“Don’t call the cops, please,” Artis said. “We’ll leave. We didn’t mean any harm. Really, we didn’t. Yes, you’re right; this is a metal detector. We just heard there might be a few knickknacks under the tree. We would have immediately notified you and offered to share.”
“And now you’ll go back to report to Miss Price,” Nan said. “Correct?”
“Miss who?” Artis said. “Price? Never heard of her.”
“Yes,” said Nimwell. “This was her idea, not ours. We’re going. We’re going right now. Please don’t report us to the police. There are outstanding warrants on us in three states. Theft of federal property. Sales of stolen property . . . And, and . . . let’s go sending the covered wagons via the villages and Hopi Indians of America. Et cetera and off to the woods we go, fait accompli.”
Artis smacked Nimwell on the head with a thwack.
“The jokester of the family,” he said sternly. “Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Aren’t you, Nim? Well, we’ll be taking our leave now.”
The Scroggit brothers trundled down the slope, quickly threw their tools and metal detector in the trunk of the Citroën, and drove off, the Citroën’s tailpipe spewing greasy blue smoke.
Nan turned to George and patted his hand. “Now that we’ve gotten our caffeine boost for the morning, let’s get over there to see what all this fuss was about.”
Removal of the trunk had left a sizable hole, about four feet deep and ten feet across.
“Dang!” said George. “It looks like a bomb crater. I sure don’t see anything that looks like a treasure chest.” Nan was looking up to where the oak’s canopy used to cover the sky.
“My gosh, will you look at all that open space up there. This is going to be a sunny spot now. Great place for another bed, mostly annuals with a couple of perennials thrown in for good measure.”
She looked around gravely at the other beds. “We’ll have to see how it affects the other new beds,” she said. “Those over there used to be in complete shade. Now, maybe it’s going to be more of a dappled effect. They can probably stand that, but they might not do as well.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” went George.
“Okay, buddy,” said Nan with a clap. “Now that we’ve seen our bomb crater, shall we do the morning rounds? Uh, George, where are you going?”
“Pick and shovel,” said George, who was already twirling the combination lock on the toolshed door. “Maybe you forgot, but I didn’t—there could be a treasure under there somewhere.”
“Oh, I suppose,” said a resigned Nan, who hated anything—even the prospect of finding a buried treasure—that interfered with the morning rounds of their gardens. “Just don’t hit a utility line with that pick, please, George. Good Lord, look at the roof of that poor shed! Talk about dented!”
An hour and what seemed like a gallon of perspiration later, George and Nan had deepened the tree stump crater by two feet and widened its diameter by another four with nothing to show for it.
“Okay, so where’s the dang treasure?” said a panting and exhausted George. “I’m not going to dig all the way to China, for crying out loud.”
“You can stop right now, dear,” said Nan, who had refilled her coffee mug twice, and was enjoying watching George dig for the last half hour while she just stood there wondering if this would be a good place to plant her volunteer spirea. “You know, this might be the perfect place to give Dusty Miller another chance.”
“Whoa!” said George.
“Yes,” said Nan, her eyes glazing over with a trance-like vision of floral creativity in action. “The one flower that’s failed to respond to my gardener’s Midas touch. Here’s the spot where it will flourish.... George? George!” George wasn’t paying any attention. He’d gone back to digging.
“George, stop it! Stop it right now! There’s no treasure under there. Never was. It’s just a myth created for people who don’t have anything better to do in their lives but chase phantom riches. George! Stop!”
“Okay,” said George, panting and covered with a glistening sheen of perspiration. “But only because I can’t dig anymore. There’s something under here, Nan-bee, and what’s under here belongs to us. Not to the con artists who are trying to rip us off.”
Nan stamped her foot in irritation.
“George! You’re just as bad as Miss Price and those Scroggit brothers. Can’t you see, the real treasure is going to be what we’ll plant here and nurture to a Fremont-worthy magnificence? Add that to the existing backyard and our wonderful new front yard, and we will have created our own heaven on earth. What more do we need? Things aren’t that bad. We’ll get by somehow.”
