The Treasure Map
Greg Thompson screamed down the sidewalk, jumping down from the curb to avoid a telephone pole that took up too much of the walkway. Swinging his head in all directions, he set his gearless BMX bike at an angle and cut across the deserted four way stop. As he peeled past the gas station on the corner, his older brother Peter looked up from the television set sitting on the counter and watched his brother go by. It was Peter's job to look after his twelve-year-old little brother during the summer while his mom was at work, even though he had a job of his own. It made no difference to Peter, as his kid brother could take care of himself, just like he did at that age. Once out of sight, Peter went back to watching his Discovery Channel show about the universe.
Greg wore no helmet. His blond shaggy bowl cut swept back from his forehead as he continued down the hill and under the highway. It was a typical warm morning in Grass Valley, and he dressed accordingly: jean shorts, high top sneakers, and a striped shirt. The ground leveled off. He peddled in full body motions, passed his old elementary school and over to the park. Summer days like this seemed to never end for a boy this age. One day Greg would wake up to his mother ushering him out the door to shop for school clothes. Only then would he realize that his vacation was over. But today was not that day, and the numbers on a calendar were the last thing on the boys’ mind. Today it was a girl.
Chelsea Donovan lived down the road and had been friends with Greg since the fifth grade. He heard she was back from summer camp and subsequently road past her house several times yesterday evening. Her father finally noticed the ride-by’s and gave his youngest daughter the hint that she should go out to the front lawn.
“Oh, hey, Chelsea! Where have you been?”
“At camp for two weeks, remember?”
“Oh yeah…” Greg feigned ignorance. He had been friends with the girl from down the road for years, but lately he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He thought she was the prettiest girl in his class; with long brown hair always braided into a single ponytail. The fair was coming up and he hoped she would go with him one night.
“You want to go ride bikes tomorrow? I’m probably going to be riding around anyway. I might meet up with Zach later, too…”
“Okay,” she said and smiled. “My sisters have been such a drag lately anyway. Being around them everyday for two weeks has really gotten on my nerves, you know?”
“Cool. Meet at memorial park at eight?"
She had agreed and he had gone home grinning.
After waking up ten minutes before his rendezvous, Greg streaked toward the park. He rolled around the final corner and cut across the parking lot, dodging through the few cars parked in front of the park pool. It was swim lesson season, but that wouldn't start for a few more hours. Greg leaned his bike against some freestanding monkey bars and walked toward the main play area. There was still dew on the grass and it collected on his sneakers, threatening to soak through. He reached down to pick up a dandelion, when he heard a familiar voice.
"Greg! Where is your mitt?" a boy of the same age yelled, walking over to Greg from the blacktop behind the pool. Greg's eyes flared wide and his shoulders slumped. He gazed in all directions, but didn't see who he wanted to.
"Oh yeah! I forgot!"
"I had two others who said they would start a game with us today. But I think they forgot too," Zach Webber said. He was a few inched taller than Greg and had very dark skin despite being solidly Caucasian. He wore a backwards hat while he pushed his bike, his glove jammed on one handgrip. "You guys always forget if I don't tell you the day before. What are you doing here then, if you forgot, anyway?"
Zach was not Greg's best friend. In school, Zach was a little cooler. He was friends with the rough boys who road dirt bikes and had older brothers that all raced. But come summertime, when the others were not around, and since they both lived close to downtown, Greg was Zach's go-to friend.
"I, uh, was waiting for someone. We were going to go riding around this morning," Greg let out. He began tearing out the petals of the flower, not wanting the other boy to guess what he had picked it for.
Just then, Chelsea came walking her bike down the slight hill from the opposite side of the park, and waved to Greg. Both he and Zach noticed this.
Zach turned back to his embarrassed friend.
"Ooooh! Greg and Chelsea, sittin' in a tree..."
Greg kicked Zach's front tire to stop the next line from being said aloud, and the girl came into earshot.
"Hi Greg," she smiled. In that brief instant the twelve-year-old boy forgot that anyone else was in the park. It was a moment that would be tattooed in his memory; the girl, her long hair, and the timeless and classic feel of summer. "Hi Zach."
"Hey Chelsea," Zach said. She joined the other two and they stood facing each other.
"So, what do you want to do?" Chelsea asked Greg.
"We were going to play some baseball with a couple other guys," Zach said, "but it looks like everyone bailed."
"Oh yeah? So are you going to come riding with us then?"
"Sounds like fun," Zach said to Greg. "So where do you guys want to go?"
"I figured we could go over to the fair grounds and check out the pond. I've got a little rod hidden in the blackberry bushes over there. And my uncle is setting up his horses for the fair next week," Greg said. "So we could go play around over there, or I heard about a cool spot over in the Empire Mine Park."
