CHAPTER 1
“What do you think it’s gonna look like?”
Trevor asked.
“I don’t know,” Nick replied between
heavy pants of air. “All I know is it’s been two weeks since the flood and Dad
finally gave me permission to come down here!”
“Yeah, it’s gotta be good if our folks
banned us this long!”
Nick Morrison and Trevor Devane were
pedaling furiously down the poorly maintained dirt road that led to the
now-receding Elk River. Giant green pine trees lined the road on either
side, towering over them like big city skyscrapers. The boys gazed up at their
massive spires as they traveled. The wind brushed at their faces as the
slumbering muscles of their legs struggled against the long winter of camping
on the couch with television and video games.
“Watch out for that pothole!” Trevor
called out.
Nick broke out of his trance and swerved
the front tire of his bike, narrowly avoiding a hole so deep he could have
buried a pirate’s treasure in its expanse.
“Whew, that was close! Thanks Trev!”
Trevor looked over at his buddy and
smiled. They both knew that this day only came once a year in Northwestern Montana. It was the first Saturday of spring sunshine with temperatures warm
enough that you could wear a tee shirt comfortably and look forward to the
impending summer. It was mid-May with only a week left of school before the
twelve-year olds would be set free for the summer. For the next three months
their lives would be a new story of discovery, freedom, and adventure—and they
knew it.
The boys rode on in silence, basking in
the glory of the warm weather. Winters like the past one were particularly hard
to take for young adventurers on the verge of entering Junior High. The snow
had been fun for the first few weeks in December: Your first trip down the big
hill in back of the gravel quarry on your toboggan, your first snowman, and of
course your first elaborate multi-room snow fort. It was a wonderful time of
year.
But the novelty wore off in a hurry.
Their Christmas vacation had actually been cut short to make up for the
blizzard that dumped almost four feet of snow in two days in early December.
Snowplows had a difficult time getting around after that, while school buses
were buried in their parking lot.
January and February weren’t much better.
A barrage of Pacific storms had pummeled the Northwest for nearly four weeks,
piling snow deep in the valleys and even deeper on the mountains. March had
been bitter cold, but brought a welcome relief from heavy snow. It was late
April that had caused the whole mess for the town of Elk River,
where Trevor and Nick’s parents made their homes.
Several warm fronts had moved in toward
the end of April, bringing temperatures suddenly into the fifties with full
sunshine beating down. This began a near tidal wave of rushing water out of the
mountains, swelling rivers and streams throughout the Canyon Valley. Elk River,
being at the north end of the valley, was hit the hardest. It had been all over
the local news. Dozens of people that lived along the Elk River had
lost their homes, and three of them lost their lives. The river had crested at
nearly fifteen feet above the norm, stealing property, trees, and the familiar
landscape of the river banks in its fury. Now, nearly two weeks later, the
river had returned to its safely meandering ways with no threat of further
torment.
“What do you think it’s gonna look like?”
Trevor asked again as they approached the river.
“I bet it’ll look like the Grand Canyon!”
Nick replied.
“Nah, not that big.”
“Maybe it’ll turn up some gold nuggets
the size of softballs!” Nick said. “We’ll be rich!”
“We don’t have gold in Montana, dumb
ass. Alaska has all the gold.”
“Uh-uh, my Uncle Arthur said he pulled
one out of Beggar’s Crick that was bigger than a jelly-bean!”
“Well, a jelly-bean is a lot smaller than
a softball, Nick.”
“Still, it would be cool.”
“Yeah,” Trevor finally agreed. “Maybe a
nugget the size of a golf ball?”
“Yeah!” Nick grinned back. “We won’t get
as much money for a golf ball nugget though. I was thinking of getting a Dodge
Viper, but I may have to settle for a dirt bike instead.”
“I want a go-kart, like those down at
Fun-World. We can make a track out at my dad’s farm.”
“Yeah, that would be cool! We could chase
the horses around!”
The boys laughed their way through every
possible scenario where they could put their gold nugget-finding rewards to
use; everything from brand new dirt bikes to buying the school from Principal
Crandall and turning the classrooms into a video game parlor. But the fun and
games were over when they arrived at the river.
“Holy shit,” Trevor said as he skidded to
a stop on his bike, kicking up a weak cloud of dust.
Nick slid in next to him, “Wow, I never
imagined this!”
