The Very Last Page

The Very Last Page

By Barry Hess

Wallace was one of those people who kept mostly to himself. He did his accounting job in the city well enough. He wasn’t a superstar, but his production was more than adequate to secure his employment. His weekends were free of worry, and he made good use of them. More than anything else he enjoyed camping alone in the forests of New England. He was especially fond of northern New Hampshire. There was something about the smell; the sheer beauty Mother Nature offered; and the moist chill in the air that just can’t be experienced anywhere else in the World. He spent almost every weekend in the woods, somewhere.

Most times he would set up his campsite, and get everything ready, so when he returned from the obligatory survey of the immediate surroundings, he could prepare his meal and relax. At heart, he wanted to be an explorer, but he followed his parent’s advice and went to Accounting school instead. He liked exploring in the mountains, and taking the most dramatic pictures he could, so he always had his camera ready in case he should encounter a Bigfoot, a Chupacabra, or maybe even an alien. One never knows…

Sunday mornings he would pack up his Jeep; then clean up his campsite so there would be no trace left of his temporary residency. He had no way of knowing that his respect and concern for preserving Nature would reward him so handsomely.

He had spent the weekend camping beside a grown-over trail that ran up through New Hampshire’s most famous Notch in the White Mountains. It was the first road Settlers used to get to the other side of the range, but it was abandoned when the new road was cut into the sides of the Notch at least 150 years ago. Trees have grown up in the trail, but hikers and campers have kept the path clear.

That particular Sunday started out like all the others. He felt invigorated having spent another glorious weekend wrapped in the grandeur of Nature, and had packed in all of his gear. His final act was to cover his tracks so he carefully looked over the site. “All good.” He thought to himself, as he gently moved the rocks away from his fire pit with his feet. Without noticing, he kicked out a rock that he hadn’t placed there, and it left a noticeable hole in the ground. A sliver of Sunshine lighted the hole as he stooped to fill it.

As he moved dirt toward the hole, he noticed the glint of metal. Although he was sure it was a soda can left behind by disrespectful campers; he couldn’t leave it, so he started to dig, and it quickly became obvious it wasn’t just a can. It was some kind of a hinge.

He did more digging than he had anticipated. It was already after 3 PM when he uncovered what appeared to be a trap door in the forest floor. There was an odd-looking padlock on one side, but the metal it was attached to had long since rusted away. His curiosity got the better of him and he looked down into the hole.

It was a shaft of some kind, but he could make out that a very clean room had been built underground. It looked like a big, table was down there. A sturdy ladder was built into the shaft, so Wallace had to get a better look.

It was remarkable. The floor was about 20 feet beneath the surface, and with the Sun directly overhead, it lighted the area around the shaft. Once inside, he could see that it wasn’t a table; it was a stack of small wooden chests. What was remarkable was that the room was obviously old, but it didn’t appear to have gathered any dust.

The stack of chests got his imagination going, but he knew it was probably one of those survivalist stashes. He fully expected to find all kinds of dried foods and survival goods inside the chests, but they were tightly nailed shut, and his pocket knife was useless.

He was still curious, so he grabbed the one metal chest that sat conspicuously on top; it was a little larger than the others. He was shocked at its weight, and had to use the Jeep’s winch to get it up out of the hole. Loading it into the Jeep required far more effort on his part. A hernia was just another strain away. He closed, and covered the door because he never intended to revisit it, and he always left things the way he found them.

All the digging and lifting had worn him out. He could wait to get home to his tools to confirm his suspicions. He was already way off his schedule, and needed to hurry because the next day was a work day.

It was nearly Mid-night when Wallace got home, and he was exhausted. It caught up with him during the long drive home. He unloaded his gear but he skipped his usual cleaning and inspections before putting it in the proper places. His muscles gave out when he tried to heft the chest out of the Jeep, and it fell heavily to the floor. It took all he had to drag it off to the side, and he was in no mood to mess with the padlock that kept its contents secret. It was big, and it looked relatively new, so naturally, Wallace assumed it had to be survivalist supplies. He could wait to cut it open when he came home from work.

He was hungry from not having eaten all day, and quickly made himself 2 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a soft drink, and took them to his room. He turned on the TV as he gobbled his sandwiches before he fell asleep.

