Last in a Long Line of Rebels

by Lisa Lewis Tyre

  The oak, he grows in sun and wet,

  and mighty branches soon unfold;

  When soil and bark and light have met,

  to spin their leaves like Havilah’s gold.

  The last word hung on the air, floating in the space between the three of us. My skin had turned cold, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stiffen.

  “What did you just say?” I asked in a whisper.

  “It’s just an old song my great-grandfather used to sing. Probably an old slave tune, passed down.”

  Benzer and I watched him pull out of the driveway. Finally, I gathered enough sense to speak.

  “Benzer,” I whispered. I was holding a hand over my heart to keep it from jumping out of my chest and doing a break dance on the sidewalk. “Did you hear what I just heard, or am I dreaming?”

  Benzer shot me a puzzled look. “I heard it, but what does it mean?”

  I smiled, slowly at first, then big enough to make my cheeks hurt. “It means we just found Havilah! C’mon!” I grabbed his hand and dragged him to the front porch. The diary lay in the swing, and I quickly flipped the pages until I found the entry dated June 1863.

  Walter will be departing soon, his duties resuming with the completion of this mission. How I dread that day! I believe he senses my distress, for today he brought the most unusual present—an oak sapling. With great ceremony, he gathered my father, and Silas, and with the aid of Jeremiah, planted it in the front yard. He gave an eloquent speech of which I only remember the following: a small thing when nourished and cared for, will take root and grow to great heights. It was rather sweet, and most unlike Walter to be so bold.

  I held the diary out to him. “Check out the date; it’s just a few days before the gold was stolen.”

  Benzer turned the worn pages carefully. “Here’s what I don’t get. If the reverend buried a big pile of gold somewhere around the tree, wouldn’t they have noticed?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe they weren’t all that smart.”

  Benzer laughed. “They’d have to be pretty dumb to be looking for gold and not see a fresh hole had been dug in their front yard.”

  Laying the diary back down, we went to stand next to the stump. An idea was forming in my brain, and I ran my hand across the wood. “You’re right. It’d be hard to miss”—I looked up at Benzer—“unless there was already a hole dug! Where’s the copy you made yesterday?”

  Benzer pulled the paper from his back pocket again and we held it between us. The photo showed a thin sapling right where the stump now stood. I jabbed it with my finger. “It would be easy to dig the sapling out and replant it. He hid the gold with the tree!”

  “That’s it!” He circled the stump. “Dang! We’ll never be able to dig it out from under this thing.”

  I crouched down beside what was left of the tree. Deep gouges were cut into the wood every eight inches, all around the base. I’d watched Mr. Rainey use a large drill to make the holes, which Mama said would be filled with fertilizer to speed up decomposition. I put a couple of fingers in the largest one. On one knee, I peered through the hole; Daddy’s dump truck was visible on the other side.

  “I’ve got it!” I jumped up and ran behind the house to Daddy’s shop. I burst through the door and hurriedly found the keys to the dump truck hanging on the wall.

  Benzer stood in the yard watching as I raced back into the yard and climbed on the bed of the truck. “Don’t just stand there. Help me with this,” I said, pointing to a thick chain coiled like a snake.

  “Lou, have you lost your mind?” Benzer asked.

  I didn’t answer. “Take this end over to the stump. I think it’s small enough to go through the largest hole.”

  “Your daddy is going to kill us. You know that, right?”

  I smiled. “No, he won’t. Not when we hand him the gold. Now, hurry.”

  Benzer pulled the chain over to the stump and began threading it through. I picked up my end and attached it to the truck. I’d seen Daddy drag out all kinds of junk clean as a whistle, even though it’d been firmly embedded in years of dirt and briars. It didn’t look so hard.

  The phone rang from the porch, but we ignored it. The last call had said the baby wouldn’t be there for hours.

  Once Benzer had the chain completely through the stump, I threw him a metal fastener from the back of the truck. He pinned the chain securely to itself. “Now what?”

  I dug the truck’s keys out of my pocket. “Do you want the honor, or should I?”