The riverbanks, as the two boys knew
them, were long gone. All the nice, clean river rocks they had perched their
feet upon while fishing over the years were gone. All that was left was a deep,
muddy canyon littered with fallen trees, broken boards, corpses of animals,
chunks of concrete, and various collections of human trash. The only thing
normal was the Elk River itself, once again quietly wandering its way south in
search of some far off ocean.
“I can’t believe it,” Trevor said. “Our
fishing hole is gone!”
“Everything is gone,” Nick replied, his
eyes surveying the damage done by the flood. “I’m not sure I like this anymore,
Trev.”
“Me neither,” his friend shook his head.
The boys looked on, dejected at the mass
destruction. All the excitement they had expected out of the aftermath of the
flood was gone in an instant. The raging water had devoured everything in its
path, including something that both boys held close to their hearts but never
realized it—the riverbanks themselves. The very path they had walked or ridden
down hundreds of times had been ripped away at the canyon edge. Most of the
comfortable, familiar old trees that had once lined the river were either
missing or toppled against one another like fallen soldiers. It was obvious
that a battle of nature had taken place on this land, and the river had won the
war.
The boys dropped their bikes where they
had skidded to a stop. Almost like sleepwalkers, Nick and Trevor plodded along
what little remained of their path to the river. Neither said a word to the
other, each lost in his own thoughts as their sneakers splashed through the few
remaining puddles in the trail. At the edge of the canyon, they stopped in
synchronicity.
“Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s the rock I hit my head on when I
crashed my bike last summer?”
“I dunno.”
“I was hoping to show it to my kids
someday. I got sixteen stitches in that crash. Most ever.”
“Yeah,” was all Nick could say.
While racing down to the river the last
summer, Trevor had lost control of his bike on this very path. Thinking back,
Nick remembered it vividly, as if it had happened just a few days ago. The
weekend before the Fourth of July, the two boys had decided to try an afternoon
of fishing on the Elk. They loaded up their bicycles with a sack lunch, fishing
poles and a tackle box and set off in a dead race for the river. Loser has to
eat the others first worm! They had raced along the same crumbling and potted
road that brought them to the river on this day. It was neck and neck as they
dodged potholes and rocks in the road. Nick remembered looking over at Trevor.
While blinking the sweat out of his own eyes, he could see the moisture
glistening off of Trevor’s face and catching in the long dark ringlets of his
hair. He remembered their eyes meeting in defiance of each other and the thrill
of the competition. Side by side they entered the final thirty yards, the
long-trodden path from the road through the thin line of trees to the river’s
edge. Their foot pedals and elbows bumped once as they rounded a turn and
Trevor had taken the lead on the inside.
Nick had dug deep to keep up, his feet a
blur of rotation, but it seemed like Trevor had caught some bizarre kind of
tailwind as the trail began its final descent to the river. Nick could tell
Trevor was going too fast to make the final turn before the river’s edge. “Slow
down, Trev!” he had shouted. His buddy had gamely fought the handlebars for
control but he overshot the curve by a wide margin. He crashed hard into the
trunk of a pine tree, tumbling through the air like a deformed bowling ball.
Nick skidded to a stop behind him, fearing his friend might be dead. He ran to
where Trevor lay, head broken open on a large stone protruding from the mossy
soil. His blood had already painted the rock a dark crimson. With his friend
unresponsive to his pleas, Nick had ridden like the wind back home where his
mother had called 9-1-1. It had been a long, scary wait in the Canyon County
hospital that night, but Trevor pulled through like the trooper that he was. He
had suffered only a concussion and a few cuts and bruises. Two days later the
hospital had sent him home with his head still wrapped in gauze.
“I suppose the rock’s halfway to Knight Falls by now,”
Trevor groaned. “We’ll never see it again.”
Nick put his arm around his buddy to
console him, despite his own feelings of sadness and loss. “Maybe we should
just go back home,” he suggested.
“No, it’s okay. This is our first
adventure of the summer, let’s see what we can find down there.”
CHAPTER 2
The two boys scrambled down the steep
embankment where the flood waters had torn the ground asunder. Their feet
slipped and skidded as they pin-wheeled their arms to keep their balance. Loose
rocks slid along with them, clacking off of other stones in their path with a
sound like popcorn popping. At the bottom, Nick and Trevor stood with their
hands on their hips waiting for their heartbeats to slow down.
