“Where’d they go?” said Josh.
“It’s always a game of hide and seek.” Eddie replied, beginning the search.
“Oh, here’s a penny…wow, flat as a pancake. Look.”
“Yeah….here’s the other one over here. Do you see the nickel anywhere? Oh wow, that is flat.”
“I wanna find the nickel,” Josh said.
The two boys searched the perimeter for the remaining coin. Sometimes the large steel wheels of a train would flip a coin quite a few yards. As the boys continued looking for their illusive prize, they spread out further and further from each other until they were encompassing an area of about fifty feet of railroad track.
“I think it probably flipped over the bank” Josh conceded.
“Yeah….. yeah, I don’t see it anywhere. It had to have flipped into the weeds somewhere. Oh well…” Eddie agreed while still looking down and around.
“We put it on the rail about here, so let’s look down over the bank a little before we give up.” said Josh
“Alright.” Eddie agreed. “Then I’m gonna go grab some lunch.”
Josh and Eddie stepped off the rock foundation that lay under the railroad ties and proceeded to look for the coin where the rocks ended and the weeds began.
“Oh, look Eddie, one of those glass things.”
“Insulators.”
Josh leaned over and picked up the mushroom-shaped glass insulator that was used long ago on the high line poles to insulate the wires from the wood cross members that they were mounted to. They were abundant along railroad tracks and roadways where old electric and phone lines used to run high overhead. Years later they became abundant at flea markets.
The boys searched but to no avail.
“We’re not gonna find that nickel, Josh,” Eddie said, half laughing and shaking his head.
Eddie was plenty ready to give up and go home to eat lunch.
The two boys stood and scanned the riverbank from their perspective up by the railroad tracks. Down and to the right was the sand bar. To the left a little bit was the river side of the trestle that ran under the tracks and let the small stream that ran out of the hills, split the sand bar and flow into the Elk River. Straight down from where they were was the river. One slip down the sandy, muddy mixture and you were wet.
Josh’s eyes caught something in the weeds close to the river’s edge near the sand bar.
“Eddie what’s that?”
“What. Where?”
“In the mud, down there just to the right of that small patch of milkweed. Looks like it’s sort of orange or red on top.”
“Oh, I see it,” said Eddie. “I don’t know.”
“Let’s go check it out.”
The two boys traversed the bank down the path and then walked the sand bar along the water’s edge until it met the muddy riverbank. There they once again spotted what they saw from up on the tracks.
“I know what that is,” said Eddie. “My uncle has one of those painted silver and sitting on his porch for decoration. It’s an old five-gallon can that was used for transporting milk. Uncle G said they would fill’em with fresh milk and deliver them by truck to stores or homes or whatever. I guess they’re pretty old.”
“Let’s pull it outta there,” Josh suggested.
“It’s a muddy old can, Josh.”
Josh looked at Eddie. Adventure races through the minds of young boys when they find treasures like this. They paused, looking at each other for a second. They had nothing else to do!
“O.K, let’s pull it outta there,” said Eddie.
The two boys carefully walked along the steep riverbank, doing their best not to slip on the sandy, muddy mix until they reached the old milk can.
“This must have washed down river this spring, too.” Josh said, while positioning himself on the bank so as not to slip.
“It still has the lid on it.” said Eddie. “My uncle’s doesn’t.”
Josh and Eddie grabbed a handle on each side of the can and pulled. The muddy bank easily gave up the old container. They then carefully retraced their steps back over to the sand bar, each boy still holding onto one handle of the milk can. They sat it down with a clunk on the flat river stones of the sand bar.
“Let’s take it over there and wash it off,” Josh said.
The two friends dunked the can in the river and wiped the sandy mud off the old treasure that they had found.
“You could give this to your uncle G and he could have a matching set,” Josh kidded.
“Actually, he would like that!” laughed Eddie. “He really likes to collect old stuff. You’ve seen his basement.”
“Look how tight the lid is,” said Josh. “It’s like, clamped on,” he continued.
Eddie nonchalantly gave the can a little shake back and forth and both boys looked at each other, puzzled, as they heard a soft flump, flump, flump from within the can, as it was shaken.
“What the heck’s in it?” Josh asked curiously.
Eddie shook the can once more. Flump, flump, flump. They paused
“Let’s open it!” they said together.
Eddie grabbed a large rock and commenced to beating on the old rusty clamp that held the lid on tight. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Over and over he pounded until the clamp started to give a little.
“Give me a whack at it,” said Josh.
Bam, bam, bam, bam, CLANK. The clamp finally let loose and snapped apart. The boys pulled it off and then thought about how to get the lid loose from the can, since years of oxidation had sealed the two together tightly.
“OK, I got it,” Josh said. “Eddie, you’re bigger than me. You hold the can as tight as you can in a bear hug, and I will put this long stick over here through the lid handle for leverage, and twist. But you’re gonna have to hold it tight!”
Eddie looked at Josh.
“OK, I’ll bear hug this wet, muddy, sandy, stinking can so you can take the lid off, Hero,” Eddie shot back, not so enthusiastically.
