“Don’t give up yet, Burton. Something’s bound to turn up. So where are we going now?”
“Your question about Denk gave me an idea. He’s a good one to talk to. He’s down by the river and out in the woods near the fireworks factory. Maybe he’s seen some-thing. We’re going out to his place.”
Jonny leaned forward from the back seat and said, “It’s by the fireworks factory? Why would you go out there?” Again, I heard that anxious tone in his voice.
“Why shouldn’t we look there? It’s near Lazy’s farm, and it’s near TNT Trail, where I saw that man wearing my coat.”
“What man?” Jonny asked.
“Didn’t I tell you about that? There was a man, and I think he was wearing my coat—you know, the one I can’t seem to find? He wasn’t very tall, now that I remember. The coat dragged on the ground. He had on a wool cap pulled down low and a red scarf. I remember the scarf. But I couldn’t see his face.”
Jonny leaned back. He seemed relieved. “It could have been anybody.”
“Not just anybody,” I pointed out, studying Jonny in the rearview mirror. “I think it was our mysterious somebody. ”
I was beginning to think maybe someone else in the car thought so too.
CHAPTER 13
Denk
As we drove out past the fireworks factory, Burton filled us in on the details about Volodenka Sviatoslavova. Volodenka, or “Denk” as he was called, lived with his wife and seven children down by the river west of town for as long as anyone could remember, same as his father and his grandfather before that.
Burton said, “They’ve always been what you’d call mountain men, proud and independent, hunters and trappers and fishermen. There’s a rumor that Denk’s ancestors can be traced all the way back to the Varangian Vikings, to the three brothers themselves, Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor. No one really knows for sure because Denk’s family has always kept to themselves, but you can’t look at his seven-foot frame, blond hair and beard, heavy leather boots and animal skins, and not imagine him plundering the coastline of Norway with other Viking marauders.
“Two years ago, his wife died of pneumonia, leaving him to raise seven children alone. He’s been on his own ever since.”
“Raising seven children by himself?”
“He’s got the help of the older kids, but yeah, he’s on his own.”
I was trying to imagine raising our four kids without Janice’s help when we pulled up in front of their ramshackle cabin at the end of a muddy road. The house, if you could call it that, was a hodge-podge of sections culled together under a tin roof and patched with tarpaulin and sheets of bark. A pencil-thin trickle of smoke rose from a river-rock chimney, while a wan light shone through one of the window openings that were covered in thin plastic sheeting.
Two of the children were out in the front yard tending a sow with her piglets. Another stood nearby feeding the chickens. Denk was to the far right of the house split-ting wood. An older boy gathered up the pieces after they went flying under the powerful swings of his giant father. He stopped and shouldered the ax and watched us as we climbed out of the car and walked over to where he waited.
“Morning, Denk. Wasn’t sure if you’d be home. Thought you might be out hunting.”
Denk towered over all of us. Two piercing blue eyes stared suspiciously out of the nest of his long hair and scraggly beard. A puff of steam curled up from his beard in the cool, morning air. He was wearing a cloak made out of beaver and fox skins with a wide leather belt around his waist that held a huge bone-handled hunting knife in its sheath. He had on deerskin pants and heavy boots and a thick, cotton shirt.
He finally answered in a heavy Slavic accent, “Got me a moose two days ago. That’s enough for now.” He gestured with his thumb toward the animal hanging dead on a hook from a tree.
“That’s a big one,” Burton said. “No doubt about it.”
Denk just stood there like an iceberg. It didn’t look like he’d be thawing anytime soon.
Pointing at me, Burton said, “This is the new pastor from Boomtown Church, and this is his boy, Jonny. We were out looking for clues about the robberies—you heard about those? Thought maybe you’d seen or heard something while you were out hunting or fishing.”
Denk didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Yeah. I found something.”
“You did?”
“Sure. ’Bout a month ago. Down by the river.”
“Really? What was it?”
“A letter, I s’pose. You want it?”
“Yes. Of course. I’d like to see it, please.”
Denk put down his ax and led us to the cabin. A single kerosene lamp illuminated the dark interior. When my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see three more girls sit-ting on benches and gathered around a sturdy, hand-carved table. One was reading, the oldest was sewing a loose hem on a dress, and the youngest, a girl of about three years old, was perched in a high chair and playing with a rag doll. They stared at us silently and then went back to their activities.
The wood floor was bare but clean and dry. Shelves around the walls held canned goods and other supplies. At the far end was the wood stove and fireplace. A pot of some- thing was bubbling over the low fire. A rifle was pinned to the wall over the mantel. Sitting on the crude mantel was a photo of a beautiful blonde woman—their mother, I assumed—in a rough frame.
Denk tromped across the room and retrieved a single sheet of paper that was propped behind the photo. He handed it to Sheriff Ernie and said, “Can’t read it. Don’t know what it says. Don’t care. You can have it.”
Burton took it over near the lamp and studied it for a moment. It was a letter—at least, part of a letter in any case. I couldn’t possibly know, because it was written in carefully rendered Chinese characters. It was scribed in black ink on a thin sheet of foolscap that was frayed and yellowed with age. Burton held it up to the light and studied it.
