by M. D. Lee
Sara grabs one end of the tarp while I have the other, and we pull it completely off the pile of boxes. I slowly walk around all the boxes neatly stacked in a large pile. There’re boxes labeled speakers, receivers, and some as turntables, others as tape decks; it’s a lot of stuff. “There must be thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment here,” I say still walking around the pile.
Sara is looking closely at one of the 8-Track tape deck boxes. “It all looks new. This is so weird, why do you suppose this equipment is all the way out here on this island?”
“I don’t know,” I say as I try lifting one of the speaker boxes. “But I don’t think anyone is supposed to know it’s out here.”
As I’m setting the speaker box down off to the side, I notice something I hadn’t seen before. “Hey, look down by the water. There’s a wooden ramp going across the rocks and boulders into the water, but it looks almost new.” The wooden ramp is about ten feet wide, long, and stretches past the high tide mark all the way into the water to about where low tide should be. The ramp seems to be built so someone could easily land a dingy or smaller boat on it no matter what the tide level. That must be how all these boxes ended up neatly stacked in a pile; someone’s using the ramp to unload and load the boxes.
It’s all starting to become clear what’s going on here, when suddenly a voice calls out from behind us, “What a drag, man. The Fish-Miester, Fisher Shoemaker. What’da doing out here, man?”
Both Sara and I spin around to see a figure standing off to the side who’s wearing a red bandana and a scraggly beard. “Skinny Pete,” I whisper to Sara.
“That’s your ghost, Skinny Pete?” Sara asks. “But I thought you said the Coast Guard caught him.”
Last summer while I was on the run, I ended up on Hunter’s Island. It was there where I ran into Skinny Pete, or should I say, I found him one morning dead drunk passed out in the bunk of his old lobster boat. At first he seemed like an okay guy; he had a drinking problem, but he was okay. We even teamed up and started working some lobster traps and I was lucky enough to even make a few bucks. The problem was, it turned out they weren’t his traps at all; we were poaching. That will get you in some big trouble here in Maine. And that’s when it all went bad. A long story short, I told the Coast Guard his last known location. They were happy to have it because they’d been after him for a while. I never heard any more about him, so I just assumed the Coast Guard found him. Apparently not.
“The Law almost nabbed me,” Skinny Pete interrupts while stroking his beard. “But I gave them the slip. Just too clever for our Aqua Cops, I guess. Actually, just between you and me, I was sorta sleeping one off when they musta cruised right past where I was anchored. Not really sure how that happened, but there was a lot a radio chatter going on later how they said I evaded their pursuit, ‘evaded their pursuit’ their words.” He chuckles a little. “Hell, I was just taking a nap; I didn’t evade nothing.”
Looking closer at Sara, Skinny Pete says, “Fisher dude, this must be your old lady you told me about.”
I nod.
He walks a little closer to us. “Thanks to Fisher, I had to make a little career change,” he says pointing to the stack of stereo equipment. “No more stinkin’ lobsters for me, no, sir. I’m now a stereo Hi-Fi equipment sales representative. And this island is my sales warehouse.”
“Fisher, I have no idea what this wacko is saying.” Sara says in a low voice.
I glance at her and make a little motion like I’m drinking from a bottle.
She whispers, “Oh, that’s right. You said he had a little drinking problem.”
I take a step back from Skinny Pete. “What are you talking about, sales representative?”
Skinny Pete moves closer to the pile of equipment, pulls a box off and sets it down on the ground then sits on it. “Ya see, I get this Hi-Fi stuff for a real good price. A REAL good price, if ya know what I mean. All I have to do is sell it to my customers who sell it to their customers. And this is like my warehouse.” He makes a sweeping gesture with his arms. “All they have to do is come out here and pick it up because we don’t do deliveries, man.”
Sara frowns and crosses her arms. “So this is a smuggling operation.”
“Ouch.” Skinny Pete says. “Smuggling; that’s such a harsh word. Smuggling is what pirates used to do. I’m no pirate.”
“You sure look like a pirate,” Sara snaps back.