  Benzer shook his head. “No way. Your dad yelled at me once for just sitting in the driver’s seat.”

  “Whatever. At least get in here with me.”

  We climbed into the worn interior. I’d only driven a couple of times in my life, mostly in open fields. But I figured all I had to do was get us into gear and drive forward. Once the stump was out, we’d park the truck back safe and sound. We buckled our seat belts, and I looked at Benzer. “Ready?” He nodded, eyes wide, and I turned the key.

  The engine roared to life. I closed my eyes and sent up a small prayer. Grabbing the gearshift like I knew what I was doing, I pulled it toward me. A loud grinding noise shook the cab.

  “Push in the clutch!” Benzer yelled.

  I glared at him, but didn’t say anything. By stretching my left leg as far as it would go, I could reach the pedal. I pushed it to the floor, then moved the gearshift again. This time it slipped perfectly into gear. Tentatively I pressed the gas, causing the truck to lurch forward and immediately die.

  “This is going great,” Benzer muttered.

  “Just shut it, Benzini,” I snapped. “If you’re not going to help, be quiet.”

  I started the truck again, and after a few tries, during which Benzer sat perfectly silent, I was able to get the truck going forward. The slack in the chain tightened as I came to the end of the driveway.

  I gave the truck a little more gas, but it didn’t budge.

  “You’re going to have to really lay on the gas,” Benzer said, looking out his window at the chain stretching behind us. “The roots must be pretty deep by now.”

  I pushed the gas harder, nervous beads of sweat popping out on my forehead. If this didn’t work, or if the gold had been moved, losing the house would be the least of my worries. Losing my behind would be more like it.

  The truck strained forward, the chain tight between the bumper and the stump, locked in a tug-of-war.

  The engine was whining at a level I’d never heard before.

  “C’mon, c’mon, you stupid stump.” I pushed the pedal closer to the floor.

  The truck rocked backward and forward, pulled in opposite directions.

  A very small movement forward caused Benzer to yell, “It’s working, it’s working!”

  I gave it more gas, and the truck moved forward again.

  “Almost there,” Benzer shouted over the whine of the engine. “Just a little bit more.”

  I stretched my leg down, pushing the gas to the floor. Suddenly, the stump came flying out of the ground, and freed from its tether, the truck raced forward. I held the wheel, frantically searching with my foot for the brake. We shot across the street, bounced through the ditch on the other side, and flew across the library parking lot, finally coming to rest when we crashed through the brick wall of the adult fiction section. Bricks landed on the windshield, causing what had previously been a small crack to break open and rain glass down into the cab. The engine shuttered and quit.

  Benzer grabbed my arm. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “I think so. Thank goodness for our seat belts!” Opening the door, I slid down to the pavement below.

  Benzer’s door was under more of the library than mine was, so he scrambled out my side.

  “We are goners when they see this,” he whispered.

  I looked behind us. The oak stump lay on the grass, its roots dangling behind, like a giant octopus caught on a fishing line.

  We left the dying truck and ran over to the stum
p. A gaping hole was now in our yard. Shoulder to shoulder, we peered down into the dark.

  “Nothing,” I whispered. “Not one thing.”

  Benzer stared. “I can’t believe it. It can’t be.”

  I shook my head, turning to look at the stump. Its gnarled roots were twisted and bent, a massive confusion of wood. Something at the center caught my eye. Barely bothering to breathe, I walked closer. Bending down, I looked at the very underbelly of the oak. The smell of dirt and wood was overpowering. Deep, held in the very heart of the root ball, was what looked like a leather bag. Benzer knelt beside me.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  I reached out a hand and touched the material. Old, rotted almost completely through, it gave way under my fingers. Coins fell between the roots, spilling onto the ground in a shiny mound.

  I sat, stunned for a moment. My heart was beating so hard I could hardly breathe. I beamed at Benzer and inhaled enough air to finally speak.

  “Gold!”

  From the diary of Louise Duncan Mayhew

  December 1863

  Walter has written that he will be home soon, for at least two days. I long for more time, as we have much to discuss. I have changed and there is much I long to share. Our letters are often stolen by the enemy, thus true emotions are rarely penned.

