The man gritted his teeth in rage and lunged for another shove. This time, Serge quickly slipped aside, grabbed him by the wrist and locked up the man’s arm under his armpit.
Now, in fights it’s often the bigger combatant who prevails. But sometimes it’s the little things. Like the little finger. Bend it back to the breaking point, and people bend to your will.
“Ow! My finger!”
“Tell the kids to go home.”
“You mean to the motel room.”
Serge rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He bent the finger harder. “Now.”
“Boys! Go back to the room!”
“What about the birds?” asked a child.
“Get going!”
The young trio skedaddled.
“Alone at last,” said Serge.
“Now will you let go of my finger?”
“Yes.” Serge pulled a pistol from under his shirt and stuck it in the man’s ribs. “I never got your name.”
“Clyde.”
“Clyde, start walking.”
“Where are we going?”
“Oh, this is going to be a real blast, a regular humdinger,” said Serge. “Have you seen the Pioneer Cemetery? . . .”
A little while later, Serge stared down into a car trunk. “Comfy?”
“W-w-what are you going to do—”
The lid slammed shut.
Eight Years Earlier
Chris was a weird little kid.
In a good way. Other children take to education like they’re being force-fed. But Chris was so naturally curious that she practically became another piece of furniture in the library, spending hours on the computer to look up more data than her course material had to offer.
Then the next day in science class, where they were discussing the basics of our sun, its age, distance. A hand shot up. “I found out that our sun bends time and space. The planets, too. It makes wormholes possible.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Einstein. Others proved his theory with a telescope during an eclipse when a star appeared from behind the corona when it shouldn’t have.”
Then math class and a triangle with equal sides. A hand flew up again.
“The Romans killed Archimedes while he was working on a problem. ‘Don’t disturb my circles,’ he said.”
“What?”
Soon, other teachers were showing up out in the hall, pointing through the window of the classroom’s door at the odd little kid in the front row with a hand enthusiastically in the air. Still more educators began joining Chris in the library to look up her tidbits, their own curiosity piqued. They glanced over at the young girl sitting a few desks away, leaning farther and farther forward, as if knowledge would pull her right through the computer screen.
Saturday meant no school, but Chris had her own curriculum. She grabbed a notebook, pens, an old compass, some tape and a lunch bag. Chris had grown up alone with her grandmother due to the broken-home epidemic that was going around. The old woman looked up as Chris wheeled her bicycle through the living room of their apartment.
“Where are you going, honey?”
“Treasure hunting.”
“Have fun.”
The ride was at least a mile, possibly closer to two, but when Chris put her mind to something, get out of the way or prepare to be run over.
Other kids probably didn’t remember, but Chris could recall every word of the old schoolyard folklore stories about the evil sugar baron named Fakakta who was found shot to death after the 1928 hurricane. And of course the lost treasure. Kids are allowed to dream.
She was a cute little sight, tiny legs churning as she pedaled her pink bicycle up the side of Hooker Highway. She finally arrived at a cane field from one of her recent rabbit hunts, and turned down a dirt road. Chris had a good memory as she walked her bike through the rows of sugar stalks. She came to a marking stake with an orange ribbon. Then she got out her compass and triangulated her position with a pair of distant power lines. Numbers were jotted in her notebook. Then she commenced digging. It was a scientific sampling grid that only she would have thought of, moving out from the stake. The afternoon wore on under the unfiltered sun, her face filthy from wiping away sweat with dirty hands. She was quickly reaching the logical conclusion: probably just a one-time find. And she didn’t have any proof that the bogeyman of the sugar field ever existed. That’s when her fingers hit it.
The second coin.
Now Chris had two geometric points to work with. She stood up and aimed her compass, dutifully recording new figures in the notebook. She turned the page and drew a second diagram. The search field had become an elongated oval. Digging continued till she could barely see in the growing darkness, but no more finds. She stuck the coin, compass and notebook in the lunch bag she had brought along, and taped it flat to her stomach under her shirt. No way anyone was going to steal this stuff.
Two boys stopped her a block from the apartment building. “Hey, Milk Crate! What have you got there?”
She hated that nickname. “None of your business!”
“Empty your pockets.”
“No!”
“I said empty!”
She turned them inside out. Empty.
“Okay, you can go.”
As she put her feet back on the pedals, one of them punched her in the shoulder with an extended knuckle.
“Ow!”
She left laughter behind as she pedaled away . . .
Good thing the next day was a Sunday. Her power of will was locked in, and there was little chance she would have been able to focus in school. She rode her bike back to the cane field again. This time it only took her three hours to find the next coin. The compass and notebook came back out. Coordinates plotted, a new shape diagramed. She stopped and aimed her compass in the direction of Lake Okeechobee, squinting with one eye closed, the tip of her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth in concentration. Math and science were just intuitive to Chris. Her mind’s eye instinctively drew a line from the lake to where she stood, envisioning the shape of the debris field if some treasure chest burst open around here in a storm surge. She decided to load her search southeast of the last coin.
It was only an hour before grimy fingers pulled up the next gold piece. Excitement bubbled. There was a lot of time left before sunset. But that would be it for the day.
Chris pedaled home and ran inside.
“Where have you been?” asked her grandmother.
“Out.” She dashed into her bedroom and closed the door. Chris ripped the tape off her stomach and lay on the floor next to her dresser. She stared up as she pulled out the bottom drawer. The two newest coins were taped underneath next to the previous one. She closed the drawer and jumped up just as her grandmother came in.
“Good gracious, child, you’re filthy.”
Chris dropped into the chair at her small desk and opened the notebook. “I’m fine.” A pen clicked open.
“You go wash up right now before you make a mess of the whole place.”
“Don’t disturb my circles.”
“Are you sassing me?”
“No, it’s a math joke.” She stood from the chair. “I’ll go wash up. I love you!”
The next day in school, the teachers had a nagging feeling that something was different in class, but they couldn’t quite put their fingers on it. By fourth period, the science teacher figured it out. Chris was unnaturally quiet. She hadn’t asked a single question or added something arcane to the discussion, like, “Thomas Edison never slept more than four hours a night.” And Chris kept glancing at the clock on the wall. Before this day, she always seemed as though she wanted class to go on forever. Maybe she had the flu.