The Box and the Bone (6 page)

“That’s what I remember too. And they were the same brassy color, instead of blackish brown like the other coins.”

“And so,” Carlos said, “if they
are
half eagles they’re real valuable, huh?”

Eddy pointed to the page. “Just read that,” he said. “Right there. Right there where it says six thousand dollars. Some of the rare ones are worth as much as six thousand dollars.”

“I thought you said four thousand.”

“Well, that was before I finished reading. See, the thing is, a lot of it depends on other stuff. Like on special little markings that mean they were part of a certain minting. Like, see this one in the picture that has a little letter D right here near the bottom. Sometimes a letter like that makes them a lot more valuable. And other things make a difference too. Like what year they were minted and how worn out they are.”

Eddy sighed and hit the page in frustration. “I just wish I’d looked at those coins more carefully. You know, when we opened the box.”

Carlos wished he had too. But he’d been kind of nervous at the time, thinking that Bucky might come back and find out that they’d broken the padlock and looked in the box. And besides, he’d had no idea then that they were so valuable. “Well, we’ll just have to find them so we can look at them again,” he said.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Eddy looked at his watch. “Hey, look what time it is. Bucky should be up by now. We’d better get over there.”

Eddy shoved the coin books back under his bed and was starting for the door when Carlos pulled him to a stop.

“Uh—wait a minute, Eddy,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about … I mean, somebody hid those coins. So maybe they still belong to that person. You know, like legally and all?”

Eddy nodded slowly, biting his lower lip. “Yeah, I did think about that,” he said finally. “But what I decided was—that box was buried a long, long time ago. And if the person who put it there were still alive he’d have been back by now to dig it up. What I decided was that the person who buried it must be dead by now. Don’t you think so?”

While Carlos was still deciding what to say, Eddy began to grin. “Besides,” he said, “I can just see us telling Bucky that we have to start looking for the real owner. I mean, can’t you guess what old Brockhurst would say to that?”

What Eddy said was true, all right, and it made Carlos feel a little better. And then he said something that was even truer. “Anyway, there’s no use wasting time worrying about it right now. There’ll be plenty of time to worry about stuff like that after we find it again. Right?”

Carlos sighed with relief. “Right,” he said.

They were partway down the hall when Eddy said, “Remember, don’t say anything to Bucky about coins.”

“Oh yeah, no coins. Just gold nuggets. Bucky is sure it’s gold nuggets.”

“Yeah, big fat nuggets,” Eddy said, and they marched down the hall whispering, “Nuggets, nuggets, nuggets!”

Eddy stopped in the kitchen long enough to ask his mom if it was all right for him to go to Bucky’s with Carlos, and then they took off running. They were just starting across the cul-de-sac when Carlos grabbed Eddy, pulled him to a stop, and pointed back toward the Grants’ front yard. Nijinsky, the Grants’ collie dog, was lying on the front lawn gnawing on a bone. A great big, dirty, stinking, very familiar-looking bone.

B
ACK AT HER OWN
house, Athena parked the wagon in the driveway and went in the back door. It was nice and warm in the kitchen. Ari was still eating his breakfast, and Diane, their mother, was at the stove making herself a poached egg. Diane was dressed for work already, in her painting clothing—a green sweater with blue and purple painty spots, and blue jeans smeared with orange and yellow. When she saw Athena she picked her up and hugged her. Snuggling her face against Athena’s cheek she danced around the kitchen singing, “How’s my beautiful baby?” over and over again in English, and some other things in Greek.

Ari made a snorting noise. “Beautiful?” he said. “She looks like a mess to me. Her playsuit is dirty, not to mention on backwards, and her ponytail’s all crooked.”

Diane pushed Athena away and looked at her. Then she took the rubber band off Athena’s ponytail, smoothed it down with both hands, and put the band back on. Cocking her head to one side she said, “There. That’s better.” Then she ran her hands down Athena’s arms and said, “You feel cold, baby. Here, wear this. This is nice and warm.”

Diane took off her painty green sweater, put it on Athena, buttoned it all the way down the front, and rolled up the sleeves into big fat doughnuts around Athena’s wrists. Then she kissed her three more times and went back to her poached egg. Athena ran down the hall to the bathroom.