“Money,” said George, his voice croaking from despair and exertion. “Money’s what we need. I haven’t told you this, Nan-bee, but I might as well tell you now; I can no longer make the payments on our second mortgage.”
“The what?”
“I took out a second mortgage on the house. You signed it. Don’t you remember?”
“Vaguely. But you said we could make those payments. And now you’re saying we can’t? I sort of leave these things to you, you know. I guess I should know better by now, shouldn’t I?”
“Don’t act so shocked!” George snapped. “It’s not as if you’ve ever taken an interest in family finances. In fact, the only interest you’ve ever really taken in bills is how many you can accumulate with all your purchases. So, don’t you be looking at me like that, as if it’s all my fault.”
Nan bit her lip, and tried hard to fight back the tears. In all their years of marriage, George had never talked to her like that. And now, once again, they were teetering on the brink of financial ruin. When would it ever end?
On the surface, Nan seldom admitted to any fault, oversight, or weakness. Deep inside, though, where all living things derive their nourishment and capacity to grow, she knew better. She realized she’d been the big spendthrift in the family, burning up money like it would never end, and treating bills like junk mail when she paid any attention to them at all. She knew George was right, and that she was making the poor slob her scapegoat.
Nan staunched the flow of moisture to her eyes and took a deep breath. She spread her feet to straddle the good earth that had been so kind to them, and braced her hands firmly against her hips.
“Okay, mister; there’s only one thing left to do.”
Shamed by his outburst, George looked up at Nan and beheld a startling vision. Nan appeared to him as the avenging Gaia-earth-deity woman brought to life, even though she wasn’t really dressed for the part. Instinctively, he threw down his shovel and bowed his head in a gesture of abject surrender.
“George!” said Nan. “You doof! What are you doing? We need to call that idiot Jim and get him over here pronto with his . . . his . . .”
“Metal detector.”
“Yeah, metal detector. If it shows there’s something down there, we’ll dig all the way down to the molten core of the earth if we have to. Now, go make yourself useful, will you? And put on another pot of coffee. Full strength.”
“There’s nothing here,” said Jim, his headphones clamped to his ears as he slowly and methodically waved his wand over every square inch of the stump crater. “I know I said I thought I heard something around here last year, but there’s not even the tiniest beep now. Must have been the low-battery warning.” It was mid-afternoon, and Nan and George had switched from coffee to merlot mode. They stood a few feet from the edge of the stump hole and gazed at Jim vacantly.
“Impossible,” George said. “All the signs point to it. Okay, granted, some of those signs are pretty weird.”
“Keep sweeping, Jim,” Nan said. “George’s right; there’s gotta be something down there.”
Jim shrugged.
“Sorry, the TreasureTrove XB 255 never lies. If it’s not beeping, that means there’s nothing there. Battery’s fully charged this time, too.”
“Maybe it’s deeper,” said Nan.
“Could be,” Jim said. “If it’s d
own too deep, this won’t pick it up. Say, more than seven or eight feet. Do you think it’s that deep?”
“Who knows?” said George after a healthy sip of Sagelands. “It could be a mile down, but this has got to be the spot.”
“And what if it doesn’t have any metal on it? What if it’s a plain wooden chest with leather hinges wrapped up in burlap or something like that?”
“Hmmmm,” said Nan. “We hadn’t really thought about that.”
“Also, why does this have to be the spot?”
“Jim,” said Nan. “Come sit down and join us for a glass of merlot . . . or hang on, you’re a gin-and-tonic guy, aren’t you? You look like you need one. And we’ve got a lot to tell you.”
19
Giving the Gift of Stump
“What do you mean, it’s not there?”
Artis and Nimwell wrung their hands and looked down at the floor.
“We mean it’s not there, Miss Price,” Artis said.
“And you actually went to the hole itself and looked in, and used your treasure detectors, and dug around some?”