“Bank’s as high as my house,” Trevor
pointed out, looking back at the steep incline they had just come down.
“Higher, I think,” Nick replied.
They turned back toward the river and
carefully picked their way through the debris. If the familiar rocks along the
river still existed, they were buried under at least a foot of drying mud. The
broken tree trunks and branches that weren’t lying flat reached instead for the
sky at all angles—as if stretching out for a hand that would pull them to
safety. The two boys carefully wound their way around the worst of them and
climbed over the easier ones.
“Hey, I found something,” Trevor said,
bending over. He grasped a black handle that stuck out from the mud and pulled.
A dirt-filled metal coffee percolator pulled loose with a sucking sound. Trevor
looked at his buddy, smiling. “Someone didn’t get their coffee this morning!”
“Cool,” Nick said. “Can I see it?”
Trevor handed his find over to Nick who
tipped it upside down and shook as much of the wet dirt out as he could. He
brushed at the surface to expose the bare metal. The bottom was discolored by
thin strips of rainbow, scars from the flames which had heated it. “It’s old,
that’s for sure,” Nick commented. His small hands continued to caress the
percolator for a moment as his eyes glazed over. “This belonged to ‘Lightning’
Rod Whitley,” he said with confidence.
“That crazy old trapper that always gets
hit by lightning? What makes you think it was his?”
“Dunno. Just do.”
“Is he still missing?”
“Yep, Dad said his old shack got washed
out in the flood.”
“Probably so drunk he never knew what hit
him.”
Nick tossed the old coffee pot back into
the mud where Mother Nature had placed it. The boys continued to pick their way
through the destruction, finding everything from a tattered old Cabbage Patch
doll, to a hairbrush, to an automobile license plate. Some things found their
way into the boy’s pockets; Nick found a porcelain figurine of a cavalry
soldier on a horse while Trevor snagged a rusted old pocket knife and the bowl
off a mud-caked tobacco pipe.
“What are you gonna do with that?” Nick
had asked his friend of the pipe. “Take up smoking?”
“Maybe,” Trevor smiled. “I know where my
big brother stashes his pot!”
Nick laughed, “No way, dude. You don’t
wanna be an idiot like your brother!”
Trevor joined in his laughter. “That’s
true! But just in case,” he patted the bulge of the pipe in his pocket.
They continued up the river a little
further in search of other treasures. The whole landscape looked alien to Nick;
there were no familiar landmarks left to help them keep their bearings. The
further they walked, the more uncomfortable they became with the carnage around
them.
“You think we should turn back?” Nick
asked.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I just got a weird
feeling. Plus, I’m not sure I remember where we came down. Everything looks the
same now.”
Trevor slowly spun around in a circle,
taking the whole scene in. “It does all look the same now. Let’s just go up a
little further, then we can go back. I can remember where we came down.”
Nick hesitated, “Are you sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure! I got a built in
compass,” he said, one finger tapping his head.
“Oh yeah? Is that why you got lost in
Willowbury Woods that one time?”
“Hey, gimme a break! I was only ten
then!”
“Yeah, and what are you now? A whopping
twelve?”
“Hey, a guy can learn a lot in two
years.”
Nick shook his head. “You, my friend, are
such a dickweed!”
“Takes one to know one!” Trevor’s tongue
slithered out and waggled at Nick.
“Don’t call me a dickweed!” Nick warned
and went for a headlock on his buddy. Trevor ducked his assault and made a run
for it. Nick followed in hot pursuit, laughing all the way. “I’m gonna nail your
butt when I catch you, Devane!”
“You couldn’t catch me if you were
driving that Viper in your dreams!” Trevor called back. The boy wound his way
through fallen trees and other piles of debris as his friend panted a few steps
behind him. His impromptu path through the river bottom led them back toward
the deep cut of the canyon wall. The bank was much steeper here as a natural
bend in the river forced the raging waters to change direction. Spotting
something of interest ahead, Trevor slid to a stop in the still damp soil. Nick
quickly caught up to him, jumping on his back and reigning fake blows down upon
his head.
“Gotcha, Devane!” Nick yelled.
“Wait, hold up,” Trevor said as Nick
relinquished his hold on his friend’s skull. “What’s that?” he said pointing.
