by Jen Bryant
Upon hearing my story, the men were understandably skeptical. Having already endured one mutiny, I was in no hurry to encourage another. Thus I pledged to them that as soon as we are no longer being followed, we will come back to the river and recover the chest, and the crew will divide among themselves all of its contents. And I, in return for taking the life of Mate Jones, will claim none.
We make haste now for the open sea, as the Royal Navy has spotted us.
Captain William Kidd
It’s weird to hear
a notorious pirate’s words
coming out of Malcolm’s mouth.
I have goose bumps on my arms, even more
than when I read those pages
silently
in Brigantine. Even more than when I copied them
down in pencil on notebook paper
(I write fast, but it still took me almost an hour)
as Mr. Tucker snored in his rocker
and Malcolm tiptoed from cabinet to cabinet
with the brass key that Gramps left me,
to see if it fit
in any of the other locks (it didn’t).
Carolann, who is almost never at a loss for words,
is at a loss for words.
Finally, she asks: “Can I see those
three maps?”
I pull the maps from their hiding place
in my bookcase.
Carolann unfolds them on the floor, walks around
them twice, then slides
the onionskin one of the Mullica River
in 1699 over the top of the current map
of Willowbank. (Why didn’t I think of
that? The whole time I was trying to figure
all this out by myself, I was comparing
old river to new river, but never the
old river to new town. Sometimes
I think Denise is right and I am truly
an idiot.) Malcolm and me, we move
closer to see what she sees: that the
course of the river way back in 1699,
the year in which Captain Kidd’s chest—
according to his ship’s log—
sank somewhere in the middle, fits
exactly over the three places, A, B, C,
that Gramps marked down in town.
“Lyza, your gramps wasn’t looking for
a house, he was looking for a treasure
that the most famous pirate ever
had lost and maybe never
came back for.”
Malcolm and me, we think on this
a minute. “How do we know for sure?”
I say. “Maybe he did come back for it
and there’s nothing there….” Malcolm
holds up the brass key. “My guess is this
is not from the seventeenth century. But if
it doesn’t fit anything over in Brigantine,
then what’s it for?” We hear someone
coming up the stairs. Denise.
Shoot! She’s supposed to be at work.
The other two scramble to hide the maps
while I grab the blanket from my bed,
spread it across my door frame to block
my sister’s prying eyes.
Denise and I almost never eat together.
This morning, however,
we end up in the kitchen at the same time.
Normally, I would just wait until later,
until she and her Female Power,
Flower Power T-shirt are out of my way. But today,
as soon as it opens, Carolann and I are meeting
Malcolm at the library, where we
hope to find out more about the fate of our
recently adopted pirate captain. Denise sits
across the table, eating her Wheaties
and reading her women’s-lib newsletter. I chomp
on a banana while my bread smokes in our
one-sided toaster. Then Denise stops
reading and things get weird. Not only does she
seem pleased at my presence, she expresses her
concern for my health and social habits:
“Lyza, you look tired, you look worried …
and I notice you’re spending a lot of time
in your room….” Who is
this strange person across the breakfast table?
An analogy: Denise is to concern and empathy
as Dad is to discipline.
As soon as she leaves, I drag some peppermint
Crest across my teeth, throw on my blue jeans,
and run across the street
to get Carolann. As we walk the three blocks
to the Willowbank Public Library, I try to ignore
a bad feeling that Denise—
somehow, some way—knows more than she should.
I think Mrs. Leinberger feels sorry for me because of Mom leaving
and everything. She’s always especially patient, even when
I ask a lot of stupid questions or pull half the books off the
shelf and don’t even take them out. So naturally, my two
best friends elect me to lead our little pirate inquiry
at the library. Fine. Mrs. Leinberger is,
of course, surprised to see three eager teenagers at her desk the
second the doors open. “We’d like to know where to go to
find out more about pirates,” I tell her. She leads us over to the
nonfiction section, to the 900s, trails her index finger
along the spines of one shelf of books. “Any of
these may help. Are you looking up any
particular pirate?” she asks. We talked about this last night, and we
decided that in case she starts asking about why we are all of a
sudden so interested in pirates, we would need to be careful.
