THE COIN

Copyright (c) 2020 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

THE COIN

By R. Peterson

Through the billowing clouds of steam produced by New York’s biggest laundry, Zofia Nowak could see her daughter wildly gesturing from the doorway. Hanna looked frantic. Zofia pulled the bed-sheet from the ironing press and hurried over to her, hoping the Szef didn’t see.

            “It’s not just a cough. Lena has the influenza,” Hanna told her. “You must come … I think she’s dying!”

Zofia rushed to find Mr. Kowalski the laundry manager. “You know the rules,” he told her. “You leave early, and you lose the entire day’s pay!”

Zofia looked at the clock on the wall. There were two hours left on her fourteen-hour shift. Her family had struggled to survive even before her husband was killed by the railroad-car. There were six other children to feed and rent was behind. The loss of even ten cents for one hour would be painful … an entire day’s pay - devastating.

            “Borrow blankets from Mrs. Lipska,” Zofia told Hanna. “I’ll be home soon.”

The next two hours were excruciatingly slow.

Two of her daughters were crying by the time cards. The laundry manager stood next to them. “Lena died an hour ago,” Sally bawled. “She begged for you.”

            “Thanks for staying,” Kowalski said reaching into his pocket. “We don’t usually do this but it’s 1918 and we want to keep our workers happy.” He handed a fresh-minted Mercury-dime to Zofia.

Zofia wiped her eyes. The coin almost slipped from her fingers but she dropped it in her apron. Then she staggered slowly home to bury her child.

            Zofia kept the silver coin in a jar by the flour can for twelve years. She would starve before she spent it. The dime  was pieniądze krwi (blood money). Hanna later used this coin and many others to pay for her mother’s burial.

-------2-------

            Giovanni Marino tried using a penny to hold down the left eyelid of the highly made-up corpse in the casket but it kept falling off. Both eyes had been unusually wide open for a dead man … as if Mateo DeLuca had seen the axe coming that had split his skull. Antonio Bianchi and his brother demanded there be no problems. The two Mafioso were coming in later to pay their respects. Giovanni remembered some coins in the drawer of his office desk. He thought a silver Mercury dime would be heavy enough … and it was. Six hours later, he came to check, the 1918  dime had fallen off somewhere in the coffin but the eyelid had remained closed … that’s all that mattered.

-------3-------

            Dutch O’Bannon and Joseph Amblano searched the Bronx cemetery with lights … looking at every headstone. “They train us all the way from Chicago to dig up a two year old grave,” Joe grumbled. “These Wops don’t have shovels?”

            “The cops are no longer looking for the loot and the boss doesn’t trust his former partners,” Dutch said.

“Here it is!” Joseph shown his kerosene lantern on the headstone Mateo DeLuca Born 1894 – Died 1936 . They began to dig.

Amblano lifted the corpse partly out of the coffin while O’Bannon grabbed the bulging bank-bag hidden below. He saw a loose dime lying in a corner. “This is my lucky day,” he chuckled as he sipped the coin into his pocket.

-------4-------

Lucy asked her father for cab-fare. David was leaving for basic training in Georgia. She would meet him early at the Chicago train station. It was 1943 and the allies were preparing to invade France. Harry   O’Bannon looked in his wallet but it was empty. Last night was poker and he’d forgotten to go to the bank. He counted out three dollars in change from a glass bowl on his desk. “Buy yourselves some lunch,” he told his daughter with a kiss. “I hear army chow kills more GI’s than the Germans!”

The recruitment train left in one hour. They were lucky to get a table at a café across the street. “I’ll write you every day,” Lucy moaned.

            “We’ll only get mail once a week.” David smiled. “I’ll be counting them.”

Lucy insisted on paying for both meals. When her fiancé returned from the cash register he tried to give her the 12 cents change. “Keep it,” she insisted. “Use the money for stamps and envelopes.”

David put the dime and two pennies in his pocket.

-------5-------

Six weeks later the Army drill sergeant lined up his men. “We need volunteers for six more weeks of special training,” he barked. “You’ll be jumping out of airplanes!” No one stepped forward. “Did I say you’ll be wearing something called parachutes … and you’ll be getting an extra ten bucks a month?” David Franklin and eight others stepped forward.

It was just after midnight June 6^th. 1944.  The skies above France were full of Douglas C-47 Gooney Birds as they dropped over six-thousand American and British soldiers more than twenty miles behind enemy lines. David Franklin watched as several of his platoon members were shot in mid-air as their parachutes drifted down to the ravaged farmlands. The next hour would determine whether his squad could hold the bridge.

It was as dark as a cave. David hurried to meet the others, after hiding all signs of his arrival. The German soldiers appeared out of nowhere. “Legen Sie Ihre Hände in die Luft!” David was thrown to the ground and searched. A German corporal named Hans Schneider took a small Bible, three letters from Lucy and a “lucky” coin from the jacket-pocket covering David’s heart. He dropped the letters in the mud when he found a chocolate bar. “Ich gehe ins Kino,” (I’m going to the movies) he smiled holding up the silver dime. “John Wayne ... Kopf sie am Pass!” (head them off at the pass)

-------6-------

Corporal Schneider was wounded during the Ardennes Counteroffensive and in early January of 1945, after treatment for a leg-injury at a hospital in Berlin, was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland to work as a prison guard.

The inhuman and sadistic treatment of Jews sentenced to death had a devastating effect on Hans. He read his Bible every night and begged to be forgiven. One day he approached a skeletal woman weeping inside a razor-wire fenced area and asked her if she needed food. He always kept a few crusts of bread in his pocket. She fell to her boney knees and begged him for a coin. He thought it was strange since there was no way these wretched individuals could spend money but passed her the silver dime from America, hoping to somehow relieve the overpowering guilt he felt … it did not help.

-------7-------

Hanna Kaczmarck waited on the crowded docks as the first ship-loads of immigrants from war-ravaged Europe arrived in America. Her late mother’s orphaned niece was supposed to hold up a hand lettered sign to show who she was.   Hanna would have recognized Oliwia even without the sign. The frightened six-year old girl was a perfect image of her younger sister Lena who had died during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Hanna threw her arms around the child and told her not to worry … she once again had a family.

It was later during dinner that Hanna noticed the silver coin on a chain around the girl’s neck. She asked to see it.

“What a strange world we live in,” Hanna said. “Your aunt Zofia once had a coin just like this one. She would never spend it, even when she was without food, because she said it was blood money! After her death, I used it and many others to pay for her funeral.”

“My matka gave to me this the last time I was with her,” Oliwia sobbed in broken English. “She said when the ciemny człowiek came to choose who was to be sent to the prysznice to give him the coin … and to beg him to pick someone else.”

“But you still have it!”

“The ciemne man never came. Instead, the camp was rozłamane by Russian soldiers!”

“I am glad that your coin brought you luck,” Hanna said as he poured cups of tea. “I was happy to give mine away.”

THE END ?