Issue 27: Nov/Dec 2002
I held the chest sitting in the stern, while Tom rowed ashore. A slight move of my hand told him to head off a bit. With a quick look over his shoulder, he turned to land on a sandy section of beach in the little cove. He stepped out over the bow and pulled the boat up on the sand, and I stepped forward to hand him the line, which he carried up farther, putting a rock on it at the end.
“I’ll carry it, Patch,” he said, taking the chest from me, “so you can draw the map.” I took my pencil and journal from my pocket and stopped to draw the beach as a line. Then I picked up the shovel, and climbed out of the boat. When I caught up with him, Tom was standing by a boulder just above the seaweed marking the high tide line. That boulder would be the first landmark on my map.
“Hold on, Tom,” I told him. “I want a look around first.” From the leather pouch on my belt, I removed a small powerful telescope. Scanning the horizon, then moving back and forth, closer and closer, I saw no signs of any people in the area at all. The woods above the beach were thick and green, tropical growth drying in the summer heat. “See that lone tree? Pace it off.”
Taking long, equal strides, Tom started toward the tree that stood alone except for the underbrush: “One, two, three . . . twenty paces,” he counted, fairly accurately, though he did have to make some allowances for getting through the brush. “Say, how far are you meaning to go, Patch? Right here’s good with me.”
“All right, pick a spot 10 paces out from the tree, then,” said I, “but we need a landmark to get the direction.” Turning around and looking out, I found one: away toward the point forming one side of our cove, there were rocks jutting up at the top of the beach, poking up above the undergrowth in a “V” from where we stood. Sighting on that, I took 10 paces. Tom, coming behind, took his 10, stopping an arm’s length short of me. So I marked a spot on the ground between us, splitting the difference. And I started digging. We buried the chest about three feet down.
“We’re partners in this,” Tom declared when it was done. “I take half the map, and you take half.”
I looked over the page in my journal, from the location of the cove down to the directions to the spot we stood on. “Fair enough, Tom. We’ll each take half of the whole then.” And I ripped the page from top to bottom, splitting the map and directions from start to finish. “We’re partners anyway, Tom, aren’t we?”
“I know your folks don’t think much of me,” he replied. “Maybe you’ll be taking their side against me sometime, who knows?”
“I don’t pay them much mind,” I told him. “I’ve stuck by you before, haven’t I? I’m not going to turn on you now.”
By way of answer to that, Tom took his knife from his belt and held it between us. He said with a cold voice, “Give me your hand, Patch.” I held out my hand, palm up. The cold sharp steel bit clean across my palm, splitting the lifeline. Next to mine, Tom’s hand laid open with a matching red surge. Without a spoken word, the two hands turned on edge and met, and we held fast as his blood met mine warm, wet, life-giving and taking.
At the boat, I held my hand in the stinging salt water to stop the bleeding and start the healing. Tom let his bleed. He climbed in first. I shoved off and took the oars.
The treasure in that chest was everything we had at the time that meant anything to us. I had put in my best, and he had put in his closest possessions. We would never, either of us, let on to another soul, its whereabouts.
Funny, we never did get around to going back for it. It was our treasure, for sure, but treasures, like fortunes, are displaced from time to time. Some time along the way we must have known that the real treasure was having each other. We were partners, after all. Same now as we were then when we were 10 years old.
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