The Treasure Hunt Club
A Novel
By Michael Scott Clifton
Copyright © 2011 by Michael Scott Clifton. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version, Cambridge, 1769. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The Treasure Hunt Club
ISBN: 978-937569-88-4
Michael Scott Clifton
Fiction, Action & Adventure
DEDICATION
For Melanie
Proverbs 31:10 says it best: “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.”
Also
For my children, Brett and Holly
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As a first-time author, I actively sought the advice and opinion of others who I felt would give me an honest appraisal of my “literary” efforts. I have many friends, family members, and colleagues to thank. Not the least of these is Sandi Miles (the “Comma” Lady!), who has read virtually everything I have ever written, and Helen Thompson, a dear friend and librarian extraordinaire, whose advice and encouragement has proven invaluable to me. A special thank you to the Northeast Texas Writers Organization (NETWO) for providing a vehicle for aspiring writers.
Chapter 1
“Dunk him again!”
Struggling mightily, Nick Hollister futilely tried to prevent his head from being submerged a second time in the toilet. With water streaming down his face and his wet hair plastered to his head, he was held upside down by four hulking football players. Their leader, Carter Cannon, stood off to the side smirking.
“I told you, JV, that the varsity locker room was for varsity players! Since your dimwit brain doesn’t get the message, I guess we will have to teach you a lesson even you won’t forget!”
With his head poised just above the toilet bowl, Nick said, “Damn you, Carter, I was just cleaning out my locker!”
Laughing, Carter gestured with his hand, and Nick was dunked again. Striding over, Carter flushed the toilet as Nick’s head was held under the swirling water. Dropping Nick, the football players stepped away as Nick flopped wetly over on his back, gasping like a fish.
“Last warning! Stay out of the varsity locker room, Hollister!” Carter growled. With that, he and the football players left, their derisive snickering slowly fading as they walked away.
Tears of anger and frustration mixed with the commode water dripping from Nick’s face. Slamming his fist repeatedly against the stall divider, Nick finally stood unsteadily. Kicking the door of the stall open, Nick stalked to his locker where he hastily stuffed the remaining items of clothes and personal possessions into his bag. Slamming the locker door shut, he left without a backward glance.
“Wonder where Nick is?” Mark Chambers asked his girlfriend, Patti, as they sat together in the Pleasant Mountain High School cafeteria. “He’s never late for lunch.”
“I don’t know, but Nick promised me he would turn in his senior profile sheet for the yearbook today. Even though I’m one of the editors, the deadline is tomorrow and can’t be extended. I explained that to him!”
Mark mumbled something unintelligible in response as he continued to chew on his turkey and cheese sandwich. Bringing the sandwich up to his mouth in preparation for another bite, he froze as he saw his friend, Nick, suddenly enter the cafeteria. Nick’s face was red, and water dripped from his hastily slicked- back hair. Spotting his friends, Nick stormed over to their table and threw himself into a chair beside them.
“Nick! What … what happened to you?” Mark asked, shocked at his friend’s appearance.
Fuming silently, Nick tried to compose himself so he could answer. Finally, and with great effort, he managed to rein in his temper.
“Well, let’s see, the festivities all started when Coach Gaffney told me that I didn’t make the varsity baseball team and that I would be on the JV team … again!”
“Oh no! I’m so sorry, Nick,” Patti said, squeezing his arm gently.
“Anyway, as I was cleaning my stuff out of the varsity locker room, Carter and four of his Neanderthal buddies walk in on me, and the next thing I know, I’m upside down and getting a toilet bath!”
Mark, his sandwich forgotten, couldn’t believe his ears.
“Carter’s gone too far this time, Nick! You’ve got to go to Mr. Bostick and tell him what he’s done!”
“And what good would that do, Mark?” Nick asked, his voice rising. “Carter’s the star athlete, the scholar student, and his dad owns all the premier car dealerships in a five-county area! It’ll be his word against mine, plus that of his four thick-necked friends! I’ll be laughed right out of the principal’s office!”
Before either Mark or Patti could respond, Nick pulled a piece of paper and a pen from the book bag he had slung down beside him. Writing furiously, he stopped abruptly and shoved the paper toward Patti.
“Here’s my senior profile sheet, Patti!” Nick said, his voice shaking in anger. “Where it says ‘what are my plans for the future,’ note that I’ve said I want to be as far from this stinking town as possible! The day I graduate, I’m outta here!”
With that, Nick slung his book bag over his shoulder and stormed out of the cafeteria.
Little did Nick know just how difficult that would prove to be.
Chapter 2
Fifteen Years Later
“Strike one!”
Nick Hollister stepped out of the batter’s box as the umpire behind the plate adjusted his mask. Idly, he brushed back the sandy blond hair that had fallen across his pale blue eyes. Freckles graced the bridge of his nose and cheeks, and a square chin jutted from underneath lips now pursed in concentration. Tall, he stood about six-foot three inches. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, he had never gained enough weight to fill out his frame, and soaking wet, he only weighed a mere 160 pounds. When his skinny frame was combined with hands and feet that were unusually large, it gave him a gawky, ungainly look. Taking a deep breath, he stepped back into the batter’s box.
