THE BISON NICKEL

“In the months before he died, Tom had asked me to help him research how he could come back as ‘a benevolent spirit….’”

In the final months of Tom’s life, while I was visiting him in Fort Collins, Colorado, we had lunch at the bar of a local restaurant. When Tom got up to take a call, the bartender asked who he was.
“His name is Tom Vaught,” I said. “He’s from New York but lives here now.”
“Is he famous?”
“In our world, yes.”
“I could tell,” the guy said. “He looks like someone who does cool things.”

He was. Tom was an artist­—an actor on stage and screen; a musician with a rich, gravelly timbre that led to a thriving career as the voice of Pepsi, MTV and Captain Morgan; a poet who sent incredible handwritten letters. He was also an adventurer, always searching for treasure: in the Sierra Madre with a travel-writer friend, on Fire Island as Pirate Tom (to the delight of scores of children), and in everyday situations—though with Tom there really was no “everyday.”

 Along the way he collected more true friends than anyone I know. Even while holding court he paid close attention to the people in his life and deeply understood us. And he was never afraid to express his love. He befriended artists, lawyers, vagabonds, bikers. After he got sick, he befriended the elderly woman who rode the stationary bicycle next to his in physical therapy; together they pretended they were riding through the streets of Paris.

Tom eschewed the trappings of modern life. He was the last of us to own a cellphone and didn’t have email until several years into the new millennium. He rued the advent of the rolling suitcase, which debuted in 1970, two years after he was born; luggage was meant to be carried. He loved train travel and railroad history and had a passionate interest in bygone America that showed in his sartorial style. (In the video played at his memorial, one friend said he could have looked equally at home during the Gold Rush, the 1920s or the ’60s.) 

We had eight months from his diagnosis until the weekend several dozen of us gathered in his hospital room at his death bed. On his last night, we sang the Talking Heads’ “Heaven” to him as he drifted in and out of consciousness, still making jokes, laughing—living—even while he was dying. When he took his final breaths the next evening, his dear friend Jack played guitar while the sun set on the Rockies outside his window. It was a moment so poignant, so cinematic, that had I not witnessed it I’d doubt it in the retelling.

In the months before he died, Tom had asked me to help him research how he could come back as “a benevolent spirit”—we’d had long conversations about the afterlife and he knew of my profound experiences with mediums and signs from beyond. I brought him books and we read through them together. Tom was determined to visit us all and to send us signs, and indeed many of us have experienced them, in the form of train whistles, appearances in dreams, significant songs playing with uncanny timing on the radio or in restaurants.

One of the signs we read about was coins—the dead leave them in our paths as a way of letting us know they’re around. A few days after Tom passed and I returned to New York City, I was taking a walk at dusk when a coin glinting on the sidewalk caught my eye. A sign, of course, and a perfect one at that. It was a bison nickel—a remake of the old buffalo nickel. A rarely seen modern echo of bygone America, just like Tom himself. And I choose to believe that it was sent with love and humor from wherever he’s holding court now.

—Laura Buchwald