He woke up at the usual time, and felt surprisingly good, except for being unusually hungry. He cleaned himself up, and made his usual hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pancakes, along with coffee and orange juice.

He finished breakfast earlier than usual, and decided to check-in early to work.

As he backed out of the garage, he glanced at the chest. Evidently, when it fell, it had burst the seam on one corner and partially revealed its contents. He stopped the Jeep in the driveway, and got out to take a closer look.

He could only see the edges, but it looked like a stack of coins. His excitement returned. He still had some time, so carefully cut off the padlock with his grinder and slowly opened the chest. He couldn’t believe his eyes, inside was a fortune in tightly-packed coin stacks filling the chest from top to bottom—most were gold ounces, but some were silver. As he folded back the top, he noticed that a small black book had been placed on top of the treasure.

Tucked inside the cover was a letter clearly written in Olde English calligraphy. The ink had lightened considerably but he could make out that whoever wrote it believed they would go to Hell if they left debts unpaid. It said if the reader found this, it would likely mean they were dead—and in their mind, in purgatory. They implored the reader to make good on their debts, and release them from their plight. It said if the reader would do all they could to satisfy the debts, on their personal Honor, anything leftover would be their reward. The last part was almost unreadable, but said something about finishing the King’s Highway; whatever that was. At least that’s what Wallace divined from the strange writing.

It was dated September 17th, 1735, and signed Samuel ‘something’ ‘something’. It stunned him that it was signed almost 300 years ago.

The book listed 11 names, and addresses. Beside each name was an amount owed to them in Pound Sterling. The addresses were just descriptions based on landmarks, roads and rivers. Following the list of names were several hand-written poems. Wallace just sat there, in silence on the floor of his garage. He immediately thought of the other chests he had left in the mysterious room--and decided he wasn’t going in to work that day, and might not be going back at all. He made 3 more trips to get all of the chests. Each time, the Jeep was loaded to capacity.

Wallace was a mostly honest man, but having thought all day on it, he realized that he would never be able to find those people 300 years later, and besides, he had had to work hard for to retrieve it. At least that’s how he tried to justify keeping his newfound treasure to himself. After all, he found it on Public property…isn’t the ‘rule’, “losers weepers, finders keepers”?

He knew his conscience wouldn’t let him do that, and decided to make an honest effort to find the descendants of those people, and keep to his benefactor’s request, even if it was a fool’s errand.

Internet resources made his task surprisingly easy. It took him several days of staring at his screen, but he did manage to trace each of the names on the list, and could locate at least one living relative for 7 of them.

“That’s the best I can do”, he assured himself, but wait, the Mormons keep track of everybody, don’t they?” he asked himself aloud.

He went to the big Temple downtown, and asked about their keeping of genealogical records. The people there were only too happy to help him locate the people he was looking for, but he stumbled a little in making up a story as to why he was looking for them.

He finally emerged from their halls of records that evening with names and addresses of those he needed to find. He felt good having gone the extra mile. There were 20 descendants on his list, and they were all in New England.

He remembered stories of people who reported similar finds in California, Nevada and New Jersey, and they all came to the same end; the authorities came and took the treasure, and that was the end of it.

He priced the gold against the Pound in 1700, and put the full amount owed in non-descript canvas bank bags. He rang the doorbells, and left only the bags to be found when the doors were answered. He put a note in each bag, “This was owed to your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great Grandfather, and I’m making good on the debt, on his behalf. Sorry it took so long.” He thought that was funny. The notes had a warning, “Do not, tell the government. They will come take it from you. Be blessed.”

Wallace was relieved when he had delivered the last of the bags. He delivered over 150 pounds of gold, and still had half of the first chest left. The other 30 crates were unopened, and he reckoned that he likely had close to a ton of gold left over.

He sat on the floor of his garage, staring at the unopened chests, his mind was ablaze with ideas on what to do with all of it. He smiled a little as he recalled his mother’s last words to him before alcoholism took her away, “Your little camping trips will be your ruin. Do something that pays you money.”

The book was still in the half-empty chest, and he picked it up. The faded and strange letters made it hard to read, but he couldn’t resist trying. Whoever wrote the poems was a devote individual, and their poems reflected a concern for the New World.

As he turned the very last page, he saw it was not another poem, but a note to the finder of the treasure, it simply said, “Thank you, dear friend, I will meet you in Heaven.”