Three Little Words

From within the little shotgun house, you could hear the clomp of boots up the wooden stairs. Bam, bam, bam. “Hey, is anybody going to let me in?”

As Jason went to bang on the door again, the patter of fat, bare feet came rushing to the door. Jason smiled as he could hear Gryphon, his girlfriend’s 4-year-old, struggling with the older lock until he triumphantly swung the door open.

“Hi Jason!”

Before Jason could return the greeting, Patricia shouted from the back, “Gryphon don't open the door for strangers.”

“Strangers? We are pals.” Looking down to Gryphon he smiled as he said, “Aren’t we, little G?” Gryphon smiled and ran back through the house towards his mom.

“Sooo...what did you find out?”

“About this?” Jason held up a tattered, Moleskin notebook that looked like it was about as old as the house they just bought. “Nothing. They joked and said maybe it was a scorecard for a game or we needed a decoder ring. Something tells me though that something...”

“And…” Patricia looked at him expecting a little more disclosure.

“Yeah - I asked that, too. They said there wasn’t anything the man had, so we could keep it and anything we found because it was too much of a hassle for them being out of state and such.”

Patricia smiled. She didn’t think much about the little notebook but Jason had taken it on as his little mission to understand what was going on as if he had read Treasure Island or followed the Forest Finn treasure a little too closely on social media. Of course, the folded up 2 dollar bill that held the page - a silver note, nonetheless - was like fuel to the fire.

“Well, I would ask ‘now what’ but I am kind of hungry, so I will save the questions for later.” She smiled as she went back to the kitchen to put the finishing touches on her curry and jasmine rice.

As Jason thumbed through the notebook, trying to figure out the odd pattern on the pages, Gryphon burrowed under his arm in an attempt to climb in his lap. Jason stared at the open book, almost in a trance at the weird pattern. Two squares. Five circles. In groups of three, and it would repeat in the same color and then would change color. Jason had a headache from thinking about it all. He tried dates, phone numbers, looking for things with those colors - he had exhausted all possibilities but part of him did not want to give up. He held the book staring out the window completely oblivious to Gryphon trying to grab the book till his pudgy hands knocked it out of his hand.

“Hey! Stop that.” Jason immediately felt a tinge of guilt for snapping on Gryphon over a book that might have been someone’s game scorecard. “Sorry, G. You, you can look.”

“Twenty-two.” Gryphon smiled as he looked at Jason. Jason just looked at him trying to figure out if that was a new greeting. “Twenty-two,” Gryphon said again.

“Twenty-two what?” Jason looked at Gryphon thinking maybe kids weren’t as easy to understand as he thought. Gryphon reached down and picked up the little black book and thumbed through it trying to find something.

“Hey, lil G. I know you don’t know, but I am kind of protective of that thing.” Jason shook his head. “Maybe I don’t know why I am protective of that thing.” As he started to move Gryphon over so he could go see if dinner was ready, Gryphon pointed to the page and smiled, “Twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two what?” Jason asked.

“Twenty-two.” His little finger pointed at the first set of shapes and ran his finder further down. “One.” Jason looked at the shapes and could not see anything that looked like twenty-two, but the one kind of made sense.

“How are you doing that, G? Are you like that thing, the Rosary Stone, no, Rosetta Stone?” Gryphon got up and half walked and half stumbled from not really getting the nap he needed and grabbed something out of his toybox.

“A bake us.”

“A who? Naw man, that is an a-bac-us.” He went to joke but then what Gryphon said and what he held finally clicked. Oh, wow, he thought. What if the little dude just figured it out. “G - come here. Tell Jason all these numbers and I am sure a ring pop is in your future.” The thought of food completely left his mind as he used his living decoder ring - a four-year-old that he just bribed with candy before dinner - to talk and scribble all the numbers out.

--------

Twenty minutes later, Jason walked into the kitchen smiling. In fact, smiling a little too much because Patricia immediately got worried. “What did you teach Gryphon? I told you about your humor, his age, and appropriate words that he brings back to pre-K.”

“Oh, no - your little man taught me,” Jason replied. “I think. We think. Well, we got something.” He put the little black notebook on the table where he had scribbled all the numbers down:

22 1 12 12 5 25

21 14 20 1 24 5 4

4 5 1 6 5 14 9 14 7

“If this is like those puzzles you solve in the Sunday paper, it spells out three real words,” Jason said, his voice barely holding in his excitement. “Valleys. Untaxed. Deafening.”

Patricia just looked at him. She wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, but she also knew from the puzzles she worked, to accidentally come up with those words with random numbers would be close to impossible.

“Let me see it. And who figured this out?” Gryphon raised his hand as if he was in school, smiling as hard as he could. “You did?” She smiled at him.

