GRAVE ROBBERS

Copyright (c) 2019 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

GRAVE ROBBERS

By R. Peterson

Ardel Higley could see Rodney under the jacked-up back-end of the ’53 Ford Customline when Clarence Porter stopped at the Frost farm. “You know what F O R D stands for?” Clarence spit tobacco juice out his side window as Ardel got out the passenger side. “Found on road dead!” He laughed before he ground his flat-bed Dodge into gear and disappeared in a cloud of dust. “Thanks for the ride,” Ardel called after his neighbor.

“Hand me that knuckle-buster will you?” Rodney pointed to a tool-box resting under a large oak tree.

“You want both knuckles broke … or just chewed up?” Ardel attached a three-quarter socket to a ratchet and handed it over after seeing what his friend was working on.

“My hands are pretty banged-up already,” Rodney said. “A little more blood ain’t gonna hurt.”

“You got this thing raised high enough?” Two Handyman jacks rested on cinderblocks and were extended all the way out.

“It was the only way I could get these shocks on.” Rodney grunted as he tightened the last nut then slid out.

“I though you was broke?”

“These came off that ten-wheeler that plunged into Magician’s Canyon,” Rodney said. “I helped the tow-truck driver and he told me to take what I wanted.”

Ardel laughed when Rodney let down the jacks and the rear of the car stayed high in the air. “Got a heavy date?”

            “Gravel roads are hard on shocks,” Rodney smiled as he polished his car. “Besides It kind of looks like a cougar ready to pounce!”

            “These all you stole off that wreck?”

            “Nope,” Rodney blasted an extra loud air-horn that made leaves fall from the oak tree. “Let’s go for a ride.”

-------2-------

Rodney turned on the radio just as they roared passed the leaning mailbox. “I’m going to miss this place,” he said as the Everly Brothers began to sing ('Till) I Kissed You.

            “Your Pa couldn’t come up with the 1956 taxes?”

            “Nope,” Rodney said. “That makes us three years behind and Pa got a foreclosure notice two days ago. We all knew it was coming but still Ma broke down and cried.”

            “How much do the buzzards want?”

            “They’re saying now all three years has to be paid … if we could only come up with one year two-hundred and eighty five dollars plus another forty-five interest we could probably hold them off for a spell.”

Ardel shook his head. “That’s over three hundred dollars … I don’t know anybody with that kind of money.”

            “You don’t happen to know where a gold mine is …. Do you?” Rodney turned up the music as if it could blast away his worry.

Ardel shook his head. “I sure wish I did.”

The Everly Brother’s song stopped playing and after a commercial where Mona Freeman tried to sell 4 way cold tablets the Coasters began to sing Poison Ivy.

            “That’s it!” Ardel suddenly sat up in his seat.

            “You know where there’s a gold mine?”

            “No, a clump of poison ivy almost as big as this car.”

Rodney laughed. “If I was going to do myself in, I’d choose something faster than itching to death.”

             “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Ardel said. “Two weeks ago I was hunting in the woods near the edge of Motha Forest when I tripped on a root and fell into the poison ivy. I was all tangled up and trying to get out when I noticed an old gravestone. The name on it was Amanda Lee Hicks … and it said  she was buried in 1912.”

            “What would a grave be doing way out there in the woods?”

            “Everyone knows the Hicks’ got land a plenty but they ain’t got enough money to afford indoor plumbing,” Ardel said. “But that wasn’t always so. At the turn of the century, Laurence Hicks was one of the most prosperous people in Cloverdale. They ran a sawmill and were partners with a family of German woodcutters named the VanGagens. The Hicks mansion burnt down in 1920. You can see the remains of an old chimney from the road. That grave I found must be from their old family plot.”

            “I still don’t understand how that helps me,” Rodney said.

            “People in them days used to bury their loved ones with pearl necklaces, gold and diamond rings and all sorts of expensive things,” Ardel said. “There might be a treasure under that poison ivy clump just waiting to be dug up.”

            “Let me get this right,” Rodney turned down the radio. “You want us to become grave robbers?”

            “It was just an idea,” Ardel told him. “It’s not like we are digging up half of Black Rose Cemetery. It’s been forty years! Most folks have probably forgot that grave is even there. There’s probably nothing in the coffin but bones … anyway.”

            “A person would have to be powerful desperate to do something like that,” Rodney turned up the radio. An instrumental by Duane Eddy was just beginning to play. “My folks, me and my little sister are looking at a lot more than forty miles of bad road if we get forced off the farm,” Rodney said.

By the time the song was finishing, Rodney was turning around in the old Walker barnyard.

            “Where are you going?” Ardel asked.

            “Pa keeps a couple of shovels in the well-house for irrigating,” Rodney said as he glared at his friend. “We’ll have to hurry it will be getting dark soon. I can’t believe you talked me into this!”

TO BE CONTINUED …