Beware the River

by Kitty Margo

  “What is it?” Billy and James asked at the same time.

  It was okay for them to get excited. They weren’t elbow deep in rank, putrid rot. “I don’t know. Let me get my hand out and we’ll see.” But I couldn’t budge it. It almost felt like something was holding my hand trapped inside the tree. “My hand is stuck! Help me pull it out!”

  An icy wave of panic rushed over me. I was terrified that either my hand would be wedged in the tree forever or my arm would have to be amputated at the shoulder to save my life.

  Billy grabbed my arm while James held on to my waist and pulled. Just when I thought they would pull my arm out of socket, my hand jerked free and we all went sailing backward with the object clutched tightly in my hand.

  As we untangled our arms and legs, Billy asked, “What is it, BJ?”

  I couldn’t tell what the object was until I had wiped a couple hundred years worth of dirt and grime off. “It looks like a really old jar. It’s one of those that have the handle on top. Gram still has a couple of these and she says they’re valuable now.”

  “Well, (hiccup) open it, BJ. Hurry up!”

  “Okay, I’m trying. Just give me a minute!”

  “Hurry up, BJ,” Billy added.

  I couldn’t get the metal lid to budge at all. “I can’t open it. The top is rusted shut.”

  “Just break the (hiccup) jar.”

  “I don’t think I should.” Holding the jar up so I could look through the bottom I saw paper and something shiny. “I can see a piece of paper rolled up inside. It looks old and fragile. I don’t want to damage it. If I do we might never solve the mystery of the buffalo.”

  I took my trusty Old Timer pocketknife out of my pocket and beat gently around the edge of the lid several times to loosen it. Then, with a little twist, it came off in my hand. I carefully lifted the lid and tilted the jar, then reached inside to remove a brittle piece of parchment paper.

  When I did, three gold nuggets, each roughly the size of a golf ball, fell into my hand.

  I just looked at them, unable to speak. None of us spoke for several seconds.

  “Is that…?” Billy began.

  “It can’t (hiccup) be…!”

  “It is!” I shrieked, finally finding my voice. I clutched the shiny pieces of gold in my hand and did a riverdance around the tree. “It’s gold!” I put it between my teeth and bit down to make sure it wasn’t a piece of candy with gold wrapping made to look like a gold nugget. It wasn’t. “We’re freaking rich! The buffalo or the man in the painting left us each a gold nugget! Look at this! It’s real! I’ve panned for gold enough to know this is the real deal!”

  “It (hiccup) can’t be real. It’s gotta be (hiccup) fake!”

  “Do you really think it’s real, BJ?”

  “How much do (hiccup) you think it’s (hiccup) worth?”

  “This is your grandpa Cliff’s land, BJ.” Billy felt the need to remind me. “So legally I would think the gold belongs to him. Do you think he will let us keep it?”

  “Of course he will numbskull! You know my grandpa better than that. There isn’t a finer man in the state of North Carolina.”

  “True, but I just needed to hear you say it. Man, I can’t believe it. This…can’t be happening. It’s too good to be true. And didn’t I tell you the buffalo was leading us to a buried treasure? Now, whose the retard?” he asked, cutting his eyes at James.

  “It wasn’t exactly buried,” James said, trying to weasel out of admitting Billy was right.

  “Was too! It was buried under years of moss and leaves and other stuff, wasn’t it, BJ.”

  “Yeah, it was buried all right.”

  “Told you. Now, at the risk of repeating (hiccup) myself, how much do (hiccup) you think it’s worth?”

  “I have no idea. Let’s go home and find out!”

  “Wait, BJ.” Billy held out his hand to stop me. “What does the paper say?”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot.” James and Billy were breathing heavily over my shoulder as I unrolled the paper. I knew if I didn’t hurry up and show James what was inside I would suffer permanent loss of hearing in my right ear from his rapid-fire hiccups.

  However even my slightest touch caused the paper to crumble in my hands. “We can’t open it here. If any of the pieces fall to the ground we’ll never find them in these weeds. Let’s take it to the cabin.” I put the paper gently back in the jar and holding it close to my chest carried it in one hand and the nuggets in the other up the stairs to the cabin.

