by Jen Bryant
I think of all
those pictures of protesting women in Denise’s
feminist newsletters,
and I’m sure they would be pretty miffed about this.
On the other hand,
August is almost over, our backs are sore,
and the chest
will stay stuck unless we get it out of there—tonight.
I decide a small
compromise is in order. “Let’s let them try for an hour,”
I propose to Carolann,
“and see what they can do with the tools. Then maybe
we can switch:
we work and they watch.” She considers this, then agrees.
I turn back to
the guys. “Is it a deal?” I ask. “Yeah, cool,” Harry says.
“I’ll whistle if we
break through,” Malcolm adds. We hand them our flashlights
and they head off toward
the woods—the tall, thin black kid and my sister’s strong,
long-haired boyfriend.
Carolann giggles: “They are the most unusual pair of pirates
I’ve ever seen.”
I sit on a rock in the side yard
of the A.M.E. Church. Carolann stands
between the back door and the woods,
humming occasionally and slapping
mosquitoes frequently. In the trees,
the locusts and crickets make
their insect racket, which blends in
almost naturally with the percussion
of the pickax pounding shale.
Only four cars have passed by the church
in the last fifty minutes.
The crickets, the katydids, and one stray cat
are our only company
as we wait, listen.
Only once did we hear someone coughing
and then, a little later, what must have been
the SNAP of a root
as it was split by the shears.
In between, there’s been the dull thud
of the pickax against rock.
I look back at Carolann, who happens to be
looking toward me.
She holds up her wrist, taps her watch.
Ten-fifteen—time to switch.
I begin walking back to Carolann,
back toward the woods,
and that’s when we hear Malcolm’s low, steady whistle.
We run so hard, we almost fall into the
hole. We stop just short and I realize
my heart has slid up into my head, where
it’s pounding like a snare drum.
My hands feel numb. I am afraid to look
down. Instead, I look at Malcolm
and Harry, who are both drenched in
sweat and breathing hard from a solid
hour of pounding and digging. Carolann
grabs my left hand—“LOOK!”—and when
I do, I see the perfectly preserved
top of a wooden chest with two thick
bands of iron, each engraved with a
mermaid, and a smaller metal plate
on which I read the name: KIDD.
Then, suddenly, everything goes black.
I am that famous explorer
who found the long-lost tribe
of pygmies and who could not get them
to stop staring.
Squatting in front of me, they study
my every move.
“Are you OK?” I hear one of them say.
Everything’s hazy. My back is propped
against a tree and it seems
they’ve thrown the canteen water on me.
My blue jeans feel wet—yuck.
My shirt feels sticky.
“Did I really faint?” I inquire. (I have never
come close to doing that before.)
“Yeah, you dropped like a brick, Lyza,”
Malcolm says. “You all right now?”
I pinch my wrist. It hurts.
I wiggle my toes and shake out my arms.
“Guess so…. Hey, where’s Harry?”
My friends are bookends on either
side of me. They tell me to breathe,
even though I know (OK, even though
I’m pretty sure) I won’t faint again.
While they have been watching over me,
Harry has been clearing away the dirt
and roots from the front of the chest,
which is smaller than I imagined—
maybe three feet long by two feet wide.
Harry lies on his stomach. He reaches
down into the hole, ready to use the
hacksaw to cut the loop of the lock
that holds it closed. He looks up at us.
“Ready?” We inhale, exhale together.
We drop down to our bellies beside
him. “Yeah—no, wait!” I say, grasping
his wrist. “Shouldn’t we lift it out of there
first?” Harry looks at Malcolm, Carolann,
then back at me. “That’s really up to
you three … but if you ask me, I say
leave it. If this chest is really what you
suspect, it’s been down in the wet dirt
for more than 250 years… you take a
big chance if you try to move it. It could
be all rotten on the bottom and anything
inside might get ruined. But… like I
said, it’s really up to you.” I turn to
Carolann, who, I can see, is already
flipping through the Rolodex of
detective books she has stored inside
her head. “We can always move it
later …,” she offers. “If you can
reach it from here, let’s open it.”
Malcolm nods his agreement. “OK,”
I say to Harry. “Do it!” He slips the
tool underneath the metal loop. Once,
twice, three times he saws before the
loop splits in two. My throat feels funny.
I try to breathe, breathe, breathe.
