by Jen Bryant
—from “Help!”
by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Tonight while Harry
and Denise are seeing
Janis Joplin (in person)
scream into her
microphone and my
father is preaching
Pythagorean theory
in a classroom
at Glassboro State,
we three plan to meet
behind Mr. Dupree’s
A.M.E. Church on
Mulberry Street
to see if Point C
is out in the open
or under two feet
of solid concrete.
After work I take
my kaleidoscope
to the porch, aim it
at the headlights of
passing cars to create
a kind of psychedelic
light show. Even so,
for about half an hour,
I fall asleep in
the wicker rocker;
I dream that Denise
is buried neck-deep
in playground dirt
and that my mother
is hiding somewhere
under the Mullica River
and that Carolann,
Malcolm, and me get
drafted to Vietnam
but when we arrive,
all we find is a field
full of holes and one
old treasure chest filled
with human bones.
After only one week of putting his
New and Improved Parenting Plan into effect,
my father is already
so predictable,
I can plan my evening outings
to the minute.
He calls at eight-thirty … precisely at eight-thirty
Yes, Dad.
Yes, I finished that, too.
Yes, I’m in the living room, reading.
Yes, I know Denise won’t be home until late.
Yes, I know you’re working late, too.
Yes, I’ll lock up.
Yes. Good night.
After that first night, he does not call twice.
Carolann arrives at eight-thirty-five,
Malcolm at eight-forty.
At precisely eight-forty-five, we carry
the metal detector, wrapped in a blanket,
down Gary Street two blocks,
turn right onto Walnut,
and make our way over to Mulberry,
to the side yard
of the A.M.E. Church.
We rest beside the back door to the sanctuary,
where every Sunday the A.M.E. gospel choir
praises the Savior
and where, every Sunday till now,
Dixon Dupree’s deep bass voice
has led them in song.
I turn to Malcolm. “Is there anyone around?”
He shakes his head. “Dad’s at home and
no one else comes here
on weeknights. We should be fine.”
We unwrap
the metal detector and draw straws to see
who gets to use it, who gets to read the map,
and who gets to stand guard.
I go last and draw
the shortest,
which means I get to suit up. Malcolm helps me
strap on the battery pack,
clip on the headphones,
and activate the magnetic signal.
Carolann stands guard in the yard.
“OK,” Malcolm says, pulling out the map
and a tape measure.
“I’ll walk off thirty-nine feet from the
building’s cornerstone and hold the tape.
From there, you head northwest, toward the woods,
another eighty-eight feet.”
I do as Malcolm says. He holds the tape on
the pivot spot
while I head off into the pines
behind the church.
At about eighty feet, I begin to swing the detector
back and forth in front of me, just like we
saw one of our American soldiers do
the other night on TV when he was using
one of these to check a field for f r a g m e n t a t i o n
mines before he led his men across.
I stop counting at eighty-seven. I’m standing
beside a fallen
maple tree about ten feet into the woods
and the signal
is so strong I think I might go deaf
if I can’t
get these stupid headphones off!!
Yesterday after dark,
while I was still washing dishes at the diner
to cover a shift for Mary Sue, who
had a bad ear infection
(or so she told Mr. Archer—
I think she drove down to the beach;
she’s pretty darn tan for a full-time dishwasher),
Malcolm and Carolann went back to Point A,
under the jungle gym at the playground,
and took the metal detector with them.
Yesterday after dark,
Malcolm and Carolann made sure
no one else was around
(not even the crows this time) before they wore
the headphones, switched on the instrument,
and swept it back and forth over
the top of the spot where the map said
the treasure might be.
Yesterday after dark,
the metal detector picked up
something
under the jungle gym, but the signal wasn’t as strong
as the one behind the church. So Carolann
used her shoes to scoop up sand
and there she found a quarter, two nickels, and four
shiny pennies (a grand total of thirty-nine cents),
probably dropped by unsuspecting mothers or upside-
down, knee-hanging kids. Then Malcolm
and Carolann swept the spot again, and this time:
no signal. So—unless the treasure is under
the cement floor of the picnic pavilion in the park
(and if it is, we may never know …),
there seems to be no reason why we shouldn’t
start digging at Point C in the woods
behind the A.M.E. Church tomorrow evening.
