by Lauren Wolk
Which was a fine dinner, and afterward we lit a fire though it was warm and sat before it, sipping hot tea, while Miss Maggie’s clothes dried. The treasure, spread out between us on the floor, looked like a bright garden.
Mouse chose a long silver chain as big around as my finger to drag into a corner and wrestle into submission.
“Give that back,” I said, trading the chain for a bit of string.
“Which is your favorite?” I asked Miss Maggie.
She set down her mug and bent closer to consider her choices. “They’re all too fancy for me,” she said, leaning back. “What would the sheep think if I went out to the moor in diamonds?”
But Osh reached down and plucked a single strand of pearls from the tangle.
Miss Maggie closed her eyes as he slipped it over her head.
When he returned to his chair, she looked at him and ran her fingers over the pearls.
“Thank you, but plain is fine with me,” she said.
“And with me,” Osh replied.
“And me,” I said. “But they’re much prettier on you than not.”
“And they’re much plainer than diamonds,” Osh said.
She closed her eyes again and sighed. “What an extraordinary day.”
“Tomorrow we hide all this,” Osh said. “And then things can get back to the way they were.”
When her clothes were dry, Miss Maggie put them on again and slipped into her poncho. She made sure the pearls were tucked away out of sight before she left.
“Life is going to seem very straightforward after all this adventure,” she mused.
“And now some quiet,” Osh said. “And work to do.”
She rolled her eyes. “And work to do,” she echoed. “Of course.”
When he pulled on his own poncho and began to follow her out the door, she said, “I can make my own way, thank you.”
But he paid her no attention, and I stood in the doorway and watched as he settled her in the skiff and rowed her across the channel. On the far side, he helped her onto the sand. They said a few words to each other. And then he turned and rowed the skiff back home, tucking it up above the wrack line, and coming back inside.
For quite some time, we sat by the fire and looked at the treasure some more. It gleamed and sparkled in the firelight.
“I hope this won’t change you,” Osh said.
“Why would it change me?”
He chose his words. “I’ve seen it happen,” he said. “People don’t want much until they have plenty, and then they want more and more.”
I was sure having the treasure wouldn’t change me that way, and I said as much. “When I think about what to do with all this, I think about giving it away. How lovely that would be.”
Osh looked at me so hard I thought I might break. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.
“Not a thing,” he said. “I’m just looking at you. Exactly as you are right now. And not because you’ll change, though you will, of course. Treasure or not. But because if I could have built a human being, I would have built you. Just so.”
Nobody had ever said anything that good about me.
We watched the fire for a while. Mouse decided that I needed something in my lap and jumped up to nuzzle my face.
The fire rearranged itself, sparks flying, and the rain began again, hard enough to make itself heard on the rooftop.
If I never lived another day in my life, I would be fine with that, I decided.
Or I would be after the schooner Shearwater came home and I’d shared with my brother the treasure that our mother, and then I, had found.
Chapter 31
I woke in the night and lay still, trying to understand what had brought me up out of a dream in which I stood at the very end of a dock, a schooner under full sail sweeping past, almost close enough to touch, my brother at the rail, reaching.
Osh was snoring softly nearby. Mouse was curled up at the foot of my bed, as usual. The rain had stopped, and there wasn’t enough wind to wake me. The fire had gone out, and day had not yet broken.
I decided that nothing was amiss, but the very idea of the treasure still in the house made me jittery. Perhaps it had woken me up.
Before going to sleep, we had put the treasure back in the canvas bags and slipped it under my bed, out of sight.
I thought about where to hide it.
One by one, I considered and rejected every spot except two.
I considered them from every angle, pictured the treasure safe in them, and made my decision as morning came slowly on.
But other things were not as clear. Other things did not make as much sense.
How was it possible to think, with just one mind, about a woman, her hands twisted, her body as rough and worn as the moors of Penikese itself—poor and tough and shrinking toward a terrible end, toward a cold grave on a bluff with not one tree for shade, no simple bench where a mourner might sit for a while to watch the sea and wish for something better?
How was it possible to think, with that same mind, about perfect, immortal diamonds forged in the hot belly of the earth—indestructible, endless, capable of binding all color into one clear and icy light, nothing lost?
How was it possible that they had been buried side by side for years while so many people dreamed of finding one of them, while just I—one, single girl and no one else in the entire world—longed for the other.
And now I had found them both.
And now for me they would always be one and the same.
As quietly as I could, I got up and fetched an old coffee tin where Osh sometimes kept seeds he collected once the garden was spent. Then I carefully tugged the bags of treasure out from under my bed.
In the almost darkness, I couldn’t see much, but I could feel the cold smoothness of the gold ingots, the pictures pressed into the coins, the perfect facets of the gemstones.
