The Chardon Chronicles: Season One -- The Harvest Festival (8 page)

He put on a pair of linen pants and a
sweatshirt and put a well worn baseball cap over his bed head. He
ordered some breakfast, “and lots of coffee” through room service
and went out on the patio. “Morning, Perry.” his golden retriever
was lounging on the patio. He got up and moved over next to Robbie
who patted his side. Robbie opened his laptop. The battery was duct
taped taped on, and the screen sometimes only showed the reds
unless he jiggled it back to full color.

He had breakfast, and sipped the coffee.
“Damn, that’s good.” He’d been telling the hotel staff how to make
it for him for the past couple of weeks, and they were finally
getting the hang of it. He liked it brewed strong so there was a
slick of coffee oil floating on the surface. He liked it with just
a drop of cream to tame the acidity. He dropped some toast scraps
on the patio. Perry just lazed his head over and ate them on his
side. “Lazy!” he chided.

He went through the morning routine while his
energy level built up. Checked the headline news: as usual, the
world situation was grim. The financial news was a waste of time as
usual: better off with tea leaves. Looked at the twitter stream,
answered some e-mail, then checked the Chardon local news and
weather. He laughed when he saw Tracy’s picture. He picked up the
phone and snapped the screen and texted it to her, then read the
article.

“Nice Job!” SEND.

A few minutes later his phone buzzed. “Thx!
Good to hear from you! Where u at?”

He took a picture of the beach and sent
it.

“SO JELLY!”

“@ FL Keys” SEND

“How’s Perry?”

“Say ‘hi’ Perry”. He sent a picture of the
dog.

“Lazy! Loving life.”

“What was ur essay?” SEND

“LOL. It was terrible.”

“Being modest?” SEND

“No. Honest. Wrote in 5 mins.”

He grunted incredulously. Something didn’t
add up. He called her. “Five minutes, really?”

“Yeah, I was running late for school and
wrote it that morning in 5 minutes. I was really surprised to say
the least. The next round is coming up and I need to give a
talk.”

“So, why the pictures at home?”

“There were photographers and a reporter at
the house. They were taking pictures of everything. Asking a lot of
questions. They were interested in the history.”

“Yeah there’s a lot of interesting history
there. Ya know, as much as Perry loves the beach, I think it’s time
to head back to Chardon.”

“Great!” She was really enthusiastic. “It’s
been too quiet here lately.”

“I’ll take care of some stuff here today then
hit the road. See you soon.”

Robbie started firing off emails. He was
helping to bring up an ethanol fuel distillery in the Keys, and had
been working for days to help set up local supply and delivery
chains. He had his fingers in a few other projects, too, not only
in Florida, but all over. He copy and pasted the same apology into
a bunch of messages. He apologized for the short notice, but said
he had to tend to some emergency family business and would be out
of communication for some time.

Before he checked out, Robbie did a lap of
the hotel and shook hands with all the staff he had interacted with
during his stay. He chatted with them and wished them well. He went
back to his room and packed two well traveled duffel bags with all
his clothes and gear. He put a wad of cash on the dresser with a
thank you note.

Perry waited for him on the bed. “We’re going
home, boy!” Perry’s tail wagged and he hopped down.

They went out into the parking lot. His truck
was in the shade provided by garden beds that lined either side of
a covered walkway into the hotel lobby. It was an ‘86 Chevy
Silverado M1008. He’d been driving it all over the country for
years. When he got it, the forest camo color pattern was still
apparent. But years of travel faded the paint to a uniform dull
gray green. The odometer stopped working a little after it rolled
over and perpetually read 16137 miles, but the diesel still ran
well, and all the other gauges still worked. He cued up a podcast
on the phone and started heading north. Perry put his head out the
window for a while, then fell asleep on the bench seat.

Morgan spent most of the days of his
suspension working for his dad at the Klerc Tire and Tune. The shop
was actually starting to look pretty clean and organized thanks to
his efforts. He even spent a couple of days power washing the
exterior of the building and the concrete drive.

The school hadn’t gotten around to sending
the repair bill, yet, and his dad wouldn’t pay him until the whole
thing was settled. He wasn’t grounded, but since his time was no
longer structured by class bells, he fell out of sync with what his
friends were up to in just a couple days. When he wasn’t working,
he spent his time researching the coin.

The trip to the coin shop had been
inconclusive. The owner held firm on his initial $1500 offer, but
also offered to connect Morgan with an auction house. In return, he
wanted 10% of the sale, on top of a 25% commission from the
auctioneer. He strongly implied that $1500 cash was a better deal.
Within a couple of days, Morgan’s sense of urgency to sell the coin
went away--he realized if it had any value, it would still have it
tomorrow or next year.

The coin research was the first time he ever
used his mind to
do
something for himself. Morgan had never
been interested in school, though he was actually one of the
smartest kids in his class. He didn’t ever engage with the
arbitrary parade of material and mind numbing standardized tests
teachers threw at them every year, and was just a solid C
student.

He started the research believing the
Internet would just tell him a price. His initial searches took him
to precious metals websites, then to numismatic web sites, all dead
ends. In frustration, and with nothing else to do, he thought to
widen the search, and wandered off on related tangents.

As he amassed seemingly unrelated and useless
facts, patterns in the information came alive. It was like
happening upon a deer trail while walking through the woods. All of
a sudden, a jumble of leaves, branches, and logs reveals a path
that leads somewhere.

