Holes (17 page)

“You thirsty?” Zero asked.

“No,” said Stanley.

“Because you have three full jars of water,” said Zero. “I thought maybe it was getting too heavy for you. If you drink some, it will lighten your load.”

“I’m not thirsty,” said Stanley. “But if you want a drink, I’ll give you some.”

“I’m not thirsty,” said Zero. “I was just worried about you.”

Stanley smiled. “I’m a camel,” he said.

They walked for what seemed like a very long time, and still never came across the
Mary Lou
. Stanley was pretty sure they were heading in the right direction. He remembered that when they left the boat, they were headed toward the setting sun. Now they were headed toward the rising sun. He knew the sun didn’t rise and set exactly in the east and west; more southeast and southwest, but he wasn’t sure how that made a difference.

His throat felt as if it was coated with sandpaper. “You sure you’re not thirsty?” he asked.

“Not me,” said Zero. His voice was dry and raspy.

When they did finally take a drink, they agreed to do it at the same time. Zero, who was now carrying the sack, set it down and took out two jars, giving one to Stanley. They decided to save the canteen for last, since it couldn’t accidentally break.

“You know I’m not thirsty,” Stanley said, as he unscrewed the lid. “I’m just drinking so you will.”

“I’m just drinking so you will,” said Zero.

They clinked the jars together and, each watching the other, poured the water into their stubborn mouths.

Zero was the first to spot the
Mary Lou
, maybe a quarter mile away, and just a little off to the right. They headed for it.

It wasn’t even noon yet when they reached the boat. They sat against the shady side and rested.

“I don’t know what happened to my mother,” Zero said. “She left and never came back.”

Stanley peeled an onion.

“She couldn’t always take me with her,” Zero said. “Sometimes she had to do things by herself.”

Stanley had the feeling that Zero was explaining things to himself.

“She’d tell me to wait in a certain place for her. When I was real little, I had to wait in small areas, like on a porch step or a doorway. ‘Now don’t leave here until I get back,’ she’d say.

“I never liked it when she left. I had a stuffed animal, a little giraffe, and I’d hug it the whole time she was gone. When I got bigger I was allowed to stay in bigger areas. Like, ‘Stay on this block.’ Or, ‘Don’t leave the park.’ But even then, I still held Jaffy.”

Stanley guessed that Jaffy was the name of Zero’s giraffe.

“And then one day she didn’t come back,” Zero said. His voice sounded suddenly hollow. “I waited for her at Laney Park.”

“Laney Park,” said Stanley. “I’ve been there.”

“You know the playscape?” asked Zero. “Yeah. I’ve played on it.”

“I waited there for more than a month,” said Zero. “You know that tunnel that you crawl through, between the slide and the swinging bridge? That’s where I slept.”

They ate four onions apiece and drank about half a jar of water. Stanley stood up and looked around. Everything looked the same in all directions.

“When I left camp, I was heading straight toward Big Thumb,” he said. “I saw the boat off to the right. So that means we have to turn a little to the left.”

Zero was lost in thought. “What? Okay,” he said.

They headed out. It was Stanley’s turn to carry the sack.

“Some kids had a birthday party,” Zero said. “I guess it was about two weeks after my mother left. There was a picnic table next to the playscape and balloons were tied to it. The kids looked to be the same age as me. One girl said hi to me and asked me if I wanted to play. I wanted to, but I didn’t. I knew I didn’t belong at the party, even though it wasn’t their playscape. There was this one mother who kept staring at me like I was some kind of monster. Then later a boy asked me if I wanted a piece of cake, but then that same mother told me, ‘Go away!’ and she told all the kids to stay away from me, so I never got the piece of cake. I ran away so fast, I forgot Jaffy.”

“Did you ever find him—it?”

For a moment, Zero didn’t answer. Then he said, “He wasn’t real.”

Stanley thought again about his own parents, how awful it would be for them to never know if he was dead or alive. He realized that was how Zero must have felt, not knowing what happened to his own mother. He wondered why Zero never mentioned his father.

“Hold on,” Zero said, stopping abruptly. “We’re going the wrong way.”

“No, this is right,” said Stanley.

“You were heading toward Big Thumb when you saw the boat off to your right,” said Zero. “That means we should have turned right when we left the boat.”

“You sure?”

Zero drew a diagram in the dirt.

Stanley still wasn’t sure.

“We need to go this way,” Zero said, first drawing a line on the map and then heading that way himself.

Stanley followed. It didn’t feel right to him, but Zero seemed sure.

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, a cloud drifted across the sky and blocked out the sun. It was a welcome relief. Once again, Stanley felt that destiny was on his side.

Zero stopped and held out his arm to stop Stanley, too.

“Listen,” Zero whispered.

Stanley didn’t hear anything.

They continued walking very quietly and Stanley began to make out the faint sounds of Camp Green Lake. They were still too far away to see the camp, but he could hear a blend of indistinct voices. As they got closer he occasionally could hear Mr. Sir’s distinctive bark.

They walked slowly and quietly, aware that sounds travel in both directions.

They approached a cluster of holes. “Let’s wait here, until they go in,” said Zero.

Stanley nodded. He checked to make sure there was nothing living in it, then climbed down into a hole. Zero climbed into the one next to him.

Despite having gone the wrong way for a while, it hadn’t taken them nearly as long as Stanley had expected. Now, they just had to wait.

The sun cut through the cloud, and Stanley felt its rays beating down on him. But soon more clouds filled the sky, shading Stanley and his hole.

He waited until he was certain the last of the campers had finished for the day.

Then he waited a little longer.

