by Melko, Paul
“I saw her before I went,” John said.
“Indeed. So the nurse said. And where did you go, actually?”
“None of your business.”
Duderstadt looked at him. “Maybe you don’t like my manner,” he said. “Maybe I ask probing questions, you think. Maybe I should mind my own business, yes?”
John said nothing.
“Well, the peace, prosperity, and safety of this town are my business,” he continued. “And you seem to be mussing up that peace, prosperity, and safety. That’s what I think.”
John shrugged.
“A shrug, a shrug. That’s what I get for my trouble.” He stood. The officer looked at him.
“Sir?”
“Check the hospitals for a wounded male,” Duderstadt said. “Winged in the shoulder by this girl here.”
“What should I do with…?” The officer held out the gun.
“Is it properly licensed?”
The officer nodded.
“Well, give it back to the young lady. She might need it again.”
With that Duderstadt left the apartment.
“I don’t think he liked us much,” John said to Casey.
The officer glanced down at them. “He doesn’t like anybody much.”
* * *
“Maybe you need a gun too,” Casey said. The police had left, and the two were sitting at the kitchenette table.
“They’re not going to stop, are they?”
“I don’t think so,” Casey said. “We should have anticipated this, when the legal ploys didn’t work.”
“Starting over doesn’t seem so bad now,” John said.
“It does, and we won’t, except as a last resort,” Casey said. “You lost your original parents, didn’t you? Do you want the rest of us to go through the same thing? Lose our families and friends?”
“Of course not,” John said. “But these people will cause us to lose our lives. If you hadn’t arrived in time, I’d be dead. If you hadn’t decided to get a gun.”
“I guess you owe me your life,” Casey said.
“I do,” John said. “What can I do to repay you?”
“Hmmm.”
John paused. “I saw Casey and Prime in 7533. They have a baby there. Abby.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Maybe, you and I…”
“Is that a proposal, John?”
“Um.”
“Because unless you have a ring hidden somewhere on your body, I don’t want to hear another word about that,” Casey said.
“But if I bought one, would you…?”
“Sorry, a lady won’t answer those kinds of hypotheticals. You just have to ask and see.”
But she reached around his head and kissed him firmly on the lips. “You just never know what the answer will be until you ask.”
“Got it.”
“How’s the treasure hunting going?” she asked.
“We’ve got nothing.”
“We’re going to lose the company, aren’t we?” she said.
“If we do, we’ll make a new one. Either here or in 7651.”
“I guess so,” Casey said. She wiped a tear from her eye. “I kinda like this universe.” She paused. “What’s the other Casey like?”
“You know the answer to that. She’s just like you.”
“Really? She’s had a baby. She’s had to deal with Prime. She can’t be the same.”
John thought about it for a moment. Yes, on the surface, the two Caseys were identical, but there was an edge to Casey-7533, a darkness that Casey-7650 didn’t have. Her experience with Prime—the death of Ted Carson, whether accidental or murder—had hardened her.
“She’s … different. Prime changed her.”
John reached up and felt the puckered hole of the gunshot wound in Casey’s shoulder. She touched his hand.
“You think…?” she started. She looked at him.
“Yeah, I think I’m a bad person sometimes,” John said. “I think I’m going to get you hurt.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. “No, John, you haven’t corrupted me. And, no, you aren’t John Prime.”
“But we’re the same!”
“Up to a point,” Casey said. “The John I love is a million times different than John Prime. He gave up. You kept going. You kept going until you found me.”
“I gave up too. It was just dumb luck.”
She smiled. “You can think that if you want.” She kissed him on the lips. “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”
* * *
John transferred into 7458 using the fixed gate, after running documents and Grace-7651 from 7650 to 7651.
“I’m beginning to feel like a taxi service,” he said.
“I’d slap a taxi driver that held me that close,” Grace said.
The half day lost to bus travel made him wish he had a car in 7458. One more trip, and he’d see about getting one.
He did rent a bike on Kelleys Island, and that made the hike to the campsite easier.
Prime wasn’t there, but the sleeping bag was laid out within the tent. The fire was smoldering, warm from breakfast or the night before. John assumed he was at the search site. He grabbed his metal detector and hiked through the woods toward the beach and Bird Rock.
“John!” he called.
No response.
He called several times, crisscrossing the search site. Had John left for lunch? Or found an area beyond the original site to search? No, he wouldn’t have had time to finish the first area at his rate of search.
John rounded a small hill, covered in saplings, and found a recently dug hole. Prime had started digging here for some reason. Digging deep too. John ran his metal detector over the bottom of the hole. It beeped and whirled. Something was down there.
He narrowed in on the spot, marked it with a stone. Then he jumped out of the hole, setting the detector aside. He needed the shovel, and found it, tossed aside in the bushes. Prime had been digging, and then he’d stopped, taking the detector with him, leaving the shovel. But whatever he had found was still buried. Where had he gone?
He stood and looked around the area. He couldn’t see anything beyond the green of the forest.
John started digging with the spade. Something crunched under his blade.