Against the steep cut in the canyon, the
boys could see a large wooden crate, broken in half and upturned against the
nearly vertical dirt wall. It appeared to be one end of a long rectangular box,
the splintered boards at the center pointing at the sky like two broken
fingers. The wood was dark with moisture and mold, nearly the same color as the
soil in which it rested.
“What do you think it is?” Trevor asked.
“Probably just an old ‘frigerator case or
something.” Nick said.
“Could be. Must be old though, ‘cause
they’ve been using cardboard for as long as I can remember.”
“Yeah, remember when your folks got that
new fridge a few years ago? Man, we made such a cool fort out of that thing.”
“Yeah, until you forgot to remind me to
drag it into the garage before that rainstorm!”
“Remind you? What am I? Your momma?”
“Well, you do kind of look like her!”
Nick slugged Trevor in the arm as the two
boys playfully teased each other. “Let’s go see what it is!”
“Last one there is a steaming road
apple!” Trevor called as he made a mad dash for the old crate. He could hear
Nick’s footsteps plodding through the moist dirt behind him a few paces, his
lungs heaving air in and out. Trevor was determined to beat his friend to their
destination. “Gonna kick your ass, Viper boy!” he said as he splashed through a
large puddle of dirty standing water.
“That’s what you think—oof!”
Trevor heard Nick hit the ground behind
him. It was a good solid thud, like a sack of potatoes hitting the grass in the
yard.
“Ow—ow—ow!” Nick cried out in pain. “I
think it’s broken!”
Trevor stopped and looked back. Nick was
down in the drying mud on the edge of the puddle, rolling around holding his
ankle. Trevor’s heart skipped a beat in terror. “Nick! You okay?” he called as
he ran back toward Nick’s writhing body.
“I think my ankle’s broken,” Nick wailed.
Trevor slid to a stop beside his friend.
“Hold on buddy, maybe it’s only sprained. Let me see it.” One side of Nick’s
tee shirt and pants were covered in mud, while some of it streaked his face. Tears
formed new paths through the muck on his cheeks as he held his knee up near his
chest. Both hands were clutched around his ankle in a death-grip.
“I think the bone is poking out!” Nick
cried.
“Hold on, hold on,” Trevor said, bending
over his fallen comrade. “Move your hands so I can see.”
“I can’t, I can’t!”
“Move your damn hands so I—ayuuuup!”
Nick’s hands shot off his ankle in a blur, grabbing Trevor by the collar of his
shirt. One second later Trevor found himself crashing into the mud puddle like a
cannonball! Dirty water spewed in all directions from the impact; the majority
of it felt like it went right straight up Trevor’s nostrils. He coughed and
spit grimy spools of saliva and snot, trying to clear his breathing passages.
“Wha—fuck?” was all he could manage
before the sound of Nick’s bellowing laughter began ringing in his ears. He
blinked away the dirty water from his eyes, seeing his best friend, his most
prized possession, cackling and crowing like a rooster at his expense.
“Ha! Gotcha Devane!” Nick was back on his
feet, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “I’m gonna win this race!” With
that, he dashed off toward the old wood crate grounded against the canyon wall.
So much for a compound fracture, Trevor thought. Despite his posterior resting
in two inches of muddy water, he could only laugh at his friend’s clever gag.
“You got me this time, ‘Nicholette’
Morrison! But paybacks are a bitch! Remember that, girly man!”
CHAPTER 3
“You’re looking a bit wet, Devane,” Nick
told his friend as he came sidling up, still dripping muddy brown water.
“Just wait, butt-wipe. You’re gonna pay
for that one!” Trevor feigned a couple of punches at Nick.
The two boys were standing at the foot of
the bank, the crate lodged in the soil above them. Much of the wood box was
buried in the mud of the canyon wall. The boys gauged it to be at least a six
foot crate, possibly eight, broken in half. The open end looked up on the
nearly cloudless afternoon sky, about ten feet above their heads.
“What do you suppose is in it, Trev?”
Nick asked.
“Dunno. Maybe pirate’s treasure?” Trevor
said.
“Pirates? In Montana?”
“Mountain pirates! Ayyy, Matey!” Trevor
growled with one eye squinted shut.
“What a dork,” Nick shook his head. “I’m
gonna climb up and take a look.”
“Be careful you don’t get your dress
dirty.”
Nick shot an evil glance back at his
friend before turning his attention to the river bank. The wall was nearly
vertical, littered with twisted, exposed tree roots drying in the sun. Nick
reached up and grabbed a root that he hoped would hold his weight. He began
pulling himself up with his arms, while his feet fought to find traction in the
wet, slippery dirt.
