(2007) Chasing Fireflies - A Novel of Discovery (32 page)

"You got one of these?"

Sketch shook his head.

Unc squatted on his heels, eye-level with him. "You mean to tell me you don't own a pocketknife?"

Sketch looked at me, then slowly shook his head.

"Well, that ain't right. I reckon you better keep mine."

Sketch looked up, surprised.

Unc twirled his hat in his hands. "Yeah, long as you're a guest in my house, you better hold onto that. It'll cut most fishing line and clip orchids, and you just never know when you might need it." He poked me in the stomach. `Just ask him."

I smiled, reached into my pocket, and pulled out an exact copy of the one he'd just given away. Sketch studied both, his chin lifted almost an inch, and then he slipped it into his pocket.

Kneeling on the floor, he pulled back the board and then reached his arm as far as he could back underneath the tub. We heard something clank a few times, then he slid his arm out, pulling an ivorycolored plastic box with him. It rattled like it was full of marbles. He sat Indian style on the floor, unlocked the little brass clasp on the box, and flipped it open. When he did, both sides met squarely in the middle and turned into a travel-sized chess set. With all sixty-four squares staring up at us, he slid open one of the two drawers and pulled out a baseball card. He rubbed it against his chest, shining the face side, then handed it to Unc.

Unc flipped it over, and his eyes grew big as half-dollars. "Whoa ... where'd you get this?"

Sketch shrugged, pulled one of the bishops from the box, and shined it on his shirt. He studied a few other pieces, then closed the lid, locked it, and tucked the box under his arm.

Unc handed the card back. "Well, don't lose it. By the time you get there, it might pay for half your college education."

The kid shook his head, slid the card into Unc's shirt pocket, and tapped it twice.

Unc said, "No, son, I can't. . ."

The kid poked Unc in the stomach, pointed at his shirt pocket, nodded, and walked out of the bathroom.

Unc looked at me. 'Well, I'll be ..."

"What?" I said.

"He just gave me a Hank Aaron baseball card."

I watched Sketch walk down the hall, pick up the cat, and walk out the front door, the cat in one arm, the box in the other. "Well, I'd say you got the better end of that deal."

Mandy pulled Unc aside. "Mr. McFarland?"

"Yes ma'am."

She smiled, crossed her arms, and rubbed the toe of one running shoe across the shag carpet. "You really think it's safe to give the boy a knife?"

"Ms. Parker?"

"Yes sir."

"Sooner or later, somebody somewhere is gonna have to trust that boy with something." Unc looked through the jagged edges of the trailer window. "Becoming a man don't happen overnight. It's something that's passed down. That boy's behind. But he can catch up." He stuck his thumbs in his pockets and waited.

"But sir. Don't you worry that-"

"Aw, I been cleaning horses' hoofs with it all week, and it's duller than a round ten-penny nail. Probably won't cut a wet noodle."

I knew this, too, was not true, and Unc knew I knew. But I also knew that this was one of those cases where he was right and what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

"You realize that if he cuts himself, and you take him to the emergency room to get stitched up or cleaned up or whatever, child services will be knocking on your door before the Betadine dries."

"Well, then ... looks like I'll just have to doctor him myself."

I laughed, and Mandy looked at me. "What?"

I held up my right hand and showed her the faint outline of a twenty-year-old scar on the first knuckle of my thumb. She shook her head and turned to walk out, pulling her sunglasses down off the top of her head. "I don't even want to know about it."

I turned to follow her and Unc stopped me, whispering, "He cuts himself... even nicking a hangnail, and I'm holding you responsible."

"Thanks."

ncle Willee taught me how to fish from the first summer I came to live with Aunt Lorna and him. We'd fish off the pier in Brunswick, in the tributaries of the Altamaha or the Little Brunswick, in the pools around the Sanctuary, and anywhere else we thought fish would bite. If he wasn't working, and I wasn't in school, then chances were good that we were somewhere wetting a line.

In high school I bought a used kayak, put in at the harbor amongst the shrimp boats, and slipped out through the grass where not even the guys in flatboats could go. That took me along the shoreline for miles. I caught trout, drum, reds, and even hooked up with a tarpon or two. This produced a lot of good dinners during high school.

After my sorry attempt to tell Unc his own story, I needed to clear my head, which is often the point of my fishing. So I woke before daylight, loaded my kayak atop Vicky, and drove to Brunswick. I put in near the Brunswick harbor and started hugging the coastline, wanting to fish the first of the outgoing tide.

Maybe a half mile downriver-still well in sight of town-my paddle struck something in the weeds that was hard but not necessarily rock, and it certainly wasn't an oyster bed. The marsh grass had grown up around it and the mud flats had mounded over it. I dug around and uncovered what looked like a coquina drain. Nearly three feet square, with a two-foot opening, it came out of the hill upon which some of the town sat-including the ZB&T. The mouth was blocked by a tictac-toe of crude iron bars.

Given the Spanish influence, forgotten coquina structures lie scattered all over these islands, so it was not entirely unusual, but it was the bars that really piqued my interest. They were hinged. Meaning they would swing out, but not in. And they were locked. Somewhere further up that two-hundred-year-old "pipe" was a mechanical release that triggered the lock to allow the bars movement. After two centuries in salt water, the bars literally crumbled when I applied pressure. Twenty minutes later, I wrestled the spindly remainders out of the coquina.

Scratching my head, I looked around. Something didn't make good sense. High tide covered up the drain completely. But I also knew that the tidal fluctuation ranged from four to six feet. The reds were circling the schools of shrimp, so I fished a few hours and paddled back in as the tide was halfway out. What I saw answered my questions. While the incoming tide filled the pipe, and high tide covered it up, the outgoing washed it out and allowed it to empty.

