Blackbeard's Lost Treasure

by Caleb Wygal

  She, like him, often sought to escape reality through numerous means. Darwin never once resorted to that type of escape, although he could have. His mom kept no locks on her door or nightstand. He could have sampled anything she did. In school, sometimes kids offered him pot—when someone would actually speak to him—although he never once tried it.

  As he grew older, he became more aware of the environment and life surrounding him. When he turned thirteen, he realized he was aware of so much more than he did when he was ten. He first became aware of his personal space. That bubble around him and others. Similar revelations occurred when he reached sixteen and then eighteen. He reached the same revelation more and more as he progressed through school. This was because he learned cause and effect. How his, or someone’s actions, affected others around them. Most of the other kids in his age group did not display a similar conscientiousness of the world around them.

  Darwin never found school challenging and seldom studied for tests. He took little interest in most classes. That didn’t stop him from earning high grades throughout middle and high school. He graduated near the top of his class with ease. He did best, of course, in the classes he enjoyed. He loaded up on science and advanced math classes when he could.

  He read voraciously, mostly adventure fiction. Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and its sequel, The Lost World, inspired Darwin to take an interest in archaeology. The treasure hunting of Dirk Pitt in Clive Cussler’s novels kept Darwin up late at night, adventuring to exotic locales looking for lost artifacts or treasure. This was one way he escaped the home situation he lived in. He branched out later and learned about noted archaeologists Robert Bakker, Howard Carter, Hiram Bingham, and Robert Ballard. The stegosaur dig Darwin went on in Montana during the summer before his senior year of college was a dream come true. Now, he was on his own expedition. He wasn’t digging for bones. He was digging for a long, lost treasure.

  He learned to think for himself. He had to. His family wasn’t going to help him to figure life out. From an early age, he had to take care of himself. He had to get himself up for school, pack his own lunches, including walking down to the grocery store to do the shopping for him and his mom.

  He was smarter than almost all of the other kids he knew. His teachers gave him an IQ test in elementary school where he tested out at near genius. He saw the decisions his family members made and knew they weren’t the correct ones. He could see that much by the time he was in third grade. That led to him questioning what adults taught him at school, at church, everywhere. When he needed help with a particular problem, he often sought the guidance of his teachers. They were the most responsible and intelligent adults he knew.

  As he progressed through school, and teachers separated students into groups for projects, he would be the one who most often did all of the work. It’s not that his classmates didn’t want to help. It was more that he didn’t like the way others would want to accomplish their assigned task. He saw solutions while others still tried to identify the problems. Although he never intentionally used his size to intimidate others, they mostly acquiesced to his ways.

  No one wanted to poke the bear with a stick.

  Somehow, through all the troubles he had at home, child services never stepped in. He and his mom never had much money. Government programs such as food stamps helped put food on the table.

  When Darwin turned sixteen, he went to his guidance counselor and asked for help in finding a job. That led to him getting a job as a busboy at a Mahoney’s location in Concord. He earned minimum wage, and after a month on the job, had more money than he had ever had in his life. He had no car, so he rode the city bus to and from work every day to save money.

  He applied for and won a scholarship award during his junior year of high school from Mahoney’s. All he had to do was write a paper on what going to college would mean for him. In it, he wrote about his childhood and familial situation. He knew of no one in his family who ever went to college, much less graduated. He wanted to break the mold and show others that someone with his background could succeed.

  During the process of entering and winning the contest, he became friends with Lucas. Although not old enough to be his dad, Lucas helped to guide Darwin through the murky waters of entering adulthood. Lucas provided the first strong male presence in Darwin’s life. That’s one of the reasons Lucas was the only person Darwin called when he found the treasure map.

  He scraped for everything he had, although it was little. He had already accomplished more than any family member he knew and knew he could do more. He just had to find an avenue in which to so.

  He didn’t know what would become of this trip, although Darwin hoped it would be what he needed to give him a boost as he entered the work force now that he had graduated.

  9

  When Lucas re-entered the motel lobby the next morning, Darwin was already there. Or, had been for a while. Several empty plates and two Styrofoam cups sat on the table. He had a third in his hand when Lucas walked up.

  “Did you leave me anything?” Lucas asked, gesturing at the counter where the motel had a continental breakfast set up. There was a microwave, toaster, three coffee urns, cereal and juice dispensers, mini-fridge, trays with various baked goods and fruits and a waffle maker.

  Lucas could smell the aromas of the coffees and syrup for the waffles. His stomach growled.

  “Not quite,” Darwin laughed.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Since about five. Couldn’t sleep. That was when they started serving breakfast.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, let me grab something to eat and we’ll get going.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The coffee wasn’t as fresh as it was last night to Lucas’s disappointment. The freshly made waffle more than made up for it. Lucas grabbed an apple for the road.

  He and Darwin climbed in the Jeep, and Lucas entered the GPS coordinates for Bath. They stopped at a gas station to fill up on gas and get some fresh coffee at the attached Dunkin Donuts. Satisfied with that pick-me-up, they set off towards Bath.