As quietly as possible, he and Zero climbed up out of their holes and crept toward camp. Stanley held the sack in front of him, cradled in his arms, instead of over his shoulder, to keep the jars from clanking against each other. A wave of terror rushed over him when he saw the compound—the tents, the Wreck Room, the Warden’s cabin under the two oak trees. The fear made him dizzy. He took a breath, summoned his courage, and continued.

“That’s the one,” he whispered, pointing out the hole where he had found the gold tube. It was still about fifty yards away, but Stanley was pretty sure it was the right hole. There was no need to risk going any closer.

They climbed down into adjacent holes, and waited for the camp to fall asleep.

Stanley tried to sleep, not knowing when he’d get the chance again. He heard the showers and, later, the sounds of dinner. He heard the creaking of the Wreck Room door. His fingers drummed against the side of the hole. He heard his own heart beat.

He took a drink from the canteen. He had given Zero the water jars. They each had a good supply of onions.

He wasn’t sure how long he remained in the hole, maybe five hours. He was surprised when he heard Zero whispering for him to wake up. He didn’t think he’d fallen asleep. If he had, he thought it must have just been for the last five minutes. Although, when he opened his eyes, he was surprised how dark it was.

There was only one light on at camp, in the office. The sky was cloudy, so there was very little starlight. Stanley could see a sliver of a moon, which appeared and disappeared among the clouds.

He carefully led Zero to the hole, which was hard to find in the darkness. He stumbled over a small pile of dirt. “I think this is it,” he whispered.

“You
think?”
Zero asked.

“It’s it,” said Stanley, sounding more certain than he really was. He climbed down. Zero handed him the shovel.

Stanley stuck the shovel into the dirt at the bottom of the hole and stepped on the back of the blade. He felt it sink beneath his weight. He scooped out some dirt and tossed it off to the side. Then he brought the shovel back down.

Zero watched for a while. “I’m going to try to refill the water jars,” he said.

Stanley took a deep breath and exhaled. “Be careful,” he said, then continued digging.

It was so dark, he couldn’t even see the end of his shovel. For all he knew he could be digging up gold and diamonds instead of dirt. He brought each shovelful close to his face, to try to see if anything was there, before dumping it out of the hole.

As he made the hole deeper, it became harder to lift the dirt up and out. It was five feet deep before he even started. He decided to use his efforts to make it wider instead.

This made more sense, he told himself. If Kate Barlow had buried a treasure chest, she probably wouldn’t have been able to dig much deeper, so why should he?

Of course, Kate Barlow probably had a whole gang of thieves helping her.

“You want some breakfast?”

Stanley jumped at the sound of Zero’s voice. He hadn’t heard him approach.

Zero handed down a box of cereal. Stanley carefully poured some cereal into his mouth. He didn’t want to put his dirty hands inside the box. He nearly gagged on the ultra-sweet taste. They were sugar-frosted flakes, and after eating nothing but onions for more than a week, he had trouble adjusting to the flavor. He washed them down with a swig of water.

Zero took over the digging. Stanley sifted his fingers through the fresh piles of dirt, in case he had missed anything. He wished he had a flashlight. A diamond no bigger than a pebble would be worth thousands of dollars. Yet there was no way he’d see it.

They finished the water that Zero had gotten from the spigot by the showers. Stanley said he’d go fill the jars again, but Zero insisted that he do it instead. “No offense, but you make too much noise when you walk. You’re too big.”

Stanley returned to the hole. As the hole grew wider, parts of the surface kept caving in. They were running out of room. To make it much wider, they would first have to move some of the surrounding dirt piles out of the way. He wondered how much time they had before the camp woke up.

“How’s it going?” Zero asked when he returned with the water.

Stanley shrugged one shoulder. He brought the shovel down the side of the hole, shaving off a slice of the dirt wall. As he did so, he felt the shovel bounce off something hard.

“What was that?” Zero asked.

Stanley didn’t know. He moved his shovel up and down the side of the hole. As the dirt chipped and flaked away, the hard object became more pronounced.

It was sticking out of the side of the hole, about a foot and a half from the bottom. He felt it with his hands.

“What is it?” Zero asked.

He could just feel a corner of it. Most of it was still buried. It had the cool, smooth texture of metal. “I think I might have found the treasure chest,” he said. His voice was filled more with astonishment than with excitement.

“Really?” asked Zero.

“I think so,” Stanley said.

The hole was wide enough for him to hold the shovel lengthwise and dig sideways into the wall. He knew he had to dig very carefully. He didn’t want the side of the hole to collapse, along with the huge pile of dirt directly above it.

He scraped at the dirt wall, until he exposed one entire side of the box-like object. He ran his fingers over it. It felt to be about eight inches tall, and almost two feet wide. He had no way of knowing how far into the earth it extended. He tried pulling it out, but it wouldn’t budge.

He was afraid that the only way to get to it was to start back up at the surface, and dig down. They didn’t have time for that.

“I’m going to try to dig a hole underneath it,” he said. “Then maybe I can pull it down and slip it out.”

“Go for it,” said Zero.

Stanley jammed the shovel into the bottom edge of his hole, and carefully began to dig a tunnel underneath the metal object. He hoped it didn’t cave in.

Occasionally he’d stop, stoop down, and try to feel the far
end of the box. But even when the tunnel was as long as his arm, he still couldn’t feel the other side.

Once again he tried pulling it out, but it was firmly in the ground. If he pulled too hard, he feared, he’d cause a cave-in. He knew that when he was ready to pull it out, he would have to do it quickly, before the ground above it collapsed.

As his tunnel grew deeper and wider—and more precarious—Stanley was able to feel latches on one end of the box, and then a leather handle. It wasn’t really a box. “I think it might be some kind of metal suitcase,” he told Zero.

“Can you pry it loose with the shovel?” Zero suggested.

“I’m afraid the side of the hole will collapse.”

“You might as well give it a try,” said Zero.