If Mary Sue’s ear is still “infected” then,
I’m going to tell Mr. Archer
he’ll have to wash the dirty dishes
himself.
The rain is coming down hard and fast,
like a Jimi Hendrix guitar riff.
Tonight we had planned to start digging,
but instead we are sitting
in Carolann’s family’s Volkswagen van,
watching the drops hit the windshield
and the rolled-up windows and hearing they
rat-a-tat-rat-a-tat on the metal roof
while we sit in the backseat and make
a list of things that are good and bad
about the location of Point C.
So far, this is what we’ve got:
GOOD: The detector says there is something metal buried in the
woods.
BAD: It’s not so far into the woods that it will be well hidden if
we have to dig a really big hole.
GOOD: Both Malcolm’s mom and Carolann’s dad are
gardeners—so getting shovels will not be a problem.
BAD: If the treasure is large (it sank pretty fast in the river,
according to Captain Kidd’s log), it will take a lot of digging;
we can’t go out there every night without our families
getting suspicious. So … we’ll have to take turns, spread out
our visits. So … this could take us the rest of the summer.
GOOD: We don’t have school, so losing a lot of sleep won’t be a
big p
roblem.
BAD: Malcolm and Carolann’s families will mostly be home at
night. They’ll need to sneak out or lie (probably both) to
get over to the church unnoticed.
GOOD: When there are three of us, two can dig and one can
stand watch.
BAD: Even with all of that digging, if the chest is buried under a
lot of soil and sand, someone might notice us before we
find it.
GOOD: The metal detector’s signal was so strong, we are almost
guaranteed to find something.
BAD: The instrument might be picking up the metal on the
outside of the chest (we saw pictures of pirate chests in the
library books; they’re mostly made of wood, with iron nails
and locks). Inside, there might be nothing that’s valuable
anymore. Carolann has been reading about how things like
salt, pepper, licorice, and cinnamon were worth a lot of
money in pirate times…. We try not to think about going
through all this for a bunch of condiments.
GOOD: If we find an actual treasure, we might be rich forever.
And if we don’t, at least we killed a few weeks of summer,
spent some time together, and kept ourselves from thinking
about ninth grade, nuclear bombs, and Vietnam.
(That’s not so bad.)
We arrive around nine.
Carolann went to bed early “with a headache,”
then she
climbed
down
the
tree
outside her room.
Malcolm told his mom he was staying
over at Jeremy Brown’s house. He’s brought
two shovels from his mom’s garden shed, which we’ll hide
somewhere near the church
when we’re done digging.
Then, Malcolm figures, he’ll sneak inside—
through the back window—
and find a good place to sleep.
My father called home at eight-thirty.
He probably won’t call again. So—
I have about two hours
before Dad or Denise comes home.
We roll aside the fallen tree,
lift the flat rock that marks the spot
where the detector’s signal was strongest.
While Carolann stands watch,
Malcolm and me tie our flashlights
in the V of a nearby tree
and start to dig.
Now I understand why pirates
in all the TV movies
usually bury their treasure
on flat, treeless beaches,
and why convicted criminals
are sentenced to hard labor
on chain gangs where they
dig ditches dawn till dusk.
The three of us have been
taking turns digging every
other night for a week,
and we have hit more rocks
and tree roots than we care
to count. Sometimes just two of us
can come, sometimes it’s all three.
So far, though, no one has noticed
when we’re gone or when we slip
back home late, late at night.
So far, no one has noticed the
three-foot-wide by two-foot-deep
hole behind the A.M.E. Church,
which we carefully cover with
the fallen tree, a big piece of plastic,
and several leafy branches.
My shoulders ache; I have
blisters on my fingers
and my palms, which
sting like crazy whenever
I plunge them into the hot
dishwater at the diner;
so to keep myself from
yelling out loud whenever
my hands hit the suds,
I have begun to sing
“Me and Bobby McGee”
while I’m working, and since
blues goddess Janis yells
at least as much as she sings,
no one in the kitchen is
the least bit suspicious.