“We’ll have to find someone to translate it,” I said.
“No, I don’t think so. I can read it.”
“How? It’s in Chinese.”
“I know. I can read Chinese.”
“You can?”
“Sure ’nough. When I worked at the powder factory, my friends down there taught me to read and speak Chinese. I’m a little rusty, but I think I can muddle through well enough to make some sense out of it.”
He started to translate haltingly: “follow directions . . . then I .. . no . . . it says you . . . find hidden . . . I don’t know this word . . . something is hidden . . . secret . . . This word means ‘secret.’”
“What’s secret?” Jonny whispered, leaning over Burton’s shoulder to see.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t say. But there is a warning. Look here: ‘Tell no one . . . journey . . . come . . . trust . . . then it says a name . . . I think it’s Change . . . it’s the old name of Boomtown! Then something about friends . . .”
“What does it mean?”
Burton studied the note for a few more moments. “I think it says, ‘Tell no one about your journey to Change; when you come, trust my friends.’”
I interrupted. “So whoever is writing the letter is telling someone about something that is hidden or secret or both. He wants this person to come to Boomtown—or Change—and trust the people who live here, or lived here. The letter is obviously very old.”
Burton nodded. “I think that’s the gist of it so far. Then look at this: ‘Gift . . . repayment . . . father . . . lost son. Then . . . love and honor . . . father . . . you . . . and look! Look at the signature and the chop next to it! I know that signature. It’s Chang! ”
It was true. At the bottom of the scrap of paper, signed with a flourish, was the unmistakable signature of Chang. Burton read the letter and then read it again, making sure he’d gotten it right. The more he read it, the more excited he became.
He exclaimed, “This was written by Chang! Our Chang. It says he was a father! No one ever knew that. He lived his entire
life as a bachelor, that’s what everyone thought. But if this letter is real—and it sure looks like it’s real—this was written by Chang to his son.”
Turning back to the Denk, Burton asked, “Where did you say you found this?”
“By the river. Below the factory. When I was fishing,”
Denk said.
“And it was just lying there?”
“In a tree. Caught on a branch.”
“You didn’t see anyone? Any footprints, anything like that?” Burton was visibly eager for details.
“No.”
“What do you think, Arthur? Think it has anything to do with what’s going on?”
“I suppose it could. The letter talks about something hidden, something that Chang knew about and nobody else. Something he wanted to keep secret until he wrote this letter. To his son, it suggests, who was living somewhere else, probably back in China where Chang was from. That would explain why no one knew about it.”
Jonny objected hastily. “But this letter was written a hundred years ago maybe. It wouldn’t have anything to do with now.”
I answered him, “Why not? Our robber or robbers are obviously looking for something. They’re digging for some-thing. Maybe it’s this hidden thing, whatever it is, that Chang kept secret. It sounds like he kept a lot of things secret. He had a son, which may also mean he had a wife—nobody knew about them. Who can guess what else we don’t know about?”
Burton sighed. “We still can’t know if this has anything to do with the robberies. Are they connected? It doesn’t tell who’s been digging or where they’ve been digging or what they’re looking for.”
Then Burton had an idea. He asked Denk, “Can you show us exactly where you found this? That would probably help a lot.”
Denk shrugged and banged through the front door. He told his oldest boy to watch the other kids and lurched down a trail to the riverbank. We followed behind and skirted the water until we came up on the backside of the fireworks factory. He pointed with a huge finger at a tree branch near the bank of the river. “Right there.”
Burton started to look around, and I joined him. Other than our own footprints, there really wasn’t anything to see. It had rained so much recently that any signs would have been wiped out. Jonny tried to get us to go further down-river. He kept waving to us. But Burton wanted us to go in closer to the factory.
Just then he glanced down at his watch. “Rats! Look at the time! I completely forgot—we’ve got to get back to town right now.”
“Why? What’s the rush?”
“It’s 10:46! The bank is going to be robbed in less than fifteen minutes.”
“Excuse me?”
“The bank! At exactly 11:00. That’s only fourteen minutes from now!”
I didn’t get a chance to ask what he was yelling about because we were running back down the trail and chasing Burton on the way to his car. Denk easily kept pace with us through his long strides and was there to watch us leave. His children had finished feeding the animals and stood next to him. They looked so forlorn in their rubber boots and patched coats that I couldn’t help but turn around and offer some help.
“Pardon me, Denk. Maybe you don’t know about some of the programs we’ve got at the church. The ladies could help with some food. They could help with the children. We could have some men come out and work on your roof, that sort of thing. Maybe I could come back out and we could talk about it. Maybe tomorrow? How does that sound?”
Denk looked like he would grab my head off its shoulders. He could do it if he wanted to. Instead, with a loud grunt he spun on his heel and stomped back into the cabin with his children in tow. The door slammed with a bang and he was gone.
“Nerts, Preacher! Now what did you go and do that for?”
Burton cried angrily.
“What?”
“Denk goes and helps us with an important clue, and then you go and insult him!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Get in the car. We’ve got to get going.”
Jonny and I hopped in. Burton was steamed.
