by Jess Rinker
“I already did. Yours are disgusting. Look at your nails, do you ever trim them?”
“Shut up, Mom,” I say, but soap up my hands anyway.
Jolene comes bursting back through the door, which hits the wall with a loud thunk.
“I made this last week on our class trip.” She’s holding a piece of paper and we can tell there’s a drawing on the other side.
“Well, what is it, Jolene? We don’t have all night.” I shut off the water and dry my hands.
“It’s from when we went to the park, to learn about the ‘forals and flaunas’ of the Outer Banks.”
“The plants and animals? I think you mean ‘flora’ and ‘fauna,’” Frankie says.
“That’s what I said.”
“Uh-huh.” Frankie looks in the mirror and pinches at a small pimple on her chin.
Out of big-sister duty, I ask Jolene, “What did you draw?”
She turns her paper around and shows us her mess of a charcoal sketch. But I can tell what it is—one of the enormous live oak trees in the park. It’s a massive one, probably one of the oldest around.
“I remember that tree!” Frankie says, looking at the picture from the reflection in the mirror. “Grandpa took us to it once and told us stories about how the native people on the island would bend branches so that they grew into strange formations. The branches would become trail directions and would stay like that for centuries.”
“Oh yeah,” I say. “I remember that too.” I look closer at Jolene’s picture and remember the giant branch that went straight out toward the ocean, and then bent straight up and pointed to the stars. “It’s a very nice tree.”
“It’s the Elbow Tree!” Jolene shouts. “Do you like it? Do you think I did a good job coloring it? It was a long walk and it was so hot, but when we got there…”
“Wait, wait, wait!” I put my hand over her mouth to make her stop talking. “What did you call it?”
“Uh ebo ee.”
I take my hand off her mouth. “What?”
“The Elbow Tree.”
Frankie and I look at each other. “Who told you it was called that?” she asks Jolene.
“Grandpa.”
I tear out of the bathroom and my sisters follow me to my room. I grab the book Grandpa had with all the flowers and trees. Flipping through I find the sketch I knew would be there. A giant live oak in the park.
“Do you remember how to get to it?”
Jolene shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“You need to remember right now!”
She almost salutes me, but stops herself. “Why?”
I turn the book around for my sisters to see the same exact tree in Grandpa’s—ahem, Throop’s—sketchbook.
“Because that’s where Blackbeard’s treasure is.”
15
Captain Jolene Takes the Helm
“It’s the answer to the riddle,” I say as we run toward the park with shovels over our shoulders. Mom tried to stop us since we’d just washed up, but I promised her we wouldn’t be long. I knew that was probably a lie, but this was important and she would have to understand. Besides, they were still so distracted by sorting through things that she hadn’t even turned on the oven yet. They didn’t see us go into the shed for the shovels.
We jog down the street, turn left, and pass the lighthouse. “Don’t you get it?” I say. “The Elbow Tree—the treasure has to be buried beneath the Elbow Tree. It makes perfect sense!”
“I know, I do get it, Sav, but don’t you think we should wait until tomorrow?” Frankie asks. “We’re not going to find buried treasure and still get home in time for bed.”
“How do you know?” I ask. “Besides, so what? We have to get started. I’ll never be able to sleep if we don’t at least go look.”
“Stop flailing your arms around and tell me what’s going on,” she says. So I tell her every detail about Mr. Throop stopping me in the hall at the museum. And even about the book with Throop’s signature in it.
“Are you sure he said it like that?” Frankie asks.
“I’m surer than sure,” I say. “Somehow he knows about the map. He’s after the treasure.”
“So Grandpa stole his sketchbook of plants?”
“Or maybe it got mixed in with Grandpa’s stuff.”
Jolene runs behind us with a tiny shovel made for taking ash out of a fireplace. I ask her if she can see okay while she’s running with the eye patch on and she says, “Shiver me timbers! Why does everyone ask me that?”
“Just checking,” I say.
