The Seventeenth Swap Read Online Free PDF Page B

off. Want a limp carrot?” He was already scrubbing one under the tap. “How’s school going? Learn any new jaw-breaker words today?”
    â€œâ€Šâ€˜Metaphorically’,” and ‘lackadaisical’,” Eric reported, slicing off the crushed end and biting into his first apple. He pulled his Language Arts word list out of his ring binder and handed it over in exchange for the carrot.
    â€œWowee!” Marvin exclaimed, holding it gingerly in wet hands and shaking his head over it. “How about that ‘reprehensible’! What’s that mean?”
    Eric only grinned and ate his apple. Marvin had great dramatic gifts. His speech might sound like the locker room, but Eric happened to know he’d graduated from Iron Mountain High with honors.
    â€œMarvin,” he said when he’d returned the list to his notebook and started on his carrot. “Do you know anybody who collects rocks? Good ones, I mean. Like thundereggs.”
    â€œA rock hound, hm? No, I guess not. I know somebody collects campaign buttons—that do you any good?”
    â€œWhat’re they?”
    â€œYou know—them big round things you pin on your lapel that say ‘Joe Blow for Mayor.’ Stuff like that. They’re all over the place in election years. Old Jake, in the meat department, he’s got ’em clean back to the first Roosevelt campaign. Must have hunnerds.”
    â€œYou mean Mr. Forrester?” Eric said in some awe. He had never heard the formidable head butcherreferred to in any less respectful terms. “D’you think he’d pay money for one, if I could find a good one?”
    â€œDepends how good it is—and whether he’s already got one like it. I’ll tell you one thing, though.” Marvin started wrenching lettuce crates open. “People’ll pay money for just about anything—so long as they want it bad enough.”
    He heaved an opened crate onto a shopping basket, and whistling expertly along with the rock band, bumped the swinging doors open and went through. Eric followed, waved goodbye to him at the lettuce bin, and started out of the store. He was intercepted once more by his father, now stamping prices on canned goods at the top of Aisle D.
    â€œMight as well get my newspaper while you’re at it,” he told Eric, digging a handful of coins from his pocket and selecting a quarter. Then with a closer look, he picked out a penny, too. “Must’ve come by this one honest,” he said with a grin as he handed both coins to Eric.
    â€œWow, thanks!” Eric said, and went on his way, studying the penny. It was the kind with wheat on the reverse—Mrs. Panek’s brother liked those. He’d probably like the nickel and the Canadian dime, too. He liked nearly anything. “It gives him something to do,” Mrs. Panek always explained sorrowfully.
    Until today, Eric had always just swapped Dad’s funny coins to her for other ordinary ones, sometimes receiving a candy bar as a bonus.
    Today, for the first time, it occurred to him that a wheat-sheaf penny might be worth more than just one cent. Lots, lots more. Coins were like stamps—the rare ones brought big prices. The wheat-sheaf oneshadn’t been made since the early 1940s, Dad had said so. After that they’d made them out of zinc—for just one year, 1942 or ’43, Eric could never remember which—but it was Dad’s birth year. He always said he was born in the year of the zinc penny.
    Eric wondered suddenly—with a sinking feeling—if he’d ever handed over a zinc penny to Mrs. Panek for just one cent. Mrs. Panek wouldn’t have noticed—she knew no more about coins than he did, mainly that some were odd and most were not. But her brother would know, all right. The zinc ones must be scarce if they’d made so few of them. Just one might be worth the whole price of the boots.
    The very thought