The pitcher toed the rubber and grinned insolently at Nick. Nick’s team was behind 35–0 in this Division I, City Recreation League slow-pitch softball game, and they were only in the third inning. None of their games so far had proceeded past the third inning, since the fifteen-run mercy rule took effect then. To add insult to injury, the opposing team’s players had all been batting left-handed since the second inning, and they were still scoring runs at will on them! These beatings were depressingly common, and Nick’s team hadn’t come close to winning a game the entire summer. In fact, they hadn’t scored a single run in the past five games combined. However, with a runner on third and two outs, all Nick had to do to break the scoreless streak was hit a single to score the runner.
The pitcher released the ball, and it looped upward in a lazy arc before coming back down into the catcher’s mitt, just wide of the plate.
“Ball one!”
Nick stepped out of the box again and wiped the sweat from his eyes with his jersey. It was almost the middle of July, and the day was a typically hot East Texas day in the city of Pleasant Mountain, population 19,983 souls, with the temperature hitting the high nineties and over 50 percent humidity. Located roughly halfway between Dallas and Texarkana on I-30, Pleasant Mountain sat squarely in the Piney Woods region of East Texas. “C’mon, Nick, get a hit!” a voice said halfheartedly from Nick’s dugout.
It was noon, and the sun was a blazing yello
w ball in the cloudless blue sky directly overhead, with not a breath of wind stirring. Looking back at his teammates sitting in the dugout, Nick saw a mostly dispirited lot fanning themselves with their gloves in the unrelenting heat. Nick had known most of them since they had all graduated from high school years earlier. He could tell that, like him, they just wanted to get this game over and go someplace (preferably at least twenty degrees cooler) other than the softball field.
That they were playing in a Division I softball league against semi-pro players was, of course, all Nick’s fault. They normally played in Division II, the lowest league, and one made up of the least-skilled players. More importantly, most teams and players in Division II were looking to have actual fun while playing softball. Nick had been responsible for turning in the application for the team, and unfortunately, time had slipped away from him, and he had turned it in after the deadline had passed.
The only softball league still taking applications was the super-competitive Division I. He had been forced to turn in his team’s application for Division I, and so now, they were playing ex-high school and college jocks, who treated every contest as if it were the seventh and deciding game of the World Series.
Nick had also been part of his team’s second softball-related disaster, in that he additionally had been responsible for the uniforms his team was now wearing. Rather than obtaining the uniforms from a reputable sporting goods store in town as they normally did, he had convinced the team instead to order them from a cut-rate, out-of-town wholesaler to save money. The wholesaler had gotten both the name and color of the uniforms wrong, later claiming he couldn’t read Nick’s scribbled writing on the order form. So instead of their team being named the “Bombers,” the name on each softball jersey was the “Boogers,” and the color, instead of Carolina Blue, was Guacamole Green. The wholesaler had refused to return their money or change the jerseys, so they had been forced to wear the jerseys. The natural result was that in addition to being massacred at each softball game, Nick and the rest of the team also had to endure a litany of nose-picking jokes.
“Ball two!” the ump cried, as the next pitch was again slightly wide of the plate.
“C’mon, JV! Are you afraid to swing at the ball?”
Nick’s eyes narrowed as he honed in on the source of the voice. It came from the opposing team’s first baseman, Carter Cannon. Like everyone else on his team, Carter was impeccably dressed in a new crisp Cannon Auto Group softball uniform, which did not conceal his bulging muscles underneath.
Although he had the looks of a Southern California surfer with piercing blue eyes and sun-bleached blond hair, Carter and his family had actually moved to Pleasant Mountain from Atlantic City, New Jersey, when Carter was in first grade.
How the Cannon family had acquired their wealth was the subject of much whispered speculation in Pleasant Mountain. Some said Carter’s father was somehow connected to the mafia back in New Jersey, while others said he had made most of his money through shady deals, kickbacks, and shakedowns.
As the proverbial thorn in Nick’s side, Nick’s introduction to Carter had been in grade school when Carter had walked up to him and shoved him, face first, off the playground swing. Carter had taken great enjoyment in making life miserable for him ever since.
In short, Nick hated Carter Cannon.
“Take a swing, JV. Maybe you will get lucky and get a hit.” Laughter erupted from Carter’s team, which was made up mostly of employees from the Cannon car dealerships, and Nick felt his face begin to turn red.
Angrily, Nick stepped back into the batter’s box. He would show Cannon a thing or two about hitting! Gritting his teeth, he waited impatiently for the next pitch. As the high, looping pitch came down over the plate, Nick swung as hard as he could, missing the ball and almost spinning himself completely around from the effort.
“Strike two!”
Carter almost fell down he was laughing so hard at Nick. “Way … way to go JV! Next time, make sure your bat actually hits the ball!” he said, gasping.