I think back to my porch dream, the
one with the chest of human bones.
Snap out of it, I tell myself. This is real—
this is New Jersey, not Vietnam.
Malcolm nudges me. “You should
open it, Lyza. This all started with you.”
Carolann agrees. “Absolutely—
but, jeez, please hurry up!”
“Hold my feet!”
I stretch
down
into the
hole and
grab the part above the lock,
the two mermaids staring, daring me to go any further.
I curl my fingers under the thin iron rim
of the chest. I pull up.
It doesn’t budge.
My fingers slip off.
“Pull up hard, Lyza,” Harry instructs.
“The wood will be warped and there’s probably
a lot of dirt in the hinges.”
I try again. CRACK! The wood on the top
splits
and I am left holding the front half of the lid.
The back half stays in place.
Inside the chest, everything’s covered in
a thin layer of sand and mud.
“Shine the light down here more!” I whisper
over my shoulder.
Carolann adjusts the beam so that it
falls directly on the open half of the chest.
I scrape my palm gently
back and forth across the top
of whatever’s in there … until
we can see—
glittering in the beam of Carolann’s flashlight
and as clear as the crystals in my kaleidoscope—
a layer of gold and silver coins
and two golfball-size gems.
We take turns
holding one another’s
feet so everyone can lean in
and see.
Carolann can’t stop whispering, I can’t
stop my lower lip from
quivering—
and Malcolm hasn’t smiled this much since
before Dixon left. Harry,
who can’t tell
that the gems are different colors, can tell enough
to know that they are something
very special. He just
keeps shaking his head: “Man … oh
man oh man … no one
is gonna
believe this.” On his turn, Harry manages
to pry open the back part
of the chest—
behind the coins and gems, there are four
smaller sacks filled with more
gold and silver coins,
two odd-looking brown and white rocks,
and a square container with
some white powder
inside. There’s also a metal box of necklaces
and rings and a few large pieces
of mostly
disintegrated cloth. After Harry comes up, I go
down again and find—hidden in some
moldy linen—
a spyglass etched with the initials W.K.
“Malcolm DuPREEEE!”
I have heard that voice somewhere before.
I am almost done
brushing myself off when we hear it. Malcolm
freezes. “Oh, Lord … Aunt Eunice.”
He slips behind a tree. “Why is she—”
Carolann interrupts. “It’s almost midnight,”
she whispers, holding the beam on her
wristwatch for me and Harry to see.
“Someone noticed we were gone.”
Through the trees, we can see Mrs. Carter
and Malcolm’s father
walking around the back of the church, swinging
their own flashlights side to side.
Suddenly it’s too quiet—even the locusts seem to be sleeping.
Harry speaks first.
“Look,” he whispers, “no one has found this out
so far. I think you should keep what you’ve got
and leave the rest of it down there—
for tonight, anyhow.”
Carolann opens her hand. She’s holding
several silver coins and a green-stoned ring.
Malcolm steps out. He has a small bag
of gold coins and a chain with a purple stone.
I have one of the weird brown and white rocks,
the red gem, and the spyglass.
Harry has nothing.
Our three pairs of eyes meet in silent agreement.
We pocket our treasure.
Our hands and feet fly to dump in some loose dirt,
branches, the plastic cover, more branches,
and finally the dead tree, rolled back on top.
Harry stashes the tools. “I’ll come get them
in a few hours,” he whispers.
Meanwhile, Malcolm’s father and aunt have started across
the backyard, toward us.
“This way!” Harry waves us away from the
dig site, so we come out on the church lawn
about twenty yards down.
“I hope you can steal us an idea
from one of your mysteries,” I whisper to Carolann.
“We need an alibi here….”
She looks as panicky as I feel. But then she grins,
points to her head. “I’m on it!”
We are nearly close enough to see their faces.
Malcolm’s dad walks like someone who’s really mad.
Carolann grabs me by the arm, pulls me toward
her and Malcolm. “Hey … slow down!” she mutters.
“Stagger a little….” (Oh, God—now I’ll be accused of
drinking, too?) But I’m wrong. This time, Carolann’s plan
uses honesty; at least it starts out that way: “Oh—Mr. Dupree,
Mrs. Carter! Thank goodness you’ve come,” she exclaims
as I lean against her and Malcolm. “Lyza fainted and we
weren’t sure we could get her home!” Actually, I still do
feel a little light-headed, so the staggering part isn’t hard.