“What’s the problem, Burt? I was just offering help. It’s the Christian thing to do.”
“You think so? You really think so?”
“Of course I do. The man lost his wife. He’s on his own trying to take care of seven children. I saw the way they live. They could use some help. That’s all I was saying.”
“You see the way they live? You don’t know anything about the way they live. Denk nearly killed himself with grief when his wife died. He had a baby not more than two months old. He had six other children and no wife to help him. He went off into the hills and didn’t come back for five months. During that time, his children took care of each other—just like they always do. When he got back, he tried to keep on going—just like he’d always done.
“But . . .”
“Don’t ‘but’ me! Keep your ‘buts’ to yourself! That older girl in there, Freyja, she graduated as a straight-A student from high school. The older boy, he’s tops in his senior class. All the rest of them kids, they’re clothed, fed, schooled, and healthy.
“And their father, Denk, he might not be able to read, mostly because he doesn’t want to—and he might not have a regular job, mostly because he doesn’t need one—but he manages to take care of his family just fine. He hunts and fishes and lays traps. What he shoots, he keeps for food; what he traps, he sells the skins for money. He usually shoots or traps more than he needs; he gives that to Walter, who cuts it up and sells it for him here in Boomtown. He trades extra fish for supplies down at the Red Bird.
“In other words, they don’t live in a fancy house or have any fancy things, but they’re getting by. They’re doing just fine under the circumstances, same as they always have.”
I didn’t know what to say. I mumbled something like, “I was just trying to help.”
“Yeah, sure, just trying to help. Well, next time you can help by minding your own business. Sometimes that’s the Christian thing to do!”
I spent the rest of the drive with my mouth shut, staring out the window and wondering if I would ever understand the people who lived in Boomtown. Just when I thought I was getting it figured out, something like this would happen and I’d have to start all over again. Maybe I preached about mercy every Sunday, but it was pretty clear—I didn’t under-stand it very well.
But in a few minutes, I had something else to think about. We sped around a corner and screeched to a halt in front of the bank. Burton jumped out and ran around the cruiser.
“C’mon, Reverend! Jonny! It’s 11:02. Let’s move it! ”
We got out and stood on the sidewalk next to Burton’s car. “What’s going on, anyway? How do you know the bank’s being robbed?”
“Because it’s Monday. The bank is always robbed on Monday at 11:00 a.m. Same as always, right on schedule.”
“But why . . .”
Before I could say anything else the front door of the bank flew open and a man came bursting through it with a bag of money in his left hand and a gun in his right. He looked about sixty-five years old, wearing a jean jacket, a red flannel shirt, gloves, and a black stocking hat and glasses. He didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see the police car sitting there or Burton with his gun drawn or the other ten people who’d been standing by waiting for him to come out. The old man threw the bag on the ground, glanced at his watch, and looked at Sheriff Ernie with disgust.
“You’re late! It’s two minutes after eleven. I been standing in the lobby of the bank waiting for you!”
“Hey, I’m sorry, Frank. We got tied up down at Denk’s place. Really, I’m sorry.”
“Well, don’t let it happen again.” He stood there with his hands on his hips. “So, you gonna arrest me or ain’tcha?”
“Sure ’nough. Just hold your horses. I got the handcuffs right here.”
Burton put his gun back in his holster and walked over to the bank robber.
“Burt
on! Aren’t you going to take his gun?” I shouted, pointing at the black revolver still in his hand.
“Oh, right, sorry. I forgot.” He reached out to take it and then stopped. “Hey, Frank, that’s not your usual gun, is it? The other one’s smaller, if I remember right.”
“I got my favorite down at Guenther’s Gun Corral. Gettin’ the sights realigned and the pistol grip recovered. This is my backup piece. Nothin’ to worry about, though. It ain’t loaded or nothin’, same as always.”
He pulled the trigger just to prove it. Bang! The gun went off and the spectators screamed. Burton jumped back. Jonny ducked behind the car. I felt the bullet whiz just past my right ear. I think it missed my head by a few centimeters. I didn’t have a ruler handy so I could measure it. Not that it mattered; I stumbled backward, tripped over my feet, and plopped on the sidewalk. Just over my shoulder, the bullet put a perfectly round hole through the “O” in the No Parking sign.
“Frank, I thought you said it wasn’t loaded! Now I’m going to have to arrest you for real!” Burton said.
“It wasn’t loaded!” the robber insisted, looking at the smoking pistol. “At least, I didn’t think it was.”
He shrugged his shoulders, handed the gun to Burton, put his arms out, and let the sheriff cuff his hands. Then he apologized to me. “Sorry ’bout that, Reverend. Nothin’ personal.”
I was flat on my backside and leaning against the car and clutching my chest. I counted my buttons—was this the third or the fourth time I’d nearly been killed? I couldn’t remember. I watched Burton open the car door and deposit Frank in the backseat. Then he came over, stooped down, and asked if I was okay.
“You sure are a lucky buck there, Arthur! What’s that? Four times now I declare! You must have one tough guardian angel!”
“My guardian angel is going to put in a two weeks’ notice and ask for a transfer. I can’t believe this! Who ever thought being a preacher could be this dangerous?”
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