He sat at the desk in his room. The lights
were off except for the desk lamp and the computer monitor cast a
pale glow. He put a US quarter next to his gold coin and stared at
them. A modern coin is mass produced. It’s meant to be a metallic
representation of a number. He read articles and watched YouTube
videos about people hoarding nickels and copper pennies and looking
for pre 1964 silver coins. The face value, the numerical value
could be a lie. He was starting to think his coin wasn’t really
currency at all. He spent hours pouring through online images of
coins from the era, and hadn’t found a match.

The only number on the coin was a Roman
numeral date:
MCDLXII
--1462. He determined the coin was hand
engraved and stippled; it was actually a miniature sculpture. The
high spots of the engravings were worn, but most of the details
were still evident and there was very little damage. Its edges were
a thick border. The face of the coin depicted a bearded man who was
sitting with his arms over his knees, and had a small image of a
lamp over small stamped letters FRNZ. The back side had two greek
words around the border, φιλόσοφος and
κύων
and depicted a small dog offering a paw.

As Friday rolled around, his teenage brain
and energy kept him up all night researching and studying articles.
He’d accumulated a giant mass of notes that were scribbled on a
stack of notepads. He shoved the mess in a bag and took his bike to
Tracy’s.

He wore a jacket on the ride and was too hot
by the time he climbed a couple of hills to the Wells farm. The
cool air felt great on his damp shirt as he coasted down the
driveway. He knocked on the door and tried the knob. It was
locked.

He got out his phone and texted her.

“AT YOUR PLACE” SEND

He got the hidden key from under a rock in
the flowerbed and went inside. He called out, “Hellloooo.” The
place was dead quiet. Tracy was probably out.

He went into the library and put the bookbag
on the big table in the center of the room. He stripped off his
coat and tossed it into a chair. His phone buzzed.

“OK. @ STORE.” she replied.

“Doing research on coin” SEND

“Np cu.” she wrote back.

He walked around the shelves. One aisle was
labelled “Money and Finance”. He said, “ok, maybe something there…”
The shelves were packed with materials. Some were books with
leather bindings and titles. He picked up a few books from the
shelf and piled them on the table. One of the volumes was
particularly striking. It was thin, and was bound in a silvery gray
leather. The cover had an embossed image a serpent coiling around a
wooden cross. He ran his fingertips over the image,
“interesting…”

He browsed the other shelves, taking it in.
He spent time hanging out in the library ever since he knew Tracy,
but they’d never really looked at the books--the library just
provided an interesting atmosphere. The aisles were tall. He was a
tall boy, 6’2” but he couldn’t reach the top shelves. He puttered
around on the first floor for a few minutes, then climbed the steep
ladder stairs to the second floor walkway. 4” oak planks formed a
walkway around the perimeter of the room. He noticed that the
planks were hanging off the shelves on iron braces and the shelves
actually went all the way up and were anchored to the beams in the
ceiling. A huge sculpture of the Sun was on the eastern wall. He’d
never noticed that it was actually a lamp. He plugged it in and it
glowed a pleasant yellow.

He climbed the stairs on the right side of
the room. A silver sculpture of the moon was mounted on the wall.
The label of the first row of shelves read “Magic and Divination”.
“Sweet. Weird. Have to check that one out.” He walked very slowly
through the aisle. He grabbed a few random volumes and carefully
stepped down the stairs. He nestled into one of the comfortable
chairs. He unpacked his pile of notes, then started browsing the
books he selected.

He flipped through the pages of each, looking
for a starting point, but kept coming back to the slender volume
with the snake on the cover. He cracked it open. The pages were
vellum. It was only 40 pages long. The frontispiece was an
elaborate illustration. The title page was latin. There was some
writing on the margin in a sloped, tight script.

“Finance and Belief, Library of J. Law”.
There were also some notes in what he assumed was German more in
language he didn’t recognize, which was actually Dutch. He thumbed
through the book. The original printed text was double spaced lines
of latin, but each line was translated to English in hand written
text. He read about halfway through the book when he heard the
Austin Healey crunching gravel outside.

He went out to help her bring groceries into
the house.

“What’s up stranger?” she asked.

“What a weird week. Been working like a
working man.” he smiled. “It’s been semi-good all things
considered. What’s up with you guys?”

“Same old, same old. People are starting to
get worked up for Homecoming.”

“Oh, yeah… I forgot about that. Still weeks
away, though, right?”

“Yep. Oh, yeah, and my Uncle’s heading home.
He could be here any time. Probably making some stops on the way up
from Florida.”

“Oh, cool! I haven’t seen him in a
while.”

She started packing away the groceries. He
usually would have stayed there chatting, but the wheels of his
mind were still churning. “I’ll be in the library.”

“Oh, Okay.” She felt strangely pained that he
just walked away.

His head was down over the book when she
walked into the room. “Did you find anything interesting?” she
asked.

“Hmmm.” he just kind of grunted, and he
rubbed his chin. “I’ve been doing research all week. At first, I
was just trying to figure out how much this is worth.” He tossed
the coin to her. “but, now, I’m just reading. There’s so much…” he
leaned back. “So much I don’t know… I didn’t even know it existed…”
he folded his hands on his chest.

She flipped through his notes. There were
single lines of text, dates, sketches, arrows, big stars. “Wow,
you’ve been busy.” she hefted the stack.

He looked at her, “maybe if I try to explain
it, you’ll notice something.”

“Go for it. Want some coffee?” he rarely ever
drank the stuff, “You know, yeah, that might be good.”

They walked into the kitchen. He flopped the
coin from palm to palm.

“At first, I thought this was a coin, money.
So I looked through just about every coin image I could find. Let
me tell you, there are a lot. But I found nothing.”

She started the pot brewing. The hot water
gurgled and steam puffed through the top of the maker.

“If it’s not a coin, what is it?”

“Could be some kind of medal?” he
shrugged.