"That sounds fun," Chelsea agreed.
Zach nodded. "But next week, its baseball for sure. You have to help me get a bunch more people to play."
Greg ignored Zach, happy just to be starting the day. He ran back and grabbed his bike, racing to catch up with the other two as they took off in the direction of the fairgrounds.
The sun became more intense as they reached the fairgrounds. They cruised in one of the back gates reserved for trucks pulling trailers full of livestock. Greg shouted to the gate attendant that they were only going to the pond, and the old man wearing a black windbreaker and Korean War Veteran hat waived them through, knowing there was no point in protesting anyway.
The pond was not far from the gate, and the three dumped their bikes in the dust. Greg went in search of his stashed rod. He came back from a nearby blackberry thicket with a button caster and a beat up Styrofoam cup full of rich back dirt.
"I had these worms left over from a couple days ago. I hope they are still alive..."
"Don't you have to have a fishing license, or something?" Zach said, standing back slightly with his hands in his pockets while Greg and Chelsea picked through the dirt for bait.
"Naw, not if you are twelve and under, I think," Greg said, pleased to be shoulder to shoulder with the girl who was slightly taller than him.
"Ooh! I got one," Chelsea exclaimed and came up with a worm. "These guys are the best bait, I think. The fish just love 'em."
In reality, Chelsea had about as much experience fishing as Zach, but she didn't let on. When you are twelve, being professional at things was easy. You just had to believe in yourself and everyone else would too. The two fishermen impaled the worm on the hook while Zach grimaced in the background. Greg handed the rod over to Chelsea and she attempted a mighty cast.
For the next hour, the three laughed and joked, squealed and yelled as they tried to catch a fish. They ran around to different sides of the small pond, coming up with reasons why each new spot was now going to be the best for catching fish. After a couple bites and loosing their second worm, the short attention span of the children won out and the novelty of fishing was over. Greg re-hid his pole and the nearly expended cup of bait worms and the group took off to walk through the paddocks of the fairgrounds.
Greg's uncle was nowhere to be found, but his horses were. The children climbed half way up the fence and pet the nose of the large brown horse that thought there might be a treat involved. When none came, he wandered out of reach and the three moved on.
"So, what do you guys think? I'
m bored. You wanna go?" Zach said.
"Yeah, I can show you guys that spot over in Empire Mine I was talking about!"
"Let's go!" Chelsea said, and they got on their bikes. The three exited out of the east entrance, Zach leading, followed by Chelsea and Greg. They went down the hill on McCourtney road toward the highway. They had not a care in the world as they coasted down towards their fate on that warm summer day.
It happened very slowly, as if it could have been avoided, but the car connecting with the transient was heavy and forceful, as was the mental impact on the three youths who had a perfect view of the accident.
They all jammed back on their pedals, breaking their bikes harshly as they came to a stop. The loosely clothed individual was knocked like a billiards ball, skimming across the ground and onto the pine needle covered corner of the intersection of McCourtney and Mill Street. The fully loaded shopping cart the man was pushing continued to roll, unharmed, down hill as the white four-door hammer came to a stop for a moment, and then sped away.
The three witnesses stood over their bikes in shock at the aftermath of the violence. Greg was the first to snap out of the fright and ran over to the downed man. Zach and Chelsea followed Greg over to the man's side.
"Are you okay?" Greg said in terror, looking at the heap of dirty clothes that looked far too warm to be wearing on this hot day. A car stopped in the middle of the intersection and the driver shouted questions to the children while reporting to the 911 dispatcher on the other end of their cell phone. Greg did not notice. The homeless man rolled supine with his dead weight and looked up at the little boy standing over him.
The man could have been handsome if it wasn't for his receding hair and dirty unkempt beard. Blood was running from his ears and mouth. Chelsea began to sob. Greg was more scared than he had ever been in his life, when the man pulled a small book from the depths of his rags. He pushed the book at Greg, who had no choice but to take it, and whispered his last words.
"The prime numbers... a map of my treasure..."
Sirens wailed from a distance away and the man closed his eyes. Greg's lower lip trembled and the three backed away. They sat down on the curb near where they dropped their bikes. Chelsea continued to cry. Greg held on to her, trying not to cry himself. Zach sat like stone, his own eyes wet, watching the scene in front of them unfold.
There was a yellow sheet over the body by the time the highway patrolman finished interviewing the three small witnesses. Greg told everything he saw, but left out the part about the booklet, which he had jammed in his waistband. They were all in shock, and once they were no longer needed, they walked their bikes away from the scene of the accident, up Mill Street, towards old town. They had to pass the body, and Greg could not bring himself to look at the yellow sheet until he was nearly past. Chelsea would not stop crying, so Zach made their destination the public library, where they could sit in the shade under the trees behind the building.
