by Charles Rose
X marks the spot. Where would that be? And where would I find a bloody handkerchief, a bag of big bills? On the eighth day of our stay, sitting out on the front porch playing Go Fish with Rex, raindrops plunking on the roof, lacing the lake, pooling in Uncle Amber’s rowboat (we would have to take turns bailing it out with an empty worm can), a light bulb lit up in my head and I came up with a masterpiece of wily subterfuge. The next morning, bright and early, I told Rex I had a terrible headache. It was up to Rex to tell Uncle Amber I would not be able to go fishing today.
With his back to me, pulling on his blue jeans, Rex said, “Then I won’t be able to either.”
“You don’t have a headache.”
“I can fake it.”
“I’m thinking you don’t want to bail out the boat.”
Rex turned around and stuffed his T-shirt into his blue jeans. “That’s a big job. It will take two of us.” He picked his beanie up off the goosenecked lamp and, with both hands, as if he were trying on a hat, fitted it on his head. Picked at a pimple, waiting for me to say something. Which I did.
“If we both have headaches Uncle Amber will have to bail out the boat.”
“So?”
“So we’re in the doghouse. No more Popsicles for us, Rex. Or Cokes.”
So Rex agreed to sacrifice himself so I could lie in bed with a damp washrag on my head and two aspirin dissolving in my stomach. I asked him who was making the bigger sacrifice, him or me. I’d have Aunt Edna to contend with. All he had to do was bail out the boat.
Rex went downstairs and notified Uncle Amber. Uncle Amber sent Rex back up with aspirin and a glass of water. He stood over the bed looking down at me like I was a mummy he’d come upon in an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. Then he went back downstairs. I heard him say to Uncle Amber, “It’s Max’s turn to empty the chamber pot,” and Uncle Amber, “Max isn’t up to it today,” and Rex, “You mean I have to do it?” and Uncle Amber, “You heard what I said, Rex.” And then they were out to the front porch, and I got out of bed, still pressing the washrag to my forehead, went to the open window and watched them descend the front steps to the pier, Uncle Amber with his rod and reel and tackle box, Rex with the cane poles. I watched Rex bail out the boat, scooping up water with the worm can—that was the hard part, when the water level sank and you could only scoop up a little at a time. I should be helping him, but it was too late for that.
I waited for them to shove off. Then I got dressed, tiptoed downstairs, padded through the living room, pausing at the bedroom door to make sure Aunt Edna was asleep. I took one of Rex’s two handkerchiefs with me. From the fridge I took a bottle of ketchup. I soaked half of Rex’s handkerchief in ketchup in the kitchen sink, put the ketchup back in the fridge. Squeezed ketchup out of the handkerchief, leaving a ketchup stain that might pass for John Dillinger’s blood. I turned on the cold water, washed ketchup down the drain.
I found Aunt Edna’s garden trowel on the back porch, went out behind the outhouse, and buried the handkerchief in the phlox bed. Back in the kitchen, I stole Aunt Edna’s grocery list. I erased her list of items, penciled in what was to be discovered by us, along with the treasure map. whoever finds this take heed, I wrote, in meticulous block letters. Treasure map and warning note I would hide in the steamer trunk between the chamber pot and a hall tree hung with Uncle Amber’s winter overcoat and his rubber overshoes, each occupying a hook. I opened the trunk and breathed in mothballs. The mothballs were sprinkled over garters, a ruby-red camisole, sketchy skirt, high-heel shoes, over Aunt Edna’s college yearbook, opened to a photograph of her with three other lookers, each with one hand on one hip, big smiles. I closed the trunk right away, snuffing out the odor of mothballs. It occurred to me I could improve on the treasure hunt by leaving clues along the way. I went downstairs again, snuck out the back porch door with four notes, notepaper torn from Aunt Edna’s grocery pad. I was sure she was still asleep. I buried three clues. Clue number one beside the dam, clue number two in an inlet near the fish hatchery. Clue number three across the road from the goiter lady. X marks the spot, in the phlox bed behind the outhouse.
“Look here, Rex.” I extracted the note I’d printed, whoever finds this take heed, and handed it to Rex.
Rex took in what else was in the steamer trunk.
“So what is a treasure map doing in Aunt Edna’s trunk?”
“How do I know?” I lied. “What if Aunt Edna’s trunk has been sitting here just waiting for us to open it? So we’d find the map.”
Rex grunted. “I’m on to your little game, Max.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t play it.”
Rex looked up at me like I had grown a foot right in front of his eyes. “You mean we can’t play it, Max.”
Aunt Edna waved goodbye at the back door, Uncle Amber behind her. Passing the outhouse on the way to the back road, I felt both of them were watching us. Once we came to a bend in the road, I looked back. The back door was closed.
Rex followed me around the bend and down the road to the dam, creek water slopping over it, a few cottages spaced out along the creek. He skipped stones off the lake, skipping three, sometimes four times. He handed me a flat stone.
“Your turn, Max.”
I did a wind up, cocked my left leg, blazed a hardball across an invisible plate. Not even one skip.
“Could I have another look at the map?”
“Here, take a look,” I said. “X marks the spot. Right over there by the dam.”
Which provided enough gurgly background music while Rex and I, taking turns, scooped up mud with Aunt Edna’s garden trowel.
My first clue, go to clue #2, was mud-smudged but still readable. We veered away from the lake to the fish hatchery, passing a weedy inlet seething with cruising gar, sunlight silvering their snouts. Rex turned up a lichened rock, grub worms wiggling. He handed me the trowel.
“It’s your turn, Max.”
“Whose idea was it to play this game?”
Scooping up grub worms, I uncovered clue #3. go to goiter lady’s mailbox.
“You go, Max.”
“We’re both going.”
“I don’t want to go there, Max.”
