The Wreck

by Landon Beach

  Brooke arrived at Nate’s desk and refilled his coffee mug. “Are we rich?” She asked looking at the coin.

  “Very funny,” Nate said, “I found this on our beach this morning.”

  “Is that gold?” Brooke asked, more serious now that she had a better look at the coin.

  “Maybe. I don’t recognize any of these marks or the language that is engraved on it.” He put the coin and magnifying glass down and pointed to the bookshelf. “Hand me that book.”

  Brooke reached up to the top shelf and grabbed a heavy, hardcover book. She looked at the title—The Golden Age of Piracy—and tried to hide a grin.

  Nate knew her expression meant: only you would have a book like this, Nate. “Thanks,” he said, laughing at himself with her. “I’m glad to see that I’m still a cheap source of entertainment for you.”

  She giggled back, and then kissed him on the cheek.

  Nate began to leaf through the book.

  Brooke set the coffee pot down and picked up the coin and magnifying glass.

  After checking the appropriate pages, he closed the book and looked up at Brooke. “Nothing in here that resembles the markings on this coin.” He took a drink of his coffee.

  Brooke passed the coin and magnifying glass back to Nate. “I can’t make out anything on it either.” She picked up the coffee pot. “Well, I’m going in to take a shower and then head out to do a little shopping. Your breakfast is cold, but it’s on the table if you still want it,” she said. “I looked down the beach this morning and I think the Gibsons are up.”

  Nate was once more absorbed in the mystery of the coin and only grunted in reply.

  “I wonder if anyone will make us an offer on our place this summer,” Brooke wondered aloud.

  A few Hampstead locals had hung on to their homes, repeatedly declining offers that were made for their property. In some cases, it was enough money to bankroll them for a decade. The ink on the paperwork transferring ownership of the house from his mother to Brooke and him hadn’t even dried yet when they had been approached. It was over Easter weekend, and they were at the beach house furnishing it with some of their own things. The doorbell had rung, and after five minutes of polite conversation, Nate and Brooke had said no; the prospective buyer and his trophy wife had stormed off.

  Some of the mansion owners had even tried to sue the cottage owners, claiming that the cottages detracted from the beachfront’s beauty. They wanted the locals out. Most of the locals wanted the castles bulldozed.

  Nate set the coin and magnifying glass aside for a moment. “You think that the local kids have all the lawn jobs sewn up yet?” His father had once told him of an unofficial lottery held at the town barbershop to determine who would be allowed to apply for the summer mansion mowing jobs. It had been one of their last conversations.

  “Probably,” said Brooke. “I’ve felt stares at the dime store from Judge Hopkins and Sheriff Walker. I know they’re wishing we would just sell our cottage already.”

  “How wrong is that?” Nate said. “The town leaders turning on the townspeople.”

  “What do they gain by us selling?”

  “New mansions mean more opportunities for their sons or daughters to mow a summer resident’s lawn,” Nate said. “And if their kid does a good job, then maybe, just maybe, they’ll get invited out for a summer party.”

  “Funny how some people get fooled into thinking they’re moving up in the world,” she said.

  “If they only knew that they look like the person who walks behind a horse and picks up its droppings.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh at the scene he was now picturing.

  “What?” Brooke said.

  He continued to laugh.

  “Naaayyyyte,” she said, poking him with her finger.

  He gathered himself. “I started to envision some of the people we know who want to break into that circle walking behind the Budweiser Clydesdales at the Fourth of the July parade picking up piles of shit and waving to the crowd. Agree?”

  “One hundred percent. Oh, the pictures you paint, Mr. Martin,” Brooke said.

  “You’re the only one that can see the pictures I describe, sweetie.”

  “When are we getting our internet connection?” Nate said.

  “They can’t make it out until next week.”

  “Damned cable company. We’re supposed to have cell phone reception out here next summer too. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  She kissed him and then left the garage.

