by D. R. Mather
***
There was a bright light. Kevin looked around the room and everyone was starting to sit up. They were squinting as they did so.
“Well,” said Alex, “that sure beats any amusement park.”
Kevin looked at everyone, “Why don’t we get ahead of the game for once and try not to stand right away.”
Everyone agreed.
Later, in the living room, everyone was talking about it.
“Well, it only took them three years to tell me what the hell I was doing all of this for,” said Kevin. Let’s hope they speed the info up now that we finally know.”
Judy stood up and looked at Kevin, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure thing honey.”
They left the living room, Judy towing Kevin by his hand.
She brought him into the dining room, stopped, and then spun in a fast half circle to face him. She was smiling as she grabbed the back of his head and kissed him, not hard, but very differently from how she had ever done before. To him, it was still a kiss; a bit weird, but nothing much more. He couldn’t see the blue glowing from Judy’s mouth. She finally released him.
“There!”
She brought him out to the others. He felt, well, different somehow. He wasn’t sure how, he just did. It was like he was more… alive?
Kevin made love to Judy that night. Judy never told him what she had done to him; she didn’t think he needed to know. She only told one person about that wonderful night of passion; Beth. To use Judy’s words, “The man plowed me like I was a mountain that was in the way of where he was getting to.” She walked funny for a few days after, as she was kind of sore.
Kevin was on his game the next day. Judy never stood a chance as he was barking out orders, correcting mistakes, and reading blueprints. He was upstairs, downstairs, with Steve, calling Steve, looking for Steve; it was quite entertaining when Judy took the time out to sit back and watch.
He was watching the elevator guys finishing up.
“Does that look like mahogany trim to you?” he asked.
“No sir.”
“Did you bring mahogany trim with you?”
“Yes sir.”
“Then why are you putting on white oak around the door?”
“I don’t know sir.”
“Fix it.”
“Yes sir.”
Judy had her hand on her mouth; she didn’t want him to see her laughing. Beth, well, she hadn’t noticed yet.
“Hey Kevin, easy there, he was…….” said Judy.
Kevin spun on one heel and only pointed to her, his brow tightly knitted, and walked outside.
Beth walked into the living room and sat on the arm of Judy’s chair. She made a few attempts at talking but failed, the half words coming from her mouth failing to make a lot of sense. She turned and looked down at Judy.
“You created a Grizzly bear is what you did. Hey, do you think you might give Alex a kis….oh never mind, it would probably kill him.”
They had a good fifteen minute giggle session after that.
***
The crews weren’t there because it was Sunday. Kevin had scaffolding set up in the ballroom. He and Judy picked out different places and were up at the ceiling meticulously cleaning all the beautiful woodwork that wrapped each beam that ran across from front to rear. It was a huge job. Kevin had a double set side-by-side, so that it covered a wide area of ceiling. Judy was on one side, Kevin was on the other. They were washing, drying, then applying a coat of Will’s wood oil, which Kevin had delivered in a drum. Judy was busy scrubbing away decades of dirt when she uncovered something odd.
“Honey, what’s this?”
“Hard to say from this far away, but it looks like one very prime butt from here.” Since the day she had revitalized Kevin, she now believed she really had turned him into an animal. The man could just go and go, like a teenager, not that she was really complaining.
“Okay horn dog, I was talking about this.”
Kevin walked over and looked. It seemed to be a small circle; a circle of small gold nuggets that had been pressed into the wood. The entire thing was maybe the size of a quarter. The nuggets themselves only little pieces, maybe the size of a grain of rice.
“Huh, honestly, I don’t know. Why would anyone do that?” Kevin began scanning the beams across the ceiling. His angle wasn’t good, as he was too high up. He went down and walked the floor. “Well, I can’t see any others,” He added.
Five minutes later, he had devised a plan. The scaffolding was on wheels so he could roll it around the room. For the next hour, he slowly moved Judy up and down every beam in the room. The pattern was never repeated. He finally set Judy back up where she left off and told her he’d return.
He walked around thinking, ’Why would someone do that, it’s as if it were hidden, but not hidden.’
He couldn’t really see them from the floor after he had Judy polish them up. If he looked as tight as he could from the floor, it was no more than a dot. He walked in to the kitchen and it was loud; too many men doing too many things. He left and went to the living room. He walked over towards the desk, then stopped, turned and went up the stairs. One thing a builder knows; it’s how a structure is put together. Kevin stopped at the top of the stairs and got his bearings. He knew there was a beam just to the right of the open panel in the wall. He walked into the hall, turned right, and did a foot count – one… two… three. The beam with the gold nuggets should be about under him now. Kevin looked up the hall to the left, then to the right; doors and walls, nothing special. He looked straight ahead, towards the back of the house, and there was a wall; in fact, it was the wall with the library behind it. He chuffed and headed towards the library. He opened the doors and walked in, turned right and saw what he had never seen before. Now he was in the door casing. He stepped to the left, and then to the right, moving back and forth between the hall and the library as he did so. Then he stopped dead. It was wrong. Where the beam was, it should be out in an open area, under the library. But it wasn’t. Something was wrong here. Kevin was a builder, his measuring tape was a part of him, it always was.
