by Jen Bryant
He squeezes my hand, releases it.
“Sure,” he says. “Stay as late as you want.
It won’t be too long now and you’ll be doing
homework at night.”
“I know,” I reply, already halfway to the door.
“Don’t remind me!”
Malcolm and Carolann are already inside the van
eating Mt. Pocono peanut brittle
from a bright orange can.
“OK,” I say. “Let’s get started. We have to
come out of here tonight
with a plan for getting that chest.”
Malcolm agrees. “Once those Boy Scouts start
tromping around in the woods,
they’re gonna find it.”
“Unless we fill the hole back in,” Carolann offers, breaking
off a huge piece of brittle, splitting it
in two, handing a half
each to Malcolm and me.
“But then what?” Malcolm points out. “We’re right
back where we are now. Plus we’re in school,
which complicates everything
and takes up a whole lot of time.”
We go back over all the ideas we had
that night at the diner:
1. Flood the hole to soften the roots
(won’t do much to break up the rock).
2. Use acid to dissolve the shale and use tools
to cut through the roots (the acid might destroy the chest
and whatever’s in it; we don’t have the right tools).
3. Burn the roots with a torch
(ditto—too risky for the chest).
4. Use ropes and a pulley to lift it up from underneath
(but how do we get the ropes under the chest in the first
place?).
We eat way too much peanut brittle, hoping a little
sugar high will provide the answer.
It doesn’t.
Finally, I say what I’ve been thinking about
for the past three days: “Guys …
I think I know a way that might work.”
My friends stop chewing. I wait.
“Well, OK already,” Carolann says, gulping down
what’s in her mouth and putting the lid on the can.
“Let’s hear it.”
I am quiet a minute, as if silence
might help me believe that my idea
is the right one, the one that Gramps himself
would choose if he were alive, if he were in charge of
this adventure,
this problem,
this chest,
this mess,
this three-foot-deep hole with tree roots and shale,
with an iron band and a mermaid,
with green-shirted Boy Scouts,
with hardly any time left
till school.
I take a deep breath.
“I think we need to tell Harry.”
After work on Tuesday, I ride my bike
two miles over to the lumberyard
and wait.
At five-thirty, Harry walks across the parking lot toward
his car,
where I am drawing circles in the gravel
with my sandal.
“Hey, Lyza—what’s going on?”
He’s definitely not expecting to see me way out here.
Then, quickly, a little desperately: “Is Denise OK?”
(Jeez, he even sounds like a husband!)
“Oh, yeah. She’s fine,” I reassure him.
“Probably home burning another meat loaf right now.”
He laughs as he unlocks his trunk,
pulls off his gray Dillard’s Lumber T-shirt,
exchanging it for another one with a caricature
of Paul McCartney on the front.
Harry’s chest is tan, his shoulders stronger
than I imagined. One thing’s for sure:
Denise has much better taste in men
than in music.
I look around to be sure we’re alone.
“Harry?” My voice isn’t too steady.
He looks at me more seriously now.
His right hand slams the trunk shut.
“What is it?”
“Harry … I need to know if you can keep
a secret.”
His eyes narrow just a bit. He looks at me funny.
“Lyza, does this secret have anything to do
with Denise—or with anything illegal?”
I shake my head. “No … it’s not about Denise.
Honest. I would tell you. And I am NOT
buying, selling, or using any drugs!”
Harry studies me. He jingles his car keys.
“OK. Yeah. I’ve kept my share
of secrets for people. So what’s yours?”
I lift my bike off the ground, swing my right leg over.
“Meet me in the parking lot of the
A.M.E. Church. I’ll get there quick as I can.”
Harry’s not with me—yet.
“Why? What’s up at the church?”
“Please. Just… just trust me. I promise
I’ll explain everything once we’re there.”
I start pedaling away, not wanting to give him
any more time to decide.
I turn onto the main road and pick up speed.
It feels good, for a change, to use my legs
instead of my back and shoulders.
As Harry passes me,
I can hear John, Paul, George, and Ringo
singing “A Hard Day’s Night” on the radio,
which, come to think of it,
sums up the whole summer
pretty darn well.
My friends are sitting on the front steps
talking to Harry when I arrive.
