Soda Machine Tony
A short story
Soda Machine Tony could tell. He swore he could. He could hear your soles skidding up his sand-dusted driveway. He bragged, to anyone who’d listen and several who wouldn’t, about how he could tell what kind of shoes you were wearing by the timbre of the skid and thump—expensive Italian shoes with the leather soles, cheap convenience store flip flops, barefoot, and everything in between. Not that any of us had expensive Italian shoes. You’d walk up, just trying to get a soda and you’d hear Tony’s voice blaring from the window, “VANS SLIP-ONS!” or “JELLY SHOES!” He wasn’t always accurate, not that that dissuaded him from shouting out his Kirkland brand clairvoyant guesses with cocksure abandon.
He wasn’t so hot at the shoe guess, but, here’s the truth: Soda Machine Tony somehow knew just what kind of change you were carrying. Each coin, down to the penny.
His front room window was right behind the soda machine that was situated—nobody knew how it got there—on the cracking and grass-speckled concrete. The thing was old and dusty but plugged in and ready to serve up your favorite pop—Fanta Red Cream Soda, Diet Pepsi, Tab, Slice…pick your poison—in his front yard, for just 50 cents, way less than the gas station two blocks up. If you peered up through the sprinkler-spotted glass, you could see the preschool scribble swipe of Tony’s surviving hair, wisping up a thin and reckless silhouette against the stuttering light of his television.
Without looking, never even turning his head, he knew the jangle, even above the dull peal of his television set. Dimes have a tinkle, and a washboard scrape on the ridges that frame them. Pennies have a copper thud belying their size, conveying their loneliness and discouragement. Quarters are the majestic breed, an almost royal sound, pressed from the blood of the nobles. And 50 cent pieces? Silver dollars? So rare that you only know them because they sound like nothing else. Stuck up too, Tony always made sure to mention, as if coins possessed a psychological inner life.
And don't even worry about folding money. Nobody, Tony always laughed, in their right mind would ever risk anything above a 5-spot with that old machine’s “vacuum slot.” And, really, nobody with more than a a buck was skidding up the sand-dusted drive to get a Ramblin' Root Beer off of Soda Machine Tony's yard.
He was right every time I ever heard him guess. But, still, you couldn’t help thinking that that’s exactly what he was doing: guessing.
One year, my friend Reggie’s family had gone to Cancun for Spring Break and, when he came back, he was burning with this idea, “I’m gonna stump Tony.” He filled his pocket with a couple quarters, a dime, his lucky penny, and his pièce de résistance: a 20¢ centavo. And he walked, no, strutted up the driveway towards the machine, a bunch of us swarming behind him, jingling his change with exaggerated hand motions, a smug look on his face. Before Reggie even got within six feet of the machine, from the cracked window, you could hear Soda Machine Tony bellowing in a cartoony borderline racist Mexican accent, “Sorry, amigo! Your centavos ain’t no bueno aqui.” Reggie’s face sank. He sorta oozed away, to the soundtrack of Tony’s coughing laugh, not even buying a soda. As Reggie skulked down the street, the entire neighborhood could hear Tony yelling, “Chuck Taylors! HIGH TOPS!”