I try to disguise our real goal. Here goes: “I think Black-
eard, Captain Tew, and maybe Captain Kidd, too.”
Mrs. Leinberger leaves for a minute. We start
pulling some pirate books off the shelves.
When she comes back, she hands me a slim book with a tattered
blue cover, apologizing for not having biographies on all three of
the pirates I named. I look at the title: The Life of William Kidd,
Reluctant Pirate, written by H. A. McCue and published in
London in 1952. “Thanks, Mrs. L,” I say. “I guess this
will just have to do.”
We lie side by side in my backyard.
Our eyes and our minds are tired.
We stayed the whole day at the library
reading about pirates, and in particular
about Captain Kidd. So far, this is
what we know: William Kidd was
born in Scotland in 1654. His father,
who was a sailor, died when he was five.
Kidd grew up poor. As a teenager,
he ran off to try his own luck at sea.
He worked on many different ships, doing many
different jobs, sailing all over the world.
When Kidd became captain of an English ship,
he won an important battle against the French;
this made him sort of a war hero.
In 1691, he married Sarah Oort, and they had
two daughters: Elizabeth and Sarah. The Kidd family
lived in a nice house—on Wall Street!—in New York
(that was Carolann’s favorite part). The captain
had an honest and excellent reputation
with just about everyone. Until 1695,
he lived a quiet, settled life. But then …
the governor of New York and some other
businessmen formed a plan: they sent Kidd
on a ship to the Indian Ocean with a piece of paper
that said he was allowed to hunt for and attack
pirate ships, and in r
eturn, they would share
the loot with him (the book explained that this
was called privateering). Kidd did this—
sort of. At some point in the long sea journey,
when Kidd refused to attack another ship
carrying valuable cargo, his crew—many
of whom were former pirates—staged a mutiny.
They tried to kill Captain Kidd. Luckily,
he was able to defend himself, but had no choice,
if he wanted to live, than to convert to piracy
(that was Malcolm’s favorite part; since his
father’s an evangelistic minister, he’s seen
more than his share of conversions). This happened
again and again over the next several years:
the captain would try to follow the principles
of privateering and to attack only certain
kinds of ships. But his crew, who wanted
more and bigger loot, would overrule him
and attack almost any ship they could.
According to the books we read, Kidd
was really an honest man, a respectable
sea captain, and a truly reluctant pirate.
When Kidd tried in 1699 to come home
to his family in New York, he left his big
ship, the Quedagh Merchant, in the Caribbean,
took a smaller, faster vessel, and sailed cautiously
up the east coast of the American colonies, including
Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey.
Kidd knew his outlaw reputation had spread.
So, according to some of his crew, he stopped
now and then to bury some of his treasure
in case he needed some reason to persuade
the governor not to arrest him. (This was when
he would have made his trip up the Mullica.)
When he reached New York, he collected his
family and sailed on to Boston, where the very
men who’d backed his mission turned against him
(this was my favorite part; desertion seems to be
my specialty), handing him over to the British
courts. Poor Captain Kidd spent more than a year
in a filthy English prison before he was granted
a trial. In May of 1701, he was convicted of piracy
and hanged. His body was displayed in a cage
over the Thames River for two whole years
as a warning to any captain or sailor who
might consider piracy. It appears that Kidd
never came back to America,
which means… he never collected
any of his buried treasure.
Part 5
How many children must we kill
Before we make the waves stand still?
—from “Saigon Bride”
by Nina Dusheck and Joan Baez
I don’t want to go.
Neither does Denise.
It’s still too soon. Too sad.
We each make excuses to Dad—
Denise: “It’s Harry’s birthday. We have tickets
to a show, and he’ll be so bummed if we can’t go!”
Me: “I promised Malcolm and Carolann I’d spend
the day with them, doing—you know—stuff.”
Dad looks at us both, square, runs his hand
through his rapidly graying hair. “Denise,” he says,
“you can stay to celebrate with Harry.
Lyza, you need to go, but tell your friends
they’re welcome to join us in Tuckahoe
as long as they don’t mind helping out at the auction.”
Dad leaves to teach a class. Denise does
a victory dance down the hall. I call Malcolm
and Carolann to tell them they’ve won
a deluxe one-day vacation
in Tuckahoe, round-trip transportation
included.
