The Treasure Map Page 4

  “Wait…great-grandpa was in a war?” Calvin chimed in.

  “That’s right,” his father answered. “I don’t suppose any of you have heard much about that, have you? To tell you the truth, there’s only so much I know about his experience in the matter. He wasn’t much of a talker, and your grandpa didn’t seem to have much to say on the subject himself. But when you’re older, you’ll take plenty of history classes that will talk about one of the most fearsome wars of all time. I don’t know how involved your great-grandpa was on the front lines, but I believe bravery runs in this family, and he was surely a hero like so many others.”

  “Did he leave any kind of...biography?” Jack asked, trying to not sound like he had secret information. “Something to remember him by?”

  “That’s a good question,” his father told him. “And one I don’t know the answer to…but if someone is going to find such a thing, it will be you, and I hope you will share it with us if and when you do. Now help me with the dishes, wash up, and get back to work. It looks like you’re going to spend quite a bit of time up there in the attic, at least if you continue at the pace you’re on now.”

  Jack slunk his shoulders back down and did as he was told. He was hoping for an evening reprieve from his punishment, perhaps a night of watching a Christmas movie and eating popcorn as they usually did this time of year. As alarming as that letter had been, the thought of losing an entire Christmas vacation to cleaning up an attic seemed unbearable to him at the time.

  When he made his way back up to the attic, he decided the only thing left to do was to do what he was actually assigned to do. Perhaps if he got the ball rolling, it might be easier than it looked, and he might be able to get his mind off whatever Niko Monroe nonsense he had experienced earlier.

  Jack thought the best strategy would be to make a game of it. He took a roll of masking tape and marked the attic into three sections.

  The first section contained the wall that was closest to the trap door that led down to the rest of the house. That would be the simplest, as it had very little in it, considering the door itself occupied most of the area.

  Then there was the middle section, which contained most of the large furniture, including a dresser, a couple of recliners that he thought never should have been kept to begin with, and now the treasure chest that contained the map, which Jack felt was calling to him every which way he turned his head. “Forget about it,” he tried to tell himself.

  Finally, he would be left with the far section of the attic, which was stacked quite high with boxes and whatever else his grandpa must have been able to chuck in there, and was by far the biggest task he had on his to-do list.

  Next, he broke each of the three sections into three smaller sections, making the attic look like a tic-tac-toe board. He then decided that every time he completed a section, he would get a point. He needed nine points to win the game. If he won the game, he would be able to celebrate Christmas. Even Jack knew this game was all in his head, but he had to do something to motivate himself to finish cleaning the attic. Otherwise, he would end up kicking dust around for a few days until his parents would decide to find a worse punishment for him.

  To make sure the game was played fairly, Jack wrote down the rules on a piece of paper, made a rough sketch of the attic on the other side of the paper, then taped the sketch to the top of the treasure chest so he could see his progress. With a devilish grin, he quickly made a big red “X” over the section that contained nothing more than the trap door to the attic. “That’s one gimme point for Jack,” he told himself.

  “You’re giving yourself points?” he heard his father say as his head and shoulders appeared through the hole in the floor. “I hope you’ve done more than what I can tell from a glance around the room. You know, Christmas is right around the corner, it would be a shame if you were still working on this come Christmas Day.”

  “I’m just trying to make it interesting,” Jack scoffed. “What are you doing up here, anyway? Is it time for bed already?”

  “Not quite,” his father answered. “You can stay up as late as you want for as long as you are working on this project, and you can get up as early as you can manage, just do whatever it takes to make your deadline. I’m here because I brought you some extra tools and garbage bags to help you. I also brought up a notebook so you can write down anything up here that you have a question about. I’ll let you know if anything borderline should be kept or tossed. And no, we don’t want any of those old newspapers. I don’t know what it was with my old man and those papers. Rubbish!”

  Jack took the notebook from his dad and tossed it next to the sketch on top of the treasure chest. He then held out his hands as he was given cleaning rags and spray bottles of various sorts and a swatter in case he saw any living creatures that needed to be attended to along the way.

  “If you need anything else, let me know,” his father told him.

  “Nothing comes to mind right now,” Jack said, but only because what he wanted to say would have gotten him into far deeper trouble.

  Back to business, he thought to himself as he looked at his game chart and compared it to the disasters spread throughout the room. Knowing he would feel better about himself as long as he was making checkmarks, Jack decided to start work on the part of the room that was closest to the door. One corner held nothing in it other than three stacks of file cabinets that went all the way up to the ceiling. The other held layers of suitcases which he could tell were from an era that made very little sense to him, each piece looking as if it had been made from a very ugly couch, even though more attractive colors must have been available at the time.

  All he had to do tonight was decide where to start, knowing he would need to sweep through the first two sections quickly if he were ever going to get through the final third, the area filled to the brim with loads of junk that he wished he could push straight down a garbage shoot, if only one were available.