Skinny Pete chuckles. “I’m mostly a mellow dude, The Fish-Miester can tell you that. But sometimes I end up doing some crazy things, but mostly mellow.”
“Aren’t you worried someone’s going to find out about your operation,” Sara says. “We found it easily enough.”
Skinny Pete pulls off his red bandana, scratches his head, then puts it back on. “I wasn’t worried about it until you just mentioned it.”
I take a quick glance and catch Sara’s eye. She gives me a slight nod back. We slowly begin creeping backwards ready to run.
Skinny Pete continues, “But now that you kids came along I can’t afford to have you blow our whole operation. The dineros are way too good.”
“We won’t say anything, I promise,” I lie. “Besides, I know you don’t want to do anything to hurt us.”
“You’re right; I don’t want to hurt you. But my new business partner doesn’t have a problem with it. Fisher, I’d like you to meet my new business partner, Turk.” Skinny Pete raises a hand and points behind us. Sara and I both snap around. Standing directly behind us is a huge muscular guy, completely bald, and wearing a black tank top that says, “Smitty’s Pub” across his chest. His face is deep tan and looks like an old scuffed up leather shoe. His arms are crossed and his eyes are glaring at us without any humor. We’re not even standing that close to him, but we get an unexpected whiff that makes my breakfast come up a little. He really stinks. His body odor is so strong it almost makes my eyes water.
Covering her nose with both hands, Sara says, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
We’re both about to run when I realize he has a three-prong trident spear pointed at us. I don’t know much about tridents, but I know they’re sharp enough to easily stab a large fish before they can get away. We don’t budge an inch.
Very slowly Turk brings the trident to my chest, taps me twice with it, then nods in the direction away from the pile of stereo equipment. He wants us to walk. As I begin to move he grabs Sara’s elbow dragging her along. Turk forces us to walk several yards out of view of the box pile to where they have some fishing gear lying about the ground.
There’s a couple of old bait barrels, some broken lobster traps, and a spool of rope without much left on it. “Stop,” Turk says through grinding teeth. Tapping me again with the sharp end of the trident, he says, “You. Grab that barrel over there.” Then he turns to Sara, “And you. You pick up the lid.”
We do as we’re told. I pick up the barrel and Sara grabs the lid. Turk motions us to move down by the water between some of the large rocks where there’s a little patch of sand. I set the barrel down in the sand and Sara tosses the lid to the ground. Turk takes the lid from the sand and pounds it onto the top of the barrel.
“Looks like it’s my lucky day. Low tide,” Turk grumbles.
I look at Sara and she looks at me; we have no idea what he’s talking about.
“Plant your butts in the sand with your back up against the barrel.” He encourages me again by tapping the sharp trident against my chest. We do as we’re told.
Turk grabs a piece of rope off the spool, pulls out a buck knife from his belt, and swiftly cuts the rope. Moving like an ape that has too many muscles, he kneels in the sand next to us grabbing our hands and quickly ties them together around the barrel strapping Sara and I tight to the barrel. Before he makes the finial knot he gives it an extra tug to make sure everything’s snug. I have to admit, his knots are a lot more secure than Skinny Pete’s knots. I got out of Skinny Pete’s knots pretty easily, but there’s no g
etting out of this ones. We’re tied tight to the barrel.
“You kids have fun,” Turk says with a lopsided grin sliding the buck knife back into belt holder. “I got boxes to load.”
As he’s walking away he stops and turns around. “Oh, when the tide comes back in, that barrel should float you two quite well.” He turns and walks away. The stink of body odor goes with him.
“Tide. Now I get it,” I say.
“Do you think this barrel will float us?” Sara asks.
“It might. Does it matter? Chances are good it won’t float us perfectly upright with our heads above water. And if it does, the icy water will get us soon after that.”
“So we could die strapped to this barrel!” Sara gives a hard wiggle and a tug on her tied hands.
“I suppose we could.”
“Aren’t you worried about our predicament?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Well, here we are again, Fisher Shoemaker, trapped with no way to get out. What is it with you getting us trapped by bad guys? I’m really getting tired of this.”
