John stopped watching the ants just long enough to look at Allie’s tea cup. He was reluctant to look any higher and see the lunatic smile on his wife’s face. He was not surprised that she had blown a fuse. How could he possibly expect her to bear up under the weight of her heavy grief. He looked in her eyes, and although she was smiling, she didn’t look mad. He humored her and said: “What did she say Allie?”
“She said to follow him.”
Allie took another sip of her tea. In the golden light, and with the euphoric smile on her face, she reminded John of an actress in a tea commercial. He didn’t want to talk anymore with her. She seemed to be okay because of a drug-induced dream so he didn’t have the burden of comforting her; but he was still firmly planted into reality and he had some grief of his own to deal with. He patted his smiling wife on the hand, kissed her on the cheek, and headed for his boat.
Ben and Matt were just laying down on the floor of the cellar. How long had they been there? They couldn’t tell. Neither one had said much in the last couple of days. They agreed that they should not talk with the hopes of gaining back their voices. On two occasions they had waved the underwear flag when voices seemed near enough to see it, but it didn’t help.
Matt’s injury was causing him to go in and out of shock, and he slept about twice as many hours as Ben. The last time they heard calling it seemed to them that the rescuers were wearing out, not calling their names with the same enthusiasm. When they had last been heard, Ben tried calling out, but although he was gaining back his speaking voice, when he tried to shout, his voice would still crack and then go silent.
Both boys individually thought that they might not survive, and after so much time without food or water, they were losing hope. The light in the cellar which bled through the four-inch gap in the jamb was at its brightest at ten in the morning, and it helped to lift the spirits of the boys. They guessed they were in the third day, and they knew they would need to be found soon.
When the light was brightest they talked about their parents, and about old memories to keep their spirits up. They were thirsty. Ben had put one of his shoes outside the cellar door with the hopes of it filling with rain water, but no rain came. There was nothing to do but wait and listen for any voices to call.
When it was light out, Ben would stand on the cellar steps and look out the crack, even though all he could see was the deadfalls. Every now and then they would hear animals walking and scratching above them on the cellar roof, and they tried to guess what kind of animal it might be by the sounds it made.
They could speak softly now. They no longer whispered really, and they played games of tick-tack-toe in the cellar’s dirt floor. They told stories to one another to pass the time. Each time Matt fell back to sleep, Ben would go to the cellar door again and look out at the deadfalls, hoping for some kind of rescue.
Ben was standing and looking out the crack when the animal came back, and he was startled by the face of Morris peering in at him on the opposite side of the jamb. Ben nearly fell on top of his injured friend at the sight of the monkey so close to his face, and he cajoled the animal to go get help. He knew the awful creature would have no clue of what he was being told, but he tried anyway.
Then the wicked little thing reached in and grabbed the underwear flag; the only signal they had to get the attention of somebody who might be searching near by. The vile creature had stolen from them their last hopes of being found, and both boys fell into a deep melancholy. They tried not to lose hope, and encouraged one another saying that they would be able to yell pretty soon, but they really didn’t believe it. Sleep was the only thing they could do to help with their despair. When they were asleep they could forget where they were.
John thought he would run his boat over to the mansion property and talk to the fire marshal. He kept the runabout at an idle as he rounded the southern point entering the main lake. He had been given a quiet lecture the day before about running full throttle. He had forgotten about the men in the wet suits swimming below the surface, and had they caught anyone but he roaring around, they would have used much sterner voices and way more colorful language.
As he rounded the point, he could see that the Rule estate was still active, although the numbers of rescuers were about half the size of the previous day. Many people had given up hope that the boys would be found on shore and alive and most if not all of the search was now concentrated on the lake. He looked off to his right where the fire department boat was, and now he could see buoys moving this way and that, obviously tethered to the divers below them.
He avoided the area where they were searching and steered a wide berth towards the eastern side of the property by the rock and the shattered yellow boat. He was watching the firemen that were milling around under the tent and talking when the monkey ran across the estate from the western side to the east. The animal was running with what looked like a white flag. The sight of the flag-carrying monkey didn’t make any sense to John. He shelved his thoughts about it and drove the runabout into the shore.
He climbed out of the boat and headed for the tent. He was still half-watching the monkey running along the southern shore with the flag, when the fire Marshal walked up to meet John. “Good morning mister Fisher. I hope you slept last night.”
“Hi Paul. Anything new?”
“No sir. We have covered all the ground around the lake. We are concentrating on the water now. Can I get you a coffee?”
“No thanks— Did you just see that?”
“What’s that Mister Fisher?”
“The monkey— Morris. Did you see him just now?”
“Yeah, he runs by back and forth all day long.”
“No, did you see him this time? He was carrying a white flag.”
“Yeah, the damn thing was carrying a flag all right. It was underwear.”
The sentence fell on the two men like a ton of bricks. Both of them looked at each other with total comprehension. Paul Everett the fire marshal ran back to the tent and gave strict orders for all his men and any remaining volunteers to search the woods from the western edge of the property to the girl scout camp and from the road at the south to the lake shore at the north. He then ran down to meet John at the runabout. They quickly moved to where the dive boat was, and gave the men in the boat separate orders to stop diving and concentrate on land to the east of the mansion grounds at the southern point all the way to the resort.