“It’s the only way to get it off, Ed. Down here, anyway. Don’t ya want to see what’s inside?” Josh asked, raising his eyebrows and cocking his head a bit.
Eddie didn’t say anything. He grabbed the can and sat himself down on the sand bar. He then sat crossed legged and put the can between his legs where he could not only bear hug it with his arms, but squeeze it with his legs, giving him a double lock on the can.
Josh brought the long stick over and ran it through the lid handle as planned and walked forward until the stick was firmly leveraged.
“Ready?” Josh asked.
“Ready.”
Josh tightened the tension on the stick by pushing on it with his leg, being careful to increase tension, but to not twist the container out of his friend’s vice-like hold. Josh pushed more and more and Eddie’s face began to get red and that big vein in his neck started to pop out.
“Hang onto it, Eddie. You’re doin’ good.” Josh encouraged.
Josh increased the pressure on the long stick ever so slightly and both boys noticed the lid begin to twist. Eddie looked at his friend without saying anything while still clenching the can with all his might, nodding his head as if to say “Keep going…don’t let up.” Josh Baker did just that and the lid continued to twist, little by little. As it did, Josh lifted on the long stick as he pushed it to try to pry up and get the lid to come off.
“It’s working, Eddie….hold on to it.”
A couple of seconds later with a fooop!, the lid popped off and fell to the sand bar with the clank of metal hitting rocks.
Eddie fell over in exhaustion and Josh fell forward with the sudden release of the lid and both boys rolled on the rocks and sand, but their efforts were not in vain, for the lid was off.
Josh picked himself up and stepped back over to where his friend was lying, still bear-hugging the milk can. Eddie sat up and both boys examined the top of the can. Josh Baker wrinkled his nose a little and said, “What is this stuff around the rim?”
Eddie, still catching his breath, touched the gooey stuff with his finger and sniffed it. He took his thumb and rubbed it against the other finger as if to test how slippery it was.
“It’s like wax,” Eddie said.
“Wax?” Josh questioned, as he performed his own viscosity test. “Why would this lid be waxed?”
“To seal it….so water can’t get in.” Eddie figured.
No one spoke for a moment. Both boys were thinking the same thing as they looked at each other and then at the top of the can. The only reason that a person would water seal and lock a container is because there was something in the container that needed to be protected. Something important. Something vital. Legal documents or papers or maybe a keepsake for generations to pass down. A will, possibly, or some kind of a personal diary. Things that would be kept in a safe at home nowadays. Birth certificates or death certificates or insurance papers.
The two boys’ hearts pounded as they slowly stood up and peered over the rim and down into the can.
“Pull it out of there, Josh.” Eddie said, as if he were a little spooked to put his arm down into the dark hole.
Josh shook the can back and forth again as before and again, flump, flump, flump. Josh took a deep breath and slowly lowered his arm down into the old milk container. He went down to about his elbow and looked at his friend as he grasped the soft, cylindrical-shaped object inside.
He pulled it out slowly and the two boys again looked at each other as their hearts pounded faster.
Josh had in his hand a rolled up piece of animal skin type material with a single piece of leather bootlace wrapped around it and tied in a simple knot.
“What in the world could this be?” Eddie asked, as both boys looked at it in amazement.
Josh, still holding onto the unknown treasure, lifted his other hand up to the bootlace and pulled on the loose end. As he did so, the knot fell loose and the rolled up animal skin was untied for the first time in many, many years.
As Eddie took one end of it, Josh held the other and the two friends slowly unrolled the mysterious scroll.
“What is this thing?…It’s like deerskin or something.” Eddie said. “Or part of one.”
Eddie knew a deer hide when he saw one, as his father was an avid hunter and always managed to bag his limit every November. Eddie had joined his father the past few years as they headed north to the high country in search of white-tailed deer but had yet to shoot his first buck. Still, he would always be there to help his dad skin their trophy and quarter the meat.
Josh remained speechless as they continued to unroll their treasure. As they unrolled it, an inch at a time, their eyes got wider and wider. They couldn’t believe what they had found along the muddy banks of the Elk River, right in their back yard.
CHAPTER THREE
Very much aged but in good condition was what seemed to be a deer-hide, tanned and preserved by someone long ago. The edges were not straight and even but ragged and rough. The boys stared in amazement at this apparent document that had not been unrolled in decades.
“What is all this writing on it?” Josh questioned.
“I don’t know…It’s weird. It’s like a list. And down here is a sketch of something,” Eddie said.
“Can you read it, Eddie?”
“We need better light…. this shade makes it hard to see,” Eddie said as he looked up and around the riverbank.
“This is so cool…what if it’s something really important, and we found it, Eddie?” Josh asked excitedly.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Buddy. If it were important, it wouldn’t be in an old can. It’s probably just an old farmer’s list of crop records or a moonshine recipe or something,” Eddie replied.
“Yeah…Oh well. Why don’t we take it up to my house and look at it in the light?” Josh suggested.
“Let’s go to my house,” Eddie said. “We’ll get some sandwiches. I’m starving.”