“I dunno. It just seems to happen.”
Suddenly an idea hits me. “Hey, I’ve got it. On the count of three, if we should try and stand up then we can at least walk away even though we’ve got a barrel tied to our backs.”
“That could work,” Sara agrees. “Okay, let’s try it. One, two, three…” We both try and stand up, but because of the sitting position it’s impossible. We try two more times, but it still doesn’t work.
“Okay,” I say. “This is no big deal. We should be able to get out of this one pretty easily.”
“I’m glad you think so, because we seem to be not moving tied to this barrel,” Sara says giving a hard tug to the rope just to make her point.
“Would you stop that! That hurts my hands when you do that.” Sara gives it another extra hard yank.
“All we have to do is get down into the water, the barrel will float, then we should be able to stand up and walk out,” I say.
“And then what?” Sara asks. “We just walk along the trails and row out to the boat with our back stuck to a barrel? That shouldn’t be too hard. That stink-bomb Turk will never be able to catch us.” She gives another hard yank on the rope. I’m getting tired of her sarcasm.
“First things first,” I say. “Let’s just see if we can get to the water so we can stand up. Then we’ll figure out what to do next. Start scooching toward the water.”
Sara doesn’t protest and we start pushing ourselves, butts through the sand, slowly down to the water like a sleepy sea turtle. As we get closer to the water’s edge, I can feel the wet sand starting to soak through my pants and underwear. There’s nothing worse than wet underwear with sand in it. One little roll of water comes shooting up the hard-pack sand and gets us good and wet.
“The water’s freezing!” Sara shouts.
“Then let’s do this fast.”
Now we are moving like a fast sea turtle—which really isn’t much faster. The water is now to our waist, so we push ourselves just a little farther. Once the water is to our chest, I’m relieved to feel the barrel floating. “It’s working! Let’s try it again.” In an instant we are both standing. Being careful not to tip over, we wade to shore, each walking sideways, with the barrel strapped to our backs.
Once we are standing on the beach, I can feel the water running out of my pants. It’s a little clumsy, but we’re able to walk sideways like a crab farther up the beach. But when I look ahead, there in front of us, sitting on a rock with a smirk across her face, is Jo.
Chapter 18
Escape
“Well, ain’t you two just the cutest thangs,” Jo say chuckling to herself. “I really like how you’ve attached yourselves to the barrel.”
“Get us out of here before they come back!” Sara insists.
“Oh relax,” Jo says as she pulls up her right pant leg revealing a large knife strapped in a sheave. She slides the knife out, looks closely at the shiny blade, then comes over toward us. “They’re too busy to notice what’s going on with you two. Besides, the big ugly one’s not worried. He thinks you’re going to float away strapped to the barrel. What an idiot.” With one swift move Jo easily slices through the rope and the barrel drops to the sand. Once our hands are free, both Sara and I remove the remaining rope from our wrists.
“So you were here the whole time?” Sara asks. “And you let us struggle into the water?”
“I was gonna help. But watching y’all trying to move with a big ol’ barrel strapped to your back was just too dang funny. Besides, you’re out now, so what’s the big deal?”
“We’re wet, and I’ve got sand in my pants. I don’t like sand in my pants,” Sara says to her cousin with a snarl. “And he was trying to kill us!”
I butt in, “We need to get out of here now.”
“Not so fast,” Jo says grabbing my shoulder. “Let’s take a look to see what they’re up to. It’s always important to know what your enemy is thinking.”
Sara and I look at each other in question. Sara says, “She’s right. Let’s see what they’re doing before we get out of here.”
Soon we’re hiding behind some low lying shrubs looking down on Skinny Pete’s smuggling operation—if you can call it that. From here it’s nothing more than a tarp over a bunch of boxes. Skinny Pete is lying flat on his back, leg up on one knee, and even from here we can hear him snoring. The ugly one’s standing closer to the landing ramp next to several other boxes in a smaller pile. He’s standing there looking out toward the water like he’s waiting for something.