  Falling to my knees, I grabbed a handful of coins and held them up in the evening sunlight. The weight of them surprised me. They were big too, much bigger than the silver dollars Bertie gave me every year on my birthday. A woman’s face surrounded by thirteen stars was on one side, with the date 1853 underneath. I turned one over and saw an eagle with wings spread over the words Twenty D.

  “I can’t believe it,” I whispered. “You’re real.” Benzer and I stared at each other, grinning like sharks.

  “Let me see one,” he said, leaning forward and taking a coin from the pile. “Wow. They’re so shiny. It’s like something you’d see in a movie.”

  “Twenty bucks each isn’t bad,” I said. “How many do you think there are?”

  Benzer crouched beside me, counting. “I’ve got twenty-two. Ka-ching!”

  “There are fifteen in my pile, so thirty-seven total. What’s twenty times thirty-seven?”

  “Uh, seven hundred and forty, but, Lou, they’re probably worth way more than that.”

  “Really? How much more? Seven hundred and forty is a long way from twenty-five thousand.”

  “I don’t know,” Benzer said, “but they’re always running commercials on TV about selling your gold jewelry. I think it’s based on how much it weighs.”

  I held out a couple of coins. “These suckers are heavy.” The loud whine of an approaching siren cut through the air. “Get the gold,” I croaked. My mouth felt like it was full of cotton, and I had to work hard to swallow.

  Benzer began scooping large handfuls of coins and putting them in the pockets of his jeans.

  “Wait here,” I said, racing into the house. In the kitchen, I slammed open the pantry door and grabbed the first thing I could find—a box of Lucky Charms cereal. Ripping open the box, I burst back outside and dumped the contents in Mama’s hedges.

  “Help,” Benzer yelled. He was standing next to the stump. His pants, bulging with gold coins, hung low around his hips, threatening to drop at any minute. “I can’t move!”

  The siren rang in my ears, getting closer by the second. Picking up the rotten remains of the leather bag, I grabbed Benzer’s arm with my other hand, dragging him to the side of the house. We crouched behind a hydrangea, emptying the contents of his pockets into the cereal box. We had barely finished when a police car skidded to a stop next to Daddy’s dump truck.

  “Hide this,” I said, handing the swollen cereal box to Benzer. He stuck it deep into the hydrangea, where the purple blooms obscured the leprechaun logo. The rotted leather bag joined it.

  Peering around the corner, I saw Deputy Lemon from the Zollicoffer Police Department emerge from his patrol car.

  “What’s the plan?” Benzer whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I answered softly. “Do you have any ideas?”

  Benzer shook his head. “Not really. I guess we could hide in the junkyard until he leaves.”

  Deputy Lemon walked around the front of Daddy’s truck, where the engine continued to belch steam. He muttered something into the microphone on his shoulder, but we couldn’t hear what he said.

  “Do you think he’ll take us to jail?” Benzer asked. His eyes were gleaming with what looked like excitement.

  “I sure hope not. Daddy is going to kill us as it is.” The phone rang from the front porch.

  “Should we get that?” Benzer asked.

  “And say what? We can’t talk right now, the police are here?”

  Benzer sighed. “I guess we might as well get this over with. They’re going to know it was us anyway.”

  I held his elbow, panic-stricken. “Wait! What’s our story? Why did we pull the stump out of the ground?”

  Benzer just shrugged. “We’re kids. People expect us to do stupid things.”

  “Well, don’t mention the gold.”

  “Duh.” Benzer rolled his eyes.

  We walked around the front of the house and over to the library where Deputy Lemon stood. Bricks littered the pavement at his feet.

  “Hey, kids,” he said gruffly. “You two see what happened?”

  I put both hands in my pockets and stared at the ground. My long shadow lay across the grass, and I saw that it was shaking.

  Benzer spoke up first. “Yes, sir. I guess we did.”

  Deputy Lemon snorted and shot a large wad of spit on the pavement. “Ain’t this your daddy’s truck?”