The two boys picked up their fishing gear and their new-found treasure and headed towards the steep riverbank once again. Something caught Josh’s ear and eye at the same time as they walked past the tunnel under the train tracks. Josh spotted something pretty good-sized through the darkness and through the foliage on the other side. It moved quickly and was gone. Josh thought it must have been a deer and said nothing to his friend.
Back at Eddie’s house the two boys lugged their fishing gear into the garage, sat the can down and put the deer-hide up on the work bench under the four-foot neon bench light.
“I’m gonna go get some sandwiches and chips. I’ll be right back,” Eddie said, while heading for the side door to the house.
“OK,” Josh replied, as he untied the scroll once more.
Josh Baker rolled it out and placed a heavy open-ended wrench on either side of it to hold it so it wouldn’t roll back up on him. His eyes squinted and studied the list and his head turned from one side to the other as if looking at it from a different angle would give him a new perspective as to what it was. He looked it over for a few minutes, turning it this way and that and looking at the sketch at the bottom right hand corner.
In the upper right hand corner was a group of numbers that Josh figured might be a date but it didn’t look like enough digits. He moved closer and turned the document to get a better look. The ink that was used was jet black and had smeared just a little somewhere in the process of writing this document and storing it for all these years. The numbers read: 9104.
“Hmmm.”
Eddie returned with two paper plates and two sodas. Eddie’s gourmet lunch included peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches, potato chips and a piece of fresh chocolate fudge made that morning by Mrs. Debord. He sat them down on the end of the workbench and dug right in.
“What did ya’ learn?” Eddie asked, with a jaw full of sandwich.
“It’s kinda smeared, but what I can read is like written in phrases…. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.” He paused while Eddie chewed. “What we have is seven lines of smeared words and some numbers, a set of numbers in the upper right corner and this drawing in the lower right corner.”
Josh looked back up at the numbers in the right hand corner.
“Does that look like a date to you?” Josh asked
Eddie moved over in front of the bench where the document lay and, while holding his sandwich, looked up and studied the figures.
“9104“..…he paused. “No. Doesn’t look like enough numbers to be a date,” Eddie said. He scanned the deer hide while Josh moved back into study position.
“But…. what if it means 09-01-04?” Josh asked
“No way.” Eddie paused. “I mean, I don’t think we have the Dead Sea Scrolls here, but I do think it’s older than 2004.”
“I was thinking more like 1904.”
Eddie shrugged his shoulders. “Is that how they wrote dates back then?”
“Maybe. Or maybe that’s how whoever drafted this wrote his dates.”
“Or her dates.”
Eddie took another bite.
“What in the world do we have here, Ed?” Josh asked with a one-sided grin on his face. “It’s a mystery.”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “Are you gonna eat that sandwich or am I?”.
“Yeah…I’m hungry. It’s mine.”
Something caught Josh’s eye once again from outside the rear service door to Eddie’s garage and down over the riverbank. Just a brief flicker of movement and then it was gone. Josh, once again, said nothing to his friend about it.
Eddie Debord’s house was situated along the riverbank of the Elk River. It was a modest three-bedroom house all on one level with an open floor plan inside and a two-car garage with a back service door. The house sat atop high ground and their yard tiered a couple times downward until it met the river. The riverbank was lined with trees just above the water’s edge and then dropped almost vertically to the water where Eddie’s father had constructed a small fishing dock.
Josh lived three houses down
from Eddie and had a similar yard layout. The house was an old cinderblock construction, two-story with three bedrooms and also with a two-car garage. The two boys were very content with their homes and yards and with their proximity to the river and to each other.
The sand bar was directly across the river from Josh Bakers’ house. The two boys took the Baker’s 12 ft. Alumacraft jon boat across to their favorite fishing spot whenever they felt the need to drown a worm or two.
Josh glanced back at the old deer hide and stared in excited amazement.
“Well, it’s something. We just have to figure out what,” Josh said, now devouring his sandwich.
“Well…..let’s do this. Let’s get a piece of paper and write down all the letters and numbers that we can read that aren’t smeared or streaked and then we will see if we can fill in the rest of the letters by logic,” Eddie suggested.
Josh nodded his OK and Eddie went over to a desk his dad had in the garage and grabbed a legal pad and a pen.
The two boys started at the top with the numbers 9104.
For the next few minutes Josh and Eddie studied the writing and put onto paper only the letters they were absolutely sure of while leaving blanks for the letters that were illegible. With his sandwich in his left hand, Josh did the writing while Eddie looked on. Occasionally they would confer on a letter and only when agreeing would they write it down. After about twenty minutes the boys had the seven lines of the strange, riddled document on modern-day paper.
Josh then looked down at the lower right hand corner of the hide, laid the yellow paper on top of the deer hide and did his best to trace the little sketch in the corner near the ripped edge, not knowing what any of the lines or symbols meant.
After he completed that sketch the boys looked it over, sighed and then agreed to make another copy so they each would have one. That completed, they each took their copies and looked them over.
River Rocks: A West Virginia Adventure Novel Page 2