“They must be expecting a pick up,” I say.
“I bet you’re right,” Jo says. “Look out there.” She’s pointing off toward the southwest. On the horizon I can see a boat heading this way.
Sara says, “That should keep them plenty busy for a while giving us enough time to get to our boat and sail out of here.” The three of us stand up, and as quietly as we can, make for the trail back to the sailboat. We sure don’t want that goon, Turk, to catch us again.
Soon we pass across the Narrows and approach the fork that leads to the Old Man. I stop. “This might be our last chance to ever look for the treasure.”
“Are you nuts?” Sara says directed at me.
“He’s right,” Jo jumps in. “Do we really want to sail away from here leaving all that money behind? We’ve got some time. What do you think, Fisher, about an hour?”
“At least,” I say. “That pick-up boat was a long ways off, and at the speed they were going, maybe a half hour or more before they get here. Then they have to paddle in, and load up. Yeah; I bet about an hour.”
“You two are unbelievable!” Sara says with her fists tightly clenched on her hip. “You already know what they’re capable of, do you really want to take a chance they’ll catch us again?”
“It’s pirate treasure, Sara. That’s a lot of money,” I say.
Clenching her teeth, Sara picks up a rock and tosses with surprising force at the water. “You two idiots aren’t going to give in, are you?” Both Jo and I shake our heads no. “Okay then; we’re going to do this my way. Fisher, set the timer on your watch for one hour. Once your timer goes off, treasure or no treasure, we’re out of here. Agreed?” Again, we both nod.
Sara brushes some loose hair from her face and continues, “Only one person can fit inside the cave underneath the Old Man, so Fisher you’ll be the person digging. While you’re doing that I’m going to sneak back to Skinny Pete’s pick-up site and keep an eye on them. If it looks like they’re done sooner or if they realize we’re not there anymore, I’ll come running back here. I can keep far enough away it should be safe.”
“I don’t know about that, Sara. I don’t like it,” I say crossing my arms tightly.
“It’ll be a lot safer this way than not knowing they might come walking up on us. It’s like Jo said, it’s important to know what your enemy is thinking.”
“I guess so,”
I say reluctantly.
“And Jo,” Sara says, “you stand just far enough away from Fisher while he’s digging that you can keep an eye on him, but in a spot where you can see me if I’m coming from the trail.”
Jo says, “I think that dog will hunt.” Sara and I look at each other with question. “It’s a good plan!” Jo says. “Dog-will-hunt means it’s a good plan.”
“One hour,” Sara says pointing a finger at me then Jo. “Got it.” Sara takes off back the way we came then suddenly stops and turns around. “And NO kissing! I swear if I catch you I’ll tear both of you to pieces no matter who started it.” Jo just shrugs.
Shortly after that I’m crawling, hands and knees with the flashlight and shovel, over the hard packed sand underneath the Old Man. It seems extra dark in here especially because it’s so bright outside. Thinking that maybe the last person in this same spot might have been a pirate over hundreds of years ago suddenly gives me a chill up my backbone. The farther I crawl I notice there’s sort of a wet fishy smell in here. But that makes sense because it’d be weird if it smelled like pizza.
It doesn’t take long at all, maybe only twenty feet in, when I come to a space I can almost stand if I keep my head down. I shine the light all around trying to decide where to dig. I guess if I were a pirate and I was burying a treasure, I’d bury it right in the middle because that would give me the most room to swing the shovel. So that’s what I do, I dig right in the middle.
Jo shouts in, “Find anything yet?”
I shout back, “No. But I’m about to start digging.”
“Okay,” she answers.
I’ve got the flashlight propped up in the sand so I can see almost everything. I take a couple of scoops of sand and toss it to the side of the rock to keep it well out of my way. Luckily sand is soft and it’s pretty easy to get a hole started. I look at my watch; I’ve only been in here ten minutes, but it actually doesn’t leave me much time. Something like buried treasure could take days to dig up, but I’m only guessing because I’ve never actually dug up any treasure before. I dig a little faster.