  I looked up for the first time. A glistening speck of spit was caught on his chin, and I felt a nervous laugh working its way up my throat.

  Ohpleasedon’tletmelaughOhpleasedon’tletmelaugh.

  “Yes, sir. But he’s not home right now.”

  He tugged at his gun belt, pulling it higher on his hips. “Then who was driving the truck?”

  “I was, sir,” I said in a quivering voice.

  Deputy Lemon gave me a hard stare. “A little thing like you drove this dump truck?” He raised his chin at Benzer. “You wouldn’t be trying to take the blame for your boyfriend, now, would you?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could get out the words, he snorted again. I watched him work his mouth round and round, finally pursing his lips and sending a huge loogie sailing through the air. It landed right on the head of the William Shakespeare statue the library had installed last year.

  I clamped both hands over my mouth, but it was no use. I started laughing—tears-down-my-face, shoulder-shaking, doubled-over laughing. Benzer held it for a moment, then he burst into huge guffaws.

  “You two think this is funny?” Deputy Lemon asked.

  I laughed harder. “No, sir. We’re sorry.”

  “Well, if you’re not now, you’re going to be. Destruction of city property is no laughing matter. Is your mama home?”

  I shook my head no, too afraid to speak. Tears were still streaming down my face from laughing so hard.

  Deputy Lemon spit again. “Is there anybody with any sense over at the Mayhew house?”

  “No, sir, not for years now,” Benzer said, continuing to laugh.

  We couldn’t control ourselves. It was as if all of the emotions from the day—Isaac, the tree being cut, Mama going into labor, us wrecking the truck and finding the gold—had melded together into a giant ball of craziness that had to get out.

  “I bet you won’t be laughing when your parents get ahold of you!” Deputy Lemon said. His face was as red as Bertie’s pants, and stretched just as tight. He pushed the Transmit button on his radio. “Dispatch, this is Deputy Lemon, come in, please.”

  Even standing under his angry stare, we still couldn’t stop giggling.

  “Lou, stop it!” Benzer whispered, his throat catching.

  “I’
m trying.”

  The radio squelched back. “Yeah, Warren, go ahead.”

  “I’ve got an 11-82 at 81 Flint Street.”

  “Can’t you just say it was a traffic accident? Honestly, Warren, I don’t have time to look up all of these codes.”

  “You need to send a crew over to mark off the street. And you better have someone inform Mrs. Hall she’s got a dump truck in her library. Over.”

  The radio squelched again. “Are your legs broken? Where am I going to get a city crew on Sunday afternoon? Use the cones I know you have, out of your trunk.” The radio fell silent. We were waiting for Deputy Lemon to respond, when the radio squawked back to life. “Did you say 81 Flint Street? I just got a call from Tucker Mayhew, asking me to send somebody to check on his daughter. They’re in the middle of a delivery, and she’s not answering the phone.”

  Deputy Lemon cleared his throat. “Uh … 10-4 on that; I’ve got her and her accomplice standing right in front of me.”

  “Accomplice! Warren, isn’t she about twelve? Her and Macy Elizabeth were in Brownies together. Get those kids over to the hospital so her parents can stop worrying.”

  Deputy Lemon grumbled into the microphone, but motioned us into the backseat. I was starting to feel sick from the stress of what we’d done. I put a hand out to roll down the window, but the handle had been removed.

  The deputy slammed his door, and we were off, siren still blazing.

  Deputy Lemon escorted us into the glaring light of the hospital entrance. Aunt Sophie, Bertie, and various relatives met us in the lobby.

  “Well, look what the cat drug in. Where in the world have you two been?” Bertie asked. She looked perfectly at home in the center of all the excitement.

  “Where’s Daddy?” I asked, dodging the question.

  “He’s with your mama,” Aunt Sophie answered. “The baby’s coming right now.” She was trembling with excitement.

  “Thank you, Deputy,” Bertie said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “I hope these two were behaving themselves.” She winked at Benzer.

  “Bertie, please,” I groaned.