I combed carefully through both bags, stopping often to hold a piece up close to my face, glad when the growing light let me see some color, and chose a few: all of them small enough to fit in the coffee tin, all of them nearly ordinary compared to the others, but also, in my eyes, the most beautiful. Among them, a necklace with a single sapphire pendant. A cuff bracelet set with ruby flowers. A gold ring so delicate, so simple, that it must have been worn by a good woman.
I thought about her. About the other people who had once owned these treasures before they’d lost them. If I’d known how to give it all back, I would have. But it had found its complicated way to me, and I would cherish the treasure while I had it. I would cherish it because it had come from my mother and because it would always belong to both of us, even after it found its complicated way to someone else. Even though I was simply a stop on its travels, just as the island was but one stop on mine.
The thought made me feel fragile.
And it made me understand better what Osh saw when he looked at me.
When Osh showed signs of waking and the shorebirds began to announce the day, I tucked the special things I’d chosen into the tin, closed it up tight, and thought about where to hide this smaller, better treasure.
Which was when I remembered what Osh always said: If you want to hide something, leave it in plain sight.
So I tiptoed back to where I’d found the tin and put it on the shelf again.
Osh wouldn’t need it until the garden was spent and he was ready to harvest its seed. And I would have told him about this keepsake long before that. Explained why it was important. Really, as soon as I could explain that to myself.
I hadn’t put aside this small portion of treasure to sell, though we could if we had to. Not to wear—like Miss Maggie, I was happy enough with plain. Just to hold in my hands, and look at, while I tried to know what I knew in my bones, to remember the faces I’d seen for only moments, when my eyes were still foggy with
birth. The voices I’d heard just once, before I’d been sent away.
I waited until Osh had his coffee before I told him where I’d decided to hide the sacks of treasure.
He listened carefully, his head tipped to one side. “Two places?” he said.
“So if somebody finds one of them, we’ll still have the other.” I cut two slices of hard bread and spread some apple butter on top of them.
He nodded. “You’re a smart Crow.” Osh sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “But perhaps we should give the whole thing away right off, as you said. To a hospital. Or an orphanage. Or a school.”
I took the bread to the table and sat down. “The whole thing?” I myself had said that it would be lovely to give it away, but I hadn’t thought I’d be asked to do that. I’d thought it would be up to me. Which it was, I supposed. “Half of it is for Jason,” I said.
Osh shrugged. “That’s fair,” he said.
“But maybe I will give away my half,” I said. I watched Mouse at her bath, licking the back of her paw and then dragging it over one ear, again and again. “Can I think about it?”
“You can do whatever you want,” he said.
“Then I will,” I said. “I’ll think about it. But can we hide it until I figure things out?”
He finished his coffee and got up for more. “We can,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
We did just that, later the same day.
First, we divided the treasure into two piles, one bigger and heavier than the other. We then rolled each pile into the middle of a piece of oilcloth, tucked the ends of the cloth over, and tied the bundle with plenty of wire twisted with fishing line. We put each bundle into a canvas sack, then into a second one for good measure, and tied up the neck with more fishing line. To the smaller of the two bundles, we tied a length of rope.
“That should do the trick,” Osh said when we were through.
The first, bigger bundle was easier to hide since we could do that during our regular chores. No one, seeing us, would think twice about it.
The second one would be more challenging, I realized, but not too difficult.
“I’ll take care of the rest,” I said when Osh and I returned to the house for lunch.
“Just be careful,” he said. “Will you tell Miss Maggie about it?”
I nodded. “Sure. If she’s there. And later on, if she’s not.”
“And about the first one?”
“Of course,” I said. “Wouldn’t you?”
He hesitated for only a moment. “Yes. She’s in this as much as we are. But she likes her life as it is.” He grew serious. “Think about her when you do things, Crow. Think about what they’ll mean.”
“I will,” I said. “Nothing bad is going to happen, Osh.”
But he had nothing to say to that. He gave me my lunch and ate his own, both of us busy with our thoughts, and didn’t say anything more about the treasure until I was ready to hide the second bundle on Cuttyhunk.
Then Osh said, “Anybody ever tries to take that from you, you let go of it. Understand?”
I thought about what he’d said on the skiff coming home from Penikese. About fighting for the island if he had to. I reminded him of that.
“I can’t hand someone an island, wrapped in a piece of oilcloth. And I can’t take it with me, either.” He sighed. “I won’t fight to keep the island, Crow. It doesn’t belong to me. But I’ll fight to stay on it. This,” he said, nodding at the bundle, “you can hand over quite easily.”
I thought he might be right, especially since I’d already hidden keepsakes in the coffee tin. But, “Nothing bad will happen,” I repeated.
And then I went off toward Cuttyhunk, prepared, if I saw anyone, to say that I was taking quahogs to Miss Maggie for her supper.
Luckily, I didn’t see a soul along the way, and when I got to Miss Maggie’s I found both the house and the barn empty, so I was able to hide the bundle properly without anyone the wiser, though I had a few scrapes to show for it.
