The Deed (32 page)

She sat down beside her daughter on the couch and placed the box on the table and ignored it, despite their silent pleas. Instead, she turned to the coffee, tediously adding sugar and cream, stirring and stirring as if trying to dissolve the spoon in the liquid.

“There we go. The deed’s resting place,” she said at last, tapping the spoon on the edge of the cup, “has been a jealously guarded secret since it was given to us. In every generation, I suppose, there’s been a faction that wants to expose the deed and stake our claim. But it can only be done once, of course. Since the very beginning, it’s been the job of the sachem…my job…to decide when the time is right to make our bid. I really believe,” she said, looking back and forth between Jason and Amanda, “the time is now.”

Jason nodded and peripherally saw Amanda do the same.

Mary accepted this with a slight regal bow of her head. “But there’s a problem,” she continued. “Keeping this secret, generation after generation, has meant restricting its knowledge to a very few. Only two people at any one time were ever meant to know the location. The sachem passes on the knowledge to her successor once that successor has proven she can handle the task. When the old sachem dies, a new successor is chosen, and the cycle repeats.”

“And somewhere along the line, someone died before they could pass on the location,” said Amanda.

“Apparently,” Mary said, nodding. “But I’m just guessing. I know that your great-grandmother, who was sachem before my mother, never knew where it was. But I don’t know if she’s the break in the chain or if it happened before her.”

“Didn’t it ever occur to anyone that the secret could die with somebody?” said Jason.

She frowned. “Yes, Jason; we aren’t idiots. We decided early on to keep a written record of the deed’s location…but something cryptic, that couldn’t be deciphered by a layman. It was more of a set of clues that, ideally, only the sachems, the deed’s intended stewards, should be able to figure out. That way, as long as there was a tribe and a leader—in other words, as long as the deed had any meaning—the location could be recovered, if lost.”

“So figuring out where the deed is could be a test of worthiness to be the next sachem,” said Jason thoughtfully. “Like a koan.”

“That’s insightful, Jason; it’s very likely we used to do exactly that. It’s different now, of course,” said Mary. She then turned to Amanda. “But that does bring us to you, darling.”

“Knew it,” said Amanda. “The pressure’s on.”

“You can do it, if it can still be done,” said her mother. “You know the stakes here—the rest is up to you.”

Jason pointed to the box, confused.

“That’s just a gift for you,” warned Mary with a smile. She slid the box across to meet his outstretched fingers; unable to reach it from the chair, Jason slid forward and dropped to his knees in front of the table.

About ten inches long, intricately carved and blackened with age, the box seemed hand-cut out of a single brick of wood. Reverently, he lifted the top piece completely off, like the lid of a hatbox, to reveal, inside, a long, crooked, carved pipe.

“It was his,” said Mary quietly. “The box, too.”

“Whose?” Jason replied, figuring it out even as he said it. “Oh, wait—his?”

Mary nodded sagely. He caught a glimpse of Amanda’s dumbstruck expression and realized it mirrored his own.

“You’re telling me this pipe was owned by my ancestor in the early 1600s,” said Jason.

“It is unquestionably his. The box, too, as I say. It’s a tribal heirloom, but it isn’t really ours, now that you’ve been found. Take it as a gesture of good faith.”

“Mary, this is so far beyond cool it’s…” Jason began. “Thank you. I don’t know what else I could possibly say.”

“Just will it back to us if you die without an heir, okay?”

“Mom,” said Amanda.

“I’m overwhelmed,” said Jason, fondling his pipe. “Seriously.” He ran a finger around the rim of the bowl, resisting the temptation to put it to his lips. “This whole thing is so
unreal…
”

“The clues, Mom—the clues,” said Amanda.

Mary smiled and drained her coffee, then looked hard at Jason. As Jason and Amanda exchanged a long glance, she walked over to the fireplace, stepped up onto the hearth, and unhooked the old parchment map of New York that Jason had noticed on his first trip here.

“No
way,
” said Amanda.

“I
knew
there was more to that thing,” said Jason. “I swear to God I did.”

“You told me you made that,” Amanda accused.

“We did—all of us,” said Mary, and held the parchment out toward her daughter. “This is yours now, my dear; it’s the legacy of our people.”

Amanda nodded solemnly as Jason rose again to get a better look.

With a last searching glance at each of them, Mary slowly turned the map over. The flip side contained several paragraphs of tiny little characters frozen in mid-scrawl, like bugs transfixed by the sudden exposure to light.

“What language is that?” said Jason.

“The old language,” Mary replied. “I’ll write up a translation for you.”

“It looks like poetry,” Amanda ventured. “Is that significant?”

Mary considered her answer carefully before continuing. “I don’t think I’m going to pass along my own conjectures. We already know I couldn’t figure it out.”

Methodically, patiently, she launched into a speech she must have been working on for some time. The time of her people, she said, and indeed of all Native Americans, had passed, rendering them shadows, or ghosts. And the function of ghosts, she explained, was to advise the living. She sipped her coffee languorously as she spoke, relaxing into eccentric tangency now that the main order of business had been concluded.

Mary believed, she said, that the Creator is never casual, that as trivial a role as her people were currently playing in the machine of the modern world, they did have a purpose still—as a living conscience for the Western world, which otherwise, she seemed happy to say, had none.

