Treasure of the Blue Whale

by Mayfield, Steven;

  For the first two weeks after the newspaper article about my discovery was published, a steady stream of fortune-hunters piled into Tesoro. They prowled the beach at first, but when no ambergris washed up, the prospectors began to venture into the water where they were mostly knocked down by incoming waves, their efforts unrewarded by even an ounce of ambergris. The Pacific Ocean in our part of the world was pretty chilly year-round and it didn’t take long for the pilgrims to lose heart, their numbers steadily dwindling until only a few of the more determined fellows remained in town, waddling into hip-deep water each morning only to waddle back empty-handed at the end of the day.

  It had been sixty-one days since the Boops garnered signatures on Dinkle’s lines-of-credit and nearly every household in Tesoro—save those belonging to a group I had dubbed the Ambergrisians: Angus MacCallum, Fiona, Miss Lizzie, Mr. Johns, Mr. Judson, James Throckmorton, and me—was deeply in debt to Cyrus Dinkle, in hock up to their earlobes with compendia of unneeded or useless stuff wedged into every corner of their homes. Fortunately, their potential salvation in the form of Everson Dexter of the Allegheny Chemicals Corporation was fast approaching, with the Ambergrisians concluding that our actor should make his appearance as near the ninety-day deadline as possible.

  “Once our charlatan has set the honey pot, we don’t want to give Dinkle too much time to think about it,” Mr. Judson advised. “He’s too good at sizing up the angles on a deal.” He hoped Allegheny’s outrageously tantalizing bid of $2845 per ounce—certainly well above anything the legitimate companies like Chanel or Jean Patou would match—might encourage Dinkle to execute the default feature on his loan contracts without much scrutiny. “With millions more than he originally thought at stake, I’m hoping the old scoundrel’s greed will override his judgment,” Mr. Judson told us. In the meantime, we figured Dinkle wouldn’t be anxious to call attention to either side of the loan agreements, given that his half was as much a Trojan horse as ours.

  Most of the Ambergrisians worried that the savvy former Indian Territories trader might push for one of the legitimate perfumers to conduct an assay before our fake analyst made his appearance. “Maybe,” Mr. Judson told them, “but it’s to Dinkle’s advantage to drag things out until we hit the ninety-day mark.” If all went well, he told us, the deadline would pass and Dinkle would claim the ambergris shares as planned. The town would be made whole and our unsuspecting dupe would discover the collateralized one thousand pounds of ambergris to be no more than two pounds of the precious compound, along with whatever sludge continued to float on the surface of the water inside the boathouse.

  The Ambergrisians met about once per week, after-midnight affairs at the Last Resort. The points discussed were always the same and there seemed to be little reason to gather. I was too young to truly grasp the danger we faced. For me, it was a great adventure. However, I now suspect the secret sessions were a way for the others to make certain the twine binding the conspiracy wasn’t coming undone. Even if the scheme worked, a world of ruin could still await us, and in my old age, I have often wondered if the true purpose of our clandestine gatherings was to see if anyone was ready to talk some sense into the others.

  “Isn’t this fraud? Won’t the sheriff eventually get involved, anyway?” Mr. Johns worried one night to his fellow conspirators. It was a never-ending concern for him, the nosy bank examiners and FDIC compliance officers that haunted his day job heavily coloring his view of a financial shenanigan like the one we had concocted. It was two o’clock in the morning and the Ambergrisians were gathered around a table at the Last Resort. I was there, too, after slipping out the window of my bedroom and then darting from shadow to shadow as I made my way across town. My covert movements were part of a charade, of course, a game of cloak-and-dagger acted out alone as no one else was likely to be awake at that hour other than the Ambergrisians and Alex. He’d said nothing as I made good my escape, his eyes gleaming in the dark.

  “It’s not fraud for the borrowers,” Mr. Judson patiently reasoned for Mr. Johns. He had addressed the banker’s worry several times in the past, but if annoyed by his co-conspirator’s chronic fretting, it didn’t show. His voice was steady, his face relaxed. “None of them know that the amount of actual ambergris in the boathouse is far less than originally thought,” the lawyer went on. “As for us, we have no legal obligation to tell Dinkle anything. It’s his responsibility to appraise the collateral he’s accepted. Not ours.”