I'd heard of Spanish and Moorish forts using this very "technology" to drain the latrines of their coastal forts and castles both stateside and in Europe. So I timed the tides, and knowing I had a couple of hours before the water returned, I strapped on a headlamp and belly-crawled through the pipe. It snaked uphill for what must have been a couple hundred yards. About the time I was totally and completely freaked out and starting to wonder how in the world I was going to crawl out backwards, the pipe turned straight up. More iron bars covered the opening. They, too, were hinged but in working order. I flipped the latch and swung the bars up and open.

I climbed up into a coquina cavern, maybe twenty feet wide and sixty or so feet long. Two rows of columns, maybe ten feet apart, supported the ceiling, which was some twelve feet above my head. The ceiling above me was a twentieth-century combination of steel support beams, rebar, and poured concrete. Again, I scratched my head. Certainly, whoever poured the concrete floor above my head knew the coquina was here. Whether or not they knew about the drain was another matter.

The walls were covered in names and dates carved into the coquina, starting in the 1800s. Most were from the mid-1800s. Some quoted Scripture, while others listed their names and those of their family. On the wall just above the entrance of the drain, someone had carved the word FRiiDOM and drawn an arrow toward the drain.

I, like everyone else in Brunswick, had grown up hearing rumors of the underground railroad that freed slaves from nearby plantations. But with the passage of time, no one ever really knew where truth ended and rumor began. Looking around, I had a feeling that the truth had been buried pretty close to where I stood.

I checked my watch, gauged the tide, and spent some more time studying the walls. In the southeast corner I found a spiral staircase that led up to a wooden trapdoor. I tapped it, but it didn't budge. It was solid wood, and judging by the sound of it, thick. I pressed my back against it and shoved with my legs. It moved. I did it again, and it broke free, scurrying roaches along the wall and covering me in dust. The door must have been six inches thick and weighed seventyfive pounds. Finally, I lifted the hinged door and slammed it against the concrete wall. A small shaft led upward, maybe two feet, to another piece of wood. This one was thinner and looked like plywood. I pushed, and it, too, lifted upward this time more easily. I pulled upward, felt carpet on my hands, and looked around.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

I stood up and found a light switch on the wall. I clicked it on and found myself in a bank vault, maybe ten feet long and eight feet wide. 11 It took me maybe a nanosecond to figure out which one. Unc had never talked much about it, but between the newspaper articles, town gossip, and what I could dig out of him, I'd put together a pretty clear picture of him spending the night in here during the storm that changed his life forever.

Two walls were lined with individual safety deposit boxes, while the opposite walls were lined with much larger ones. At the far end, opposite the door, sat a chair and single table. One last thing caught my eye. A small oriental rug lay crumpled above the carpet-covered door I'd just climbed through. I spread it out over the trapdoor and realized that it was there less for decoration than to cover the cut lines in the carpet. Between the poor lighting and the rug, you'd never know the door existed. Add to that a power outage, and, well ... I left with one question.

Did Unc know about the trapdoor?

I wanted to snoop around some more, but I knew the tide wouldn't let me-unless I wanted to spend the next nine to ten hours in the basement. I stepped into the basement and finally down into the drain, where I heard the echo of water lapping against the coquina. It was time to go.

I crawled quickly, scared a few fiddler crabs in the process, and slid out the mouth of the drain just as the tide was rolling over the lip. I slipped back into my kayak just as the shrimp boats were idling out to sea.

I don't know why I discovered the drain that particular morning. I'd paddled by that spot more than a hundred times since junior high, and why my paddle never banged against the coquina before is beyond me. Proximity to shore, water level, how far I was inserting the paddle on each stroke-all of these things played a part, but that still doesn't explain the mystery of why then and there.

That night, I sprung it on Unc. I was mad, and he could tell from the tone of my voice. "I found something today."

He looked at me over the top of the newspaper. "Yeah?"

"I did some digging today in the basement ... the bank basement."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah ... until today, I thought it was just a cool piece of slave history. How come you never told me about the door under the carpet?"

My question caught him off guard.

He set the paper down and tilted his head, studying me. "Chase, I didn't steal those bonds."

I crossed my arms. "Then you're saying you knew about it?"

" 'Course I knew about it. Jack and I found it as kids."

Pieces started falling into place. "So you knew all along that he took the bonds?"

He nodded.

"Why?"

Still he said nothing.

"Unc?"

"Some things are worth more than money."

I studied him and for the first time, understood that he was hiding something. Something close. "What're you hiding?" Then it hit me. "Oh, I see. He's got something on you, and you both know it."

He didn't move.

"What's he got on you? What's he been using all this time to keep you quiet?"

Unc just nodded and smiled. "You're gonna make one heck of a reporter someday."

"Let me get this straight-you lost your dad, your wife, your son, your job, most everything you ever owned ... heck, even your name." I looked around. "Now what on earth is worth that?"

He studied his fingernails and chewed his lip. "I heard about this guy one time who, back in the fifties, went off into the bush and tried to convert the natives. He got off the plane, and they surrounded him and shoved about eight spears through his chest." He shook his head. "Seems like a waste, don't it? Before he left, somebody asked him why he was going." Unc walked toward the edge of the porch and talked to me over his shoulder. "He said he gave up what he couldn't keep to gain what he couldn't lose."

Unc stepped off the porch, looked around what little world he had left, and then turned and looked at me. "I've tried to remember that." He smiled. "And some days I do."

In the five years since that conversation, I've written over a thousand newspaper articles-several of which have been syndicated nationally. Readers say I have a nose for the truth. Red would be the first among them, which is good because he's my boss. That may be correct, except for the one story where it really matters. Now, when I look at the collage on my wall, I can only scratch my head. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, the truth is elusive. I know the who, the what, the when, and the how, but I have yet to crack the code on the why.