Beneath the Sand

The eleven-year-olds stared at their unexpected discovery with excitement and wonder.

“Maybe it’s buried treasure,” Squeak said.

“Yeah, right.” Duke laughed.

“All right, smarty-pants. Then what do you think it is?”

“I dunno, Squeak. I guess it could be some kind of treasure.”

Squeak called Ellington by his nickname, “Duke”, after a great jazz pianist his father loved. Squeak’s real name was Petunia, which she absolutely hated. She wanted a cool nickname like “Sam” or “Titanium”, but with a boy as a best friend, you got what you got. Back in first grade, Duke once said that her voice squeaked when she got excited. He started calling her Squeak and the name stuck.

“It’s not very big,” Duke said as he dug deeper into the soft, sugary sand. He was able to loosen the edges of the wooden box and lift it to the surface of the beach. From the other side of the box, Squeak helped him.

“I bet it washed up here during one of the hurricanes,” she suggested. “I wonder how many times we’ve walked right over this thing.”

“Look, there’s something written on it.” Duke brushed the sand away from a tarnished brass oval that was centered on the lid of the flat box, but it was impossible to read.

“Let’s take it down to the water to try to wash it off!” Squeak’s voice was getting higher-pitched and her words were coming out faster.

“I think we should leave it here until tomorrow,” Duke said. “You know that no one comes out to the tip of the island other than us. The tourists stay at the clubhouse and the locals avoid this spot because the beach is narrow and the water gets rough. Who knows how long this thing has been here? If we cover it back up and mark it, nobody will find it before we come back tomorrow.”

“What!?” Squeak’s mouth was hanging open. “We just dug up the only treasure ever discovered on North Captiva and you want to wait to find out what’s inside until tomorrow? Why?” Her voice was now high-pitched enough to attract dogs, and she ran all of her words together in a rush.

“Let’s just open it and see what’s inside. Maybe we don’t have to carry the whole box back. Maybe we can hide whatever we find in there inside our beach towels.” Squeak was incredibly desperate to see what was in the box.

Ellington turned the box around to show her the side that had been facing him. He dangled a brass lock back and forth with his finger. The brass was black with tarnish just like the oval piece on top, but still solid and strong. The key was nowhere in sight. There was no way to get in there without a tool of some kind.

“Awww, crud.” Squeak’s words came out low and slow again as her hopes came crashing down.

Duke giggled. Although he’d never tell her, he liked that Squeak refused to say anything worse than “crud”, “darn”, or – his reluctant favorite – “poopy”.

Duke spoke in a low voice, “I have a feeling that we should keep this to ourselves. If our sisters see it, they’re going to take charge of it. And I say, finders keepers.”

Squeak and Duke instinctively looked down toward the water where their older sisters, Veronica and Alicia, were sunbathing. The girls, both 15 and soon starting their sophomore year at Ft. Myers High School, had started to pack up their chairs, sun block, and towels.

“C’mon, vermin!” Squeak’s sister, Veronica, called into the sea oats. “We’re leaving. Get in the golf cart or get left behind!

Squeak reluctantly reburied the wooden box while Ellington located three large abalone shells to mark its spot in the sand.

They leapt off of the worn edge of eroded beach to join their sisters in the golf cart. The only ways to get around the island were by golf cart or by foot. No cars were allowed, and there wasn’t a bridge that attached the island to the mainland anyway. For as long as the two of them could remember, their families – and those of a few other kids they knew from school – spent their summers on the island. It only took fifteen minutes to get to North Captiva by boat from Florida’s mainland, and there was a grass airstrip for the wealthier tourists who flew in. Duke and Squeak met new kids every summer, but they always stuck together.

Veronica was driving the golf cart and purposefully hitting every dip in the sandy path that led back to the house. She was trying to bounce the younger kids off of the back seat, which faced the opposite direction from the giggling teenagers.

“So, you think a tourist left the box, or what?” Squeak whispered to Duke as they held tight to the hand rail in the back of the cart.

“Could even be pirates,” Duke thought out loud. “You know there were a lot of pirates who hid out on the barrier islands a long time ago.”

“My teacher, Mrs. Winifred, said that the Calusa Indians carved a lot of things from wood – like statues and things,” Squeak said. “Could the box be that old?”

“I don’t think so. The lock looked way too new for that. I don’t think they had locks like that in the 1700’s when the Calusa were chased out of Southwest Florida.”

Squeak didn’t say anything more. Ellington knew a lot about history and other subjects, and she didn’t want him to think she was dumb. Squeak knew she was smarter than most of the kids in their class, but Duke was grown-up smart. He knew everything.

“Want to go back by ourselves after dinner? We could walk along the beach, so it would only take about fifteen minutes to get out there,” Squeak asked.

“Heck no. I don’t wanna be gator bait,” Duke shook his head fiercely.

Squeak might not have had all the book smarts that Duke had, but she was definitely the more courageous of the two.

“C’mon, scaredy cat! What if it rains tonight and the box sinks so far that we lose track of it?”

“Look at the sky, Squeak. There’s no rain coming.” Ellington tried to keep his beach towel from flying off the seat after Veronica drove the golf cart too quickly over another deep swell in the path.