“And I want a couple of you men to get over to the girl scout camp pronto! If that flag turns out to be boy’s underwear, they might have used it to get our attention! I can’t understand why they didn’t hear us or call out, but there must be some logical explanation. When you muster them up, have them search again along the north side of the lake. I want one of you to run over and tell Mrs. Anderson at the county hospital. We will notify Mister Fisher’s wife. This may be very good news. Now get moving!”
They backed away and ran the runabout along the shore where John last seen Morris. They went all the way along the lake searching the southern shoreline when they spotted the make-shift flag on the shore very near the monkey who was distracted apparently hunting for a frog or a crayfish. They ran the boat into the shore to scare the monkey from his new possession, positioning the boat hull in-between Morris and the flag.
John jumped over the windshield of his boat and grabbed the flag before the angered monkey could reach it. The stubborn animal shrieked at John using all the communication skills it had in his monkey repertoire to try and persuade John to give the thing up, and then he ran up a vine and disappeared into the forest.
John looked at the make-shift flag and turned the waistband for Paul to see it. The permanent marker that had been used revealed its owner. John was smiling ear to ear and he was crying when he showed the fireman the hand-written name. “Ben Fisher.” He thought about all the times he heckled Allie about writing the boy’s name on the band of his underwear. She was a creature of habit though, God bless her, and she s
till wrote his name long after she had stopped using the laundromat. John could still hear her saying, “John Fisher, do you want your son wearing some other boy’s underwear after swimming at the pool?”
The two men ran the runabout full throttle to tell Allie about the find. An hour later, the mansion grounds was once again buzzing at full steam with the news of the make-shift flag. Paul Everett had a megaphone and was informing the crowd of volunteers about the many possibilities of why the flag might have been made. He wanted to ask the volunteers to come forward if they had any ideas for the need of a flag before they all went looking.
In the end it was a little brownie girl-scout named Jill that walked up to the tent and asked to speak with John. One of the firemen walked in with her and introduced her. “John, this little girl says she might know where your son is. She said she wanted to tell you herself. Her name is Jill.”
“Hi Mister Fisher. I think I have an idea where the lost boys are.”
John kneeled down to be at eye-level with her.
“Well, Jill we are interested in any suggestions.”
“I think they might be at the Alamo.”
John had no idea what she was talking about. He thought she just had an over-active imagination. Maybe she just read a book about Davy Crockett. He thanked her and stood back up. He was preparing to go out with some firemen to search an area, when she followed him and tugged at his shirt tail.
“Mister Fisher, I don’t mean the real Alamo silly. I mean the Alamo here.”
John crouched again.
“What do you mean, the Alamo here?”
“Everybody knows about the Alamo. It’s in the forest.”
“Can you show me?”
“Sure I can Mister Fisher.”
She led John through the woods as far as she could safely, finally pointing to the general area where the Alamo once was. There were too many deadfalls for the little girl to reach the whole way, but she gave John a description. He sent her back in the arms of one of the firemen, and gave the man orders to bring more men and chain-saws and rescue gear.
Ben and Matt were asleep when John was being shown to the vicinity of the Alamo. Ben was dreaming that his father was calling him. The calling kept getting closer and Ben was happy. Matt was also hearing his friend’s father in a dream, and then he opened his eyes. There was dim light in the cellar so he knew it was daytime, but nobody was calling. He thought he would go back to sleep. Then he heard Ben’s dad call again and this time he was very close.
He looked over at his sleeping friend. Ben was snoring softly. He shook him to wake him. “Ben, I think it’s your dad. I think we’re saved!”
“What?”
“I think your dad is—”
“Ben! Matt! Are you in there?!”
Ben got to his feet and jumped to where he could see the opening. He didn’t have a flag, so he stuck his arm out the space in the jamb. A strong hand grabbed his own and then it squeezed when his dad said, “Ben, we will have you out of there as soon as we clear away the wood. Do you understand?”
Ben squeezed his father’s hand. He wanted to say yes, but his voice would only squeak. John tried to find a place where he could look down in, but it was impossible. He said, “Ben, I can’t see you from here. Is Matt okay? If he is squeeze my hand once. If he isn’t squeeze my hand twice.”
Ben answered his father with a squeeze. He was crying with happy tears. He could hear more men now. They were all getting very near.
“Ben, you and Matt stay away from the door. Keep away until we clear the deadfalls away. Okay?”
Ben squeezed his father’s hand once, and then he let go. The sound of chain-saws never sounded so good.
It took a half an hour to clear away the downed trees with so many happy firemen and volunteers. The cellar door was opened and the boys were carried out in stretchers. The firemen were surprised at the mechanical condition of the antique door of the root cellar. They thought about filling in the cellar with dirt to prevent anyone from ever getting trapped inside again, but finally decided just to bolt the cellar door shut with a heavy chain and padlock.