“Well,” said Nimwell. “Not exactly, Miss Price.”
“What do you mean by ‘not exactly’?”
Artis tried steal a glance at his brother, and gave his head a tiny shake, which would have been barely perceptible to most people.
“I saw that!” screeched Miss Price. “I saw that. It’s a signal, isn’t it? It means ‘Don’t tell Miss Price the truth,’ doesn’t it? Huh?” Locking her jaw into a steely smirk, Miss Price gazed first at Artis, then at Nimwell, in a manner that reminded them of the judge passing down the sentence—a $15,000 fine and one year in jail, suspended—for trespassing on public property and theft of same. That was at Vicksburg.
“What happened?”
Artis and Nimwell looked at each other.
“No more signals, now,” Miss Price barked. “As you’ve seen I can detect your little secret signals. Fess up!”
“Well, we really didn’t get to look at the hole,” said Nimwell, who was usually the brother delegated to making incriminating confessions when they were warranted, mainly because hardly anyone could understand what he was saying once his nerves got the better of him. “Is often accountable and found out through discovery, and, I must say, of a threatening nature, is the sot which out is through and back again.”
“What in the name of God are you saying? You didn’t get to the hole? Well, I thought that was the whole idea behind the tree-removal ruse!”
“The Fremonts found us out,” Artis said. “They figured out what was up and threatened to call the cops if we didn’t leave. We can’t afford any more law enforcement encounters, Miss Price. We’ve got two convictions on our records, and there are outstanding warrants on us in three . . .”
“Four.”
“Four states.”
Miss Price sighed.
“Incompetents and criminals, that’s who I’ve hired,” she moaned. “What in the name of God have I done to deserve this?”
“We brought you back the stump,” said Artis.
“Just as you asked,” said Nimwell. “And it’s got quite a large and tangled root system.”
Miss Price instantly broke free of her mournful reverie and leaned forward toward the Scroggit brothers, causing them instinctively to flinch and draw back ever so slightly.
“That’s good,” she said. “That’s very good. And you had it delivered to the Historical Society parking lot, as I directed you to do?” Both nodded their heads furiously.
“Okay. Let’s head over there right this instant. I’m driving. We want to get over there pronto in case somebody might get it into his head to steal it.”
Artis chuckled. Nimwell smiled.
“Miss Price,” Artis said. “Who in the world would want to steal a tree stump?”
“Who’s to say the Fremonts won’t come charging in to reclaim their lost property, eh?” said Miss Price. “Now, get up. We’re going to head straight over there. Give me your keys. I’m driving your car, and you’re not getting a dime of mileage out of me. You got your pick and shovel to dig the dirt out of those roots?”
Artis shook his head.
“Those are back at our store, Miss Price.”
“Okay, never mind. We’ll dig it out with our bare hands if we have to.”
Billowing their oil cloud behind them, they made the four miles to the Historical Society in three minutes flat, running two red lights and three stop signs, barely avoiding a collision with a Jim’s Sanitation Service truck, and miraculously avoiding detection by the Livia police. When they skidded to a stop in the Historical Society parking lot, Artis and Nimwell were quivering mounds of jelly, marveling that they had survived, and wondering, based on the fog-thick cloud trailing them, how long it would take for their engine to blow up.
“All ashore that’s going ashore!” shouted Miss Price. She jumped out of the car and found herself face-to-face with the turned-over stump, which sprouted a Medusa head of roots, turf, and clotted dirt covering at least seventy square feet.
“Let’s get digging!” she shouted. “Hey, what’s wrong with you two? Or should that be a big surprise to me?” As Miss Price ran her hands over the roots and began to claw away at the dirt trapped within their tangled network, Artis and Nimwell hung back, standing silently by the car.
“What is it you want us to do?” wondered Artis meekly.
