Young Whit and the Traitor's Treasure

by Phil Lollar

  Emmy bounced up and down. “Forget the English lesson! What’s the answer?”

  “A clock.”

  Emmy stopped bouncing and looked confused. “I don’t get it.”

  Johnny smiled. “A clock has a face that can’t see or hear or taste or smell. And it has hands that can’t grasp or hold.”

  “But what do they tell?”

  “Time.”

  Emmy’s mouth opened and then slowly spread into a smile.

  “Now, that’s only one clue,” Johnny demurred. “There are lots more.”

  Emmy shook her head. “You’re gonna bust this thing wide open, Sherlock.”

  Johnny ignored the nickname and said, “I hope so, for my family, for old Huck, and now for Ben, too.”

  But though Johnny had solved one clue rapidly, the rest weren’t so simple, as he discovered over the next few days. His first thought was to see if a deer, a fish, a cave, and a speck of dirt had anything in common. “Lots of things,” said Emmy. “They can all be found outside. They can all be found in a forest ...”

  “They can all be found in or around a river,” Johnny added.

  “Yeah, and the deer, the fish, and the speck can all be found inside a cave,” Emmy added, “if the cave had a stream running through it.”

  “And you can definitely hide gold in a cave,” said Johnny. “Are there any caves around here?”

  Emmy nodded. “Hundreds.”

  Johnny frowned. “No, that’s too easy. Huck was smarter than that.”

  “Hey, maybe the picture of the fish goes with the clue about musicians!”

  “How do you figure?”

  “If it’s a tune-a fish, musicians would like it because of their big scales!”

  Emmy laughed at her own joke, but Johnny rolled his eyes. He read through the riddle again and then flipped back and forth between the riddle and the pictures. “Hm,” he grunted.

  “What?” asked Emmy. “You got something?”

  “Well, I thought maybe each line of the riddle linked to a picture, but there aren’t enough pictures.”

  “And no picture of a clock,” added Emmy. “But the pictures and the riddle must be connected somehow, right?”

  “Theoretically,” Johnny muttered, chewing gently on his inner lip. “But, like you said, no clock. The pictures could just be a ruse.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so,” said Emmy. “I don’t think old Huck woulda spent all the time it took to put this together if they weren’t connected in some way.”

  Johnny rubbed his forehead. “I just have to keep thinking.”

  But though he thought about the photo album a great deal—every spare moment for the rest of the week, in fact—answers were not forthcoming, and he knew Emmy was getting frustrated at the slow progress. They also received news that Ben had been sentenced to 90 days in jail, which just made his guilt and Emmy’s impatience worse.

  Johnny committed the riddle to memory. The album was so fragile that he didn’t want to bring it to school unless it was absolutely necessary. He kept it in the safest place he could think of, his trunk.

  He didn’t want to risk getting the album damaged when Wilson, Arty, and the other goons “accidentally” bumped into him in the hallway, knocked him against a locker, shoved him in the lunchroom, and kicked over his book bag in history class—all of which happened routinely now.

  He had also developed a reputation for hiding behind Emmy, since they were almost always together. She was livid about that and wanted to tell off anyone who teased Johnny about it, but he told her to let it go and focus on the clues.

  The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that some of the lines did connect to the pictures, though he was less certain which ones connected to which. At week’s end, however, he was ready to conclude that the last line about X being much more than X didn’t connect to any of the pictures.

  “Well, at least that’s something,” said Emmy when he told her Friday afternoon. “Any idea what it actually means?”

  “Not a clue,” said Johnny with a sigh.

  Saturday, Emmy and her family went on a weekend trip to Washington—not DC but NC, as in North Carolina, on the north bank of the Pamlico River where it meets the Tar River. It was known as “The Original Washington,” and Emmy had family there who lived right on the river and owned a boat. Johnny spent most of the day concentrating on the clues, first in his room, and then out in the backyard.