A librarian, all the children knew, Ms. Robinson, was out back having a cigarette, when the upset children dropped their bikes. They plopped themselves down at the base of a large boxelder. She snubbed out her cigarette and walked over inquisitively.
"Hey guys, what's wrong?"
This time Zach spilled the story, leaving the librarian visibly saddened for what the children had seen. She bent down and comforted the little girl and asked if she could call anyone's parents. "That's just terrible," she said.
"That's okay," Chelsea said, sniffling and wiping away her tears. She seemed to be doing better, and asked Greg, "What did that guy give you anyway."
Greg looked up at Ms. Robinson, and figuring he was in good company, pulled the book from under his shirt. He handed it over to her, who better to tell them what he had been given than a librarian, and said, "He gave this to me before he... closed his eyes. He said something about treasure and prime numbers. What are prime numbers?" he asked the woman.
Flipping though the book, she answered. "They haven't taught you prime numbers yet, in school? They are numbers that are not divisible except by one and themselves. It looks like he drew a map on the prime numbered pages." She knelt down and showed the children what she had found in the book.
The intrigue created by this new information further helped to snap the three out of their current mood as they crowded around to get a view of the pages. "Maybe we should cut the pages out and tape them together to make a big map!" Zach said.
Considering the possibility of ruining the artifact he had just be entrusted with, Greg finally agreed after a supportive nod from Chelsea.
"Why don't you come inside? We have scissors and tape you can use in the library," Ms. Robinson said, genuinely interested in what the children had been given. The three agreed, dusted themselves off, moved their bikes to a place they wouldn't get stolen, and went inside the old whitewashed building.
The corners of the pages of the booklet had common symbols on them, and when the prime numbered pages were cut out (the first three pages were only front sided) the symbols could be matched at the corners and the map was formed. Nine pages put together made a series of hand drawn maps showing three different locations with three X's and a brief blurb giving specifics. The librarian was especially flummoxed by the map, as the pages seemed to be drawn independently of each other, but still formed a cohesive single document spanning a single sheet.
The kids seemed to have forgotten the whole traumatizing incident that had brought them the map. They launched right into taping the pieces together without considering any deeper issues that might give an adult reason for reflection. The librarian on the other hand, did have these thoughts and decided that more than likely, this was an innocuous treasure hunt, especially since only one X seemed to be located in town. She gave the children her blessing save one piece of advice.
"Now, if you do find anything, remember that it would be the right thing to do to turn it into the police first. Then, should they allow you to keep whatever it may be, it will be yours legally."
The children agreed, along with a promise to first tell their parents what they were up to, and left the Grass Valley Public Library.
"We are not actually going to tell our parents what we are doing, are we?" Zach asked.
"No way! My mother would never let me go!" Chelsea said.
"And mine is at work, so I couldn't ask her anyway," Greg said.
So, with that agreement, they were off on their treasure hunt. The map, that they had studied, contained three different locations of treasures. Two of the places on the map were labeled Silver City and Lone Pine. None of the three knew those two locations, so they went after the X in their own town. It was located not far from them, in a place they knew, in fact. Three little tear marks set just down the road from the high school, and up a main road from where they were at, marked a small reservoir hidden in the middle of the town. The X was on a creek that led into the ponds. The note about this treasure said it was under a rock that was covered by a tree branch.
The three raced up the road and circumnavigated the reservoir, going down a side street full of houses that dead-ended against the greenspace. They again laid their bikes aside and picked their way through a mound of blackberries and onto the bank of the creek. The area was far from natural, fences backed up to the blackberry bush infested area, with trash and broken bottles intermittently strewn about. This was a hobo paradise, and in evidence was a moldy mattress dumped halfway into the thorny vines. The children moved toward the ponds until they spied on the far bank, the landmark described on the map.
The sense of elation was immediate and the three jumped to the opposite side of the creek. They all tried hard to keep their glee to themselves as to not alert anyone in the area.
The account on the map was word for word for as how the children would have described the place. Atop a pad of concrete sat a boulder the size of a small wrecking ball, with a thin tree branch growing horizontal out over the top of the stone to reach the sunlight availa
ble over the creek. Greg grabbed the branch and lifted with all his might. The branch lazily took its undulating weight off the stone while Chelsea and Zach pushed with all their weight. Feet slipped on gravel and tore at weeds, but the stone rolled and a black hole was uncovered.
Greg looked to Chelsea and Zach, and each back to the other. Finally Greg knelt to the hole unsure of what he would find.