by Jon Cohen
Ronnie was staring at his boots. So was Cliff.
Stu jumped in. “Ronnie here says you live in Dean Jeffers’s tree house.”
“I said ‘renting,’” Ronnie murmured.
“Either way, he’s there.”
Cliff toed the gravel. He didn’t like this at all. But Stu, beered up, had goaded them into it (old Walter, voice of reason, had gone home earlier), and if Cliff had hung back, Stu would’ve wondered why. Cliff lifted his eyes and looked at Harry. Certainly a question tugged hard at him. It came out before he could stop it. “How’d you get in her booth?”
There were three EMT guys. One of them said, “Nobody sits with Amanda.”
“Tell us about that,” Stu demanded.
Harry took a breath. “I was invited?” Well, Amanda sure got what she wanted, riling these guys up. He clenched his various muscle groups, taking quick inventory. A couple of weeks spent in the forest, he was in pretty good shape. When the fighting commenced, Harry imagined he could get in one good punch. Before they tore him to pieces.
Stu sneered. “Why would she pick you, a government bureaucrat? Doesn’t make sense. She likes real men. Men who work with their hands.” Stu thrust out his hands, realizing too late he only used them to shuffle paper. One of the EMT guys snickered.
Harry thrust his own hands out. For Ronnie’s inspection. “Look. Calluses.” They were standing under a light in the parking lot. Ronnie took a peek.
“How about that? You got yourself toughened up.” Ronnie looked Harry up and down, nodded approvingly.
A couple weeks in the woods had done Harry good.
Ronnie said, “I wish I could live in a tree house.”
The EMT guys nodded. “Living in a tree house is pretty cool, actually,” one of them said.
“Especially that tree house. Nobody builds a tree house like Dean,” another said.
“And that’s the goddamn point!” Stu shouted. “This is the guy replacing Dean!” Stu suddenly lurched forward and socked Harry on the jaw, smacking him back against the side of his car. But Harry didn’t fall. His right ear buzzed, and he had a moment of dizziness, but he was upright. And both of his fists were clenched.
Stu had a frightened feral grin. When he tried to retreat backward, he couldn’t. Cliff, Ronnie and the EMT guys made themselves into a wall. Keeping him there for Harry’s turn.
Harry stepped up to Stu. Got right in his face. “You know, I have this brother, got in fights all his life. And he’d just love it if I hit you. God, it would make him so proud.”
Stu went pale with panic. Harry gave him a long look and then unclenched his fists and stepped away.
Stu’s panic transformed into a smirk. He was about to open his mouth, when Cliff suddenly lifted him straight up into the air from behind, carried him a few paces and dropped him on his ass. The men turned their backs on him and faced Harry.
Ronnie stepped forward. Shook Harry’s hand.
Then Cliff stepped forward and shook Harry’s hand. Leaned in, and spoke so only Harry could hear. “Well, maybe the best man won.” Meaning Harry vs. Stu? No, wait, Harry thought. This was the guy Amanda slept with. Big, handsome. A slight whiff of the barn about him not altogether unpleasant.
Then all the EMT guys shook Harry’s hand. The last one said, “Wish I lived in a tree house. Way cool.”
23
Harry tried to convince himself that it was just one more stop on a list of errands to run in Scranton. Let’s see, go to CVS, ShopRite, and oh yeah, if I have a minute, drop by the post office for that quarter-million dollars in gold.
The internet bullion companies shipped gold in amounts under $300,000, insured, to either the post office or UPS. Harry had set up PO mailboxes in two locations—which for some reason was perfectly legal—a branch in East Rydsen and the main office downtown. His plan was to mix and match, use a different gold company shipping to a different location each time, either UPS or the post office, depending on...what? On how it all went.
He parked his car and smiled for the security cameras. Surely there had to be some. Already, his image was in the hands of Interpol. And Chinese hackers had already contacted their hit men in Scranton. They’d have to beat the FBI, which was no doubt waiting for him in the lobby. He hoped the handcuffs wouldn’t be too tight.