“A bake us,” he mustered.

“Abacus? Wow, you love that thing. Who would have thought?” She just shook her head in amazement, proud that her son did something to impress her now-not-so-new boyfriend. “It looks like it checks out - the numbers and the letters. Do the colors mean anything? And what does valleys, untaxed, and deafening mean?”

“A bake us.” Gryphon said, still proud of everyone being excited about something he did.

“I don’t know, but - “, Jason was interrupted by the little black box on the counter. I am sorry. I don’t quite know what you mean. Please try again. “I guess the box thought A-bake-us meant Alexa.” At the sound of that, it dinged again and its blue light shined, and Jason thought why not. “Alexa - what the, I mean what three words valleys, untaxed, deafening - what do the three little words mean?” Jason felt flustered - he couldn’t even speak to the silly box. The light spun for a moment and finally said, “website what three words. The simplest way to talk about location. Street addresses weren’t designed for 2021. They aren’t accurate enough to specify precise locations, such as building entrances, and don’t exist for parks and many rural areas. More at this website. Does that answer your question?”

--

In a matter of seconds everyone forgot about the meal that had taken so long to prepare. If anyone had any doubts, it dissipated as soon as the location was showing up less than forty minutes from where they were. Soon the laptop, jackets, three spoons, and the pot of curry were piled in the car and they were off. Jason fought with the accelerator because he wanted to drive a hundred miles per hour just to get to wherever and whatever it was. Everyone sat in silence for the ride almost sick from suspense with the exception of Gryphon occasionally saying, “A bake us” and then smiling with content.

“J - I feel like I am...I dunno...like in that old movie, The Goonies. Isn’t that where they went treasure hunting or something to buy a house?”

“I have no idea, babe. But - we are pulling up to the park. He dug out his phone and pulled up the map. “Hey - can you pull up Google maps - I have the three word map. Maybe we can get there - I hope this is easy.” He reached in the car and grabbed something.

“What is that? A hammer?” Patricia looked at him. “Are you expecting having to bludgeon something because if so, I might have to sit this one out.”

“No, no, no. Like to dig. I, we, don’t have a shovel, so I grabbed this. And one of your spoons.” He shrugged and they all made their way through the park to try and find out where the spot was while imagining what would be there. A tree, a house, a box, and what would really be there. A treasure, or was it just a place where they went on a date? They had no idea.

They walked up to the edge of a small pond and looked around. Nothing but grass. Patricia looked at Jason, knowing that she really did not want him to start just randomly digging in that square meter of earth, but also knew that there really wasn’t a way he wasn’t going to start digging. A quick glance around and he started swinging the hammer.

“Step back honey,” Patricia said to Gryphon. “Jason, have you thought about what might be buried there?”

“Yeah - treasure. Or something. A time capsule. We are going to find it.” He kept going as fast as he could swing the claw end of the hammer down and then yanking up as much dirt with it as he could.

“Jason, honey. You know they bury other things. Like, wires, and trash, and dead bodies. You know. What if we find a body?” He looked at her with a puzzled expression, still swinging the hammer.

“You think someone would leave a 2 dollar bill wrapped up with instructions how to find a dead -”

Crunch. The hammer hit something brittle - like aluminum or metal that had rusted through. Everyone including Gryphon stared at the hole with eyes wide open. Jason and Patricia immediately started clearing away the dirt slowly and carefully from around the top of the container. Clearing out around it more and more, they were able to wiggle the can out of the dirt and set it down between them. Jason felt almost reverent while setting the container as if he needed to respect it now that they discovered its secrets.

“What are you waiting for?” Patricia stared at him. “Tear that thing open.” Jason pried the lid off and started to remove ten small pouches; old cloth that was so old it would break open if jostled too much. Inside each cloth were folded up two, five, and ten dollar bills. Jason instinctively looked around. As he counted the different pouches, he placed them in Patricia’s backpack. “That’s the last of it. Just shy of 20 grand, Patricia. Nineteen thousand, nine-hundred ninety-eight bucks. Like in a can. We found it. We found buried treasure! I’m, I, man, I can’t speak.” He leaned back to sit on his feet just looking at Patricia, then to Gryphon, then to the backpack.

“Don’t forget your two dollar bill that started it all. That makes an even 20k. Jason…” Patricia was dumbfounded. “What do we do?”

“You know what we do - we take it. We use it. We fund the dreams that never happened. What is something you would do or see or get?” Patricia just sat there and smiled at Jason. Gryphon did not disappoint to add to the moment with his word of the day: “A bake us.” Gryphon smiled and Jason and Patricia just burst into laughter and tears.

“Yeah,” Patricia said as they gathered their things and headed back to the car. “You got that one right, Gryphon. Us.”