He took the tape and slid it across the hall until he knew he was close to a beam below – the weird beam. He went to the library side and did it again. It was different by fifteen feet. Kevin walked into the library and stopped; he looked at the right side wall. He walked over to get a closer look. It looked the same as the others. He thought of the hidden panels elsewhere.
“Could it be?”
He started feeling around from the corner, heading out to the back. He was beginning to think he had done a miscalculation because he only had ten feet until he hit the back wall. A bookshelf covered a lot of the distance that was left, but he decided to see if it would move. It did, but there was nothing behind it but a wall. He was about to give up when he saw something, something close to the floor, on one of the wood panels. It was tiny; Kevin bent down to see it, and saw it was gold nuggets in a circle. He touched it lightly then took his hand away. He looked over the wall, then pushed it harder. There was a ‘click’. The panel popped out by only half an inch, but it was enough to grab it. Kevin opened the panel and was facing a dirty, dust-filled room. This room hadn’t seen light for a very long time. He couldn’t see inside so he flicked his lighter. The room illuminated a little. The end of the room seemed empty except for a few overturned wooden boxes. Kevin turned to the right and started walking up the side of the room. The lighter got really hot.
“Ow, shit,” he said, and dropped it.
He turned and headed off to his room for a flashlight. In a minute, he’d returned to the secret room again. The flashlight was a very bright L.E.D. model with about half a million candle power. He turned to the right again and shone it up the room. The second half of the room had a lot of boxes, none were overturned. There were two huge benches, one on his left and one on his right. They must have been at least twelve feet long. When Kevin got over to them, all h
e saw was dust-covered lumps, all the same shape, seemingly dumped all over each bench. They were placed on top of each other in no particular order. He reached out, picked one up, and held it in his hand; it was heavy, very heavy for its size. It covered the size of his hand from finger tips to wrist. He wiped the thing with his thumb. As he pulled his thumb out of the way, he saw it. It was a gold ingot. He stared at it for a second then threw it back. He dragged his hand across the pile and they clicked and clacked. He uncovered more by doing this, the entire bench was loaded with gold ingots.
“OH SHIT!”
He spun on a heel really fast and looked around him. There were boxes and boxes, all of them stamped ‘GOLD BULLION, property of Colburn mining and Co.’. There had to be more than fifty boxes there. He spun a bit more and saw ten boxes or more that looked different, sitting in a corner next to the bench. Kevin walked over to the one on the top. He lifted it, and it was amazingly heavy.
“OH SHIT.”
He put the flashlight on the bench so that it was pointing at the box on top. He pulled and pried until the lid went flying over his side and landed with a thud. Kevin looked inside, the box was full. He picked one up, it was mostly clean and it was stamped, ‘Colburn refinery 32.15 troy ounce gold kilo bar, 0.999.9 pure’. It was the same as all the ones on the benches. Kevin dropped it and ran. In the hall, he yelled out at the top of his lungs.
“EVERYONE, COME TO THE LIBRARY DOORS NOW!”
He ran downstairs and turned into the ballroom. Judy was climbing down the scaffolding. Kevin ran into the kitchen and grabbed an extension cord and a two unit halogen work light. By the time he’d arrived back up there, everyone was in front of the library doors. He didn’t talk except to throw the cord at Alex.
“Plug this in somewhere in the library.”
He disappeared to the back right side, out of sight. Alex plugged the cord in and went to where he had last seen Kevin; he could see the open panel in the wall.
“Oh neat, a secret room!”
That got the rest moving into the area Kevin had gone to. As Alex got about a foot from the panel, Kevin popped his head out and took the cord, then ducked back out of sight. Suddenly the secret room came to life in a flash of light. Kevin blocked the door now as everyone joined him.
“Everyone, I want you to see Will and Barbs, REAL future,” said Kevin. He stepped backwards into the room.
After a minute of looking up the room from the back, Judy had to ask, “They get to live in here?”
“No baby,” Kevin laughed. “Go on, walk over to that box on the left side bench, the one I opened.”
Judy went alone. She walked as if there was a human-sized mouse trap hiding somewhere. She got to the box and picked something up. Everyone was watching her.
“OH…….MY….GOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!” She was doing a maximum rabbit jump, up and down, up and down, over and over. She spun and spun and looked everywhere as she did so, then she turned to the very confused group and held the bar up, tears streaming out of her eyes. In almost a whisper she said, “Gold, there are boxes and boxes of gold.”
Judy was almost at the point of passing out. Kevin saw this, ran to her, grabbed her, and held her up.
Everyone ran up to the second half of the room now.
“We have to catalog all of this, check to see what boxes are filled or whatever, and make sure everything is sized,” said Kevin as the cheers and screams finally died down.
***
One full day later and they had a tally. All the gold bars were the same size, so there were no problems there. There were seventy-eight boxes that had five hundred bars in each box. There was another box’s worth on each bench, bringing the total to eighty boxes, and about fifty thousand bars. Each bar weighed 32.15 troy ounces for a grand total of about 1,607,500 troy ounces. Alex checked the spot market just after the total came in; the going rate put it at about one billion, seven hundred and sixty eight million, two hundred and fifty thousand.