Harry was so nervous he had to grip the handrail to get up the front steps. He braced himself and pushed open the doors and entered the lobby. No FBI, no Interpol. Really? Just the gray-haired clerk behind the desk? It couldn’t be this easy.
It took him three tries to guide the key into the lock of his mailbox. The clerk glanced over as Harry’s key clicked against the little metal door. When Harry reached in for the yellow delivery slip, he accidentally bumped it out the open back end of the mailbox.
He turned in alarm. The clerk was already sliding off his stool. He shrugged and called over, “Not a problem,” and went slowly through a door to the back. Harry heard him groan on the other side of the wall. Harry was gripping the edge of the counter when the clerk came back through the door holding a package the size of a shoebox.
“Hoo boy, whatcha got in here, lead?” the clerk said.
“That’s right, yes,” Harry heard himself say. “Lead soldiers. I’m a collector.” He gave the clerk a sheepish shrug.
The clerk brightened. “That right? I used to have a bunch of those little guys.”
Harry kept his smile in place. This was not the scenario he’d planned on, which was: anonymous man picks up inconspicuous package in outlying post office and gets the hell out of Dodge.
Harry held out his hands, but the clerk was still admiring the heft of the box.
“Boy, you must have Napoleon’s entire army in here.”
Harry’s outstretched fingers were twitching. He tried not to grab the package. “Actually,” he said, “just a British Revolutionary War battalion.”
The clerk grinned. “Ha! Redcoats! I love those guys. Soldiers used to dress nice for wars, you know?”
He handed the package over to Harry, and Harry almost dropped it, the weight of it startling. He went through the whole catastrophe in his mind. The box hitting the floor and splitting open, a quarter-million dollars in gold rolling in all directions, people diving on the coins in a free-for-all. He drew the box tight to his chest and glanced over his shoulder. The only other patron was a stout old woman in a purple knit hat who had her arm so deep inside her mailbox it looked like she was trying to deliver a breech calf.
The clerk was still speaking to Harry. “We used to dress nice, too. I had a route, back in the day. Wore the cap with the hard visor, gray wool trousers with the black stripe down the outside, shoes you could see your reflection in, you know? A uniform you were proud of.” He sighed. “I miss uniforms.” He stared into the distance and sighed again. “Well, it all went ka-flooey in the eighties, like most things. Guys come to work now in their long johns, practically.”
The clerk looked over Harry’s shoulder and called out to the woman still fishing in her mailbox. “Miss Pulzniack!” He touched his head and rolled his eyes for Harry, whispering, “She never believes it’s empty, poor thing.” He came around the desk, “Come on now, Miss Pulzniack. Can’t have you getting stuck in there again.”
Harry exited. For the second delivery of gold, he’d be using UPS.
* * *
Twilight. The tree house. The box on the table, waiting.
A sudden little chill up Harry’s spine: a memory of Wolf. Long ago Wolf, drunk, squeezing Harry’s shoulder with a big paw and leaning in. Listen up, Harry, he’d said.
Listen up, Harry. Gold. I’m telling you. When the fucking world goes down the fucking toilet, and it surely will, gold is your lifeboat.
You’re so right, Wolf, Harry thought, staring at the box on the table. Gold is my lifeboat.
Harry glanced ou
t into the woods, as he’d done so frequently since the voice message from Wolf. I’m coming, Harry. I want my share!
All had been silent since then, but Harry could just imagine, if Wolf found out that Harry was converting his money into gold, the silence would turn into howls.
“Harry?”
Harry snapped out of his reverie. Oriana was beside him. Going up and down on her toes in excitement.
“Are you going to open the box? Come on.”
Gold was his lifeboat, and Oriana was his lifeboat, too, and this forest, and this tree house. And Amanda’s hand on his arm at Green Gables.
Was it the first time he’d been touched in a year?