“Well, what do you think I want you to do?” barked Miss Price. “Drop your trousers and do your business right here in the parking lot? My God, you would’ve thought I was asking you to jump through hoops of fire. We’re going to dig through this mess to find out if our treasure’s tangled up in it. If it’s not down in the hole somewhere, it just could be all knotted up deep in these roots. There’s no telling what could be locked up in here. Now, go to the back of the building, and look for a couple of big plastic buckets under the eaves. You should find some trowels and gardening forks in them. I use them in my groundskeeping. We can claw through all this stuff in no time.”
One hour later, Miss Price and the Scroggit brothers were soaked in sweat. A big pile of dirt and gravel lay at their feet. Coiling out from the trunk was a fibrous network of roots and rootlets still caked with thick hunks of damp subsoil. It looked impenetrable.
“Okay,” said Artis. “It’s obvious that there’s nothing here. And I personally have my doubts that even a tangled mess this thick can hold up a heavy chest full of treasure.”
“Who said it was a heavy chest?” said Miss Price. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying that good things come in small packages? This could be a small chest. Who knows, it might not even be a chest at all.”
Artis and Nimwell looked at Miss Price, puzzled.
“Uh, how could you fit a lot of coins, or gold, or whatever it is into a little chest?” wondered Artis.
“You’ll see,” said Miss Price. She kept stabbing at the clot of dirt and roots, trying to tear away the web of smaller roots to free the spaces between the bigger ones. “You must take my word for it; this is a treasure that will make you wealthy men, wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.”
As their thoughts drifted back to the tens of thousands of dollars they owed various autocratic government agencies, and their dream of someday recapturing the glory days of their artifacts business, the Scroggit brothers attacked the tangle of roots with a fresh energy.
“Hey!” said Nimwell with uncharacteristic excitement as he pulled back from the stump. “I just hit something hard. What on earth . . . or I guess in earth, I should say, is that?”
Artis and Miss Price crowded in for a look. Deep within the fibers of stringy roots was something that looked like a bleached rock.
“Is it a fungus of some kind?” wondered Artis.
“Too hard for a fungus,” said Nimwell. “I think I chipped it with my trowel. It’s more like a rock.”
“That’s no rock,” Miss Price said ominously. “I’m not paying you to sightsee
. Dig!”
Artis and Nimwell furiously attacked the roots surrounding the yellow-gray object, which appeared unnaturally smooth. Once they had cleared the dirt away from it, it dangled there, an orb suspended in place by the roots still attached to it.
“What is it?” gasped Artis.
Miss Price tittered.
“Give it a good pull and you will soon find out.”
Artis began to tug at the object, at first without using much force, afraid it might be something of great value that could be broken unless a delicate touch was employed.
“Pull hard, yet steadily and carefully,” said Miss Price. “Dig your fingers in at the sides a little and jiggle it. But, careful! It should come out now without too much more work.”
Artis hesitated, placed his hand firmly around the hard object, and yanked with all his might. With a crackle of roots, the object broke free, more easily than he expected, causing him to fall backward and drop the object on the parking lot pavement, where it shattered into a dozen pieces. Miss Price and Nimwell yelped. Nursing his wrist, which had been bruised by the fall, Artis got up slowly and looked down at the object, which the other two stared at in silent awe.
“My God!” he cried. “It’s . . . it’s . . . what is it?”
“You know damn well what it is,” Miss Price cried. “It’s a human skull! Or pieces of a skull, you oaf, thanks to your clumsy incompetence. Now, keep digging.”
20
Roots
The Scroggit brothers stood stunned and petrified as Miss Price jabbed at the shrinking stump. Human bones—or pieces of bones, to be more precise—were littering their dirt pile, and more pieces of varying sizes were still falling out of the tangle of roots that had now been largely cleared of caked dirt, gravel, and sod. Miss Price was wielding her gardening trowel like a woman half her age, her energy never flagging as she stabbed, chopped, and pried things loose. Brittle bone fragments dropped onto the pavement or the other bones. Mainly, they fell in small and hard-to-distinguish parts, broken and severed by time, the absence of coffins or any other protective receptacles, and the violent actions of expanding roots and the oak’s final death throes.
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