When we reach the entrance of the park, we kick off our shoes into the sand and I turn to her again. “Now it’s all up to you, Captain Jolene.” I salute her.
Her eyes—or eye—gets wide. Then it starts to tear up.
“Now don’t cry,” Frankie says. “You can do it. You can remember. Look, we’ll do it bit by bit. Start walking, and when we come to a fork, you do your best to choose, okay?”
Jolene nods as Frankie wipes her tear away. And then we start to walk. The sandy trails of the park are narrow and bend this way and that, like whoever made them couldn’t make up their mind which trees to walk around. We’ve been in nearly every inch of the park but I can’t remember where that Elbow Tree is. Our footsteps are silent as we tread through, and we’re surrounded by a canopy of twisted branches and moss. An occasional jay screeches overhead. Little sparrows flit off the path into scrubby bushes.
For a long time Jolene does great, shouting out left or right every time we come to a split in the trail with no hesitation. But after about the fifth turn, I can tell she’s not as certain anymore.
“Do you remember how long you were walking before you got to it?” I ask her. She slowly shakes her head. “How many turns total?” She shakes her head again.
“Let’s take a break and think about this,” Frankie says, and we all sit on a fallen branch along the path. As usual, the mosquitoes find us as soon as we stop moving.
I dig my bare feet into the sand while Frankie strategizes. It’s warm on top and cool underneath.
“I mean we’ve all been to the tree,” Frankie says. “Jolene has the advantage of having just been there a few days ago but together we should be able to figure out where it is. The park’s not that big.”
“It was so long ago,” I say, wiggling my toes in the sand. “And we always spent more time over at the beach because that’s what you liked, instead of in the trees.”
“Oh no! Don’t blame me. You and Grandpa spent hours looking for coins in the surf. It wasn’t all my idea!”
“That’s enough!” Jolene shouts. “I remember!” And she gets up and starts walking away from us. We quickly scramble after her, sending sand everywhere. After several more minutes, and right before I’m about to lose my mind completely, Jolene stops dead in her path. We almost run into her.
“There it is.”
It’s a very dense part of the park and the trees all run into each other so it’s hard to tell where one tree ends and the other begins; the branches are all intertwined like clasped fingers.
But when you look closely, there is one tree that stands out.
We look up at the giant live oak towering over us. Its branches twist in every direction like it couldn’t remember which way the sun was, all of them knobby, gnarly elbows and knees with massive curtains of moss draping down like long hair.
“I remember now,” I say, twisting Grandpa’s celestial ring between my fingers.
Grandpa had called the tree “a weeping old woman” on one of our walks. “She’s waiting for her sailor who is never coming home.”
“Who’s the sailor?” I whispered.
Grandpa made his voice low and wobbly. “Nobody knows. A pirate maybe?”
The branches creaked around us. “Are there a lot of ghosts in here?” I asked.
“In the woods?” Grandpa leaned down close to me. “Not many. Maybe Blackbeard’s. He’s all over the island though. I imagine he occasion
ally meets up with Theodosia at the lighthouse.”
Theodosia is another famous ghost in town, but I’ve never seen her. “Why?”
“Both looking for something, I suppose. Blackbeard’s lost ship, Theodosia’s family.”
“Theodosia,” I repeated, enjoying the sound of her name on my tongue. “As long as they’re nice, I’m not afraid.”
“Ghosts are only stories that want to be told.” Grandpa hugged me close. “No reason to be afraid. Especially near a tree as beautiful as the weeping old woman.”
Or, as he must have named it for Jolene at some point, the Elbow Tree. She runs up to that elbow now and tries to reach it. One branch on the left of the trunk unnaturally twists and turns straight up, where the others meander their way around each other like they’re lost. She can only touch it with the tips of her fingers.
“You’re a genius, Jolene,” I say, and she bounces up and down. “Now let’s dig.”
“Where?” Frankie asks. “It could be anywhere. This tree is huge.”
“Has to be under the elbow itself.”
