Spider Lake (34 page)

He opened the door to the cabin. There was no cathedral ceiling, no modern conveniences. He looked at the old painting by Sam Regola. He had hung it straight when he left, but now it was crooked. It seemed older now, tarnished with a golden patina made with forty years of cigarette smoke. Ben walked over to the couch and sat down. He pulled some clean clothes out of his saddle bags.

As he sat there, he just looked at the old painting.

He got up, walked over to the old fridge, and found that there were four beers inside. Not the designer beers of the night before, but regular beer still held together by the rings. He opened one and slugged it down. Then he took a shower. He would get cleaned up and then he would leave.

When he had showered, he grabbed another can and sat down again on the musty couch. He thought about all that had happened to him. He thought about the dream. He thought about all the things that led to this one minute. He was feeling angry, losing his cool. Why would it all be for naught? He could not think of any moral lessons he had learned. He never coveted money. That was not his problem. He just wanted to be a provider.

He had one shoe on and the other was in his hand. He was still looking at the painting. It was part of this whole mess. In a fit of anger, he threw his shoe as hard as he could at it, and it fell off the wall.

he egg tempera painting that Sam Regola painted forty-five years ago fell four and a half feet to the linoleum floor of cabin number four. Ben looked at the damaged frame and felt pangs of guilt for having broken it. He walked over to his shoe and picked it up. He looked down at the broken frame. He had helped Sam with the materials to build the thing. His grandfather’s hand planes were used to put the decorative curves in the wood.

He walked over to the fridge and grabbed another Pabst Blue Ribbon. He kicked the face-down painting as he walked back over to the couch. Outside, the rain had picked up and it was puring again. Ben noticed for the first time that the roof had a couple of leaks. He looked back down at the painting. He picked it up from the floor and a letter fell out. The white envelope fell quickly, as if it were more dense than just paper. When it hit the floor it made an audible knocking sound on the cheap linoleum. Ben sat the painting face up on the grimy kitchen counter, looking at the envelope on the floor. He knew somehow it would be addressed to him. Sam had given him the painting. He picked up the painting again, and tore the backing paper off the back.

The wood panel that was used by Sam Regola for the painting, had a recessed back in the size and shape of the envelope. He walked back over to the couch and slowly put on his other shoe, staring at the white envelope on the floor. He thought that if he walked up to it, the envelope might disappear. He finally got up off the couch and picked the envelope up. Inside was a shiny gold coin and a letter. He studied the coin, and compared it to the one he had kept from the floor of the water tank. It was the same coin from the same year.

Ben’s hands were shaking as he pulled the letter out of the envelope. There were two sheets inside. One read;

Dear Ben,

If you are reading this, it means I have left your fine establishment and gone to my long home. It also means that you were witty enough to “look inside”. Please thank your parents for me for their fine hospitality. There is an old scripture from the good book which says, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” It comes to mind when I think about how your family took me in, thinking that I had nothing. For that I thank you.

I was not quite honest about who I was Ben. When you found me sleeping on the road-side, I was making my way back to my own boyhood home, Spider Lake. You see Ben, my real name is Samuel Rule. The name Regola is Italian for Rule. I hope you can forgive my white lie. My brother and I grew up at the Mansion just west of you. You could say we are next-door neighbors!

I was going back home to live out my last days, but when I met you and yours, I kind of changed my mind. My brother and I never did see eye to eye, and I thought why not stay in one of your cabins instead.

There is one other thing Ben. I have decided to leave you my half of the estate. I originally thought I would leave it to my brother, or to a charity, but something inside me said you could use it.

I hope you do good with it, and use it for your education, and not let it spoil you. I lived most of my life never even touching it. I thought a long time about whether or not it would do you good or bad, but I seen something in you that said you would be alright.

Attached is a copy of my last will and testament. You will find a law firm in Chicago who is handling the trust. They are very old and very well established as honest men, and it would do you good to allow them to advise you on its management.

God bless you my boy.

Your friend,

Samuel Rule

When Ben pulled the motorcycle into his driveway, his wife and the twins were there to meet him. When he gingerly pulled his helmet off, Jill could only see his beaten and bloody face and she began to tear. She kissed Ben’s face in the only place that he wasn’t bruised, and she hugged him once he was off his bike.

The boys thought their dad looked way cool just like in the movies, and when Ben smiled with his missing teeth, he was elevated in the twins’ esteem. He hugged the boys at the same time, one in each arm, and he told them he had a present for them, reaching into his jacket pocket and handing them each a shiny gold coin.

The lawyers had been contacted, and Ben had to cut through some legal red tape, but in the end it was determined that he was the sole heir to both the Rule brother’s fortunes. Had Merriweather not hidden half of his gold, the amount would have crossed the line from very large to enormous, but the property still held its secrets.

The skinny pool-shark opened a pool-hall in Rhinelander with his share of the ill-gotten gold. He made several bad investments and partied morning noon and night for several months, and in less than a year he was bankrupt.

Ruben the J-man McCann and his caring wife bought a sailboat with their share of the stolen gold and sailed it down from Marinette to the Florida keys. Ruben’s wife never asked how he came into the gold so she never knew the violence it took to obtain it. Truth be told, he hit Ben only once. The skinny-man did the real beating. The skinny man enjoyed the beating. Now the J-man and his wife live frugally on their boat, only splurging now and then to follow Jimmy Buffett around the country.

What is unknown to all but the reader, is that Morris the monkey had been transferring the coins one by one from the underground vault of the Alamo to the water tower tank. He accessed the cache from an air vent that was carefully hidden within a dead tree. All the training Morris had in the collection of loose change, had caused him to have a keen interest in the underground cache. Old habits die hard as they say, and had the vent not been damaged in the storm he might still be hauling the gold coins from one place to the other.

The Alamo door was actually kept in good working condition by Rule; not the children with the oil can, and the legends of a secret door opening only when the door was shut were based in fact, but are now long forgotten.

The second and third door to the secret vault which led from the Alamo underneath the stone fence to the Rule property could only be opened with a key. It was the same skeleton key that accessed the entry door of the old Victorian mansion. There is still one key in existence which was donated by a Ms. Rosa McCann to the Rhinelander Historical Society and it sits in a glass-topped case with vintage photographs of the old mansion.

If the key were to be used in the surviving underground locks, and if a cable from an underground mechanism would be replaced on a single pulley, it would make for quite a find.

But that is a story for another time.

THE END