  The afternoons were still warm, and he decided the hammock would be a great place to continue his contemplation. Unfortunately, he didn’t brush it off first, and when he plopped down on it, a cloud of gritty dust enveloped him. “Great,” he muttered, looking at dirt specks all over his shirt and arms.

  Johnny sneezed, and then, just as he was about to brush himself off, he noticed something. A couple of the dirt specks moved, but not because he was moving. They moved all on their own. He looked at them more closely and realized they weren’t dust specks at all. They were bugs—mites, to be precise.

  It hit him. He wrestled his way out of the hammock (nearly flipping over twice), brushed himself off, and bolted into the house and upstairs to his room. He retrieved the album from the trunk, pulled a magnifying glass from his desk drawer, and examined the picture of the speck.

  It, too, was a mite.

  He flipped to the riddle:

  I am power and I am force, though I am found in dust ...

  No, not “mite.”

  Might.

  Deer. Fish. Cave. Might. Clock.

  He was more confused than ever.

  So was Emmy, even though she had to admit, when she looked at the photo under a microscope in science class, that it was, indeed, a mite. They were supposed to be dissecting a frog, but Emmy got squeamish, so Johnny took over while Emmy looked at the picture.

  “That’s not all,” said Johnny, pulling out the frog’s liver. “Look at the cave under the scope. What do you see?”

  Emmy positioned the picture under the scope and moved it around. “I dunno ... looks like a cave to—” She suddenly stopped. “Wait! Are those ... wooden beams?”

  “Yep!” He probed the frog’s stomach. “And what kind of cave uses wood beams?”

  Emmy thought for a moment and then smiled. “A mineshaft!” she whispered.

  “Right!” He pulled out the lungs.

  Emmy grimaced. “Ugh! So what line of the riddle does it go with?”

  “The second one, I think: ‘It’s what happened to all of my treasures, hidden in Earth’s crust ...’ But it doesn’t quite fit.”

  “Mineshaft ... you’re right, it doesn’t,” said Emmy, looking a little green. “So, what about the other pictures? Anything special about them?”

  Johnny shook his head. “No, they’re just a deer and a fish, although the deer does have a full set of antlers, which makes it a buck.”

  “So now we have might, mineshaft, fish, buck, and clock?”

  “And something having to do with an X.” Johnny mulled the words around in his mind as he turned the frog over to take out its brain. There was something familiar about them—not necessarily the words themselves but the pattern they formed. He just couldn’t figure out what it was! It was so frustrating!

  “Arrrgh!” he growled, and the dissecting tool slipped and popped out one of the frog’s eyeballs.

  Emmy went pale. “Excuse me,” she muttered, and bolted from the room.

  Johnny suppressed a chuckle and continued working.

  During the next few weeks, however, Johnny found he had less and less time to spend on the clues. The deadline for the first big science project was less than a month away. He had his own project nearly finished, but he was helping Emmy with hers, and then one afternoon he found a note in his locker:

  “Got any good science project ideas? Don’t wanna have to buy one. L.”

  Luke, he thought. Guess he doesn’t mind coming to a traitor when he needs something.

  Johnny was tempted to crumple the
paper and toss it in the trash right in front of Luke. But then he took a breath, turned the paper over, and wrote, “Make water flow upward by suction.” He drew a quick diagram of how it was done and folded the paper.

  At lunch, Johnny did his own “accidental” bump into Luke, shoved the paper into his hand, whispered, “Open later,” and kept walking. That afternoon, he found four more notes in his locker from Pete, Linda, Caroline, and Hector, all asking the same thing as Luke. Johnny smiled and took out his pencil.

  “The nerve of them!” Emmy exclaimed when he told her on the way home from school. “They treat you like dirt or ignore you in the hallways, and then they want your help with their science projects?”

  “I don’t mind,” Johnny replied. “It tweaks Wilson.”

  But the next day he found more notes. Some were new requests, and some were from Luke and the others, asking for help with the projects he’d already given them. He didn’t tell them what to do, but he did point them to the right reference materials in the school library.

