by Jen Bryant
That night, I sleep for about ten minutes—total.
I get up at seven. I check to be sure
the spyglass is well hidden
underneath my bed.
I call Malcolm at eight, Carolann at eight-thirty.
I drink two Coca-Colas from the fridge
and run down to the diner.
My caffeine fix lasts until lunch, after which I
drop and break two plates
and one water glass.
I spend almost as much time sweeping up
as I do washing.
Mr. Archer is not forgiving.
“Those come out of your paycheck, Miss Bradley!”
he bellows so the entire kitchen staff
can hear. What a jerk.
I watch the clock like a hawk
between four and four-thirty p.m. At 4:31, I fling
my apron into the stockroom, bolt out
the back door, and make straight
for the A.M.E. Church—
where this time, just as he promised,
Harry Keating is waiting.
Malcolm, it turns out, has been walking or riding
his bike up and
down the street in front of the church
nearly all day, keeping
a loose watch on the backyard and the woods—
just in case.
Since noon, Carolann
has been
sitting on the
church steps
reading the same chapter
of Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase
over and over.
They both come running when they see me.
“Is that him?” Malcolm asks, nodding
toward the parking lot, where Harry is getting
out of his car with someone
we’ve never seen before.
I shrug. “Guess so—Harry said he’d show
his professor friend those few things that we
grabbed from the chest, then see
if he would come down here.”
“But can we trust him?” Carolann demands.
Since the beginning, this has been
our million-dollar question. From Gramps to me, from me
to Carolann and Malcolm, from them to Harry,
and now from all of us to—
whoever he is—from Princeton.
I gaze into my friends’ tired faces.
“Look at us,” I say. “In a week we go back to school.
We’re bruised and we’re beat
and—I think—we’re tired of keeping secrets?”
They don’t argue. I take that as a yes.
“I spent all last night thinking about this,”
I continue, “about what’s best for us, about what
Gramps would want.
And I realized that we will never know if this is
what we think it is … we’ll never find out
what it’s worth
or if it’s of any use
unless we let an expert see it.”
Gravel crunches nearby. Harry and the new guy,
dressed in blue jeans and work boots,
walk toward us across the parking lot.
“Lyza—Carolann—Malcolm,” Harry says.
“This is Trent Taylor, from the Archaeology Department
at Princeton.”
Professor Taylor shakes our hands.
He has calluses in the same places I do. I like him.
“Trent and I met at a peace rally,” Harry continues.
“I’ve gotten to know him pretty well over
the summer. You three can trust him with this,
same as you did me.”
Professor Taylor steps forward, holds out a clear
plastic bag that contains
the red gem, the purple necklace,
and the weird brown and white stone.
“So you three found and dug up these?”
I take a deep breath. I glance over at my two
best friends once again. They look exhausted.
As much fun as it was for us to be
treasure hunters,
this project has become too complicated
for us to finish on our own.
I know Gramps would understand.
“Yes, sir,” I answer for the three of us.
“And we’d like to show you how….”
I nod toward Malcolm.
“Let’s do it,” Malcolm says, holding up
the key to the church.
Inside, we spread the maps across the choir-room floor.
Carolann brings out the green-stoned ring
and the silver coins. Malcolm displays
the gold. Then, in front of Professor Taylor,
we replay the day
we first explained everything to Harry.
But this time, we don’t
have to sing.
Professor Taylor stares at us.
He doesn’t say anything—
at first.
Then he takes the strange brown and white rock
from the plastic bag
and holds it up.
“This is a bezoar stone. Back in my lab,
I dated it around the mid-1600s.
It’s from India and was made from the intestines
of a sacred goat. Back then, people believed it had
miraculous healing powers. Captain Kidd
probably kept it in case he needed
an antidote—for poison.”
He pauses, puts it down. His voice is calm
but when he takes out the red gem,
his hands tremble.
“This … is an African ruby. I’m not sure yet
about the year, but you can bet
if we were able to turn this into cash,
you three could buy a few blocks of houses
in this town.”
He lifts the purple necklace, his hands still shaking.
“Amethyst. Probably from South America.
Polished and set like this,
and off a seventeenth-century ship,
I’d guess it’s worth almost as much as the ruby”—
he nods toward the green ring—“or that emerald.