Frankie nods. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
We start to dig a wide hole under the elbow, fighting to keep the sand from falling back inside. Our shovels clank against each other and I know there has to be a better way, but we keep going because I don’t know what that way is yet. After a while, Jolene starts whining. “I’m sweaty.”
“Pirates aren’t afraid of a little sweat,” I say. “Keep digging.”
Sand flies in every direction and the sun drops lower in the sky, beneath the tree branches. I don’t even realize how late it’s getting until I look up and see the shadows dancing around the paths. And then, out of the corner of my eye, there’s some kind of shadowy movement behind another tree. Most often the animals we see roaming around are birds or cats. But this something is bigger than a bird or cat.
“Stop!” I whisper-yell at my sisters. They freeze and look up.
“What is it?” Frankie asks.
I point in the direction where the shadow moved. Frankie looks and squints, but neither of us sees anything now.
“Your imagination,” Frankie says.
“Probably,” I admit.
We’re about to start digging again when a twig snaps loudly behind us. Like someone stepped on it with a very big foot. Ocracoke is isolated. Except for the wild ponies, the biggest feet belong to people. And the wild ponies aren’t anywhere near the village. They have their own pen and free-roaming pastures at the north end.
Jolene runs over and hides behind us.
“Probably someone else walking the trails,” Frankie says, standing in front of both of us. “Hello?” she calls out.
Somewhere a dog barks.
The ocean waves in the distance seem to say, Hushhh hushhh.
When I try really hard, I think I can make out some kind of shape between the scraggy bushes, but it’s like a cluster of stars: If you try to look directly at it, it seems to disappear.
“What if it’s Blackbeard’s ghost?” Jolene’s voice is shaky. “What if he doesn’t want us to find his treasure after all?”
I consider that for a second, but then reject it. “No way. If Edward is here, he would know we only want to be the right and true guardians of this treasure.”
“Who have now decided they want to use the treasure to save their house?” Frankie whispers, looking at me and madly twirling her hair. She’s going to make herself bald if she doesn’t stop.
“We don’t have to use all of it,” I say. “Some of it can still go in a museum like we promised. I don’t think Blackbeard will mind if we take a tiny cut.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like sharing,” Jolene says. “He is a pirate.”
A jay screeches in the tree above us. Frankie looks up. “It’s a warning,” she says.
I have to say, my sisters are not helping.
“Stop it! Both of you!”
I worry that they’re right and I’m wrong, but as we stand there waiting, no one appears, ghostly or otherwise. Only the wind through the moss and rustling leaves of the underbrush, pushing wisps of sand across the surface of the ground. Strangely quiet.
“Let’s head home for today,” Frankie says. “Mom’s waiting for us anyway.”
“Okay,” Jolene and I say at the same time.
We cover up the hole with moss and branches and hurry back through the twists and turns of the park trails, toward the road, and the streetlights, and other people, hoping to make it out of the woods before it’s completely dark. We push past the tall grasses that line the park and all three of us reach the warm pavement with relief. We pull on our shoes quickly. Now, back to the Queen Mary.
Until a very tall man in a green hat steps out from behind a parked car. Throop. Again.
We hold our shovels like spears. “Why are you following us?” I ask.
Mr. Throop laughs at our weapons, his arms out like he’s presenting himself onstage. “You really don’t remember meeting me, do you?”
We all shake our heads.
“I met you two before this littlest Dare was even born, when I worked for your grandfather as an apprentice.” He points to Jolene, who leans back against me. I put my free hand over her chest and hold her close. “You were only tiny adventurers then. Cornelius brought you aboard my ship, the Brigantine. You don’t remember any of that?”
“No,” Frankie says for all of us.
Peeking out from behind me, Jolene says, in a tiny but strong voice, “Everyone knows boats are supposed to have girl names.”
Throop laughs again, but this time it sounds scratchy and annoyed. “Cornelius taught you too well, little one. But my ship is too scientific for a romantic name. I wanted it to represent something grand and majestic. It’s made specifically for searching for shipwrecks. Something your grandfather and I did quite often together. At least, before he decided his ways were better than mine.”