“Come on, you can do it Nicky!” Trevor
called out encouragement.
The muscles in Nick’s arms strained against
the force of gravity on his body. Trevor could see his face turning red and
veins popping out on his blushing neck. Nick managed to get his foot hooked on
a smaller tree root, and boost himself up a little further. He looked up. The
opening of the box was still two feet away. His groping hand searched for
another root to grab for leverage.
“Use that rock, Nick,” Trevor pointed to
a large rock that had been half exposed by the raging waters of the flood. “It
looks sturdy enough.”
Nick nodded his head and stretched the
limits of his muscles to grasp the protruding stone. His splayed fingers
finally found a purchase on its rough exterior. Again, he strained to pull
himself up inch by inch. Just a foot short of the top he could hear Trevor down
below yelling, “You’re almost there! Almost there!” With a final grunt of
exertion, Nick put all his energy into the effort. Then the rock came loose.
“Lookout!” Nick yelled as he plummeted
back down the bank. His feet landed near the bottom and caught in the mud, flinging
him into a backwards somersault. At the bottom, Trevor performed an
Olympic-caliber hurdle to avoid first the rock that Nick had torn loose and
then Nick himself. His friend crashed to a final stop laying face down in the
dirt.
“Wow. Nick, you okay?”
Nick groaned, but with a smile. “Man,
that one hurt!”
“No doubt, you sure went ass over
teakettle!”
Nick slowly rose back to his feet. He did
a quick damage control check, but nothing seemed to be out of place. He
considered himself lucky that the landing was in the soft dirt exposed by the
flood rather than bare river rocks. He brushed himself off, and looked back up
at the crate.
“Well, that didn’t work.”
“How ‘bout you go up and get a foothold
on that first strong root,” Trevor replied. “Then you can give me a boost from
that position.”
Nick shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”
He climbed back up to the spot on the
bank where he felt he had the most support, and then reached down to help
Trevor up. Trevor set his foot in the same stirrup-shaped root that Nick was
standing on. “Hope this holds us both,” he commented.
“Yeah, me too!” Nick said as he cupped
his own stirrup with his hands. “Alley oop, my friend.”
Trevor dropped one foot into Nick’s
outstretched arms and pulled himself up. Fortunately for Nick, both boys were
able to lean against the slight angle of the dirt bank so he didn’t have to
support all of Trevor’s weight. Nick squeezed his eyes shut against the
miniature landslide of dirt and rocks that Trevor’s movement broke loose. “I
can’t see,” Nick said. “How close are you?”
“I’m right there,” Trevor replied. His
eyes were even with the open end of the crate, but he could barely see inside.
“I can’t see inside though. Hang on, I’m gonna reach in.”
“Your luck it’ll be a bear trap in there,
Devane!”
“Don’t remind me!”
Trevor blindly reached inside the crate
and fished around with his arm. He could feel dried mud and something that felt
like cloth. “I’ve got something, Nick!”
“What is it?”
Trevor yanked at the material as it
slowly tore free. One end broke loose first, then finally the rest of it, still
wadded up in a muddy ball. “Looks like a shirt. A girl’s shirt. But I’m not
sure, it’s all wadded up.”
“Toss it down, we can look at it later.
What else is in there?”
Trevor tossed the wadded up material, still
sticky with moist soil, down the river’s floor. He reached back into the crate
and groped for more treasure. “All I can feel is dried mud. There may be more
in there, but I can’t reach. Can you boost me higher?”
“No way, dude,” Nick panted. “Let’s get down
for a few. I need to rest. My arms are about to break off!”
“Okay, let me down.”
Nick eased Trevor back down and the boys
jumped the final two feet to the river bottom. They stood over the wad of
material they had managed to wrest from the box above, hands on hips, chests
heaving from the exertion. A cool breeze went to work drying the sweat from
their foreheads.
“Whew… I thought my… arms were gonna fall
off,” Nick said.
“That’s ‘cause my dick weighs… eighty
pounds alone.” Trevor grinned.
“Yeah, maybe with an anvil tied to it!”
“No, really. I weighed it on my mom’s
bathroom scale a couple of days ago. Seventy-nine and three-quarters pounds.”
Nick scowled in disbelief. “You weighed
it?”