  Mr. Judson’s face grew solemn.

  “But let’s face it. For those of us in this room, it is fraud. Unadulterated fraud. It’s a crime. If Dinkle finds out that Dexter is a fake, we could all go to jail.”

  This was a revelation neither surprising nor welcome. For several weeks the Ambergrisians had done an excellent job of avoiding the truth, casting our line into the water with the idea that mackerel and cod were the only fish under the surface. Mr. Judson’s words reminded us that a tug on the line might come from a shark and his candor gave way to silence in the moments that followed. Eventually, he took a deep breath and went on.

  “I want you all to be my clients. That includes you, Connor. I’ll prepare the papers and bring them around. If there’s an investigation, you were advised by your attorney to keep quiet. That’s the story. At the same time, I won’t be able to tell what I know without breaching attorney-client privilege. We’ll cancel each other out for a while…Buy some time. I know a bit about Dinkle’s affairs. Maybe enough to convince to him to make a deal with us instead of going to the sheriff.”

  He laughed.

  “Of course, we can always make a run for it. How’s everyone feel about sailing with me to South America?”

  No one else laughed and Mr. Judson’s expression once again sobered. He looked at me.

  “Connor, you’ll have to figure out a way to get your mother’s signature without telling her what’s going on. I know it seems she’s turned a corner, but if she goes back to the way things were…”

  He didn’t have to finish. Ma was better, but her even temperament was still novel enough to make us uneasy about handing her a secret. If she abruptly soared into one of her up moods, she would be unable to stop talking. No secret would be safe.

  “I understand, Mr. Judson,” I said.

  After the meeting broke up I headed home, this time making no effort to conceal myself as I walked through the center of town. It was warm and the streets were deserted, the night given over to crickets and bullfrogs. I added my own chirping to their songs, whistling softly as I walked, confident I could dance a jig and sing “A Long Way to Tipperary” all the way home and still escape detection.

  At the center of Tesoro was Fremont Park with its splintered benches and unfinished cedar picnic tables. There was a gazebo, as well, the site of weddings, award presentations, and occasional speechifying—Coach Wally Buford or Milton Garwood not infrequently feeling the urge to unload a few of the opinions that would otherwise constipate their brains. None of these things transpired after midnight and I expected the gazebo to be deserted as I approached, its dark silhouette as rigid and lifeless as the exoskeleton of a cicada. It wasn’t. The moon was only mid-month, but the sky was cloudless, allowing more than enough light to make out something that might have caused me to levitate entirely over that damned gazebo had such a thing been possible. A solitary figure sat inside the open-sided structure—a woman, her hair pulled into a single, long braid. She looked directly at me, and even in the dim moonlight, I easily recognized her. It was Axel Throckmorton’s erstwhile fiancée, Mei Ling.

  People who traipse about alone at three o’clock in the morning are usually up to no good, and I figured Mei Ling would likely see it that way—maybe size me up as a burglar, or worse yet, a window peeper. An explanation was needed, one I neither had nor was able to conjure despite frantically mining the remotest parts of my mind. Nevertheless, I headed for the gazebo. “If ye get caught wit’ yer breech
es doon, act like ye means it to be tha’ way,” Angus MacCallum once advised me. I later shared his counsel with Miss Lizzie who disagreed. “Typical man’s point of view,” she snorted. “Try keeping your pants on to begin with.”

  Of course, Miss Lizzie was right, but sound advice isn’t much help to a fellow who has already forgotten his belt, so I abandoned any notion of sneaking off and made directly for the gazebo. I reached it and strode inside, behaving as if I thought myself expected. I’m not much of an actor now and likely wasn’t any better then. Thus, I probably came off as exactly what I was: A ten-year-old kid skulking about town in the wee hours.

  “Nice night,” I said, cursing the involuntary squeak in my voice.

  Mei Ling was not beautiful in the way of Fiona Littleleaf or Mrs. C. Herbert Judson—her face broad, her build a bit stocky, a faint spray of acne on her cheeks—but she was a pleasant-looking girl. I’d only seen her from a distance since her arrival in Tesoro. From afar she’d seemed a grown woman. Close up, she looked younger than her sixteen years. I took the seat next to her.