The coins I’d need to clean and date,
but from here they appear to be
English gold and Spanish silver.”
He gets quiet again.
Beside me, Carolann jiggles both feet.
Malcolm sweats.
I realize I am opening and closing my hands
butterfly-style,
just like my dad. My stomach churns.
“We’d like a few minutes to talk things over
between us,” I hear myself say.
Harry takes Professor Taylor
back outside.
Malcolm, Carolann, and I
fold up the maps, place the coins and gems
into the plastic bag, carry them
over to the table behind the piano.
I take out the list I scribbled today
during my break at the diner.
I place the paper in the center
so we all can read it.
I give Carolann a red pen, Malcolm a blue one.
“Write down anything else you can think of,” I tell them.
And they do.
At the top of the paper, I have written this:
Should we go public with our treasure?
Below that question, I have drawn
a horizontal line across the middle.
Then I’ve listed the reasons why we should,
and below that, the reasons why we shouldn’t.
After Carolann and Malcolm add their ideas
and their comments, the list looks like this:
SHOULD
We can find out for sure what all this stuff really is and how much it’s worth.
True—I can’t tell a ruby from a piece of glass
pai
nted with red nail polish.
We don’t have to hide anything anymore.
Yeah, I’m tired of sneaking around. But
then—will we have to hide ourselves
from the papers if we get famous?
We might be rich, even if we don’t get to keep everything.
This could be one reason our folks won’t be so mad once they know what we’ve been doing.
I wouldn’t mind finding out what it’s like to have extra money. Plus we could do some good things for people if we get rich.
We can finally get some sleep.
Amen!
Ditto. I think I could sleep for a whole week.
SHOULDN’T
Once we hand over our treasure, then what? Do we have rights?
Good point. Harry says he knows this Trent guy pretty well—but still … how will we feel when he takes it back to his lab?
Right…. Can we still see it? Will we get the credit? Will we get any of the money?
This whole thing might be illegal. We could get arrested or something.
Maybe—but wouldn’t Harry have told us that already?
I doubt it. I mean, people dive down in the ocean to look for treasure all the time. We just dug ours up.
We’re not adults, so maybe they’ll say our parents get to decide what happens with all the stuff in the chest.
Yeah, I thought of this, too. But let’s say we keep it—now Harry and this Trent guy know about it—we’d have to hide it somewhere else till we’re 21. I don’t want to wait that long.
Or we’d need to sell it secretly (to who? and for how much?).
We talk about each point on the list.
We weigh every possibility.
Then we vote.
A few days after we turn our treasure over
to Trent Taylor and his lab workers,
Malcolm and me are watching TV when our
new lawyer (the professor said we should get one)
calls: “Because the chest was found on the A.M.E. grounds,
it technically belongs to the church,” he explains.
“In order to claim the contents, the church
would need to assign ownership of the treasure to you.”
I almost faint again. How could we have done
all that thinking, all that sneaking and digging—
all that work—and not be the legal owners?
As I’m thinking these depressing thoughts, Malcolm
bolts for the street, leaps onto his bike, and pedals
off. A half hour later, the phone rings. “Get Carolann
and meet me at the church, soon as you can….”
We arrive just before five, in time
to see Malcolm’s aunt Eunice—
dressed in what looks like her Sunday suit
and carrying a Bible under her right arm—
enter the front door of the A.M.E. Church.
Malcolm heads us off at the steps. “My
dad’s inside with the elders,” he tells us.
“And I just finished explaining everything,
including our legal situation, to my aunt.
Now she’s gonna try to convince them
to sign the rights to the chest over to us.”
With her gum, Carolann blows a giant bubble.
“Sooo … what do we do?” she inquires.
Malcolm shrugs. “We wait right here
in case they want to talk to us,” he replies.
Carolann sighs. “I seem to be spending
a lot of my free time on these steps.”
I ask Malcolm: “How serious do you think
the elders will take your aunt Eunice?”
Malcolm rolls his eyes. “My dad might
be the pastor … but his sister runs
the place. If anyone can get them to
sign, it’s my aunt.” I sit down between
Carolann and Malcolm and take out
my kaleidoscope. We pass it back
and forth, each taking a turn at
looking through the lens,
at a hundred little glass pieces
that spin and glitter like uncut gems.