  Once there I put the nuggets on the table and spreading the crumbled remains of paper, tried to piece them together. I couldn’t focus. My eyes kept roaming to the shiny gold nuggets glistening in the afternoon sun. Billy and James kept picking the nuggets up, shifting them from hand to hand trying to judge their weight.

  It took forever, but when the pieces were fitted together I recognized it immediately. It looked like a jigsaw puzzle and what writing remained was terribly smudged, but it was a pencil sketch of the painting in Gram’s living room.

  That’s where we would find the answers!

  In the painting!

  I should have known, since that’s where this whole episode began. “Let’s go to Gram’s. Maybe we can find some answers there.”

  * * * * *

  We arrived at Gram’s in a swirling cloud of dust. As my luck would have it, Gram wasn’t home. I remembered her getting all gussied up this morning because my mom was taking her for a hair appointment. Wouldn’t you know it?

  I didn’t have a key.

  Luckily, I knew where she kept an extra one. It was in one of the multi-colored flower and fern baskets surrounding her porch. I just didn’t know which one.

  “We have to check all these hanging baskets.” I swung around on the porch and counted six baskets. “James you check the baskets on the right. Billy the ones on the left and I’ll check the middle.”

  “It might help if I knew what I was looking for,” James complained as he reached into one of the baskets. As he did, he startled a mother sparrow on her nest and she angrily flew out and hit James right between the eyes. He screamed, clutched his heart, fell back into a rocking chair and refused to go near another basket.

  “We’re looking for the key Gram has hidden in one of these baskets.”

  “Good luck (hiccup) with that.” He refused to budge from the safety of his rocker. “I hope (hiccup) you (hiccup) find it.”

  Billy and I stood on tiptoes feeling around in one pot of damp peat moss after another until Billy finally got lucky and pulled out the key. “I found it!”

  “Yep, that’s it.” Taking the key, I opened the front door.

  We raced each other up the stairs where I grabbed my laptop and searched for the price of gold.

  “Gold is currently selling for…holy catfish excrement!… $1400.00 a freaking ounce!

  These weigh at least…hold on!” I ran downstairs to weigh the nuggets on Gram’s food scale with both of them hot on my heels. “Exactly five ounces each.”

  “That means I am holding at least $21,000.00 in my hand!”

  “That’s breaks down to $7,000.00 each.”

  “However, I heard on the news just yesterday that the price of gold was skyrocketing. Who knows what it could be worth a month from now.”

  Billy, looking totally flabbergasted, whispered. “I’m going to buy a new computer, a new game system, video games and put the rest away for college.”

  Yep, I’d say $7000.00 would buy a few video games,” I agreed.

  James was ecstatic, jumping up and down on my bed like a toddler. “Yeah baby! I can get my own four wheeler now, boys!” He fell down on my bed and stared at the ceiling with a huge grin on his face. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. My own four wheeler!” Then he looked at me. “What will you do with your money, BJ?”

  “I’m joining the Navy when I graduate, so my college tuition will be covered.”

  “Do you still plan to be a Search and
Rescue Swimmer?”

  “Yep, if I can pass all of the tests.”

  “I know you won’t have any trouble passing the swimming test,” Billy said.

  “Please tell me that you’re not going to put all your money in your savings account and not spend a buffalo nickel on yourself,” James said. “Buffalo nickel, get it?”

  “Yeah, I got it. But no, I won’t put all of it in the bank. I’m going to buy some killer fishing gear, some new duck decoys, new hip waders, maybe a Jon Boat, and I guess I’ll put some back to buy…I don’t know…a nice friendship ring someday.”

  Oh crap! Why did I let those words slip out? I would never hear the end of it!

  “Megan Cobb!” They both squealed as Billy fell down on the bed beside James and they laughed and made lovesick doe eyes at each other. “You got it bad, (hiccup) boy.”

  “Nope.” I rolled the nuggets around in my hand enjoying the sound of them clicking against each other. “Actually, I’ve got it real good.”