He reached into the pit, rooting in the dirt, and pulled out a small coin. The obverse said C. BECHTLER, ASSAYER in a circle around the rim. The opposite side said NORTH CAROLINA GOLD. There was no date, but the coin said 150 G. That meant 150 grains. A third of an ounce of twenty-carat gold. The gold alone was worth a few hundred dollars, but John had a feeling that the age of the coin gave it much more value.
John stood up again and looked around. They’d found their gold, but in the process they’d lost John Prime.
CHAPTER 9
John Prime wiped sweat from his eyes again. A rain shower had blown through, and, instead of refreshing the forest, it had left it so muggy and humid that the perspiration refused to evaporate from his forehead. The detectors were guaranteed waterproof, and so was he, but that didn’t stop the sweat from streaming into his eyes and stinging.
He was maybe halfway done canvassing the area. For his trouble, he’d found fifteen coins, some as old as 1943, amounting to $2.15. Not one of them was gold. Slowly he’d been working his way closer to the house on the adjacent property. He’d seen no one near the house, but when he glanced over once, one of the curtains looked like it had been moved.
How pissed would they be if they found out all that gold had been sitting right next to them all these years? But they’d never find out.
What if the gold was right on their property line? Or even over the line?
Perversely, Prime took a turn from his line directly toward the house. The detector beeped.
He bent down, as he had done a dozen times already, and cleared away leaves, humus, and dirt. A pop-top, from the seventies, lay half buried in the dirt.
“Find riches beyond belief,” he whispered. “Pirate
treasure, old coins, the wedding band you lost last year.”
He continued on, right up to the edge of the property, where the shrubs gave way to lawn. He was over a hundred meters from Bird Rock at this point, beyond their target area.
Prime turned, took two steps over a small mound, and the detector began to vibrate.
“Another pop-top,” he said. “This’ll be the most pristine tract of forest in Ohio when we’re done.”
He cleared away the upper layer, running his detector over each shovelful. Nothing. He pulled out a larger chunk of dirt. Still nothing, but the detector chirped over the same spot. He threw his shoulder into it and excavated another chunk of dirt.
Something was wedged into the dirt. He dug it out with his finger. Something heavy and metallic rolled onto the ground. A button.
Prime held it in his palm, poured a little water over it, rinsing it.
It was a button, and etched into it were the letters CSA.
“Confederate States of America,” John said.
Prime didn’t let himself get too excited. Buttons didn’t mean anything. Johnson’s Island, just on the other side of Marblehead, was a Union prison. There were any number of ways a button might have arrived on this spot. And only one way that gold might have.
Prime ran the detector over the bottom of the hole. Still it beeped. Something else was down there.
He started shoveling dirt from the hole, deepening and enlarging. Every ten shovels full, he ran the detector over the debris. He found three more buttons, and then there was no more sound from the detector.
“Four buttons,” he said. “That’s it. Four buttons.”
But then he paused. This was a sure sign that there were some Civil War artifacts on the island. Instead of continuing his linear path into the woods, Prime decided to circle around from the hole. Maybe there was something nearby.
On his second circumference, just as he stepped over an old mound of mossy dirt, the detector exploded with sound. Mapping it out, Prime found the area of interest to be a meter in diameter. Something big was down there.
He marked the area with the shovel, dragging it through the leaves and debris. Then Prime started digging in huge strokes. He forgot the heat for the moment. He ignored the pain in his feet and the blisters on his palms.
Something dinged on his shovel.
He jumped into the hole, now about half a meter deep. Brushing dirt aside, he found a glint of metal. A round coin the size of a nickel.
Prime grinned.
“Found it!”
He heard the sound of a shotgun pumped once. He looked up into the face of a grimy man dressed in dirty jeans, a white T-shirt, and a cowboy hat.
“You sure did,” said a second man on the other side of the hole. “Now why don’t you tell us how you came to hear about our Civil War gold?”
* * *
One dragged him out of the hole, while the other kept his gun pointed on him.
“I’m just looking for metal,” Prime protested. “I didn’t know about any Civil War gold until I found this coin.”
The first man grabbed it out of his hand. “Our gold.”
“This is federal land!” Prime cried. “That’s mine to keep.” Prime had no idea if that was true or not.
“Not if you’re dead,” the one with the gun said.
“Uh.”
“Grab his stuff, Russell,” the one with the gun said.
Russell grabbed Prime’s detector and the small trowel. He missed the bigger shovel, and Prime wasn’t about to mention it to them.
“Come on, digger,” Russell said. “You can tell us all about it when we get you to the barn.”
“Don’t think about squawking. No one will mind a stray gunshot out here. Turkey season.”
“And he’s the turkey, right, Amos?” Russell said.
“Yeah, he’s the turkey.”
They dragged him through the woods toward the west, emerging onto the lawn of the house that marked the edge of the park. They led him to a barn behind the house.
“Cuff him to that pole,” Amos said.