“Sure did!”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Why? ‘Cause you’ve never seen a trouser
sausage that big?”
“No, because they don’t make a magnifying
glass and tweezers that small!”
“Ha, ha, Morrison. You’re just jealous,”
Trevor laughed.
The boy’s attention returned to their
find. The material was a light tan, but may have been white at one time. It was
hard to tell through all the mud still caked to the surface. Some of the edges
displayed a tattered lace weave and one lone pearl button poked up out of a
clod of dried dirt.
“Looks like a girl’s shirt alright,” Nick
agreed.
“Probably just an old box of clothes,”
Trevor replied, bending down. He began pulling at the fabric, breaking loose
bits of soil. He stretched the cloth straight into a shape that was
unmistakably a girl’s blouse with lacing on the front. From the fabric something
dropped and hit the ground with a muffled clink.
“What was that?” Nick asked.
Trevor reached out and picked up the
object, brushing at the clinging mud. He turned it around in his fingers.
“Looks like a bracelet. Let’s go wash it off in that puddle back there.”
Moments later Nick watched on as Trevor
shook the bracelet in a few inches of standing water. He wiped it off on his
already soiled shirt and held it up in the sunlight. A metal plaque at the
center of the jeweled loop glistened with the reflection. On either side of the
plaque were various small turquoise, ruby and agate stones held together by a
flexible, twisted gold band..
“It’s personalized,” Trevor said. “WENDY.
Pretty cool, huh?”
“Yeah, pretty cool. For a ladies bracelet
anyway.”
Trevor nodded. He was staring at the
nameplate on the bracelet when his eyes suddenly widened. Watching him, Nick
thought he saw a light bulb go on above his buddy’s head. “Uh-oh,” Nick said.
“Dude! I can give this to Wendy
Burkhalter! I wanna get into her pants so bad.”
“Buddy, she’s so far out of your league
it’s not funny.”
“Hey, you never know. With a beautiful
bracelet like this, maybe I could win her heart!”
“Well, I guess you could give it a shot.
But even if you do win her heart, I wouldn’t advise getting in her pants just
yet.”
“Why not?”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with what
you found in there!” Nick razzed him.
“I would too!”
“How do you know?”
“Remember? Out in my dad’s shed?” Trevor
grinned like a fool, his eyebrows dancing up and down on his forehead.
Nick chuckled at the memory.
It had been last summer. Trevor’s dad had
set the boys to work on the lawn and trimming some of the bushes in their yard
for extra money. While searching for the hedge clippers, Trevor had made a
surprising discovery at the back of his father’s tool shed; a hefty stack of
magazines called Juggs, Oui, and Hustler. The boys had looked at each other
like they had just discovered gold. They had grabbed a few of them and made a
mad dash for Willowbury Woods where they would be less likely to be caught. As
they oohed and awed over the photos in the magazines, they received an
education that a boy just couldn’t get in grade school. In full graphic detail!
Although they were far too young to get the same kind of stimulation they would
in a couple more years, those magazines had gone further in satisfying their
curiosity than they could have ever imagined.
An hour later, they returned to Trevor’s
house and replaced the magazines just as Mr. Devane had come storming out the
back door demanding to know why the lawn hadn’t been cut yet. They had lost a
dollar each over that little escapade. Trevor’s father refused to pay them the
full five dollars after running off to play for an hour before the work was
done. Still, it was well worth that dollar in both boys’ opinions. That was the
day they both became men—in their eyes anyway.
“Too bad Dad caught Todd looking at them
right after that,” Trevor said, dejected.
“That’s what you get for telling your
dopey big brother about them,” Nick scolded. Trevor nodded agreement. “Hey,
let’s see what else is in the box!”
Trevor quickly brightened up. “Yeah!
Maybe we’ll find some bras and panties too!”
“You are one sick puppy, Devane,” Nick
said.
Trevor stuffed the Wendy bracelet deep into
the front pocket of his jeans and picked up the girl’s shirt the bracelet had
fallen out of. “You wanna keep the shirt?” Trevor asked.
“Why would I want that dirty old girl’s
shirt?”
“Might go well with your skirt!”
Nick playfully punched his buddy in the
shoulder.
“Ouch. You broke my arm!” Trevor
complained in mock pain.
“Shut up, Devane. This time you give me a
boost.”