Carolann has the maps
and the handwritten transcript
of Captain Kidd’s ship’s log;
Malcolm has the key to get us into
the church. We enter by the back door,
walk through the kitchen, and spread the maps across
the choir-room floor.
Malcolm turns on the light that’s over
the piano, and the three of us sit
on the bench. Harry sits cross-legged on
the floor, looking confused but, so far,
patient. Since we’re in church, I pray
silently that I have not misjudged him—
that he will keep our secret
and not rat us out. And more important,
that he’ll actually help us.
After we agreed that Harry might be
our only answer to saving the chest,
we decided that each of us should
tell one part of our story, and since
Harry knows me the best of the three,
I got elected to start. First I explain how
I found the maps and the letter
from Gramps; then Malcolm reads
the documents we found in Brigantine;
then Carolann tells how we used all that,
plus the metal detector, to find the site
we’ve been digging up at night
right behind the church. “We don’t
come every night—just as often
as we can,” she explains, sliding off
the bench, pacing a little, then sitting
back down again. “Sometimes it’s just
two of us, sometimes all three,
but we’ve been sneaking over here
for more than six weeks and now we’re
stuck.” When Carolann’s done,
Harry stands. He looks down at the
maps and then at the three of us
lined up on the piano bench like
magpies on a fence. Finally, he says:
“That story is so wild … you can’t
possibly be making it up.”
I feel all
three of us breathe
a sigh of relief. He believes us!
“So when do I get to see…?”
A wedge of light sprawls across
the choir-room floor. “Someone’s comin’—
grab the maps!” Malcolm croaks.
We dive down and gather them up.
Malcolm tucks them in his shirt.
And Harry—color-blind, grave-keeping,
Denise-loving Harry—stands
like a soldier between us
and whoever has intruded.
The wedge of light
that sprawled across the choir-room floor
is quickly blocked by the full figure
of Mrs. Eunice Carter.
“Malcolm DuPREEEE!” she bellows.
Her eyes slide across the rest of us.
“What are you-all doin’ in here?”
Sweat beads are already popping out across
Malcolm’s forehead. “Aunt Eunice! … uh…
hi… uh … we were just… uh …”
Stepping toward her, Harry interrupts.
“Excuse me, ma’am—uh, Mrs. Carter …
you see, I was just… uh … I don’t have
a piano at home and I was just… uh …
hoping to use this one here to … umm …
to rehearse a Beatles tune.”
Mrs. Carter’s eyes light up. “Oh, I love them.
Which one you singin'?”
I exchange looks with Carolann:
Uh-oh. He’d better pick one we
all know the words to.
Harry turns around, starts walking slowly toward
the piano. He looks at me, mouthing:
“Ticket to Ride”? and I nod OK.
We gather around the piano
with Harry playing,
Malcolm and me singing alto,
Carolann and Mrs. Carter singing soprano,
and we belt out the most
unrehearsed, improvised version of “Ticket to Ride”
that South Jersey has ever heard.
After singing that song with us twice more,
Aunt Eunice leaves with her sheet music
and her casserole dish
(which is what she came there for).
We wait, just to be safe, in the parking lot
in Harry’s car
until the sun goes down, until we’re sure
no one else is around. Malcolm stands watch
while Carolann and I take Harry through the side yard,
which we’ve walked across
so many times that we know it by heart
even in the moonless dark.
At the woods’ edge, I flick on my flashlight,
let the beam fall
on the tree trunk about ten feet in.
“There—can you see anything?” I ask.
Harry peers into the woods. He shakes
his head. “Nope. Not a thing.”
Carolann and I smile. “Good,” she says. “Because we spent
almost as much time covering this thing
as we did trying to dig it up!”
We roll back the tree, lift the branches
and the plastic. We lie on our bellies, scoop
out a few shoefuls of loose dirt. We move
away so Harry can look down
into the hole at the long-haired,
fish-tailed woman at the bottom.
Harry just keeps repeating:
“Man … unbelievable. Man oh
man oh man … unbelievable…. Man.”
And then: “You did all this yourselves, by hand?”
We show him our bruised wrists
and blistered fingers.
We show him the hollow tree where we’ve been dumping
most of the dirt.
He walks around the hole. He pulls
on his ponytail. Then he walks around again, staring
down at the mermaid and the tangle of tree roots
that have grown around the chest
like an octopus clinging to a boat.