“Okay, well, that’s all very nice, Mr. Throop. We have to go now,” Frankie says, and starts pushing both Jolene and me forward. “We have to be home for…” She stops herself from saying “dinner,” maybe so we don’t sound so babyish. “We just have to get home.”
“No worries. I’m having dinner with friends and have to be on my way as well.” But he stands in the middle of the road like he’s trying to block us. I’m giving him ten seconds before I hit him in the shins with my shovel. He finally starts to leave, but quickly turns and says, “One last thing. You probably don’t remember this, but back in ’86 a little boy was digging holes on the beach.” He pauses.
“Yeah?” Frankie says. “And?”
“He was near the water and wanted to see how deep he could make the hole. With damp sand, you know, he dug forever. He thought maybe he’d dig to the other side of the world.” Throop chuckles. I hate the way it sounds, like a choking fish.
“His parents went for a walk down by the surf. Let him keep digging. They figured he was safe. Not in the water. Busy and focused.”
“Not to be rude, but what’s your point, sir?” I ask.
“When they returned, he’d been swallowed by the sand.” Throop looks at us. I try very hard to not react. Jolene shudders under my arm.
“My point is, digging in sand is very, very dangerous without support. Cave-ins happen on beaches all the time.” He pauses for a moment and, as if we don’t understand what he’s saying, he slowly adds, “Small children can suffocate.”
The way he says it makes my skin cold.
“Who says we were digging?” I say, even though I know how ridiculous that sounds, given our shovels.
Throop shrugs. “It was only a thought. You have to be careful out there.”
“Uh-huh, okay, bye now.” We all mumble our goodbyes and zip around him.
But I hear the very last thing he mumbles back: “Treasure hunting is not for little girls.”
16
Retreat to the Crow’s Nest
We run home as fast as we can, past the lighthouse
, past Ms. Gigantic Sunglasses putting out her trash, where Jolene pauses and says, “Doesn’t she know the sun is setting?” Frankie pulls her along and we toss our shovels under the porch. We run right up the steps into the house, where Mom seems to have been waiting for us the entire time.
“All of this in and out is making me think I need to put in a swinging saloon door,” she says. “Go wash up again. I’ve been holding off finishing dinner for you, but it’s late. Uncle Randy, Aunt Della, and your cousins will be here any minute. I don’t appreciate not knowing where you are.”
“We were at the park, Mom,” Frankie says.
“Doing what?” Mom picks up the sleeve of Jolene’s shirt and drops it like it’s contaminated with something horrific. She groans. “You three! Go shower and change. All of you. Thirty minutes. And, Savannah, help Jolene rinse out the shampoo!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, and we all trudge up the stairs to follow Mom’s orders. She’s being extra picky, like funeral-grade, you-have-to-wear-a-dress picky. I hate when she’s like this. And all for our cousins? Why should they care if we’re covered in sand and dirt with leaves in our hair? That’s how they always see us.
Frankie showers in our parents’ bathroom and I take the hall bath. Jolene has to wait for me and then she jumps in my shower. “You want me to help you with your hair?” I ask her.
“I can do it myself,” she says, and I don’t argue.
“Okay, but take off that eye patch,” I say as I leave the bathroom. Frankie and I wait in the attic with our hair wrapped up in towels, and we talk about Throop.
“He has some nerve!” I shout as I pace the room. Frankie sets up the Star Board but without candles this time. We’re going to try to squeeze in one call to Blackbeard to see if he can tell us anything about Throop. Jolene tears into the room looking like she maybe got her hair partially wet and it’s still full of soap. I’ll probably hear it from Mom, but I don’t care. This is more important. “Hurry up, Frankie!”
“Shhhh!” Frankie says to me. “We don’t need Dad coming up here.”
“But Throop has some nerve,” I whisper this time. “To try to scare us like that. To say girls can’t be treasure hunters. Besides, we’re not little! Who does he think he is?”