  He picked up the coin again and then looked out the window at the spot on the beach where he had found it. Where had it come from? Were there more? He put the magnifying glass and coin in the top drawer of his desk and reshelved the book. He stood with his hand resting on the dive gear for a moment. Let’s have a look.

  He entered the house through the sliding glass door and could hear the shower running as he walked down the hallway and grabbed a towel from the linen closet. He exited the house and as he stepped off the deck, he noticed that the blinds were now open on the lakeside windows of a house two down from them. No doubt the owner had his binoculars out and was watching to see what Nate was up to. The man spent more time prying into other people’s lives than living his own. The beach mansion owners had one complaint that held weight: the locals were nosey.

  Nate passed by the stack of unused wood in the sand and made his way to the water. The lake was placid and the sun had risen far enough to see the sandy bottom. He positioned himself at the approximate point where he had found the coin. He looked back toward the house to make sure it had been found on his property. It had.

  After strapping the knife to his right calf, he pulled the mask down past his face so that it hung by its strap around his neck and rested on his upper chest. He entered the water holding the fins above the surface and probed the bottom with his toes for more coins as he walked out up to his waist. Feeling none, he put his fins on and pulled the mask over his head. He spit into the faceplate, rubbing warm saliva all over, and then dipped the mask into the cold water. After securing it to his face, Nate verified his alignment with the spot on the beach where he’d found the coin and dove under.

  The water’s temperature was probably in the high fifties, and Nate kicked to warm his body, seeing nothing on the bottom at first. Then, his own anchor auger, wire, and buoy appeared. He surfaced next to Speculation, took a deep breath, and dove to the bottom to test the auger. Holding onto the steel pole, he pulled from side to side, then up and down. Neither motion moved the mooring. He checked the wire which ran through the auger’s eye to the buoy and back to the eye: they were secure.

  A few summers back, he had applied for a job as a navigator on a yacht out of Shelby’s. The local paper had advertised that a crew was needed for the vessel’s summer voyage up Lake Huron to Mackinac Island, down Lake Michigan to Chicago, and then back to Hampstead. Perhaps “applied” was too strong a word. Thinking that mailing an item like a resume would be too formal, he had shown up at Shelby’s to inquire about the job. The marina owner, Kevin Shelby, had finally opened his office door after Nate’s third stream of knocking. Shelby had a cigarette and cup of coffee in one hand and was running the other hand through his greasy hair. There had been an open bottle of Baileys on his small desk.

  After hearing Nate out, Shelby had said, “Fuck if I know. I’ve never even heard about the cruise, you sure you’ve got the right marina?”

  And that was the end of his career as a navigator—and possibly berthing his boat there.

  Nate swam under Speculation and after seeing that the hull was fine, he surfaced and kicked further out until the water was approximately ten feet deep. He took a deep breath and dove.

  He traced the bottom and swam in a zigzag pattern out to a depth of twenty-five feet. Odds-and-ends were scattered across the sand: rocks, a tire, a rusted can but no coins. He surfaced. The sun hid behind a cloud making the water darker as Nate treaded. A breeze had started and Speculati
on wandered around her mooring. Where did the coin come from? Nate rotated in a slow circle watching the waves and hearing the distant cry of a seagull.

  The sun came out from behind the cloud and the khaki colored bottom illuminated under his black fins. He dove and kicked back toward shore while hugging the lake bed. Had he hoped to find something? Sure. Did he really think that he would? No. At least he knew the boat wasn’t going anywhere.

  As he dried off on the beach, Brooke emerged from the house.

  3

  “I’m heading out now,” she said, “What were you doing?”

  “Checking the mooring,” Nate shouted back, “everything’s fine.”

  “All right, I’ll be back in about an hour.”

  Nate gave her the thumbs up sign and watched as she stepped off the deck and disappeared around the side of the house. When she got back, he had his own errands to run.

  ✽✽✽

  Beecher Hardware looked gloomy when Nate showed up in the late afternoon. The morning’s promising sunshine had faded, leaving an overcast rainy day. So much for the weather report. Brooke had arrived home after shopping and was reading her new book on the couch when Nate had left for town.