“All right, fine then. We’ll wait until tomorrow. But no telling anyone! It’s a secret bound by trust.” This was a friendship oath they had used for years. Each of them had to say it to make it an iron-clad promise.

“A secret bound by trust,” Ellington repeated. He had said this somewhat loudly, in order to be heard over the cackling of the two girls in the front seat. But just as he raised his voice, the others had stopped talking, and his words were heard clearly by everyone in the golf cart.

The older sisters looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“A secret bound by trust?” Veronica laughed hysterically. “You guys are total dorks.”

Ellington buried his face in his towel and Squeak reverted to her most useful threat, “I’ll tell Mom and Dad how lousy you’re driving the cart and they won’t let you take it out by yourself for the rest of the summer, Veronica, so leave us alone.”

“You’d better not, Squeak.” Veronica tried to look tough in front of Duke’s sister Alicia, but Squeak knew that nothing was more important to Veronica than her golf cart privileges. For a young teenager on North Captiva, a golf cart was as good as a car. It was freedom.

“Try me,” Squeak taunted.

They drove past the mailbox emblazoned with the name of their house – Rose Conch. All of the houses on the island were lovingly named by their owners. Veronica parked the cart underneath the stilt home which their father had built. It had stood up to Hurricanes Charlie, Wilma, and Irma, needing only minor repairs after that last storm. It was a solid, thick house, but the girls knew that their conversation could be heard through the open glass doors on the floors above if they weren’t careful.

“This isn’t over, Petunia,” Veronica hissed.

“Yeah? Well, I’m scared to death,” Squeak whispered sassily.

Veronica plugged the golf cart into the charger for the next person who needed it.

Alicia gently nudged Ellington, whose head was still under his beach towel.

“C’mon, Duke. I’m bound by trust to get you home to Mom in one piece.”

Alicia was nicer to Duke than Veronica was to Squeak. Squeak thought it was probably because they only had each other and their mom. Veronica, on the other hand, was herself the victim of an older brother, so she probably felt the need to pass the misery along to her little sister now that she was in the position to do so.

Alicia and Duke were on their way out of the carport when Alicia suddenly stopped and turned around. “Oh, Veronica, I left my iPhone in your room when we were changing for the beach.” She turned to Duke. “I’ll be right back.” Then she ran upstairs behind Veronica.

Duke and Squeak were alone by the golf cart. The occasion gave Squeak an idea, and she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask one more time.

“Duke, I’ve got it! Tell Alicia that we left something on the beach, then let’s go back and get the box. There’s still almost two hours of sun left!”

“Squeak, it’ll take us at least fifteen minutes to walk there, another fifteen to walk back. That leaves us maybe an hour to try to open it, see what’s inside and –”

“That’s more than enough time! It’s not that big so there can’t be a bunch inside of it, right? We just see what’s there, grab it and take it home! You’ll be back in time for dinner, honest!”

“What do I say to Alicia?”

“Tell her you’re coming with me so I’m not alone.”

“What are we supposed to say we left back at the beach? They saw us packing our stuff up.”

“I’ll tell them I left my Crocs.” As she said this, Squeak slipped off her beach shoes and pushed them into Ellington’s bunched-up towel. Before he could protest, they heard the screen door open from above and snap closed on its spring hinges. Alicia came bounding down the stairs two at a time. Duke was cornered. Squeak had won.

“Okay, let’s go,” Alicia started. “Mom’s making pasta.”

“Oh, poopy! I left my Crocs,” Squeak blurted out. She wasn’t quite able to make eye contact when she lied, but Duke was amazed at how easily and naturally his friend could manipulate a situation to get what she wanted.

“Um. I, um, I can walk back with you, if you want,” Duke offered. Unlike Squeak, he was visibly uncomfortable lying.

Alicia eyed them both with one raised brow. Then a slight smile came to her face.

“Uh huh. Okay. You two go on. But you have to be back before dark. I’ll cover for you with Mom.”

“Thanks,” he said, though he didn’t really know what he was thanking her for.

Squeak took a few steps back from the carport so she could see the front door of house above them.

“MOM!” she yelled up in the direction of the screen door. A few seconds later, a pretty blond woman who looked like Squeak plus twenty-five years appeared over the railing.

“What’s up, Pet?” Mrs. Scoville asked.

“I left my Crocs on the beach.” She pointed convincingly at her bare feet. “Duke’s going to walk me back to get them, okay?”

“Alright. Just be back before dark.” She looked down at Alicia, who just shrugged. Mrs. Scoville smiled and went back inside. Alicia looked at Duke and, pointing a finger at him, repeated, “Back before dark.”
Then she left.

Duke stared at Squeak for a moment, not really sure what to do. Sensing that her friend was starting to change his mind, Squeak moved quickly to the golf cart. At first, Duke was about to protest, thinking she intended to try to drive the thing. Then he saw her lift the back seat where they had been sitting a few minutes ago. Underneath it was a storage compartment. Squeak grabbed a small tool kit, put the seat down again, and walked right past Duke toward the path to the beach.

“C’mon,” she said with a smile. “We don’t have much time.”

Still not entirely sure how he had lost control of his life in just under two minutes, Duke shook his head and jogged to catch up with Squeak.