“Poor thing! Look, brother—she’s bleeding!” says Aunt Eunice.
Another surprise—I have some dried blood on my forehead.
Malcolm’s dad doesn’t look so mad now. “Got a call from
Lyza’s father … then realized you weren’t in bed, either,”
he says to Malcolm. Then to us: “What are you all doing
out here at this hour, anyhow?” Malcolm, who’s almost allergic
to lying, tries to explain: “Lyza lost something from her family
near here….” He pauses, looks at me. “Maybe during the
picnic or the baseball game. She asked us to help her find it….”
His voice drifts off. Harry steps forward. “Uh—Mr. Dupree—
if you’ll excuse me, I think I can explain.” We listen as Harry,
who hardly knows us and doesn’t owe us anything, explains
how he “happened to drive by” while we were searching in the
churchyard for “Lyza’s family keepsake,” which I thought
I lost at the picnic, and how important it was to me personally,
and how Malcolm and Carolann had promised to help me,
and how I tripped on a rock in the dark and fainted, and how—
about an hour later—I was just getting back on my feet. Harry
is a good actor. “Mr. Dupree, you have raised a responsible son,”
he says as Malcolm’s eyebrows arch way up. “These kids
have stuck together to be sure Lyza’s all right, even though
they know they might get into trouble for being out so late….”
Harry pauses for dramatic effect. “Now if you’ll both excuse me,
I’d like to take Lyza home to her father and sister.”
The adults look totally convinced. Aunt Eunice offers me
a handkerchief for my head. Malcolm’s dad helps me over
to Harry’s car, where I slide into the back in case I need to lie
down. “Well, Lyza, after all that—did you find it?” he inquires.
I look helplessly at my friends’ faces. The last thing we need
is for people to start snooping around the church for my sake.
I make a decision. I reach into my pocket for the odd brown
and white rock. But Malcolm beats me to it. “Here!” he almost
shouts, holding out the chain with the purple stone (which looks
more like something you can buy at the jewelry store).
“You almost forgot!” Malcolm drops it onto my lap and closes
Harry’s back door. Like I said once before, my family might
be messed up, but my friends are as steady as they come.
Part 9
It’s been a hard day’s night.
I should be sleeping like a log….
—from “A Hard Day’s Night”
by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Carolann rides home with Malcolm,
Aunt Eunice, and Mr. Dupree.
Now it’s just Harry and me
cruising slowly down Main Street.
He turns, stops, turns again, then pulls
over on Gary Street about half a block from our house.
He kills the engine. We sit, silent.
“Are you mad?” I ask.
He swivels to face me in the backseat.
“Mad?… No, no, I guess not.”
He scratches his arm, still smeared with dirt.
I can see he’s trying hard to get his mind
around all of this—which is exactly what
I’m trying to do, too. Until now, we c
ould simply
follow the maps,
dig when we were able, stay quiet,
and just keep going. But now …
I take the brown and white rock
from my pocket, the red gem from my sock,
the spyglass from the waistband
of my blue jeans. I spread them out on the backseat, next to
the necklace from Malcolm.
We stare at them a long time—
at least it seems like a long time.
Finally, Harry sighs: “I have a friend—a guy I met
at a protest. He’s a professor at Princeton.
I don’t know for sure if he’ll be able to tell us much
about what you’ve found. But if he can’t,
he’ll know someone who can.”
I wait for him to continue.
“It’s up to you, Lyza.
But if this stuff is what you think it is—
a treasure chest lost by Captain Kidd—
well… unless you plan to keep it in your closet
and never say a word about it,
it seems like you should be showing it
to someone
who can tell you for sure what these things are,
what they’re actually worth.”
He pauses and looks at me, square. Just like Dad did
before that first time we drove
to Tuckahoe. “What you have here
is a significant piece of history. And even though
whatever it’s worth might belong to you,
the history of this belongs
to everyone.”
I run my finger across the spyglass,
which looks like an antique version of my
kaleidoscope.
“So—you think we should go public?” I ask.
Harry nods. “Yep. I do.”
Here we go again … another decision. Why are there
so many of them? If this were a math equation,
it would look like this:
adventure = problem + problem + problem + problem
I just hope I choose the right solution.