The two boys were hospitalized and treated for exposure. Ben was able to be discharged after a couple of days, but Matt was kept there longer due to his injuries. The x-rays they took of the boy revealed that he did indeed suffer a cracked rib and broken collar-bone. He would remain in the hospital for four more days, only because the medical staff wanted to keep a close eye on him.
The little girl named Jill was given a citation from the fire department for the part she played in the discovery of the boys, and she was interviewed by a newspaperman and had an article written about her.
Allie never left her son until Ben politely asked if he could play with someone his own age, and eventually the two parents got around to drilling the new rules about boats and storms into their son. They would also eventually have arguments about lost watches and the monkey, but that is a story for another time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Answer ( Present Day )
hen Ben regained conciousness it was still dark. He was lying on his back and his body was shivering. He was still beneath the old tower and for a minute, he thought he had fallen. His memory did come back to him though and he realized he had been badly beaten. He hurt pretty much everywhere, but his face and his head hurt the worse.
He felt his teeth with his tongue and realized that he had lost one tooth and chipped another. He winced when his tongue hit the raw nerve of the chipped tooth and he reached up and touched his swollen face. He felt like he had been hit by a truck. He sat up and as he did, his right side ached near the bottom of his rib cage. He looked around, but it was too dark to see if the Jeep-man and the skinny guy were still around.
He reached down into his left pocket where he kept his wallet and his cell phone and he pulled the phone out. He thumbed the on switch at the top and waited for the phone software to boot. When it was on, he checked the time. It was three-twelve in the morning. He thought that it would be smart to call the police, but what would he say he was doing there? He put the phone back into his pocket and forced himself to stand.
He had never been beaten up in all his lifetime. When he was thirteen he had been hit by a car, ending up on the car hood with his mangled bike beneath the wheels, and his memory of that pain seemed less than what he was feeling now. He remembered more clearly now the blows he took by his two attackers, and he guessed that they had kicked him a few times after he went down.
They had stolen his backpack. That was clear enough. He thought about how he could possibly get it back. He calculated the value of a couple hundred coins guessing their weight to be an ounce. He thought that it would probably be close to four hundred thousand dollars. He had the gold right on him in a backpack! There was no way he could get it back and he knew it. He was the stranger in town. The Jeep-man had the friends, the money, the alibi. What was the old saying? Possession is ninety percent of the law?
Ben felt like crying. He didn’t though. It wasn’t because he was a punching bag, physical pain never hurt as much as mental pain. He had come all this way and he was right about the dream. The inscription on the painting obviously said look inside, and the water-tower in the foreground was what he looked inside of. It was all so obvious once he put it all together.
Look inside Ben! Look inside the water-tower Ben! Why had the dream pushed him up here hundreds of miles to the north? Was it so the son of Digger could finally find his father’s gold? Why had Carly been plugged in to the cosmic force that would cause him to be beaten up? Was she the Jeep-man’s guardian angel? Or was she the skinny pool player’s? Not only had he done all the work for them, but he also had a couple of thousand dollars worth of dental work as payment for bringing it down.
Ben looked up into the sky. The storm had passed and the stars were out, and he could see the stripe of the milky way. He held his gaze a bit too long and became disoriented and unbalanced. He probably had sustaine
d some brain damage as well. Only in his weakest moments did he ask, “Why me?” There was so much confusion and despair. He fell on his knees and he asked, “Why me God? I know I am not perfect. I am flawed and I know it, but have I been all that bad? Aren’t I one of your believers? Have I not read your word? Was I wanting too much just to ask for a normal life? Was I asking too much just to be able to house and feed my family? Why did you send me here? Was it you or was it the devil? Was all this just a ruse to make a couple of barflies rich?”
Ben sat in the open field on his knees for a while, thinking nothing. He was too disappointed to move. He was too tired to think. What would he tell Jill? She would not care about the money. She was never materialistic. She always had strength even during these last three years. She always kept steady and rarely did she get depressed. He wanted so bad to come through for her. He wanted to roll his motorcycle in the driveway and throw the gold out of the bag onto the front lawn.
He looked up again. The stars were gone and it started to rain. Then, even before he got back on his feet, it poured. He was soaked in the span of thirty-seconds. He looked up again and said; “That’s just great! That is the perfect ending! Dump some rain on the guy. He can take it!”
Ben walked over to where he left his boat. It was gone. No doubt the J-man and skinny guy used it to make their escape. Ben thought of the old Snagglepuss cartoon “Heavens to Murgatroyd, exit, stage left!” He could picture the two assailants doing the stage left gag and laughing all the way to his boat.
He decided to walk back up the property to the road and walk back that way to the resort. The pouring rain did have the positive effect of soothing his wounds. The cold water actually made him feel better, to think more clearly. When he got to the place where the old foundation of the mansion began, he looked to the west; thinking about the black days and nights he and Matt spent in the cellar. He stopped there just for a minute looking at the edge of the forest, thinking about his old friend. He hadn’t seen Matt since the fight. He didn’t even know if Matt was alive. He thought about little Jill, the girl who had saved him by pointing out the Alamo. The girl he would eventually marry.
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