When Athena got back to where her wagon was waiting in the front yard she was feeling better. Diane’s sweater was painty and it had raggedy elbows but it was nice and warm—and long. So long it went down almost to her feet. Feeling nice and warm made Athena forget about being angry at Aurora and Ari, and the wagon, and Muffy and Susie. She began to sing her favorite song again as she went across the lawn.

“Kato sto yialo. Kato sto periyiali,”
she sang as the wagon bounced behind her across the bumpy lawn. When she got to the sidewalk she stopped to think.

Yesterday, she’d played all the things she could think of about the fishpond house. Today it might be more fun to find someplace new. Someplace where she could make an even better house for her doll family. Maybe there would be a better place at Beaumont Park. Turning the other way she started down the sidewalk toward the avenue. The park would be a good place to play.

But Athena had gone down Beaumont Avenue for only two blocks when it started to rain. Just a few big fat drops at first, but then more and more. She was almost to the big church where Susie’s family went every Sunday, when the rain began to come down very hard and fast. People were coming out of the church, putting up umbrellas, and hurrying to their cars. Athena stopped under a tree and watched until the people were gone.

The rain was coming down harder and harder all the time. Big drops were coming right through the tree and falling on Athena and her wagon and the doll family too. She began to run. With the wagon banging along behind her she ran up the sloping ramp that led to the porch in front of the church door.

It was better under the little roof. Pulling the wagon up next to the church’s big double doors, Athena picked up the doll family one by one and dried them off on the sleeve of Diane’s sweater. Then she leaned against the door and waited for the rain to stop.

But it didn’t stop, and after a while the wind began to blow so hard that the rain started coming right in under the little roof. Athena was leaning back further to get away from the rain when suddenly the door began to move—and when she pushed harder it moved some more. Pulling her wagon behind her, she went on in.

Inside the big church doors there was a room with tables and pictures around the walls, and some other doors that led to an even bigger room with a very high ceiling. Leaving the wagon in the first room, Athena went on in to look around. It was very beautiful inside the church. She looked at all the benches for sitting on and at all the statues and pictures and candles. Then she went back to the smaller room to wait for the rain to stop.

While she was waiting Athena looked at the pictures and notices on the walls and tried to read what they said. She could read words like
you
and
call
and
school
and
children
.

The word
children
was on a box that sat up on short wooden legs near the front door. There was a picture of children on the box too. Lots of skinny little children with sad eyes and thin, hungry faces. Athena looked at the picture of the sad, sick children for a long time, and at the box behind it.

The box was like a bank for saving money, with a narrow hole in the top to put the money in and with one wall made of glass so that you could see how much money was inside. The money was all mixed up together so it was hard to tell, but it didn’t seem like there was very much. Not enough to buy food for all the skinny little children in the picture. Looking at the little bit of money made her feel sad.

After a while Athena remembered that she had some money too. She had two pennies in her playsuit pocket. She pulled up Diane’s sweater, reached into her pocket, and dropped the two pennies into the hole on the top of the box. It was fun dropping the pennies into the hole. And afterwards, when she looked at the pictures of the hungry children and then at her own two pennies lying there in the box with the other money, she didn’t feel quite so sad.

Athena had to wait in the church for a long time. Every now and then she went to the church door to see if the rain had stopped. After a long time it almost did. The sidewalks were still wet and the sky was gray and cloudy, but not much rain was coming down. She closed the door quickly and went back inside to get her wagon and the doll family.

The family had been waiting very patiently. Athena picked up the mother doll and the little girl doll and made them sit down beside each other. “Look,” she made the mother doll say, “look baby. The rain is stopping. We better go home right now.”

“Oh no,” the girl doll said. “I don’t want to go home yet. I want to stay here in the church. Let’s go see all the statues and candles. And the money for hungry children. I want to see the money box for hungry children.”

Athena played with the girl doll for a little while longer before she finally pulled her red wagon out through the church’s doors. The rain was all gone, the sun was shining, and she was feeling especially happy.