  Now that it was daylight, they could get a better view of their surroundings. Lucas affirmed his initial impression of Chocowinity from when they arrived the previous evening: not much to it. It looked like a place where a few hopeful entrepreneurs hoped to catch travelers as they passed through the intersection of Routes 17 and 33.

  The four-lane Route 17 they were on crossed over the Pamlico River into the larger town of Washington. Founded the same year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the town’s claim to fame was that it was the first to be named after the first President, George Washington. There looked to be more to this town than the village they just left. Established older businesses lined the road.

  They made a right onto US 264 soon after entering the town. Within a few minutes, the town gave way to open land on either side of the road. It looked to Lucas as though cotton was the primary cash crop in the area. The fields through here held thousands of the small plants with fluffy, white buds peeking out of their tops.

  After a few minutes, a small green sign pointed to stay left for Nags Head and the Ocracoke Ferry, or to veer right for Bath. US 264 split and Lucas pointed the Jeep down NC 99. Ten minutes later they entered Bath. In all, the trip from the motel to Bath took less than half an hour. It was just after 9 a.m. local time.

  They passed over a small bridge into Bath. The town looked untouched since the early 1900’s. There were no big businesses, no fast food chains, and no neon lights. The antebellum homes and churches made Lucas feel as though he stepped into a bygone era. He would not have been surprised for the paved roads to give way to dirt and to see the populace make their way around on horse and buggy.

  “Do you see anyone?” Darwin asked, echoing Lucas’s thoughts.

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t. You’d think that there’d at least be some movement.”

  They turned onto South Main Street towards the tip of
town. As they moved slowly down the street, to the left were many old stately white homes. On the right were more modest homes with private docks floating on Bath Creek.

  The street ended fewer than two-hundred yards from their entry onto it. There they saw their first resident: an older gentleman wearing a gray hat on a golf cart picking up the newspaper from his driveway on the Bath Creek side of the street.

  Darwin laughed. “Look at that old man. His front door is less than twenty feet away from the newspaper.”

  “Maybe he has a really hard time walking,” Lucas said. “Or he just likes driving his cart.”

  “I would,” Darwin shrugged.

  South Main terminated at Front Street, looking out over the harbor. They passed a home with a hand-painted sign in the yard advertising “The Lost Treasure Gift Shop.” A small, red home and a large, white house on the corner followed.

  On the other side of Front Street, there was a tiny parking area near a small park named Bonner’s Point. The park was a small strip of grass fifty feet wide that made up the majority of the park. A few tall trees dotted the grassy area terminating at the water’s edge. Several picnic tables sat at the right end of the park with a great view of the water. Three park benches faced the water. It was warm enough for them to wear short-sleeved shirts, although not quite an appropriate temperature for them to be comfortable wearing shorts.

  An older couple sat close together on one of the benches. A middle-aged woman in a jogging outfit ran along the tree-lined street with a pint-size, white dog at the end of a leash.

  When Darwin joined Lucas at the side of the Jeep, in an almost awed whisper said, “Man, its quiet here.”

  Lucas took a moment to get a better sense of their surroundings. Aside from an occasional yelp from the dog, the only sound they heard was the lapping of the small waves against the wooden retaining wall at the water’s edge. Missing were the sounds of automobiles and trucks and the hustle-bustle of modern America.

  “It is,” Lucas agreed. “Like we stepped back in time.”

  They walked down the embankment to the water's edge. The remnants of a tropical storm lingered off the coast, casting a gloomy pall over the bay. Although they had seen many boats tied up along the docks on Bath Creek, they did not see any out on the water. A dead tree rose from the water and pointed vaguely to the left in the direction of Teach’s Point—the area where it was presumed that Blackbeard’s home stood.

  “Yep. So what do you want to do?”

  Lucas looked back along the street they had just traveled down, and pointed, “Let’s walk back that way. It looks like that treasure shop was open.”

  In the fifty yards between the park and the treasure stop stood two historical markers: one black, one white.

  The black one read:

  John Lawson

  1674-1711

  ***

  Naturalist, explorer, and surveyor general for the Lords Proprietors, John Lawson traveled the interior of the Carolina colony in 1700-01. He described the 550-mile journey in A New Voyage to Carolina, published in 1709. Lawson was killed by Tuscarora Indians while exploring the Neuse River in 1711. His house stood nearby.

  Beyond that marker and the next was a tiny red house with a stone chimney. The next marker was the reason they came to Bath. It read simply:

  Edward Teach

  Notorious pirate called “Blackbeard.” Lived in Bath while Charles Eden was governor. Killed at Ocracoke, 1718.

  “What do you think?” Lucas asked Darwin.

  “Looks promising,” he said.

  “I know. Let’s check out this treasure store.”