  “I guess you do at that.” Billy grinned. “I guess you do. Now, let’s go find that painting and see what else the buffalo has in store for us.”

  Chapter 16

  The inside of Gram’s house was cool and dark. But I knew the attic would feel like an oven on a day like this. Was I ever right! I pulled down the ladder to the attic and a blast of hot air, that felt like it was coming from a furnace, hit us square in the face. Sweat began to pour off of us in rivulets the instant we climbed the steps into the deep, dark shadows of the scorching attic.

  As he was wiping the dirty sweat from his forehead and grandma beads from his neck Billy grumbled, “Man, it must be 120 degrees up here.”

  “Yeah, BJ,” James agreed, still drenched with sweat from his near death experience with the malicious sparrow. “Turn on a fan will you?”

  I looked around and finally found an antique fan, then after wasting valuable time searching for an electrical socket, plugged it in. That was a mistake! Far from cooling us off, it only circulated the hot air blowing years of cobwebs and dust to settle over us. I turned off the fan as James and Billy coughed and spluttered and pulled cobwebs and entire families of spiders out of their hair.

  “BJ, find the painting and let’s get out of here,” Billy groaned.

  I looked in every corner of the attic for the painting. It was so hot I could hardly breathe, but we kept searching. I saw where a snake had wrapped around an attic pipe to shed his skin and issued a silent prayer that he had taken his new skin and went back outside. I didn’t mention it to the other two, I knew they would leave me to search alone. We searched behind boxes, old toys, old books, mattresses, magazines, a dressmaker’s dummy, furniture and a couple of old tricycles. No painting. “I wonder what Gram did with the painting? She said she was bringing it up here, so where is it?”

  “I don’t know, BJ,” James wheezed, “but I’ve got to get out of this heat before I suffocate.”

  Giving up the search for now, I was quick to agree as we followed James down the attic steps.

  All three of us released contented sighs as we were greeted by a blast of cold air. We went to my room, fell on the floor and gathered over one of the air conditioning vents.

  “Where could the painting be?” Billy wondered out loud.

  I was about to answer, when I heard tires crunching on the gravel drive outside. Jumping up off the floor, I raced to the window and saw Mom and Gram. Good, maybe Gram could tell us where the painting was. I watched as Mom went around to the trunk of the car. Instead of the grocery bags I was expecting to see, she lifted out a large bundle wrapped in brown paper.

  “I wonder what’s in the package?” It wasn’t anyone in the family’s birthday. When we arrived downstairs she was carefully leaning the package against the fireplace in the living room. “Hi Mom.”

  “Oh, hi honey. I thought you boys were at the cabin.” She gasped when she turned around to find us covered with spider webs and completely filthy from our visit to the attic. “Where on earth have you been?”

  “We were up in the attic looking around.” Then I turned to take Gram’s grocery bags, and follow her into the kitchen. “Gram, what did you do with the painting of the buffalo? We looked all over the attic, but it’s not there.”

  “I know.” She was grinning wide enough to show every one of her false teeth. “Your Mom took it.”

  “Mom took it? Why?”

  “Because,” Mom said, coming through the door with more groceries. “I felt bad about her painting getting damaged. I realize it was an accident. Gram and I both know you would never have intentionally dropped the painting, honey. Still, I felt bad that a painting that has been in her family for over two hundred years got broken, so I took it to the craft shop and had it fitted with a new frame and glass. Come on, let’s go take a look at it.”

  Billy and James looked on nervously, as Mom tore away the brown paper wrapping. I looked away, afraid to meet the eyes of the buffalo in the painting. Why? When he had single-handedly saved my life and the lives of everyone I loved.

  “Look at this, BJ,” Mom was saying. “There’s writing on the painting. Did you see it before?”

  “No, I don’t remember any writing on the painting!” And I had been about as up close and personal to that painting as a person could get. However the writing was as plain as the nose on my face. How did I miss it before? That was really odd. But, in my defense, it’s kinda hard to focus on the written word when a painted buffalo is winking at you.

  Old Slew-foot and Me

  Josephus Siler

  1754

  “Who or what the heck is a Slew-foot?” James asked.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Billy answered. “Get your laptop and Google it, BJ.”