  “What’s going on with you?” I asked. “Why aren’t you home in bed?”

  Mei Ling didn’t answer, instead looking past me to a sundial a few yards away, the device useless at that hour of the night. She knew little English, but well understood one of the words I’d used.

  “Home,” she said, “…Day.”

  I relaxed. Miss Lizzie had explained the International Date Line to Alex and me. It was three o’clock in the morning where we sat in the gazebo, but folks in the place Mei Ling still called home were sitting down to dinner at 6:00 p.m. the next day.

  “You,” Mei Ling said, the feathery hint of a smile on her face, “Treasure Boy.”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  Mei Ling turned away, tipping her head to look at a moon more than halfway through its nocturnal arc. Even in the dark I could see that her face was filled with longing, her eyes moist. I understood. For a long time I had sent messages for the moon to pass along to my father, wherever he was. I suspect Mei Ling might have been doing the same, sending greetings for the moon to carry to her family on the other side of the planet. Her loneliness was palpable and I suddenly wanted to rescue her from it.

  At ten I possessed the inclination to be a hero, particularly one capable of coming to the aid of a pretty girl who has slipped into that mysterious and ethereal region where only teenagers reside. However, the wherewithal accompanying such an inclination is too often sadly lacking, particularly for those of a tender age like mine at the time. I possessed neither great strength nor prowess with weaponry, but then, Mei Ling’s predicament did not require muscle or sword, did it? It called for a fellow with sharp wits, and for the minutes that followed, I somehow found a way to be that fellow.

  “The treasure isn’t real,” I said, divulging the secret I’d pledged to withhold. Mei Ling cocked her head, obviously curious, and I blurted out everything: The blob on the beach that became a dinosaur egg, Cyrus Dinkle’s mousetrap, the Ambergrisians, the Allegheny Chemicals Corporation, Everson Dexter. All of it. At first, she appraised me as one does a lunatic, her expression a mixture of nervousness and fear. However, she was soon rapt as I acted out the parts: Angus MacCallum’s crab-like gait, Miss Lizzie’s clipped, no-nonsense voice, the hale affect of Roger Johns, Mr. Judson’s measured tones, Fiona’s spit and vinegar, James Throckmorton’s broad-shouldered presence, the paunch and sneer of Cyrus Dinkle. Before long the moisture in her eyes glistened with amusement, and when I impersonated Dinkle’s man as a stiff-backed incarnation of film star Bela Lugosi, she laughed aloud.

  “Treasure Boy…funny,” she said.

  Of course, Mei Ling hadn’t understood more than a few words, but I was quite certain she could recognize beans being spilt as they tumbled out of the can. I think she was grateful; at least it seemed so. Her face was less shadowed, her eyes brighter. She wasn’t alone any more. She was now in on a secret, part of something on our side of the world.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” I instructed. She grinned.

  I grinned back and then bade her good night before heading home. She remained in the gazebo. After reaching our cottage, I scrambled noiselessly through the window of my bedroom. Alex lay on his back in our bed. His eyes were closed, his breathing steady. I slipped in next to him and lay awake. It had been a relief to tell someone and I wanted to tell Alex and Ma, too. Secrets have a way of oozing out of whatever jar one puts them in, and I’d been struggling to keep the lid on mine for weeks. I remained awake until it was time to head for the Sinclair station to pick up that morning’s editions of the Chronicle. I passed Fremont Park on the way to the station. The gazebo was deserted.

  Chapter Eighteen:

  Welcome to Fort Buford

  I returned from delivering papers and went back to bed, sleeping until early afternoon. I awoke rested and ready to face facts: Other than secret meetings with the Ambergrisians in the wee hours and my charade for Mei Ling, the part I had thus far played in the scheme to fool Dinkle had been utterly disappointing. When it began I had fancied myself as a Jim Hawkins sort. We had both become involved by accident—Jim made privy to the pirates’ plan in Treasure Island because he wanted an apple from the ship’s barrel, me stumbling upon the truth about the ambergris because my paper route took me past the boathouse each morning. However, Jim had gone on to fight pirates while my only job thus far had been to keep my mouth shut. It was not a satisfying assignment, and I decided to stop pining for adventure. It was time to get back to the rest of my summer vacation. After all, one week in August was already behind us and the air was filled with the ominous smell of new pencils, lined tablets, and the freshly applied floor wax that wafted from the open windows of the Tesoro Elementary School.

