that radiation came back down
as the cloud drifted. Not just on Nevada, but wherever the wind blew it. Most
of it blew into southern Utah, but a lot of it came down here, too. And it
changed things.”

“Changed things? How?”

“Well, it made a lot of people
sick. The radiation gave them cancers and tumors. A lot of people died.”

“Didn’t they know that would
happen?”

“They probably did, but they
didn’t care. They thought testing the bombs was more important. And they were
testing what the radiation fallout would do, too.”

“And they let them do that?”

“Well, not everyone,” Marty said.
“There were protesters, but they were considered fringe elements. The
government lied and said there was no risk, but of course there was. Radiation
causes damage to people, and to things in the River. And it lasts a long time,
it takes many years for its effects to completely go away. For human beings and
animals, most of the impact seems to have gone. But in the River, it really
fucked things up, and… excuse me. I meant to say ‘screwed things up.’”

Winn snickered. Marty was so
conscientious about swearing in front of him.
If he could hear my mother,
Winn thought.

“The radiation turned some
creatures into other things, made them change. Some of the changes didn’t
matter much. But other changes made things worse. Ghosts, for example.”

“Ghosts?” Winn asked, becoming
concerned.

“Well, a normal ghost behaves a
certain way,” Marty said. “After you figure them out, you can kind of predict
what they might do. Some ghosts can be very unpredictable, mind you. But most
of them like to follow patterns. You said you saw a priest in the cave, when
you were in the River?”

“Yeah. He was praying, I think. He
spoke in Spanish.”

“Any chance you remember what he
said?”

Winn was used to hearing Spanish
all the time – in Tucson you heard it as much as English. And while he wasn’t
fluent in it, he knew several words.

“He said something like, ‘Padre
Kino dios,’ and then, ‘Protejas tu siervo, sanes mis heridas.’”

“Was he bleeding?” Marty asked.

“Yes, he had a cut on his leg.
What was he saying?”

“You’re right, he was praying,”
Marty replied. “His name was Father Kino, and he was asking for protection from
God. And for his wounds to be healed. He’s probably been praying in that cave
for years. Maybe hundreds of years.”

“Oh,” Winn said, turning the inert
coin over and over in his fingers. “And the guy with the mountain lion? He was
a ghost, too?”

“Well,” Marty said, “kind of. He
was something much worse than a ghost.”

“Worse?” Winn said, looking up at
Marty from the coin. He looked worried.

“A lot worse,” Marty said.
“Remember what I said about the radiation? He’s a result of that. I hope you
never run into him again. He’s very dangerous. Promise me you’ll stay out of
that cave.”

“I promise,” Winn said, frightened,
but intrigued. “But what about the coin?”

“So it was in your pocket when you
came out?” Marty asked. “And you’re sure it was not in your pocket when you
went in?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Winn said. “And
it was different. It had powers.”

“What kind of powers?”

“It made you feel different, when
you touched it.”

“Different how?”

“Well,” Winn thought. He wasn’t
sure how to express it. “It made something in your stomach get really warm, and
then it went up into your chest and out your head. And it made you feel really
happy.”

“Oh,” Marty said, a little
surprised.

“And if you stopped touching it,
and you touched it again, it made the feelings come back. I was up in the
treehouse, doing it over and over, and I lost the nickel. I sat it down and it
rolled off somehow. When I has holding it, I went into the River, and I saw
that it was glowing. So I figured I could find it under the tree by looking for
the glow. But I couldn’t. I searched just now and I still can’t find it. I
think someone else found it and took it. I’m sure it was worth a lot.”

Marty perked up. “I know a way we
can find it!” he said, and stood up, smiling at him. “Come with me, young man!
We shall try to locate this mysterious nickel of yours!”

Winn left the can of lemonade on
the table and tucked the nickel into his pocket. He followed Marty out the
front door and through the yard as he walked back to his shed, located behind
the trailer. Marty pulled a keychain that was attached to his belt, and fiddled
with the keys until he located a small padlock key. He inserted it in the
padlock and turned until it clicked, then he removed the padlock from the
aluminum doors and slid them open.

Winn had seen Marty’s shed many times.
It had a wooden workbench and a brown pegboard above it with every tool
imaginable neatly arranged, hanging from hooks. There were little white
outlines around each tool, so when you took one off, you knew exactly where it
was supposed to go when you were done. Marty had two large red and black tool
chests that were on rollers, tucked against one wall, and opposite was a set of
metal shelving that held large boxes. There was a single bulb light hanging in
the middle of the shed, but with the doors open there was more than enough
light. Marty walked to one of the boxes, pulled it off the shelf, and sat it
down on the wooden bench.

“OK, I haven’t used this in years,
so I hope it still works,” he said, rummaging through the box.

“What is it?” Winn asked, excited
to see what Marty was talking about.

“This!” Marty said, pulling out a
piece of round metal and showing it to Winn. Then he kept searching in the box.

“What is this?” Winn asked,
turning the metal disc over in his hand.

“It’s a metal detector,” Marty
said, pulling out two long poles. “It goes on the end of these.” Marty snapped
the metal poles together, and then slipped the disc onto the end of it. “Now to
find the electronics.”