At the office, in and out of the cubicles, surely somebody would have bumped into him, or in a crowded supermarket aisle brushed past him. But Amanda at Green Gables—it was the first time in a year he’d felt the touch of another person. The second time was when Stu Giptner punched him. And in a way, strangely, that moment was a lifeboat, too. Snapping him awake. Felt. These accumulating moments, small and large, lifting him higher and higher out of a dark numb sea.
He had a sudden vision of Wolf in the dark waters and lifeboats capsizing.
“Harry, how about I open it?”
He nodded. Oriana picked up the paring knife and expertly sliced down the taped center of the box. Carefully parted the flaps.
My God, Harry thought. Talk about felt. Now he was the one up on his toes, tense with excitement. He’d never seen a gold coin before except in pirate movies. A beam of light from the setting sun cut through the branches of the beech and ignited the interior of the box. For a blinding instant it was like looking into a teeming treasure chest.
Bedazzled, Harry blinked his eyes and laughed. “Gold!” he exclaimed.
Oriana, too. “Gold!”
What else could you say? Gold! Look at it! Neatly packed in clear plastic tubes—twenty-five tubes, ten coins in each—mundane, orderly and unbelievable. He reached for a tube, hefted it up and down. What did it weigh? A half-pound? A half-pound of hamburger felt like nothing in particular when you picked it up from the meat case. But a half-pound of gold!
He placed the coin tube in Oriana’s hand.
“So heavy,” she breathed.
“Open it,” he said. “Go on. Take one out.”
“No. It has to be you. You have to touch the gold first,” she said. “Open your hand.”
Oriana looking at him, so intently. What did she see? The grum of course. And what would she see when he plinked away the final piece of gold? Would she like him as much when the grum turned into plain old Harry? So complicated, when life had been transformed into a fairy tale and a fairy tale into life.
She tipped the tube and a gold coin fell, end over end, into the palm of his hand. The coin was icy cold and spectacularly bright. On its front, a depiction of Liberty, torch in hand, astride a mountain. He flipped the coin over. On the reverse, a golden eagle hovered above a nest containing a female eagle and her hatchlings, his big wings spread protectively. The great bird was so finely minted Harry could almost see the wind ruffling its wing feathers.
“Wingèd,” whispered Oriana.
“It’s an eagle. Not a red-tailed hawk,” Harry cautioned. Caution for what possible reason, this far along in their golden adventure? Because they were on a tightrope. To make this adventure work, he had to keep things as real as possible. He had to be the adult. Or, at least, try to be.
“Oh, it’s perfect!” Oriana exclaimed, launching herself at him and giving him a big hug.
And here it was, out of nowhere another lifeboat. He looked down at the child, this wonderful creature of the forest. “It is, you’re right,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s perfectly perfect.”
He put the coin in her hand. “Your turn to hold it.”
Oriana stared at the eagle. She traced her fingertips over the wings. “I can feel his feathers,” she whispered. “Really.”
Harry looked over her shoulder. “The detail’s amazing.”
“Touch his wing,” she said.
Reluctantly, he touched the tip of a golden wing. And he felt the feathers, too, and maybe even a little gust of wind moving through the eagle’s wings. He yanked his hand back. It spooked him, how Oriana could get him going. But the point of the gold was not to revel in it and be amazed—it was to get rid of it as fast as possible.
Oriana played with the coin, the light dancing around the room. She sighed. “I know she can’t, but I wish Mom could see this. I wish we could show her.” She looked quickly at him. “But I know we can’t.”
Harry instantly dropped to a knee in front of her. Waited until she met his eyes. “Listen to me. Your mom finds out about this, Oriana? It’s over. The gold will never happen. She’d boot me out of the tree house and out of the forest. She’d kick my butt over the Endless Mountains.”
“She likes you, Harry. After Green Gables, she said so.”
Again he thought, Get rid of the gold as fast as possible. “She likes me, because she doesn’t know who I am.”
“And I like you because I do know who you are,” Oriana said.
He took a deep breath. “Let’s see if everybody still likes everybody at the end of this.” He clapped his hands together and stood up. “And to get to the end, we have to get started.”