  “S’pose I’ll start with the filing cabinets,” Jack shrugged as he walked toward the corner, carefully avoiding the trap door. When he opened the first of a dozen drawers, he beheld an array of colored folders carefully labeled from front to back. Each folder contained a solitary map. He flipped through them briefly and noticed they were all efficiently labeled, and might be quite valuable if they were of any rarity and importance. He had seen a television show where several old, grumpy men talked about such things, and he thought to make a note of them to see if his father thought they would be worth checking out. None of them, however, were anything like the one he had found in the treasure chest.

  Jack began to whistle as he went through each drawer to confirm that they each had similar files. It took him nearly half an hour, but he knew that would be quite quick compared to the rest of the sections, and was exceedingly eager to make a second “X” over one of the nine sections on his chart. He made one slash across the corner of the page before realizing that the section wasn’t completely finished until his father told him what he wanted to do with the files, so he opted against making the opposite slash across the box on his sheet of paper. That counted as half.

  “Getting dark,” Jack told himself, not because he could see outside, since the only window in the attic was still blocked on the other end by stacks of newspapers, but because he heard the alarm clock, which he had snuck up with him after dinner. “I better take a look through those suitcases and call it a night.

  The greens, the browns, the yellows, every suitcase was hideous in its own way, but the worst of them all, Jack thought, would be the orange and lavender one tossed on top of the stack.

  Since his job was to clean up this mess, he thought he might as well move forward by taking care of the worst of the worst. He closed his eyes and feared what they might contain. He considered how he might have to go through years of rat-infested laundry, tubes of unused toothpaste, or a thousand more newspapers.

  He sniffed for a clue, rather than opening his eyes, and at first, he
didn’t notice anything at all. But then a hint of something caught his attention…could it be…yes! It was new car smell. The suitcase was empty. Nothing in it. He checked all the minor compartments just to be sure, but there was not a single item to be found in the entire suitcase. It appeared as if it had never been used before.

  “I hope this is a good sign,” Jack encouraged himself as he set the first suitcase on its end in a manner that he intended to become an organized row. “Yes!” he said again, clapping his hands as he picked up and shook the second suitcase, a green and maroon eyesore that was almost as hideous on the outside, but equally empty on the inside as the first suitcase had been.

  “This is glorious,” Jack told himself as he heard a racket downstairs. “I’ll get another point in no time.”

  Knock! Knock!

  Jack looked down and saw his father poking his head through the trap door once again. “I know I said you could work here as late as you want to, but it is getting late, so feel free to come down and get some rest if you need it. It does look like you’ve made a bit of progress this time, at least on one side, so I hope you keep it up in the morning.”

  “I’ll be down in a little bit,” Jack conceded. “I’m…well…I think I can get this one little section done before bed and I’ll feel better about the whole situation come morning time.”

  “Fair enough,” his father said. “Mom said breakfast is at seven, so you better be up for it if you want to eat before it’s all gone.”

  Jack did not like the sound of missing breakfast. At least not when his mom went to the trouble of making a real breakfast. Bacon and eggs and french toast and pancakes and…well, just the thought of it all made him want to shut down for the night.

  “No!” Jack reminded himself. “I can do this. I’m not going to spend my entire Christmas vacation locked up in this filthy old attic like some forgotten creature.” He proceeded to flip through the rest of the suitcases with vigor, looking through every nook and cranny that they had available, then lining them up all in two rows as if they were a properly drilled marching company.

  “All those suitcases,” Jack shook his head as he walked down the ladder to the second floor, “and not a single useful thing in any of them. Maybe gramps had the common sense to not be seen with them.”

  Jack slept well that night. So well, in fact, that when he awoke he was surprised that his eyes opened without hesitation. He didn’t yawn or stretch or gripe about the cold weather. He simply scooted his feet into his slippers and trotted downstairs to where his mother was all alone in the kitchen.

  “You’re up early, dear,” she told him. “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “Slept just fine,” he said. “Maybe the thought of breakfast woke me up.”

  “Yeah, that sounds more like you,” she said, trying to not let him see her roll her eyes. “Your dad says you made a bit of progress on your little assignment.”

  “Little assignment?” he scoffed. “You mean my punishment for not paying attention to a bunch of boring old teachers? I got a few things done. But that’s a big attic. And I don’t know what to do with all the junk I’ve been finding. It is mostly garbage, you know. I found four filing cabinets with nothing but old maps and two dozen suitcases that never found their way toward a vacation.”

  “That sounds like my old man,” Joshua Monroe said as he walked in the room. He sat down next to his son and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pitcher on the table. “Your grandpa always dreamed of adventure. He talked constantly about exploring jungles and climbing mountains. All he ever did was work his hands to the bone trying to make ends meet so your uncles and I could have food on the table. He did pretty well for himself under the circumstances, but he never felt comfortable spending his savings on some wild excursion.”

