The Golden Lily

A gold bar. 10oz of fine, pure gold at 999.9.

Charlie Huston didn’t really know what those numbers meant, but the lawyer said it would be worth at least $20,000 with a reputable exchange-traded funds dealer. He barely knew his great-uncle either. The man had been very private, though most of the rest of the family assumed he had been rich. Charlie was excited but wondered aloud in the empty room, “Why give this to me?” Time for some homework.

The only other thing in the safe-deposit box was a small notebook underneath the bar of gold. Black, leather, visibly used with an elastic band holding it closed. Without removing the gold, indeed without wanting to touch it for fear of smudging, Charlie gently pulled the leather notebook out from under its box-mate. Looking around the room lined with a couple hundred other safety boxes embedded in the walls, there was only the table his box was now open on, and three nicely cushioned chairs. “Those are nice,” he noted to himself before shaking his head clear and dragging one to the table at center of the room. He wanted to focus. He wanted the thoughts of a man who had just received a twenty-thousand-dollar gift from a dead relative he had barely known.

With a short sigh, Charlie sat in the chair and paused, looking at the book. The edges were worn, and there were bits of other note paper in different colors poking out of the sides. “Full of good reading,” he thought to himself. Somewhat reverentially, Charlie reached out and turned back the book’s black cover and stared at the page.

Blank. Charlie smiled at his own hesitance. He realized he had been holding his breath. Blank cover page. Fine. Page two. Charlie turned the fine vellum page over.

Blank. “What tha…?”

Charlie picked up the notebook, still with careful reverence, and began flipping through the pages. Blank. Blank. Blank. The colored note papers were blank too. Charlie quickly thumbed the pages looking for any sign of writing. Nothing. The whole book was blank. But it still had the appearance of being well-used.

“Huh!” Charlie sat back, puzzled. “Who was this guy?” he thought. Less reverentially, he tossed the book back into the open security box, where it landed on the gold bar with a slap. “Well, at least there’s that.”

Charlie stood up and looked in the box. Still puzzled, he slowly closed the lid.

He quickly reopened the box and grabbed the black book before slamming the lid in place once again. The gold would wait.

On the street level, just outside the bank, Charlie turned left and headed for the subway station. He knew the way, like any good citizen of the city, and his body was on autopilot. In his mind, he tried to remember everything he could about his great-uncle.

Let’s see. Grandfather’s brother. War veteran. About a thousand years old…

Charlie stopped abruptly on the crowded sidewalk. “Ah, a hundred and one,” he said out loud, before looking around at the busy street full of people. He walked on. Everybody talked to themselves in the city. It was the only way you could be sure someone was listening.

One hundred and one years old. He had just learned that this morning at the lawyer’s office during the reading of the will. Born in 1920. Joined the Army Air Crops in 1941. Fought in the Pacific in World War Two…

Never married. Charlie had stopped again lost in his thoughts. “I wonder why?” He looked down at the ring finger of his left hand, empty and remembered that he had been married once… “Oh.” He walked on towards the station.

Approaching the stairs leading down to the subterranean platform, Charlie was flipping thoughts in his mind. Why a gold bar? Why a blank book? Why keep it until he died? Who can tell me what…?

THAT’S IT! Charlie knew what he needed. He needed someone who knew his great-uncle. A contemporary. Charlie spun on his heels and headed in the opposite direction, away from the station stairs. He would need an entirely different station for this trip.

Charlie sat across from his grandmother at her small, two-person tea table. With tea. Which he hated. But he would drink it anyway because Nana had made it for him. Her apartment in the retirement community building was upscale. Small, but not depressing, and elegantly decorated with nearly a century of her belongings meticulously kept. The place was paid for on a plan that would only expire when she did. Charlie’s grandmother, “Nana” as she had been known for the last half century or so, was still very lucid, very healthy, very smart. At the ripe old age of ninety-four, she had outlived both of Charlie’s parents and a slew of other relatives. It was enough to make him hope he had inherited a good amount of the beautiful old lady’s genes. “Maybe it’s the tea,” he reasoned to himself as he picked up the cup and sipped at the steaming hot liquid.

“Have you found a job?” she asked.

“Still looking,” he said.

“Have you found a girlfriend?” she asked.

“Still looking,” he said.

“Well, do a better job this time. That last one was…WHOA!” she giggled.

Charlie smiled and laughed a little. The old girl wasn’t wrong. Definitely…WHOA!

“I haven’t seen or spoken to Maxwell since your grandfather died. Twelve years or so. He and Charles were remarkably close, but after he died, Maxwell just retreated.”