  All of this reference finding, idea sharing, and note taking and passing took his attention away from the clues, and as the days passed, Emmy became more and more agitated. “You need to focus!” she insisted.

  “I know, I know!” Johnny replied irritably.

  “Do you? ’Cause it seems like you’re trying to be Mr. Popular Hero. Don’t you care about Ben at all?”

  Johnny glared at her, and she glared right back at him. When neither of them blinked, Johnny picked up his book bag and walked away.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Johnny was still miffed at dinner that evening, though he kept quiet. What does she expect? he thought as he cleared the dishes from the table. I don’t see her solving any clues. I’m doing the best I can! But he knew this wasn’t entirely true, and that Emmy was more than a little right about him. He liked being the hero, even if it was in secret.

  The rest of that week and all the next were blurs. Johnny couldn’t seem to concentrate fully on anything, thus little progress was made on the clues. And what little concentration he did have was taken up helping others with their science projects behind Wilson’s back—that and dodging Wilson and his cronies.

  The coming Saturday was Johnny’s birthday celebration. Fiona wanted to throw him a party, but he nixed that idea, mainly because he knew nobody would come except Emmy, and even she was a bit iffy now. He didn’t tell Fiona that, though. He just shrugged and said, “I don’t think I’m ready for a big party yet. Maybe it should just be us.”

  Fiona agreed, and they decided to have a fish fry in the backyard. Johnny did invite Emmy, as well as Hen to play with Charlie, and they both came. Out of respect for his birthday, Emmy called a truce for the day, and they had a pleasant morning playing games and having fun.

  Harold had to work, but he promised to bring home fresh fish from the market, and he arrived early afternoon. Johnny helped him fire up the grill, and when they had a nice burn going, Harold unwrapped the package of fish to show Johnny how to clean and gut them.

  Johnny stopped cold. The fish lying on the table in front of him was an almost exact match to the photo in old Huck’s album.

  He took a breath. “Dad,” he said as casually as he could, “what kind of fish is this?”

  “Sole!” Harold responded, sharpening a knife. “Delicious fileted!”

  Sole! “Great!” Johnny said aloud. “Um, would you excuse me?”

  “I thought you wanted me to show you how to prepare them.”

  “I’ve changed my mind.”

  Harold smirked. “Squeamish, eh? All right, run along.”

  Johnny turned and walked quickly across the yard to where Emmy was playing dolls with Charlie and Hen. He grabbed Emmy’s wrist, said, “I need to talk to you,” and without waiting for an answer, tugged her to her feet. Stifling her complaints, he led her to the shed and pulled her inside.

  “What is going on with you?” she asked.

  “Sole!”

  “What?”

  “The fish in the picture in old Huck’s album is a sole!”

  “It is?”

  “Yes! And you were right, it matches the musician clue!”

  Emmy’s jaw dropped. “How?”

  He recited the clue: “I feed musicians and they feed me, and trod on me end to end ...”

  “I don’t get it,” said Emmy.

  “Sole, the fish, feeds people!” he exclaimed. “And you walk on the sole of your foot!”

  Emmy scratched her head. “Okay ... but how do musicians feed sole? Fish food? And why just musicians?”

  Johnny grabbed her shoulders. “’Cause it’s also soul—S-O-U-L! And it’s not just musicians, but music—music feeds the soul!”

  Emmy laughed out loud and then clamped her hand over her mouth.

  Johnny grinned and said, “Okay, so now we have might, mineshaft, sole or soul, deer or buck, and clock.”

  “And X,” added Emmy.

  “Right ...”

  “So? What does it all mean?”

  He shook his head. “I still don’t know, but we’re getting close. I can feel it.”

  Emmy giggled. “Happy birthday!”

  The rest of the week was taken up with other class assignments and perfecting their science projects for next week’s presentation. Johnny was confident that he and Emmy were ready, but he wasn’t sure about all the other kids he had been helping in secret.