We stand to the side
as the Willowbank A.M.E. elders file silently by.
A few of them nod, smile.
Finally, Aunt Eunice appears, her Bible tucked
under her right arm, her pink hat tilted back, her forehead
speckled with sweat. She hands Malcolm a letter
signed by all the elders,
giving us exclusive rights to the treasure.
“Luke 12:13–21, the Parable of the Rich Fool…
one of my favorites,” she explains, nodding toward the
half-dozen men and women walking across the parking lot.
“I reminded our elders that we did not
find those maps,
locate that chest,
dig and dig until our hands bled
and we were short of sleep.”
She pauses, mops her brow with a handkerchief.
“I reminded them that we did not
plan and worry and weep
over how to honor a grandfather’s last dream,
or agonize over how and when to ask someone for help:
‘The Lord did not lead any of us to that spot,’ I told them.
‘The Lord saw fit to lead those three kids
to a place in our woods
where He showed them a hidden treasure …
and, Brothers and Sisters, He will not be pleased
if we reap the wheat that we have not sown,
if we keep the riches that we do not morally own.’”
Maybe I’ve just spent too many years around Denise,
but I admit I’m always shocked when people
do the right thing, when doing the wrong thing
would be so much easier.
“Thanks, Aunt Eunice,” I manage to croak,
which seems like a too-little word, considering
what she just did for us.
She lifts the arm that isn’t holding the Bible, wraps it
around the backs of all three of us—and squeezes.
“You know …,” she whispers, “we pray every Sunday
that the Lord will provide our church
with a new roof….”
She gives us one last squeeze
and Malcolm a big, wet kiss on the cheek
before she leaves.
Malcolm, smiling sheepishly, wipes his face with his sleeve.
Carolann squeals: “Malcolm, you are a genius!”
“Like I told you,” he says, handing me the signed letter.
“She runs the place!”
Part 10
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
—from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”
by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
and we are already missing summer.
Once the word spread around town
about our finding a pirate treasure,
we became almost like
celebrities, except with chores and homework.
I thought, with all the press
and even a quick mention of us
on CBS,
that maybe—just maybe—I’d hear
from Mom.
But so far, nothing.
As Grandma used to say whenever Gramps promised
to spend weekends
painting the house and the porch
instead of staying in the attic with his maps:
“I’m not holding my breath.”
But anyway, it’s Saturday, and phone calls,
fan mail, and homework
will have to wait.
I grab half an English muffin from the pantry,
stop for a quick look in the hallway mirror.
With my new haircut, my nice blouse,
and Denise’s old peasant sk
irt,
I could pass for a college kid myself.
Malcolm’s already outside; Carolann’s walking across
the street. They are both dressed up nice.
When Dad pulls our car around,
we pile into the backseat and drive off, waving to
the twins, who are hanging off the Motts’ front porch,
wearing their new pirate costumes, a patch over
their two left eyes.
The sun’s warm for September but there
is already a crispness in the air.
“Perfect sailing weather,” Gramps would say.
On our way north to the interstate,
we pass a lot of folks heading south,
going to the shore for maybe the last time this year.
It’s funny how, since the treasure took up
all my energy this summer,
I didn’t have time to be envious
like I always used to be. Now I’m looking through the windows,
wishing the passengers a safe trip
to Wildwood, Avalon, or Stone Harbor.
I smooth my skirt, settle back in the seat
of Dad’s station wagon, and listen
to the news on WOR. When they start
to give the war report,
Dad glances into the rearview mirror
at Malcolm, who’s reading another letter from Dixon.
“That’s OK, Mr. Bradley,” Malcolm says
as Dad reaches for the tuner. “I’m used to it by now.”
And then to me: “Dixon’s platoon captain
made him a scout. Do you think that’s
a good thing?”
I try to imagine Dixon creeping through the jungle
in a helmet and camouflage,
checking for signs of the enemy
while the rest of his platoon waits for word
of what’s ahead. I don’t think it’s such a
good thing—but what can I say?
“Well…” I hesitate. “They probably really
depend on him …,” I continue, trying to sound
as positive as I can. “So they probably give him
the best food and more rest
and plenty of ammunition.”