The barn was dim, etched in sunlight knifing through the cracks in the old weathered walls. Russell dragged Prime to a post and cuffed his hands behind his back and around the post. Amos then set the gun next to his feet on the ground.
“So, you’re looking for gold, and we want to know how you found out,” Amos said.
“I told you, I was just looking around for souvenirs and stuff,” Prime said. “I don’t know about any gold. Not until I found that coin. Which you can have. Looks like it was on your property anyway.”
Amos laughed. “Our property!”
Russell guffawed.
“We saw you crisscrossing that land for three days,” Amos said. “We was watching you. You don’t spend that time crisscrossing without having some plan, right?”
“Some plan to find Civil War gold,” Russell said.
“So there’s some Civil War gold,” Prime said. “So what? You want it? You can have it. I’m outta here. Just uncuff me and I’m gone.”
“Yeah, well, that could have been the plan, until you found that coin,” Amos said. “Now, we need to know who else knows. We can’t have people nosing around all day and night for our gold.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Prime said. “I promise.”
“You don’t have to promise,” Amos said. “We can take care of that.”
The threat cut through Prime. He didn’t see any easy way out of this. He had to buy time until Farmboy found him.
“Everyone knows about the gold where I’m from,” Prime said. “And people know where I am, so don’t think you can get away with anything!”
“People go missing all the time in the woods,” Amos said. “We’ll clean up your search site, hide all your camping gear. It’s like you’ve never been here.”
“People know I’m here. They’ll find me.”
Amos glared. “We’ll just leave you here for a few hours. You think about telling us what we want, and we’ll make it painless for you. Otherwise…”
“Yeah, I get it. ‘Otherwise’ is bad.”
“Oh, and look how close you got to the gold!” Amos said. He walked over to a pile of boxes covered in a white cloth. He whisked it away. On the top of the pile was a steamer trunk open and filled with gold coins.
“You morons,” Prime said. “What good does keeping all that gold in a box do you?”
Amos glared again. “You’ll be sorry. You’ll see!” They left the barn.
“What the hell,” Prime said, and tried to reposition himself on the dirt floor. He figured he’d be there for a long time.
* * *
John stood up and looked around again. Prime would not have wandered off in the middle of the day with the dig in progress. No way. Something happened. Maybe he’d hurt himself and had gone in search of medical assistance. Though there was no hospital on the island. John had no idea where to look. He could check in with the police, he guessed. The island did have one police car.
“John,” he whispered. “Where’d you go?”
For just a moment, he wondered if Prime had absconded with the gold. No, there was no way to get back to his Casey if he did. Nor did John believe Prime would steal the money even if he could go back. But John wondered for a second if Prime could build his own device. He had been armpits deep in building the machine in 7651. Maybe he’d copied the plans or memorized them. It was no harder than building a kit airplane or submarine.
John bent over and ran his detector over the bottom of the hole again. It continued to beep. Still more down there.
He dug the shovel into the earth and turned over another pile of dirt. With the side of the spade, he broke the pieces into smaller chunks. This time he didn’t need the detector to see the coins. A small handful of dull metal circles clung to the clod.
“Geez!” John hefted the pile of coins in his palm. They were heavy like gold. He poured a little water over them. They glittered as
the dirt came off them. Each was bigger than a dime, smooth edged, and printed with the same words in an arc around the edge of the coin: C. BECHTLER, ASSAYER. And on the opposite side: NORTH CAROLINA GOLD. He was holding a fortune in gold in the palm of his hand. The gold alone was worth thousands of dollars, but he had a feeling the coins as antiquities would be worth even more. Civil War gold.
“John!” he shouted. He climbed out of the hole. “John!”
He scrambled onto the small hill next to it. John stopped. The small hill was an old pile of dirt. Someone a long time before had dug there. He paused and looked closely at the pile. It was moss-covered, with leaves atop and small ferns. But it was clearly not a part of the original terrain. Someone had piled that dirt there, years before. Looking for gold.
He turned at the sound of someone moving through the brush.
“John?”
The sound stopped, but there was no response.
John froze. Prime would have responded.
He carefully walked to his left, trying not to disturb plants or make noise with his feet. He slipped the coins into his pocket.
Backing carefully down the gentle slope, he found a small bush and knelt behind it.
Two shapes emerged into the clearing with the hole.
“I swear I heard something, Russell.”
“Ain’t no one here now, Amos.”
One stared into the hole. The other stood with his arms on his hips and looked around.
“This shovel wasn’t here before,” Amos said. “I’m telling you, he has a friend.”
“Then where’d he go? Ain’t here now.”
John presumed something had happened to Prime, and these two knew what. Maybe he could bluff them. He looked just like Prime.
He stood up. “What do you two want now?”
The two jumped, staring at him. They stared into the green cover as John emerged.
“Who…”
“What…”
“I asked what you wanted now? Why are you bothering me again?”
“How’d he get away?” Amos asked.
Russell didn’t answer but pulled a gun from his belt.
John turned and ran. Bluffing hadn’t worked so well.
A shot went off. Something thudded into a tree nearby.