As he listened, Jason fought the desire to rise to the defense of the West, knowing his propensity to let his argumentative nature lead him into trouble. He distracted himself by trying to appreciate what a momentous occasion this must be for her, handing over the keys to the kingdom after three hundred years of waiting. He respectfully listened to her every sanctimonious word, tried to hear her as the calm, reverberating voice of an all-but-extinguished race of people.

And here sat Amanda in rapt attention next to him, her fortunes inextricably bound with his in this crazy, preordained partnership racing toward some cosmic conclusion. It felt almost as if her mother were blessing their union, with the island of Manhattan as the dowry.

LONG ISLAND EXPRESSWAY
, 3:00
P.M.

“It’s unfathomable to me,” said Jason playfully from the passenger seat, “that you haven’t torn into this thing yet.”

Amanda smiled and kept her eyes glued to the road. The rain had abated for the time being, but the car’s twin wipers still arced gamely across the windshield, swishing in absolute synchronicity. The map and Mary’s translation lay on Jason’s lap, his pipe and Bible secure in the backseat.

“It’s crazy,” she replied distractedly. “Now that we have the answer in front of us, I’m almost afraid to start.”

“Makes sense to me,” said Jason, looking over the translation Mary had provided. “Before, this was an intellectual exercise. Now it’s about proving yourself.”

“What are you talking about? We don’t have to prove ourselves.”

“‘We’?” said Jason. “What do you mean ‘we,’ kemo sabe?”

“What is it with you and all the Indian jokes?” she said.

He winced. “Sorry. What I mean is that for me it’s still a game, but for you it’s about proving your worthiness to be the next sachem.”

“Oh, please.”

“This is the rite of passage you’ve been waiting for,” he goaded. “But it puts the pressure on. It’s not enough that
we
solve it…
you
have to solve it.”

“I don’t think of it that way,” she said softly.

“Bullshit,” said Jason, smiling. “Don’t worry. I promise if I figure it out first, I’ll sandbag and drop hints until you figure it out.”

She turned to fix him with a stern gaze. “Okay.
A,
you’re not going to figure it out before me, and
B,
don’t you dare delay this thing by even a minute. We figure it out together. Partner.”

“Okay, partner,” he laughed. “But seriously, if I get it first I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“No,
don’t,
” she said firmly.

“Okay, I won’t,” he replied. “But I will.”

“You’re such a dick.”

He laughed and went back to scanning Mary’s translation of the ancient text.

“Well, read it out loud at least,” she said, annoyed, and he did.

“That shit is just bristling with clues,” murmured Jason. “A god rising from the earth to kiss the sun—a skyscraper?”

“But which one?” said Amanda, puzzled. “A red god.”

“Well, we know it’s been hidden at least since the late nineteenth century, so it’s probably made out of bricks, right?”

Amanda’s face lightened. “Good,” she said. “It’s probably not even what we’d call a skyscraper anymore.”

“We should get a list of all the tallest buildings by year.”

“I have all that stuff at my apartment,” she replied excitedly. “Reference books, old New York history—the works. We can get started as soon as we get back.”

Jason shook his head. “I’m busy tonight,” he said. “Are you doing anything tomorrow?”

He loved how predictable she was; the shocked look on her face was perfect. “I’m kidding, Amanda,” he reassured her. “I didn’t chase you all the way out here to pencil you in for next week.”

She grinned reluctantly and craned her head around to check the blind spot before making another ill-advised lane change to scoot past a short line of slow cars in her mad dash for the city.

They both fell silent for a while. To all appearances Amanda seemed focused on the road, but when she asked for a rereading of the translation it became clear where her mind was. After complying, Jason picked up the original and began idly looking it over. The poem itself being indecipherable, he scanned the page for nonverbal visual clues, then flipped it over and visually traced the contours of the map with one finger, trying to find a pattern. He held the page up to the windshield and watched the white light bleed through the frail old parchment.

“I wonder if there’s any kind of interplay between the words and the map?” he said aloud. “If we knew which of these words meant what, we could search the map wherever key words lie on the—”

Suddenly, Amanda slammed both feet on the brake, which instantly locked up on the rain-slicked road. Jason lurched forward, flailing out one arm to protect the documents, and looked over the dashboard, where he saw red taillights coming on fast—they were rocketing out of control toward a square white wall of truck parked improbably in the fast lane, flashers flashing.

Amanda wrenched the wheel to the right, and he rolled his head around to see if her intended lane was clear. Not even close. There was no escape; either they’d plow into the back of the truck or, if their hard-turned and skidding wheels caught, they’d nose into the next lane, to be creamed by an oncoming Expedition. “Jesus Christ,” he squeezed out, as their brakes struck up a chilling death wail.

The glowing red taillights spread across the drizzly pane in hideous close-up, and Jason became suddenly aware of himself drifting forward in slow motion. Somewhere in the midst of Amanda’s desperate “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he heard, rather than felt, the wheels find traction, and the car lurched right, missing the truck’s bumper by the width of a couple of fingers. Jason scrunched his face in preparation for the next-lane impact, but the Expedition had somehow managed to brake in time, horn blaring indignation.