“He was Grandpa’s younger brother, right?” Charlie asked.

“Yes, by two years,” said Nana. “They did everything together. School, sports…girls!” she said, smiling mischievously at her grandson.

“Um, yuck. Let’s pause that thought there before I need therapy,” he said.

Nana chuckled and continued. “They were both pilots in the war, you know. Both in the Pacific together. Here, let me show you.” Nana moved to get up, still able to on her own, but Charlie stood quicker to

Assist anyway. “I have a picture of them together in their uniforms. Over…here,” she said, identifying the picture she wanted in a sea of other pictures equally interesting to Charlie.

“Good looking guys,” Charlie remarked at the picture. “Glad I could keep up the family trend.” He smiled at his grandmother, who responded with her own smile and a raised right eyebrow.

“I’m glad it was you, Charlie,” she said, changing the subject. “That hunk of gold was an obsession for those two men, and a couple of their old war buddies. I’m sure you remember when they would get together at that old bar downtown and tell stories until they got kicked out?”

“The Irish pub?”

“Not that one.”

“The other Irish pub?”

“No no…”

“The English pub?”

“No, this was an Irish pub.”

“Well, that narrows it down,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Anyway, they’re all dead now. But Charles and Max kept the obsession going until…well, until passing it on to you.”

“Nana, the gold is nice, but what was the obsession? What’s the story of that thing?” he asked.

“Hand me that small wooden box on the top shelf, would you?” She pointed behind him at the shelves that surrounded her television. “I want to show you something.”

Charlie looked up at the top shelf and saw the small, non-decorated wooden box, about palm sized. He took it down off the shelf and handed it to his grandmother.

“Come, sit down. I think you will like this,” she said, moving back to the table.

They both sat down again, and she placed the little box on the table. A small brass latch kept it closed but moved aside easily.

Charlie looked on with interest as she pulled out a small match box and an old scrap of blank paper. “Charles and Maxwell had secrets, but this is one they shared with me. The origin of that old block of gold, I mean.”

“Is there something written on that paper? It looks blank,” said Charlie.

“It is blank,” she said, “Until you do this.” Nana struck a match from the box she had been holding. “Hold this paper up, between your fingers.” She moved his hands into position and reached out with the match.

Just as Charlie began to think she was going to burn the paper in his hands, a word started to appear. Nana waived the match back and forth about an inch from the paper. Charlie squinted, trying to make out the word forming on the paper. “Am…Am..Sh…”

“Invisible ink,” said Nana. Your grandfather and his brother had this gold bar since returning from the war they said. But I think they believed someone was after it..or them…or both.”

“Yamashita. It says Yamashita,” Charlie read. What’s a Yamashita?”

“I think it’s a who,” said Nana “perhaps the who that owned that gold before the boys got it.”

“Wait, they stole it? Were they…were they crooks, Nana?”

“Not the two men I knew. Still, things happen in war, things long since dead.” She saw the unsettled look on Charlie’s face. “That’s why I’m glad it was you. I’m glad Maxwell gave the mystery to you to figure out.”

“Figure out? But I only have the gold, nice as it is. And a…” It dawned on him like a brick. A gold brick to the head. Charlie reached for his backpack, the one he always carried. Inside, the blank black book. “Blank,” he said. “Blank.”

He looked at his grandmother and she pleasantly handed him the match box.

“Did you know about this book?” he asked.

“Like I said, I’m glad it was you, she said, smiling.

Charlie shook off a feeling like he had just walked through a spider’s nest of webs. He opened the book to the first page. Blank cover page? Holding the book open with his elbow, he struck a match and shuffled himself to be able to repeat his grandmother’s magic from a moment ago. Slowly, he moved the flame back and forth about an inch from the page. Nothing happened, so he began waving his way down the length of the page. Maybe it was a blank cover page.

He was on his third match and about halfway down the page when it happened. What ever chemical reaction needed to take place was beginning to show words. “It’s working. Nana…” She smiled and clapped her hands together in delight, taking more joy from her grandson’s reaction than anything written on the page.

Charlie worked faster now, worried that the exposed letters would disappear just as quickly. “Words. I’m getting words.” His pulse was faster now and he could feel sweat dripping down his back. “Here we go. That’s it! I got it. It’s…”

Everything stopped. The match went out on its own, still held between Charlie’s fingers. He stared at the page with the revealed letters. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe.

The page contained a written note from his granduncle. It said:

Are you ready, Charlie? Let’s begin…

Nana stood up from the table. “I’ll get more tea, dear.”