W
HEN CARLOS AND EDDY
saw Nijinsky with the bone, they forgot, for the moment, about hurrying over to Bucky’s. Instead they went back and squatted down on each side of Nijinsky to do a more careful inspection. Just to be sure the bone was the same one that they’d found the night before, buried where the treasure chest had been.

Carlos and Eddy leaned closer. With some dogs it might be dangerous to get so close in a bone-chewing situation, but with Nijinsky you didn’t have to worry. He only wagged his tail and stopped chewing long enough to let them have a good look.

“Yep,” Carlos said. “It’s definitely the same shape, and see all that gunk stuck to it? I remember all that gunk.”

Eddy wrinkled his nose and made a gagging noise. “And the smell too. I definitely remember the smell.”

“Well, I guess Nijinsky was the one who dug up the treasure. You know, when he was burying the bone.”

“It looks that way,” Eddy said. “At least we know that he must have been the one to put his bone there.”

Carlos sighed and nodded. “Well, anyway, I guess we better go tell Bucky.”

“Yes. I guess so,” Eddy said.

As they started back across the cul-de-sac Carlos asked, “What do you think he’ll do to Nijinsky when he finds out?”

Eddy grinned. “Oh, he’ll give him the third degree.” He got a mean look on his face and said, “Okay, dog. You better start talking—or else.”

“Yeah,” Carlos said. “Or else—the torture chamber. Bring out the red-hot pokers, Igor. And the thumbscrews.”

Eddy did an Igor the hunchback number and whined, “Too bad, Boss. No can do thumbscrews. No thumbs.”

They were still laughing when they rang the Brockhursts’ bell and Bucky shot out the door.

“Okay, dudes,” he said, “let’s go. I’m ungrounded. Let’s go find that treasure. Let’s go dig up …”

Carlos had been saying “er, er, er” for quite a while before Bucky shut up long enough for them to tell him about Nijinsky and the bone.

As soon as they’d convinced him that it was, for sure, the very same bone, Bucky said. “Well, all right. That means … Well, I guess that means that …”

“Well, for one thing it means that Nijinsky has been back to the Pit since we were there last night,” Carlos said.

“That’s right,” Eddy agreed. “But that’s about all it means for sure. It doesn’t prove that he had anything to do with—”

“What do you mean?” Bucky said. “Sure he did. His bone was in the hole, wasn’t it? And our treasure chest was missing from that same hole. That sounds like a pretty good clue to me. Come on. Let’s go look. Maybe he buried the treasure somewhere else in the Pit.”

Carlos didn’t think that was too likely. That would have to mean that Nijinsky dug up the treasure and carried it away and buried it someplace else. And
then
came back and buried his bone in the first hole. Not too likely. Nijinsky seemed like a fairly smart dog, as dogs go, but not all that smart. But there was no use arguing with Bucky so the three of them headed back to the Pit.

On the way Bucky wanted to stop at the Grants’ to see the bone but Nijinsky had disappeared. And so had the bone. So they went on to the Pit and started digging.

The first place they dug was in the corner where they’d started the new clubhouse and found the tin box. “Just in case we missed the right spot in the dark last night,” Bucky said. “Everybody dig where you were digging before. And don’t stop until you’re down to the really solid stuff.”

In Carlos’s part of the circle that didn’t take long. But he was still whacking away at the “solid stuff” when he heard something and looked up in time to see a huge, shaggy shape come flying over the Pit wall, dragging something behind it. The shaggy shape was Lump and the something he was dragging at the end of his leash turned out to be Susie.

As Susie landed on her hands and knees she turned loose of the leash and Lump came bounding toward Carlos whining with happiness. Carlos braced himself for a slobbery kiss attack. Then as soon as he’d gotten Lump to more or less cool it, he went to see if Susie was hurt. She was still sitting on the ground looking at her knee, but when Carlos came over she jumped up.

“You all right?” he asked her.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” Susie said, even though she obviously had a skinned knee. “Hey, I didn’t know you guys were in here. I was just taking Lump for a walk.”

Carlos grinned. “Down here in the Pit? Funny place to walk a dog, isn’t it?”