He opened The Grum’s Ledger to the illustration of the grum brooding atop his gold mound, and placed the book on the cardboard box filled with real gold. “So,” he said. “We’ve got the grum’s gold. Next question—how do we give it away?”
“Wait,” Oriana said. “What about the lottery ticket? That’s the other big thing.”
Harry smiled. “Knew you’d say that.” He took the faded lottery ticket out of his wallet, held it between two fingers.
“Because it’s magic,” she said, “just like the book. And I was thinking, the numbers...what if—”
He clapped his hand over her mouth. “The numbers mean absolutely nothing. And that’s the key.”
She pushed his hand away. “It’s magic.”
“When I bought this ticket, everything changed. That’s how it’s magic. I bought it, and wham, my world disappeared, and here I am in a tree house in the forest with you. But the actual numbers printed on the ticket? They’re random, picked by a computer.”
Oriana spoke quietly. “I’m sorry it wasn’t all good magic.”
He lifted her chin. “But the good magic is—I’m here, Oriana. It’s the way magic works. You know all the stories. Some of them are very Grimm.”
She half smiled.
“And some of them,” Harry said, “are very grum.”
Full smile. “They start sad,” she said, “but they end happy.”
“If we work together. If your mom doesn’t find out.” If Wolf doesn’t find me, he didn’t say. “And if—” he waggled the lottery ticket “—we listen to the ticket and keep it random. Random and simple. How simple?” He opened a box and pulled out six old burlap seed bags he’d picked out of a bin in a farmers market outside Scranton. “Six numbers on the ticket so...we hand out six bags of gold.”
“Just like in the stories!” Oriana said. “Bags of gold!”
Harry nodded, pleased with himself. “Gotta do it right, right?”
Four of the bags were the size of plastic shopping bags. The other two were twice as large. In The Grum’s Ledger, the grum rids himself of the gold, a little at first, and then at the end begins to “hurl great heaps” into the night.
Harry explained he would start small, and then for the last bags he’d give away the gold in great heaps. An adventure, after all, has to build to an exciting climax.
He held up burlap bag number one. Oriana opened the coin tubes and poured in the gold. The gathering coins clinked and plinked. The bag got heavier and lumpier. When it was full, he
handed it to Oriana.
She gripped it with two hands, her mouth open in wonder. It was fifteen pounds of gold, but it felt like a thousand. She shook the bag. Twirled it. Jingled it. Jangled it. He took it back before she accidentally tossed it through a window. They were not going to toss the gold into the forest like the grum. Harry would dispose of it carefully. Six bags in six different towns.
But how to choose the towns? He had an answer for that, too. Oriana was amazed by him. Harry had an answer for everything. In the light of the kerosene lamp, he seemed to glow. And on the wall behind him, he cast a very big shadow.
The wind blew and the tree house rocked like an old wooden sailing ship. But Harry had gained his sea legs; he was steady on his feet.
They would choose the six towns randomly, Harry said, just as the computer had randomly chosen the six ticket numbers. Random means no pattern. And if there was no pattern to how he handed out the money, it would make it hard for anyone to trace anything back to him. He reached into his back pocket, held up a folded map he’d bought in a gas station convenience store and spread it out on his cot.
Oriana read the words printed in large letters across the top. “Map of Susquehanna County. There are so many towns. How will we pick?”
“Come on. You know how we’re going to pick...” He held open the bag for her.
It took her a second and then she laughed. “We flip a coin!” She reached into the bag.
Oriana held up a coin. When Harry gave her the nod, she stepped forward and flipped it into the air. It landed on the map with a papery thunk, glinting in the light as it twirled in a slow circle and dropped, eagle side up. They went down on their knees beside the cot and looked at the map. Harry nudged the coin aside to see where it had landed.
“Elkdale,” he said. It was one of the smallest towns on the map. Small and random.
“I love that name!” Oriana said. “It sounds enchanted.”
And who in Elkdale would get the gold? Which house would Harry choose? On what doorstep would he leave a burlap bag?