  Mr. Judson wanted to get on with things, as well. “No point staring at a clock when the wind is good,” he told me. He and Mrs. Judson had taken a shine to Alex and me, the Judsons having no children of their own, and as folks’ appetites to sue their neighbors abated, we spent more and more time on his boat. In the beginning my brother and I were useless—shinnying up the mast, dangling from the bowsprit where ocean spray could hit us in the face, riding the boom as it swung about on a tack. But as the days passed, Mr. Judson taught us more and more about seamanship, showing us how to raise and lower the sails without tangling the lines, how to bring the boat about without turning her over, and when to hoist the jib. Before long he had me, and then Alex, at the tiller. I loved it and later taught my kids and grandkids how to sail on my own boat. I’d have taught the great-grandkids, as well, if my balance was better and my hips less creaky.

  Sometimes, when the wind was down, we lowered the sails and just floated. Mr. Judson did most of the talking on those occasions while Alex and I wolfed down crab salad sandwiches or the ginger snap cookies Mrs. Judson always packed for us. Mr. Judson occasionally let me have a sip of beer or a puff on his pipe, promising Alex similar favor when his age was in double digits. “I’m a bad influence on you boys,” he said, but he wasn’t. He talked about the importance of a firm handshake and looking a fellow in the eye, how ignoring a pile of trouble simply makes the pile bigger, and how to talk to girls so they don’t realize you’re an idiot until they’ve convinced themselves that you’re not one.

  While Alex and I negotiated the high seas with Mr. Judson, more than a few folks back in Tesoro were beginning to bend under the onerous weight of consumerism Dinkle’s lines of credit had shoved down their throats. “There’s only so much crap you can buy,” Milton Garwood griped, and if anyone could appreciate that wisdom, it was Milton. His house was still filled with furniture he and Mrs. Garwood didn’t need, and teak miniatures they needed even less, and the glass cats his wife used to like before she had about a hundred of them, and ships in a bottle, and an aquarium filled with dead fish, and a set of encyclopedias that were still in the box, and a newfangled electric bread toaster
he’d already broken, and, of course, all the doorstops shaped like whales that had seemed like a grand idea at the time. He also had Mr. Sprinkles back after reclaiming him from the exotic animal preserve in Petaluma.

  Milton decided he hadn’t given the little fellow a decent chance the first time around and figured to try a different approach, giving him a collar and putting him on a leash. It turns out that organ-grinders’ monkeys don’t have a natural affinity for either collars or leashes, but Mr. Sprinkles didn’t scratch or bite as you might expect. Instead, he turned ironic and was willing to be led about on a leash if he could occasionally drape himself across the old man’s bald head until it appeared Milton was wearing a toupee with arms. The little fellow also became territorial, screeching and hurling himself at the screen door when anyone stepped onto the Garwood porch. While this unfortunately sent Milton’s spinster cousin from Stinson Beach to the hospital after she fainted and hit her head on a whale doorstop, it also helped him close his waste disposal service.

  Long before the ambergris rush died off on its own, Milton grew tired of standing in a line of strangers to use his outhouse and decided to close up shop—nickel be damned—a change in business policy that proved unpopular. “You can’t fight the call of nature, you old fart,” one of the ambergris prospectors yelled when Milton ran him off. Milton put a bell on his outhouse door and stood guard with a shotgun as much as he could, but a good many former depositors still managed to sneak inside and conduct their transactions. Eventually, Milton turned Mr. Sprinkles loose on them. “It was outstanding,” he told the boys at the Last Resort. “The little bastard started right in to shrieking and spitting and pissing and throwing turds. Them boys scattered like turkeys on Thanksgiving Day. I woulda kissed the little sonuvabitch, but I’m scared he might bite my lips off.”