  The store sat in a regal colonial home with white siding and black shutters. It looked recently renovated. Two large oak trees sat in the front yard straddling a concrete walkway. Neatly manicured bushes sat in well-kept flowerbeds at the foot of a wraparound porch. The porch had a two-person swing on the corner and several seating group arrangements. It was a perfect place for locals to congregate in warm summer evenings and sip sweet tea and mint juleps.

  They walked to the door and knocked. The house, similar the rest of the area, was quiet. The sign in the window advertised the place as being open, and after a minute passed by, they almost decided to continue their search elsewhere.

  As they began to turn to walk away, they heard a rattling from behind the green door. It opened, and a short, elderly woman opened the door. She looked startled to see two tall—especially compared to her—men standing in front of her. She might also be surprised to see two customers this early in the morning on a weekday, Lucas thought.

  She looked unsure at first and after a beat, smiled, and opened the glass door for them. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said with a voice Lucas suspected would fit right in narrating children’s stories for Disney.

  “Good morning to you as well, ma’am,” Lucas said.

  “I’m sorry it took me a minute to get to the door,” she said. “My husband and I were out back digging in the garden.”

  “That’s okay. We understand,” Lucas said.

  She smiled. “Well, come in. Come in. Have a look around.”

  She stood aside to let Lucas and Darwin pass. Darwin had to duck his head as he entered to keep from banging it on the oak doorframe.

  The home was built in the early 1900's, although to Lucas it looked in good shape. There was a small foyer with a hallway going all of the way to the rear of the house, passing between two stairway landings on its way to a screen door. Hardwood floors shined with wax. To the left and right were two large rooms. Merchandise filled both areas.

  “Over here to the left,” the woman said, “is our pirate treasure room. And here on the right is our Christmas room, which we just opened this week.”

  Lucas peeked into the Christmas room first. He knew once he started looking in the pirate treasure room he'd forget about this one, and he wanted to show his respect to the woman whom he'd disturbed from her morning gardening. A fully decorated Christmas tree sat in the middle of the room, with tables around it. The perimeter of the room was filled with displays of various holiday decorations and ornaments.

  He stepped to the first table and looked at a stand of ornaments made from seashells into the shape of a bi-wing plane – a well-recognized shape out here near Kitty Hawk where Charles and Orville Wright made the first flight. The next display had ornaments also made from seashells of differing shapes into the form of turtles.

  The lady stood in the corner and watched as Lucas and Darwin made their way around the room.

  “Are these homemade?” Darwin asked.

  She smiled. “Yes, I make all of them myself.”

  Lucas looked around and figured that there were hundreds of different individual ornaments throughout the room. “That's impressive,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir,” she replied. “I made most of the other decorations here as well.”

  “That's quite an accomplishment.”

  She told them about how she went about making the seashell ornaments, and Lucas was quickly lost. Arts and Crafts were not his area of expertise. They listened as the woman described at length how she made them. Lucas couldn't imagine how much time it took, and it gave him a huge amount of respect for her.

  Lucas looked at Darwin. “Want to take a look at the other room?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. He looked down at the woman as he passed her by and waved at the handmade ornaments. “Ma'am, I'd like to see how you do that sometime.”

  “Well,” she said in her fairytale voice oozing with a Southern twang, “I've already finished for the year. If you come back in the spring, well, that's when I get started.”

  “I'll do that,” he said.

  The group entered the treasure room. It wasn't really filled with “treasure”, although there was a wooden chest filled with plastic gold doubloons. That was as close as it got to treasure. The room was filled with small gifts, jewelry, pictures, and anything having to do with pirates or the ocean.
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br />   A large glass display sat in the center of the room. It had jewelry, gift boxes, and porcelain bells. In one of the corners on the top were several wooden boxes. Lucas stepped over, picked one up, and opened it.

  Inside was a brass bosun's whistle. These were used aboard ships at sea by boatswains and quartermaster to pass commands to their crew when their voices could not be heard over the sounds of the sea. By placing a finger over a hole in the top, the user could change its pitch. Because of its high pitch, commands and messages could be passed to the crew over the roiling sounds of the sea.

  He thought it interesting and held on to it.

  The lady stood patiently at the side of the room. “What brings you boys to Bath so early this morning?”

  “Blackbeard,” Lucas replied.

  She smiled again. “Well, you've come to the right place. I have all sorts of stuff about Blackbeard. He used to live here, you know. In Bath.”

  “Yes, ma'am,” Lucas said. “You certainly have a lovely place here.”

  “Definitely,” Darwin agreed.

  “Why, thank you boys. What are your names?”

  “I'm Lucas, and this is my friend Darwin. Pleasure to meet you.”

  “Yes, you as well. My name is Alethia. What is it about Blackbeard that interests you?”

  “His treasure,” Darwin said.

  She gazed up at Darwin for a moment. She seemed to be deciding whether to take him seriously. “Well, we get that a lot around here.”

  “Treasure hunters?”

  “Oh, yes. Every couple of years there's always someone who comes here trying to find his treasure.” She pointed out the front door in the general direction of the sound. “They go out there to Teach's Point and dig around.”