“Give or take a million,” Alex added.
The following party was Kevin’s treat. All the crews were invited, even Bill, Katie and the kids, and Judy’s mom and dad. No one but the group knew what the party was for. Kevin decided the best way to hide it was to simply reverse his steps. Everything looked normal again.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Benny opened the barn door and looked around, Stan was right behind him. They walked around inside, looking at all the flooring. It was simple, rough cut planks, easy to pull up. Benny walked over to a back corner and started stomping the floor with one foot.
“Yeah, this will work, come here with that pry bar.”
After some work, Benny figured they had pulled enough planks up.
“Go get them.”
“Right Benny,” Stan ran out of the barn.
Benny looked under the floorboards to the space below, it was fairly deep. The Carters had a height side foundation put in before the barn was built; it left about four feet of gap between the floor and the ground beneath.
“Yeah, this will work, nice and icy.”
Stan came back in dragging Mr. Carter by his feet. He dragged him over to the hole and dropped him in. This was followed by Mrs. Carter, their fifteen year old son, and the family dog.
“Close the fucker up,” said Benny, and walked out of the barn.
“Right, I’m on it.” Stan began to wonder why it had to be Benny in charge. After all, Stan was bigger, and a whole lot smarter than Benny. He placed the planks back where they were and nailed them down, stepped back to look at his work, then ran from the barn over to the house. He found Benny in a downstairs bedroom, digging through the Carter’s personal things. He wasn’t nice about what got in his way as he looked, and a lot of broken glass was spread about the floor. Stan could hear the noise the second he walked in, and then headed to find the source.
“Bodies are taken care of, what’s going on in here?”
“You name it: guns, money, jewelry, anything we can use. You check out the closet over there.”
Stan opened the closet and glanced in; it didn’t take long to see the four barrels leaning against the side corner. He reached in.
“All right, is this what you mean Benny?” He pulled out a 30.06 hunting rifle.
“Yeah, that’s the stuff, see any ammo?”
“I don’t yet but there are more rifles.” Stan pulled them all out. There was a 30-30 a 308 and a 12 gauge pump shot gun.
“OH YEAH, JACKPOT!” Benny came over to check them out, “There has to be ammo for this shit, check in there again.”
Stan re-entered the closet. In the opposite corner of the rifles were three steel, military style ammo boxes. He lifted one, it was very heavy, and took it out of the closet.
“How about this for starters, there are three more of these.”
“Well get them out here Stan, my man!”
When all of the boxes were opened, they found that two were filled to the top with ammo for the 30-30 and the 30.06. Stan found boxes of ammo for the shotgun, thirty in all, twenty shells in each box, all were 00 buckshot except two, and they were hollow point slugs.
“Oh this is sweet Stan my man, fucking icy or what?”
“The man must have been preparing for a war or something.”
“Nah, a lot of the farmers have big stocks of this shit, they live too far from town or from neighbors, so they like to stock up!”
“Yeah, lucky for us.”
“Stan, check under the bed,”
Benny was busy trying to figure out the working of the 308. Stan got half of his body under the bed; he saw a large flat box, dragged it over to him and clicked the latch.
“Oh shit.” He closed the box and wiggled out from under the bed. Stan dropped the box on the bed and popped the lid again, “How about this Benny?”
Benny stared at the contents of the box, “OH, fucking YES!”
He pulled out a handgun. This wasn’t any ordinary gun; Benny was holding a single round, .50
caliber monster. Sporting the top of this monster was a 50x scope. In the box was all the cleaning supplies as well as five boxes of ammo.
“Holy shit Stan; maybe the guy was expecting a war after all!” Benny was giggling like a school girl. It may have been a hand gun, but it was still too big to slip in the back of his pants. So for now, Benny put it back, closed the lid, and kept it at his side.
By the time Benny and Stan had finished, they had discovered enough dry goods and frozen foods to feed a small army as well as the root cellar where the Carters stored winter squash, home canned vegetables and jellies. Benny figured, if you rationed it out right, there was enough there to feed about ten men for four or five months. There were two large upright freezers in a laundry room that were stocked to the brim with deer meat and beef.
“Christ Benny, it’s almost like we were supposed to be here!”
Benny started to reach over and slap Stan’s head, but then he stopped, hesitated, and put his hand down. He wasn’t supposed to hit Stan; he’d got to remember that.
“Yeah Stan, just like we were supposed to be here.”
The Carter family would probably not have agreed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kevin spent a good portion of the next day trying to locate people who were very important. Like for instance, his new friend the Governor. Not to mention the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Kevin had an ace up his sleeve though. April stood beside him at the desk phone. She’d already located the Governor, as well as the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. The Governor gave Kevin the name of the person in the state archives and Kevin had already talked to her; she was on the case right now in fact. He also had the right name of the head of archives for the sale, contracts and shipment of gold from private companies to the U.S. Government.
Kevin had pretty much left all the separate crews to do their own thing; this took precedence over everything right now.