  The front door chimed as he entered, smelling fresh lumber and paint. The owner, Tyee Beecher, was at his usual post behind the front counter, reading the paper for probably the third time just to make sure he had all the local gossip memorized. He was fifty-two and had taken over from his father twenty-eight years ago.

  “Hi, Tyee,” Nate said.

  Tyee lowered the paper and stared. “You up for the summer or just the weekend?”

  “The summer. We got in yesterday,” said Nate, “I’m here to pick up a new lock for my boat. How are things?”

  “Aisle five,” Tyee said and went back to reading the paper.

  Nate walked over to aisle five and picked up a master lock. The locks were wedged between half-a-dozen metal detectors and two columns of flashlights. He picked up a metal detector and felt the weight while swinging it in slow arcs above the floor. In the waters off Florida, there were literally millions, maybe billions in lost treasure from sunken galleons waiting to be discovered. There existed the slim possibility that the treasure would roll in toward the coast and wash up on the beach. On a spring break when he was in high school, he had taken an early morning run on Daytona Beach with his father and seen dozens of people tacking metal detectors back and forth.

  Nate hung the detector back up. He wasn’t that crazy, even though he had donned a mask and fins less than two hours ago and swum around looking for a trail of gold coins in Lake Huron.

  When he returned to the counter, Tyee had left his paper and was rustling around in the back room. There was no one else in the store. Nate wasn’t in a hurry. He had a haircut appointment in half an hour but the barber shop was only a block away. He always started the summer off with a flattop, low maintenance and kept him cool. Brooke loved to rub her hand from the base of his neck up to the top. He kept it trimmed until a month before school started.

  Tyee’s six foot five frame came through the doorway, his mess of black and gray hair nearly hitting the top.

  “That all you need?” Tyee’s voice was sharp and deep.

  “I think so,” Nate hesitated while Tyee rang up the master lock, “unless you could tell me anything about this.” Nate took the gold coin out of his pocket and placed it on the counter.

  “So that’s why you were eyein’ the metal detectors,” Tyee said as he regarded the coin. “Well, it’s French.”

  For the first nine years of his life, his name had simply been Beecher. His people held the tradition that one did not receive his name until performing a distinguishing act. When he saved his older sister from drowning at the beach, while other children and a few nearby adults panicked, he was given the name of Tyee, meaning Chief. Beecher came from his Chippewa ancestors who had intermarried with French explorers—a fact that still did not sit well with him. Hence, he could read and speak French, but rarely did or needed to. Tyee had tried college but didn’t care much for school. On essay questions where he was required to write two page responses, he answered them in two or three sentences, claiming that he had gotten to the point and didn’t need to write more. After one semester, he dropped out and came back to work at the hardware store.

  “French?” Nate asked.

  “Appears to be,” said Tyee, “Look here.” Tyee picked up the coin and pointed to the date 1643. “King Louis the Fourteenth began his reign in that year, which would match the child’s portrait displayed on the front face.”

  “I was wondering why anyone would put a kid on a coin,” Nate said.

  “Well, in those days it didn’t matter how old you were. When your predecessor kicked the bucket, you were king. I think Louis the Fourteenth was around four or five when his old man croaked.”

  “Looks like I came to the right man,” Nate said.

  “Not really,” said Tyee, “I only know that date and Louis’s reign because my mother made me memorize it. She thought it was important for me to know my ancestry.”

  “You’re part French?”

  “We’re all part somethin’,” Tyee said. “Why do you think my goddamn eyes are green?”

  Nate looked up at Tyee’s eyes, but quickly averted his gaze out of embarrassment. Nate knew that Tyee had been the unfortunate victim of a quick marriage that had ended badly with no kids, but he had no idea that Tyee had French lineage. Tyee was back to looking at the coin. “What else do you know about Louis the Fourteenth?” Nate asked.

  “Not much. He ruled for a helluva long time,” Tyee paused, searching for more information and then grunted, “well, that’s all I can remember. Education is pathetic isn’t it?”