“Tables, rugs, lamps, bookcases, garden tools,
blankets, chairs—everything goes to the highest bidder!”
the auctioneer declares from his perch on the back porch.
Malcolm and Carolann help us keep everything coming
to the auction block, where it’s sold at bargain prices
to total strangers. It’s hard to watch. Even though I know
we have no use for any of it, it’s still hard to watch. At lunch,
I don’t say much. I sit in Gramps’ favorite chair on the lawn,
flip through some of his old magazines and play with my
kaleidoscope. My friends understand. Carolann squeezes
my hand and Malcolm feeds me Cracker Jacks he’s brought
from home. We’re almost through by half past two. Dad brings
the last things from the basement, including a broken rocker
and a blue-painted steel locker with a padlock on the front.
As Dad wheels them past in a wooden wagon, Malcolm starts
waving his arms like a willow in a storm. “You see the lock?
It says The Benson Company—that’s what it says
across the top of the brass key you showed me, the one your
grandfather taped to the back of that envelope!” Something
lurches in my throat. “How much money you got?” I ask.
Malcolm fishes in both his pants pockets for loose change.
He turns up eighty-five cents. We ask Carolann. “I brought
my June allowance—four dollars,” she says. I search every
pocket of my overalls: two dollars, ten cents. The bid is up
to five bucks. We bid six. Someone says six fifty. We say
six ninety-five—all we have. The next minute is three
hours long. Finally, the gavel bangs and the auctioneer
points to us: “One steel blue locker … contents unknown …
SOLD! … to the young buyers in the front row!” We run up
and wheel the thing away before he changes his mind.
We tell Dad we need the locker
for a summer project (which is true).
He just shakes his head and says:
“My father, the family pack rat… I guess
it’s pretty typical for him to keep
something huge and useless like this. Where
in the world will you guys put it?”
I’ve seen hundreds of pouty I-might-cry-at-
any-minute-Daddy looks on Denise’s face.
I’m desperate: I try my own version now. He sighs.
“OK, OK. You win. But you’ll have to sit
in the way back and keep it from tearing up
the inside of the station wagon.”
No problem, we answer. No sweat.
Except… the locker is metal
and it is heavy as a house and it has
a few sharp edges that keep digging
into our legs every time we hit a bump
and when we turn a corner it
shifts to the opposite side of the car
and whoever’s side that is
gets squished against the window.
By the time we reach Willowbank,
we are so beat up, we leave the locker
in the car, run for the freezer,
where we fill three plastic bags with
ice and sit on my front porch
healing our almost-seven-dollar wounds.
It’s another two days before
we can get together again
in a private place. This is
pretty important because
you can fold up three maps
pretty quick, but we don’t know
what’s in the locker with
the Benson Company padlock
on it, and just in case it is
something we don’t want
anyone else to see, we wait
to meet at night in Carolann’s
basemen
t, where her father
helps us carry the heavy-
as-a-house locker down
the stairs. “A project, huh?”
he asks us, to which
Carolann responds with all
her charm: “Daddy, will you
PLEEEEase keep the twins
away from this—I need my
own space for things now that
I’m older,” and to my surprise,
he agrees. We wait until he’s
upstairs again watching the
evening news. I have the key
and we draw straws to see
who gets to try the lock first.
Malcolm draws the shortest straw
but he puts the key in my hand.
“I think you should open it, Lyza.
It’s your granddad,” he says.
Carolann nods. “Go ahead.”
I slip the key carefully into
the lock. I try turning it left
but the lock is stiff. I turn it
right and pull down so that
the arm clicks open. I notice
my hand is shaking slightly
and my throat feels dry but I
remove the lock from the hole
in the metal door. I lift the latch
and pull. Inside is something
that looks like a shorter version
of the contraption that the
lifeguards use to clean the pool
at the Willowbank YWCA.
We all stand there looking.
“What is it?” Carolann finally asks.
Malcolm reaches in and pulls it
out. It has a long handle and
a battery pack and some kind
of round disk on the bottom,
about the size of an LP record.
“Malcolm, what is it?” I echo.
Malcolm inspects the battery
pack. He runs his hand down the
shaft to the round disk. Finally,
he answers. “I’ve seen these