I felt much better as I walked back along the path toward the bass stands. Tidy. A burden gone.
As I walked, I repeated what I’d said to Osh—“Nothing bad will happen”—and I believed it. But believing something doesn’t always make it so.
Chapter 32
Nothing much—good or bad—happened for a while after that.
When I told Miss Maggie that I had hidden part of the treasure at her place, she held up a hand and said, “Don’t tell me where. If I need to know, I’ll ask you.”
“And I’ll tell you,” I said. “Just let me know if you come across it, and I’ll find a better hiding place.”
“I will,” she agreed.
And we left it at that.
For those few long summer days, I was able to focus on what was in front of me, working alongside Osh and Miss Maggie and catching up on my lessons and reading new books Miss Maggie had borrowed from the library. But I also spent time watching the Graveyard for ships coming through.
I knew that the Shearwater had probably passed by while I was busy with other things, but I was sure that I could count on Mrs. Pelham at the hospital in New Bedford to tell Jason how to find me when he went to see her again.
I expected that one day he might knock on our door, out of the blue. And that would be fine. But I confess that I was impatient. I didn’t want to wait that long.
So up to a hilltop I trudged each day, and the heavy heat of summer made me glad for the bigger winds I found there.
I still saw people sailing to and from Penikese from time to time, and I imagined them digging up what was left of the moors.
I guessed that no one would go into the leper graveyard. Of all the places where a treasure might be buried, the graveyard was the least likely, most of it already devoted to the bones of the Penikese lepers. And those old bones were another reason for people to dig elsewhere, despite how foolish it was to be afraid of something so long dead and buried. But I had learned that fear was fear, most of it not very smart, and I was happy if it gave the little grave time to heal.
I wondered what someone would think if they found the ground there disturbed. Nearly everyone believed that a baby was resting in that ground. A leper baby. And who would want to meddle with such a grave?
But that was the problem. Anyone digging in such a place must have had good reason to think that the treasure was buried there.
And the policemen had seen us at the graveyard, in the rain.
The thief, Mr. Kendall, knew that we’d been out there, too. And I’d asked him if he knew anything about a baby.
If he ever went back to Penikese and saw that little grave all turned up and raw, he would know. I was sure he would.
I shook my head clean of such thoughts.
What was done was done.
The treasure was hidden well.
I knew where I’d come from, finally, and that I had a brother somewhere.
I still had what I’d always had, and more, and no one hurt in the process.
But as I sat in the evening wind and scanned the ocean going slowly gray, I wondered why I felt so sad.
When night came, it did not fall, as people say it does. Beyond the bright crown of the earth, the heavens were always dark. Here, on this lonely hill, tinier than the smallest suggestion of a moment, I watched the darkness rise up from the ground to meet the steady darkness overhead, as if the two worlds had been waiting for the sun to go so they could touch again.
And I, too, was dark. Invisible. Silent.
Across the bay, New Bedford squatted like a toad. Such a dirty, noisy, greedy place. But over there, I’d been Crow, just Crow, a stranger among strangers. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Here, in this clean and beautiful place, among people I had always known, I wasn’t sure where I fit. And that, I decided, was the sad part
.
There were a few islanders on the porch of the grocery, trading gossip in the shade, when I came up the path the next morning, a dime in my pocket.
“Good morning, Crow,” said Mr. Benson, the pilot who spent much of his time at the grocery between jobs.
The others turned to watch me climb the steps to the porch. Mrs. Aaronson, who baked pies for the inn, opened the screen door so I could go inside.
People always opened doors for me whenever they could. Looking on, a stranger might think they were just being nice. But I knew otherwise: The islanders preferred that I keep my hands to myself.
Everyone stopped talking as I stood there at the open door.
I walked over to where Mr. Benson sat in one of the porch chairs, smoking his pipe.
“Good morning to you, too, Mr. Benson,” I said. I held out my hand, as I’d seen people so often do.
He looked at me. Looked around at the other islanders. Looked back at me.
And slowly took my hand. Shook it twice. Let it go.
I watched for him to wipe it on his pant leg or grip the hot bowl of his pipe, but he didn’t. He simply laid it in his lap and looked me steadily in the eye until, after a moment, I was the one to look away.
“If you’re not going in, Crow, the sandflies are,” Mrs. Aaronson said.
So I went into the grocery.
She shut the door gently.
And I heard the conversation on the porch start up again. They talked about what storms we might expect that summer. A liniment that eased bruises. A trip off-island. News from Boston. Nothing about me.
Mr. Higgins, the grocer, came out from behind the counter. “Can I get something for you, Crow?”
I thought about how eager he always was to help me when I came to fetch something for Miss Maggie or Osh. He always rushed to ask me what I wanted, picked it out himself, put it in a bag, and handed it over.