  Jack slumped down in his chair and waited for breakfast. He knew he wasn’t going to receive any sympathy talking about hard work around his father. He thought he might have been able to eke out some pity from his mother while he had her alone, but that hope had quickly vanished.

  “So what should I do with all that old junk?” Jack asked.

  “Make a note of it as I told you,” his father reminded him. “I’ll come up and get the big stuff whenever you’re taking a break, and I’ll let you know what to throw away when it comes to the little stuff. Just remember…those newspapers have all got to go.”

  “You sure don’t like those newspapers, do you?” Jack chuckled as his mother served him a plate filled with all the foods he woke up dreaming about. “What did they ever do to you?”

  His father shook his head and looked up to the ceiling as if he could see through the floorboards straight into the heavens. “Grandpa was always holding onto those things as if they had some significance beyond the events of the day. He thought they were important, but in reality they were always a waste of space. Then when my folks moved out, he refused to take them with him! He said they belonged here. He was a smart man, and a hard-working man, but sometimes…well, I don’t know what he was thinking sometimes.”

  Jack shrugged his shoulders, picked up his empty plate, and set it in the sink to soak. “Guess I’ll see you when I see you then,” he said with his shoulders drooping a little, still trying to find his way out of having to finish his punishment all by himself.

  “You can come down whenever you’re hungry, dear,” his mother reminded him. “But only to eat. You’re not getting out of this no matter how hard you practice your puppy dog eyes.”

  Jack walked away without another word, then rushed up the stairs before his body language betrayed him. One more roll of the eyes and he thought his punishment might be worsened. He had a decent understanding of when he could push his limits and when it was best to roll with the punches.

  Jack made the short climb up to the attic and was immediately brought back to the reality of his punishment. He thought he had made some great progress the night before, having already earned himself three points out of a possible nine, according to the rules he had given himself for a game that only he would ever play. What he had forgotten was that he had started with the easiest tasks possible, and was still staring at a mountain of newspapers and other odds and ends on the far side of the room.

  Jack pulled out the notebook his father had given him. He readied his pen and quickly jotted down two notes:

  1. Two rows of the ugliest suitcases known to mankind.

  2. Drawers filled with useless maps.

  “The middle sections don’t look like much work either,” Jack told himself, trying to gain encouragement where he still could. He looked down at the treasure chest and crinkled his nose. “Maybe I’ll find more of that story somewhere among the junk in here. I guess I’ll have to wait.”

  The rest of the morning blew by like a light breeze, which was of some relief to the boy as he dug and scrubbed and fiddled with the few objects taking up what was admittedly the least of his worries. His vacation was going to waste away as he rearranged the bits of furniture in the middle portion of the attic, each piece less valuable than the last.

  Jack made note of these objects as well, but was certain that not even a yard sale would be profitable with these broken-down relics. His grandparents, it would seem, did not have an abundance of fancy things to be treasured for generations to come, but rather they kept everything they had just in case they might need them for one reason or another.

  “At least I’ll have some breathing room to work in when these sections get cleared out,” he assured himself. And he was quite right. While he headed downstairs for a bite to eat, his father headed up to remove the heavier objects.

  “Leave that treasure chest, will you?” Jack asked his father as he saw him pass by on one of his trips. “I think it’s kinda cool, might keep some of my old toys in it or something.”

  “No problem,” his father grimaced as he maneuvered a beat-up recliner through the living room and out the front door. When he came back in he added, “We’ll keep those file cabinets
for now as well. I think I can use them in the office. Sturdy enough.”

  Jack finished up his meal and headed back up to the attic for the rest of the day’s work. It felt nice having a bit of extra room to sort through the rest of the things. “Six points already!” he shouted, which encouraged him for a moment, before he remembered again that the last three points were going to take days for him to sift through.

  Something else was still bothering him as well. Why just the one map in that treasure box and why did it look so different from the others? Why was there a letter wrapped up inside, how did he become a witness of the events it contained, and why did the story cut off so abruptly? And the most curious part of all, why did someone with the same last name as him have such a story to tell? It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  He thought about bringing it up to his dad, but Jack still couldn’t explain to himself what had happened the day before. The story felt so real. He had half-convinced himself that it was nothing more than a dream, probably a result of too much dust in the attic that caused him to pass out and hallucinate, but it was far too clear and vivid.

  “Maybe I better look at that letter again,” he said, thinking a nice diversion might help him regain some focus for the rest of the day. Jack opened the trunk, and as he had left it, he saw the pages resting just the way he had stuffed them along with the map. He grabbed them with caution, but strangely noticed something that hadn’t been there before.

  It looked like a drop of blood had splattered onto the map. Jack checked his hands for a moment, but he was sure he would have noticed had he scratched himself. Not a nick on him anywhere. This was a new mark and it wasn’t his.

  Undeterred, Jack placed the map before him, then set his eyes on the letter, which he would come to find had something new to say.