“You scared of her? You think she’ll bite you. It says here go to her mailbox. She won’t even know we’re there.”
“She’ll be sitting out on her porch.”
“So what? Her mailbox is across the road. And she can’t sit out on her porch all the time.”
We took the back way, down a blacktop road away from the lake. When we got to the access road, Rex took it. I knew I had to follow him.
Up ahead of us, next to the goiter lady’s mailbox, to our left a head-high cornfield, tassels shushing in a cooling breeze that rippled the goldenrod to our right, fluffed the spirea bushes beside the front porch. The goiter lady sat in the porch swing where she had been sitting nine days ago, stilling her palmetto fan, slowing the swing to quietude.
Rex squatted beside a clump of Queen Anne’s lace, and with Aunt Edna’s garden trowel unearthed clue number three, in the phlox bed behind the outhouse x marks the spot.
Rex got to his feet and tore clue number three into four strips, held them high up over his head, let them spiral down. One clung to the clump of Queen Anne’s lace; the others drifted into the hole. Then he handed me Aunt Edna’s garden trowel. “From now on you do the digging. And the walking. I’m staying right here.”
To do what, ogle the goiter lady? “You’re coming with me.”
“Why? What for?” Rex asked. He swiped off his beanie and, balancing it on his right forefinger, twirled it slowly. Across the road the goiter lady pushed off, swung in the squeaky porch swing up up up and away, landing on both feet, kerplop, without toppling into the spirea bushes. Beanie-twirling, Rex asked me. “Is she nuts or something?”
Galumphing through sawgrass and goldenrod, on came
the goiter lady, yelling “Get away from my mailbox!” Rex took off first. When I caught up with him he was breathing hard. The first of the row of poplars chuffed and shuffled in the breeze off the lake.
“We aren’t going to find any treasure, Max.”
“We’ll find it. It’s where the treasure map says it is.”
Rex grabbed the treasure map out of my hand. “X marks the spot, my foot,” he said.
“You’ll see,” I said, wishing he wouldn’t see.
How did our treasure hunt end? As we turned the last bend in the road, robins in the pecan tree flurried off in a cloud of flapping wings. X marks the spot, buried in the phlox bed behind the outhouse, had obviously been tampered with. A gaping hole confronted us, minus Rex’s ketchup-encrusted handkerchief but containing a note from Aunt Edna—would you please return my garden trowel!!!!
Rex turned to me and grabbed the garden trowel. He started digging, flinging out dirt, yanking phlox stalks out by the roots. He must have dug two feet down. I knew then that he had known all along what I had done. And I knew Aunt Edna hadn’t been asleep, had known I would use her bottle of ketchup to further my ends, not hers. Uncle Amber must have dug up the handkerchief and left the note.
The back porch door was locked. We got in through the front porch screen door. Since the night latch was on in the door to the living room, we sat in the glider and looked out at cruising speedboats, girls water-skiing in their wake. Uncle Amber came to the front door, unlatched it and let us in. The first thing he did was ask me for the garden trowel. I handed it over. Then—“From now on you boys will stay in the cottage.”
Aunt Edna came in from the bedroom, her sunflower-emblazoned kimono closed tight on her throat. “No more treasure hunts for you two.” She dabbed at her mascara with a wad of Kleenex. “And don’t you ever steal my garden trowel again!”
Rex stared at her like she was the lady with a beard or the fat lady in a sideshow. Uncle Amber scanned the ceiling like he thought it might fall down on him. Then, his eyes dropping, clamping on us—“Go to your room, both of you, ’til supper time.”
Rex asked if we could play our radio. The answer, from Uncle Amber, was no. From Aunt Edna, “Amber?”
“What is it, Edna?”
“It’s all right if they play their radio.”
Aunt Edna gave us her sour smile. Then she went back in the bedroom and closed the door.
Up in our room, I opened the trunk and realized certain items had been taken out and later put back in—Aunt Edna’s garters, her camisole, her skirt, her high-heel shoes. Had Aunt Edna put them on, put on a show for Uncle Amber? Had Uncle Amber put them back, re-sprinkled the mothballs? Rex went to the chamber pot in one corner. He picked up a mothball, squinted at it, put it back in the trunk. He sat down on my side of his bed, turned on the radio. He pulled off his beanie and twisted it.
Without taking his eyes off me—“Who’s been up here messing around with Aunt Edna’s clothes?”
I had to tell him. “Must have been Uncle Amber.”
“Why would he do that?”
“How do I know, Rex?”
Rex put his beanie back on, flattened it over his ears. “When are we going home, Max?”
“When Dad comes to get us,” I said.
“You hope,” Rex said.
“He’ll be here, Rex.”
“He better be,” Rex said.
We took a last look at the mothballs in Aunt Edna’s trunk. Then Rex got up and closed it.
Our father did come for us. He drove us to Indianapolis, passing car after car on the road. He took us to an Indians baseball game. He bought us hot dogs, all the Cokes we could drink; he did everything he could to show us a good time. We soon forgot all about our treasure hunt. But Aunt Edna in her bedroom, her sour smile stitched into her vanity mirror, or stretched out in her bed, her face turned to the wallpaper, waiting for Uncle Amber to bring her her garters, her skirt, her camisole, left an imprint I couldn’t wipe away.
About the Author
Charles Rose taught English at Auburn University for thirty-four years. A native of Indiana, he held degrees from Vanderbilt and the University of Florida and published many short stories and articles. He was a past Hospice Volunteer of the Year, and in 2004 he was awarded an Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship for literary arts/fiction. Rose was the author of In the Midst of Life: A Hospice Volunteer’s Story. He died in 2011 shortly before the publication of this volume.
For more information on Charles Rose and A Ford in the River, visit www.newsouthbooks.com/fordintheriver.