  “Okay, hold on.” As I was racing up the stairs to find my laptop I heard another car door slam. Looking out the window I saw Gram’s twin sister, Mattie Ruth, walking up the sidewalk. Let me just tell you that woman is a spitfire if ever there was one. She’s one of those elderly women who say whatever comes to mind. Mom says she doesn’t have a filter.

  Hurrying back downstairs, I hugged Great Aunt Mattie Ruth and just about got my cheeks pinched off in the process. I fell on the sofa between James and Billy and typed slew-foot into the search engine. According to www.freedictionary.com slew-foot means “the lower extremity of the vertebrae leg that is in direct contact with the ground in standing or walking. “I guess it just means his hooves.”

  “I didn’t know you still had that painting, Hattie Mae,” Mattie Ruth said to Gram as she motioned toward the painting. “I haven’t seen that thing in a month of Sundays. Whoever heard of someone having a buffalo as a pet? Don’t that just beat all! Old Josephus Siler must have been a hoot. He’s the man in the painting, you know. It’s supposed to be a self portrait.”

  “You know, that’s right,” Gram said, as a light bulb must have clicked on in her brain. “I had forgotten all about that. I knew there was something I was forgetting to tell BJ about that painting. Now I remember. The man in the painting was your great, great, great grandfather Josephus Siler and the buffalo was his pet.”

  “Unfortunately, a hunter killed the buffalo’s mother when the baby was only a few days old. Grandpa Siler took the baby home, somehow coaxed one of his other animals to nurse it, and raised it as a pet. We know this because he left a journal in which he spoke often of Old Slew-foot.”

  The buffalo was my great, great, great grandfather’s pet? As filthy as I was, I had to sit down. We were all quiet for a long time and then I whispered to James and Billy, “Great Grandpa Siler tried to warn me and when I didn’t listen, he sent the buffalo to save us.”

  “Yep, that’s right, Hattie Mae,” Mattie Ruth took up the story. Until her retirement a few years ago, she had been a history teacher at the local high school. “Back in those days, millions of buffalo were slaughtered, many of them for their tongues alone. Thanks to Grandpa Siler, Old Slew-foot lived to a ripe old age.”


  “For their tongues!” we cried in unison.

  “Yes, their tongues. For some strange reason, that I personally cannot comprehend, buffalo tongue was considered a delicacy in the 1700’s.”

  “A delicacy?” James clutched his stomach and moaned. “Man, they would eat anything in the old days. Didn’t they ever hear of a fried chicken leg and some mashed potatoes?”

  “That is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard,” Billy moaned.

  Mattie Ruth agreed with their assessment and continued. “Buffalo were plentiful at one time, so plentiful in fact that the hunters would massacre hundreds in a day. Now, here is the really awful part. After this mass slaughter of buffalo, the hunters would remove the hide and cut out the buffalo’s tongue and leave the carcass lying in the blazing sun to rot. It was such a horrible waste of meat. Too bad PETA wasn’t around in those days.”

  “I know, right? How did they keep the tongues from spoiling back then without refrigerators or ice coolers?” Billy asked. It was the first time I had ever known him to be eager for a history lesson.

  “Good question, Billy,” Mattie Ruth said, extremely pleased by his interest. “Actually they didn’t need refrigeration. After removing the tongues they placed them in huge vats and salted them and this kept the meat from spoiling. It’s basically the same process they use on the country ham BJ loves so much today. Then when the vats reached the restaurants the tongues were boiled.”

  “You mean they ate boiled buffalo tongue?” James commenced to gag again. The boy has the weakest stomach in the state.

  “No, they didn’t eat boiled tongue. They boiled the tongues to remove the salt. Then the tongues were fried, sometimes in the marrow from their very own bones if you can believe that.”

  “Yuck! How totally disgusting! That’s almost as bad as my grandpa eating pickled pig’s feet.” James groaned. “Can you even imagine putting a pigs foot in your mouth?”

  “My grandpa eats chicken gizzards!” Billy said. “Why would you eat anything’s gizzard?”