Trevor got into position on the steep
bank and helped lift Nick up. Being two inches taller and a little bit
stronger, Trevor was able to lift his buddy up several inches further than he
had been able to get in their last attempt. Nick’s head was above the level of
the opening to the crate, allowing him to see much of its contents—which was
mostly dried mud. Poking through, he saw remnants of more material, something
plaid and a sheath of denim that might have been from a pair of pants.
“What’ve you got?” Trevor called out
below.
“All I see is mud and clothes, Trev. I
think you were right. This is just an old clothes chest.”
“Well, dig around if you can. We found
the bracelet didn’t we?”
“Yeah. I’m going in as far as I can.”
Nick hooked his arms around the edge of the crate, the ragged edges of wood
cutting into his pits. “Ouch,” he commented as splinters threatened to tear
into his flesh. With both arms he fished around inside the crate, pulling the
cloth loose from its mooring in the drying river bed soil. Below the plaid
material, he spotted something glittering in the afternoon sun.
“Trev! I think there is gold in here! I
can see a gold nugget!”
“See, I told you there was something more
than clothes in there! Pull it out!”
Nick stretched his arm as far as it would
go, his fingers stopping just a few inches short of their prize. “I can’t
reach! Boost me higher!”
Trevor strained to lift Nick another couple
of inches, breath hissing through his gritted teeth. Nick re-situated himself
atop the crate’s edge and reached again for the gold nugget. He felt his finger
brush the little glimmer of gold and slide away. Again he adjusted his position
and made another attempt. The old wooden box groaned with the pressure of his
weight, and slowly began tipping out of the thick soil.
“Ack, the crate’s coming loose!” Nick
yelled to Trevor, but it was too late. The river bank lost its hold on the
crate as it tore loose from its dock and toppled over. It fell, crashing to the
riverbed, taking Nick and Trevor with it. Being at the bottom, Trevor was able
to jump and tumble on the ground below. As he rolled to a stop he heard the
crate hit the ground with a crack, the rotting boards snapping with the impact.
Then the thud of his best friend’s body as it found the earth from nearly ten
feet in the air.
Trevor looked up to see that Nick landed
just a few feet away, lying on his side. His face had turned some shade between
crimson and purple. His mouth was agape, his eyes wide. Trevor could hear the
slow scratching sound of Nick’s lungs trying to draw a breath from the air
around him. He bounded to his friend’s side, placing a hand gently on his
upturned shoulder.
“Nick? You okay, man? Nicky? Breathe,
man, breathe. Just little breaths at first!”
Nick gasped again at the air, this time
sucking a little bit in. The next time, he got a little more. Slowly his
breathing accelerated until he was actually heaving in the cool spring air.
What little natural color he had in his face slowly began to return. Trevor
watched the transformation in awe.
“Buddy, I thought I lost you there.”
Nick offered a wane smile. “Nope. Not.
Me,” he managed between gasps. “Tougher… than the shoe…leather. On… Old Lady
Crandall’s… face.”
Trevor helped Nick sit up as his lungs
eventually replenished the lost oxygen. Nick moved his arms and his legs, again
grateful that he had landed on soft dirt and not stone. His shoulder and ribs
were a little sore, but other than that he had survived the second tumble of
the day with little injury. “Now I know what Troy Aikman must have felt like,”
he said.
“Well, if your Cowboys knew how to make a
good offensive line, the poor guy wouldn’t have had to retire!”
“Yeah, I know,” Nick agreed. “Help me
up.”
Trevor reached down and grasped his
buddy’s hand. He began pulling Nick to his feet when he suddenly stopped. Nick
saw Trevor’s eyes widen as they stared directly over his shoulder.
“What’s wrong—oof!” Nick sat back down in
the dirt hard as Trevor’s hand lost its grip with his own. “Thanks a lot,” he
was about to say before Trevor interrupted him.
“Holy shit, Nick. Look!” he pointed.
Nick spun his head around to see what had
brought such shock to his friend’s face. Although his breathing had almost
returned to normal, Nick’s lungs suddenly found themselves struggling for air
once again. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The fallen crate had dumped its
contents in a stream of litter across the river bed floor. In that litter of mud
and tattered fabric were various curves and cylinders of bone poking out from
the debris.
And, at the head of the stream, was one
grinning, human skull staring back at them.
© 2005 Ryan Seek. All rights reserved.
"I am influenced by those I admire." - Ryan Seek