  Wilson looked frustrated going down the halls, and the kids Johnny had been helping did their best to duck out of the brute’s way. Johnny deduced that Wilson hadn’t figured out what was going on, which was a good thing.

  That changed on Friday. The morning passed without too much tumult, just the by-now-expected jibes from Wilson and his goons, and snubs from almost everyone else. At lunch, Emmy needed to finish some math homework (her math class was right after lunch), so Johnny decided to eat outside under one of the big shade trees next to the main building.

  When he had finished, he headed back toward the front entrance. He saw Wilson and Arty confronting Luke at the other end of the building, between some bushes and the building’s outer wall. Johnny couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Wilson’s menacing look, Arty’s sneer, and Luke’s cringe told him all he needed to know.

  Luke pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, and Wilson snatched it out of his hand, read it, and looked furious. Johnny was about to run down and help Luke when the bell rang, ending lunch, and Wilson and Arty let Luke go and took off behind the building. Luke also scampered off. The jig was up.

  The afternoon passed without incident. But when Johnny met up with Emmy again in English and told her what he had seen, she agreed: The jig was definitely up.

  The teacher, Mrs. Wagner, brought the class to order and called on a couple of students to begin reading aloud from Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night. Johnny followed along in his own copy, only half concentrating, trying to figure out what he was going to do about Wilson. Suddenly, something in the opening exchange between Orsino and Curio nearly jumped off the page at him:

  ORSINO:

  O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou ...

  So full of shapes is fancy

  That it alone is high fantastical.

  CURIO:

  Will you go hunt, my lord?

  ORSINO:

  What, Curio?

  CURIO:

  The hart.

  ORSINO:

  Why, so I do, the noblest that I have.

  Oh, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,

  Methought she purged the air of pestilence.

  That instant was I turned into a hart,

  And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,

  E’er since pursue me.

  A shiver of excitement ran down Johnny’s spine. Hart! he thought. It’s another name for a deer!

  His mind raced to recall the clue:

  Lovers in love love my name, for it’s where their loves begin. “Lovers in love love ...
” the heart—because the heart is where love begins! he said to himself. It fits!

  “Yes!” he exclaimed aloud, and everyone’s heads snapped around to look at him. He swallowed sheepishly. “Sorry!”

  The other students snickered. Emmy gawked at him.

  “I’m glad you like the play so much, Mr. Whittaker,” said Mrs. Wagner. “Perhaps you’d like to read the next section aloud, along with Miss Capello.”

  He picked up his book, and Emmy did the same. But even as he read, his mind continued to race. Might, mineshaft, sole, hart, clock. It still didn’t mean much. And how did the last clue about X fit in?

  Wait! They had been reciting the clues in the order they appeared in the riddle, but what if he put them in the order of the pictures?

  Hart, sole, mineshaft, might, clock.

  Forget the clock for a minute.

  Hart, sole, mineshaft, might.

  Another shiver ran down Johnny’s spine. “Whoa!” he said aloud.

  Emmy stopped reading. The class snickered again. Mrs. Wagner frowned. “That is not in the text, either, Mr. Whittaker,” she said. “Very well, let’s have two more readers.”

  Emmy nudged Johnny, but he held up a finger and kept thinking. Could that be it? But what about the clock and the X? “When is an X much more than an X ...” What kind of a clue is that? The only X I can think of is the X that marks the spot where pirate loot is—

  He sat straight up and felt the biggest shiver yet. “That’s it!” he shouted.

  “Mr. Whittaker!” Mrs. Wagner nearly yelled. “If you cannot control yourself, I’ll have to ask you to leave!”

  Johnny looked around the room and then apologetically at Mrs. Wagner. “I-I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I really am! I—I just thought of something really important, and—”

  Mrs. Wagner huffed. “Oh, never mind! Class time is almost up anyway. I want you all to read the rest of the play this weekend.”

  The class moaned.

  “You can thank Mr. Whittaker for that. You’re dismissed.”

  The kids gathered their things and bolted from the room, a few pausing only long enough to blow raspberries at Johnny.