His face now beet-red in anger and embarrassment, Nick stepped out of the box and tried to control his breathing. He would get a hit, he thought, and his team would score and avoid the shutout. Finally, he managed to compose himself and stepped back into the batter’s box. When the next pitch was delivered, he was ready. Swinging, he connected solidly with the ball, sending it sharply down the third base line. The runner at third took off for home as soon as Nick’s bat hit the ball. Running hard for first, Nick risked a glance at the third baseman and saw him dive for the ball. Man- aging to knock the ball down with his glove, the third baseman bobbled the softball in his haste to pick it up and throw it to first.
Nick felt his heart leap! He was going to make it! He was going to be safe at first, and they were going to finally score!
Putting his head down, Nick ran for all he was worth for the first-base bag. Just as he was about to safely reach first, Carter stuck his leg out in front of the first-base bag. Nick tripped over Carter’s outstretched leg and cartwheeled past first base before he finally came to a stop face down in the infield dirt.
Spitting dirt out of his mouth, Nick got up quickly. Enraged, he headed for Carter.
“You … you look like a moon pie, JV!” Carter crowed laughing as he pointed at Nick’s face. Indeed, the red dirt of the infield was caked on Nick’s sweaty face so that despite his obvious anger, it gave him a comical appearance.
“You bastard! You did that on purpose!” Nick yelled as he pointed a shaking finger at Carter.
“I can’t help it if you are clumsy, JV. Next time, touch the base before tripping over your own two feet,” Carter replied coolly.
This was too much for Nick, and he made for Carter. Before he got two steps, the Boogers’ first-base coach interposed himself between Nick and Carter.
“Nick, stop!”
The Boogers’ first-base coach was Mark Chambers. He and Nick had been best friends since elementary school. Mark’s brown eyes looked up at Nick with concern as he strained to hold him back. At five feet ten inches and with a slender build, Mark was significantly shorter than Nick.
“You saw what he did, Mark! He tripped me on purpose!” Nick cried, his voice trembling in anger.
“What about it, ump? Did you see what happened?” Mark demanded.
The field umpire was a skinny, redheaded high school kid with a bad acne condition. He had a prominent Adam’s apple, which bobbed up and down as he tried to form a reply.
“We need a call, ump! He’s out, isn’t he? I mean he completely missed the bag!” Carter pointed out smugly as he and the rest of his team slowly formed a semicircle around the umpire.
With his Adam’s apple now bobbing frantically, the umpire looked around at the mass of muscle surrounding him and decided that the correct call required more than the twenty dollars he was paid per game.
“Er … he’s out,” the kid said in a quivering voice.
“What? That’s crap!” Nick yelled. Ripping himself from Mark’s grasp, Nick headed for Carter.
“You can’t get away with … oof!”
Nick folded up like an accordion as Carter’s right jab landed sharply in his midsection. Air exploded from his lungs, and he crumpled to the ground, fighting to breathe.
“Don’t crowd me, Hollister!” Carter said with a dangerous smile on his face.
“Damn you, Carter! Leave him alone!” Mark cried angrily as he pushed past him and tried to help Nick back to his feet.
“Hey, Cannon! I got something for ya!” Through eyes still bleary in pain, Nick looked up and saw a figure from the Boogers’ dugout heading toward Carter. As he fought to bring his eyes into focus, he finally saw that it was Steve Parsons approaching Carter.
After Mark, Steve was probably Nick’s next best friend. His watery green eyes were flashing dangerously as he approached Carter. Steve had dropped out of high school his senior year and had eventually gotten a GED. To everyone’s surprise, he had gone
to a tech school at a nearby community college and had become a certified diesel mechanic, and he now worked as a mechanic at Dock’s Auto Repair in Pleasant Mountain. Steve was only a trim six feet tall, but he was extremely muscular. He had removed the sleeves from his Boogers softball jersey, and one large bicep sported a tattoo of a flaming guitar with the words “Born to Rock” inscribed on the guitar. Steve was into heavy metal and played drums every weekend for a garage band.
Taking a pull from a Coors Light bottle in his right hand, Steve stopped a few paces from Carter, his eyes never leaving Carter’s face. As long as he had known him, Nick had never known Steve to be very far from a can, bottle, or mug of beer. Although Nick had rarely seen Steve truly drunk, Steve drank enough beer on a regular basis that he wore the perpetual expression of someone with a slight buzz on. However, there was no evidence of that now as he gazed fearlessly at Carter.
“How ‘bout it, Cannon? Me and you can go a few rounds here and now,” Steve drawled casually.
Eyeing the beer bottle in Steve’s hand, Carter smirked and said, “I doubt you’d feel anything, Parsons. As much as I’d like pounding your ass, I’m afraid my efforts would be wasted.”
Before more could be said, the plate umpire shouldered his way past the knot of players and interposed himself between Steve and Carter. Not much older than the field umpire, he apparently was made of sterner stuff as he fearlessly announced, “The game’s over! Break it up, or I’ll call the cops!”
Sneering one more time at Steve, Carter nodded and jerked his head toward his team, and they began to walk away. However, he had taken only a few steps before he stopped and turned back toward Nick, who still lay on the ground, fighting to get his breath back.
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