We only get one chance
to dig this week.
Carolann’s aunt from Millville
is here for a visit,
which means Carolann has to give up
her room and sleep on the couch,
where it would be hard not to notice
if she tried to sneak out at night.
Malcolm and me, we do our best to
switch off digging and standing watch,
but then, just our luck, the church
decides to have its summer picnic
in the side yard (the Duprees always
invite me), so all we can do that day
is stand about thirty yards
from our carefully covered hole
and nibble on corn dogs, coleslaw,
baked beans, and chocolate cake.
After we eat, all the kids play baseball,
with home plate being near the back door
and left field being right in front
of the trees that stand about ten feet
from our dig. Malcolm and me make sure
we get on different teams and we make
really sure that we each play left field
(which isn’t easy, since everyone knows
Malcolm’s a pretty good pitcher) and we
scramble, sprint, and dive for every
hit that comes anywhere near us.
Then I slip—a hit gets past me …
I run till I think my lungs will burst
while the ball rolls right into the woods by
our hole. I say a quick prayer under my
breath, and when I get there, the plastic
has stopped it from dropping in.
I grab it and run back toward
the game. I heave it as hard as I can
to the infield (so much for healing
my aching shoulders) while I make
a promise to God that if we do find
a treasure, I will come to church again
and I will even pray for Janis Joplin
—and maybe Denise.
Another week of digging.
More blisters.
Shoulders ache.
Still
a big,
empty hole.
I am walking past the cemetery gate
on my way to work at the Willowbank Diner
when I see Harry Keating pulling weeds
from around one headstone,
then moving on to do the same
to another. I stop to watch and then—
I don’t know why—I decide to go in and say hi
to Harry and that’s when I see that he’s
taking care of Eddie’s, Guy’s, and Charley’s graves.
Now I’m thinking maybe I have been
too quick to label Harry as lazy, to lump
him in with some of the other older
teens in town whose only occupation
is complaining. Harry looks up. “Hey, Lyza.”
“Hey,” I say. I help him pull dandelions
from around the stones, and we talk about
stuff happening in town, about a few
of the new music groups, about him filling in for Dixon
at the lumberyard. “The old guys tease me
about my ponytail,” he says. “But I like the work.”
The more we talk, the nicer Harry seems.
So I ask him, flat out, how he puts up
with Denise. He laughs, but even he
must see what a pain she can be sometimes.
“I know she seems unreasonable … but
Denise really does care about you, Lyza—
she just has trouble showing it.”
I tell Harry that I thi
nk his color-blindness
is affecting his judgment with women.
I tell him that as long as he’s going to
hang around with my sister, I wish he
would go ahead and marry her, get her
out of our house and my hair. Harry
laughs again, but then he gets serious.
“Maybe someday, I’ll actually do that.”
(Jeez—the thought of Hairy Harry
and Denise getting hitched is just weird.)
After this, we walk over to where
Gramps is buried. The headstone says:
LEWIS BRADLEY, 1888–1968.
It needs weeding, too. So Harry and me,
we both kneel down, start to pull out
the vines and thistles that have grown
on either side. This hurts my digging blisters,
which I’m doing my best to hide from Harry.
I try not to remember the funeral. I try
not to think about everyone I’ve lost… but
of course that’s exactly where my mind goes.
Suddenly I can’t see the weeds in front of me.
My eyes fill up and even though I think
I can hold my tears back, in about two seconds
I am sobbing into Harry’s long brown hair,
which smells like sawdust and cigarettes, while he
holds me, letting me be sad for as long
as I need. I never thought I’d say this,
but if Harry marries Denise,
at least there will finally be someone
in the family I can lean on.
Malcolm shows me a letter from Dixon:
Hey, Malcolm—
Well, we made it all the way across the world to South Vietnam. Now we wait to get our orders. Rumor has it they send blacks to where the fighting is worse. Every one of us is scared, but of course no one’s saying so. Our base is right near the runway and you wouldn’t believe the noise. Planes and choppers coming and going all the time. Lots of flag-covered caskets heading home.