  Nate wondered if some of his students would one day say something similar, needing knowledge that he was supposed to have provided.

  Tyee continued. “And it’s not for certain that this is from France. I’m just matching the date to the one I know and the fact that Louis took the throne early.” Tyee flipped the coin to Nate.

  “Think it’s worth anything?” Nate said.

  “Gotta be worth somethin’ if it’s genuine, but who knows how much.”

  “Do you know anyone around here who would?” Nate said. “My internet isn’t working yet.”

  “The hell with technology,” Tyee said. “Where’d you get this from?”

  “I found it on the beach in front of my cottage this morning.”

  Tyee raised an eyebrow.

  “No kidding,” Nate defended.

  “It looks like it’s made out of gold, but I suppose you can never be sure with all of the fakes these days. I know one person who might know something about this,” said Tyee, “but he doesn’t like people too much.”

  “Who is he?” Nate said. “I wouldn’t take much of his time.”

  “An old friend of mine named Abner Hutch. Lives out past the bight.”

  “The bight?”

  Tyee grinned. “It’s another name for the bend in the coast north of where you live. You’ve never heard it called that before?”

  Nate shook his head no.

  “Hutch lives out on the tip.”

  “Can I phone him?”

  “No phone line at his place. I’ll call him on my radio and tell him you’re comin’ out. He’ll probably mess with ya.”

  “Mess with me how?”

  “You’ll see,” Tyee shrugged.

  “Anything else I need to know about this guy?” Nate said.

  “Bring a bicycle with you. It’s the only way you can get to his house other than walking the blasted mile past Mrs. Hawthorne’s.”

  “He doesn’t have a driveway?” Nate said.

  “He parks his truck at Mrs. Hawthorne’s. He hardly ever leaves his place anyway, and if he does, he just takes his boat.”

  “Who is Mrs. Hawthorne?”

  “She kinda looks after him, since his wife passed away.”

 
“Recently?”

  “Eleven years ago. Don’t ask him about it. Not much of a talker anyways. Mrs. H has a phone, so I could get ahold of him that way, but radio’s quicker. Got one at his house and one on his boat.”

  “Any kids?” Nate said, trying to ascertain as much about Hutch as possible before meeting him.

  “You sure are askin’ a lot of questions.”

  “Well, it’s unusual for anyone to not have a driveway or a phone. It doesn’t sound like a person who would be able to tell me anything about this coin.”

  “He’s a retired Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer. After his wife passed away, he’s kinda become an unofficial Great Lakes historian and wreck diver. I’m not sayin’ he can tell you anything about that coin, but if it’s got somethin’ to do with the lakes, then he’s your best bet.”

  The door chimed and two men entered carrying a Styrofoam cooler.

  “Hey, you sell bait?” One of the men asked.

  “No. You’ll have to go next door to Mickey’s,” Tyee said, and the men left.

  Nate looked puzzled.

  “What?” Tyee said.

  “Tyee, you sell everything in this hardware store. It’s like a mix of Cabellas, West Marine, a well-stocked dive shop, and Dick’s sporting goods. Why don’t you sell bait?”

  “You don’t understand how a small town works do ya?” Tyee said and didn’t wait for an answer. “I purposely don’t carry bait ‘cause Mickey Leif is my friend. I don’t compete with friends, so I refer all of my customers to Mickey. He doesn’t carry the stuff I do, so he refers his customers to me. That way we both stay in business.”

  Nate tilted his head back in understanding, feeling stupid for not figuring it out before he let the question slip out of his mouth. “You said Hutch dives.”

  “I did,” Tyee said.

  “Does he get all of his stuff from you?”

  “Mostly. On some wrecks though, he needs special equipment so I have to order it for him. When it comes in, he just drives over in his boat and picks it up out back,” Tyee said while motioning his thumb toward the store’s rear window. The hardware store was on the water with a dock out back. At the end of the dock was a large wooden shed painted red with white trim and a black shingled roof. A boat was tied up to one side.