He pokes the shelf of shale with a branch;
he lies down, removes his boot, and pounds it
with the heel. “That’s not budging.”
“We know,” I say. “And that’s why we need
your help. We need special tools and someone who’s
strong enough to use them
to break through the rock and the roots.”
Carolann pulls one of her mystery books
from her knapsack: The Mystery of the Fire Dragon.
On the cover, it shows a man
using a pointed thing with a handle
to smash the thick rock wall
of his cell.
“How about something like this?” she asks,
holding the book up to Harry’s face.
“That’s a pickax,” Harry explains.
“We have some at Dillard’s….” He leans over
the center of the hole.
“Yeah, a pickax might do the trick.
Probably a hacksaw and lopping shears for the roots.”
He turns to me:
“Your father knows nothing about this?”
“Nope,” I reply.
“How about Denise?”
“Nope.”
He nods toward Carolann and back to Malcolm.
“Not their parents, either?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Nobody but you three?”
“Nope—just you. And you promised,” I remind him.
Harry holds up his hand.
“I know, I know. Don’t sweat it, Lyza….
It’s just… well, we use the tools at the lumberyard
during the day—”
“But not at night, right?” I interrupt. “No one would
know if we borrowed them then—right?”
“No, not at night. Yard’s closed till morning.”
“Perfect!” I say. “Then can you bring them here
on Thursday after work? We’ll meet you
at eight-forty-five.”
I stand on one side of the hole.
Harry stands on the other. I look him straight in the face
and wait for his reply.
At last he sighs, shakes his head.
“Good Lord! How did I end up taking orders from
two Bradley women?”
Part 8
Lately things just don’t seem the same.
Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why….
—from “Purple Haze”
by Jimi Hendrix
10,000: Estimated number of anti-war protesters at the
Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
12,000: Estimated number of police—same place.
6,000: Number of National Guardsmen called in as reinforcements.
7,500: Number of U.S. Army troops called to Chicago to help quiet the riots.
And all this time
we thought
the war
was in Vietnam.
Wednesday passes pretty quickly.
Thursday is an eternity. On my work shift, I triple-wash
every glass and dish. I stack and restack
the dinner plates, rearrange the bowls.
Mary Sue glares at me the whole time.
“Don’t be so ambitious,” she scolds.
“Makes the rest of us look lazy.”
That wouldn’t be hard, I feel like saying. (But I don’t.)
At home, I heat up the least-burned piece
of Denise’s meat loaf and choke it down.
I sweep the kitchen and vacuum every room.
Dad calls home at precisely eight-thirty.
“I’m giving my last exam, so don’t wait up.
But leave the lights on, OK?”
OK, Dad. No problem. Click. Breathe.
Carolann and Malcolm are outside waiting.
They look as nervous as I feel.
�
��We should split up tonight,” Carolann suggests.
“Take different ways to the church. Just in case.”
This seems like spillover from her mystery-book reading.
I turn to Malcolm. “Can’t hurt,” he shrugs.
“OK,” I say. “I’ll take Maple—you two take Walnut or Main.”
We head out separately. We meet up again shortly
in the churchyard, where Harry Keating
promised he’d be waiting,
but he is nowhere to be found.
We sit together
at the edge of
the A.M.E. Church
parking lot waiting
under the starry
sky with the thin
sliver of moon: five, ten,
fifteen, twenty minutes—
and still, no sign of Harry.
A pair of headlights spear the dark
and we are deer
caught by flashlight in the neighbor’s garden.
I have seen
the look on Denise’s face when Harry is late
and I have
that same look now as Harry kills the engine
and jumps out.
Dressed entirely in black, he is carrying
a canteen.
“Sorry, guys,” he says. “The boss had a meeting
after closing
and I couldn’t get the tools until everyone left.”
He pops open
the trunk, pulls out a pickax, hands Malcolm
the hacksaw and shears.
“I know the National Organization for Women wouldn’t approve,
but I’m only
willing to do this once,” Harry says. “So how ’bout
us guys give this
our best shot while you girls stand watch?” Malcolm—
who at first was mad
at God and at Harry (for not getting drafted)—now
seems to like
having Harry around. “Good idea,” he says. But
Carolann frowns.
“That’s not real fair to us, ya know….” She wags
her index finger,
looking to me for support. Truthfully, I am torn:
