It was a gorgeous day. The beach was covered with debris, but the air sparkled. I went down seventy-five feet offshore, and I spotted the cannon immediately, by its shape. It was too regular to be a natural formation. But I couldn’t believe it. I had been in that area a dozen times before. Apparently the storm had swept the sea bottom like a big broom, removing a deep layer of sand.
There were three other cannon behind the first. Then I saw it. It looked like a jagged greenish-brown rock, but the minute my eyes lit on it I felt a funny prickle run down my back. I swam over to it. There were coins all over the bottom around it, silver coins, some lying singly, some stuck together in clumps. I had read about finds like this, and I knew that the big lump also consisted of coins-hundreds of them, welded together by chemical action.
I don’t know how I got it out. We found out later the darned thing weighed over thirty pounds. All I remember is doing a war dance with Jim. We were both whooping and jumping up and down and smacking each other’s hands.
Jim called the museum right away and the state archaeological service took over, but they let us work along with the pros. The historians figured that the ship was one of the galleons from the plate fleet of 1735. It had carried a couple of million dollars’ worth of gold and silver coins. Of course we didn’t find nearly that much; the cargo had been scattered and washed away over two hundred years.
But it was a fabulous summer. Mother couldn’t hassle me about getting a job, not with an opportunity like that available, so I spent most of the summer in the water, which is just the way I wanted to spend it.
I also enjoyed the publicity we got. Most of it was from local papers, but some of the national magazines sent photographers, and there was one smashing picture of me in the National Geographic article. I was back in school for my senior year when the issue came out, and I had to take a certain amount of ribbing. “Pretty young Sandy Bishop, the discoverer of the wreck…” Theyposed me lying languorously on the beach, half buried in silver coins.
I managed to live that one down, and by February everybody had forgotten about the article-everybody except me. I caught myself daydreaming when I should have been studying, remembering the glory of it all, and wondering if that was the last exciting thing that would ever happen to me. The weather was bad-it is bad in February, even in Florida -and I was not looking forward to graduation, assuming I would graduate, which was not at all certain, thanks to a particularly boring Soc course and a professor who was giving me a hard time. I knew I had to make it, though. Jim and Mother were worried about money.
Worried about money, after finding millions of dollars worth of treasure? Most people would read that sentence with an incredulous smile. If a professional treasure hunter read it he would smile, too-a wry, pained smile of sympathy. I know of one pro who dumped his coins back into the ocean after getting his tax bill. There are complicated laws governing the way the find is divided-it isn’t a case of “finders keepers.” The value of the treasure depends on what you can get for it on the open market, but you pay taxes on the basis of a standard determined by the mysterious gentlemen from internal revenue. The problem got so complicated I never did understand all the ramifications, but poor Jim used to sit for hours, brooding over the masses of accumulated legal forms, holding his head in his hands and groaning softly. Eventually we might make money out of the discovery, but it would take years to settle the accounts, and there were times when Jim thought it would be easier to donate the coins to a museum. The point is that at that moment we were hard-up; and I knew I had to get out and stop sponging off my parents. Work, in other words. It was a depressing thought.
I was considering my prospects one evening in February. I had a single room that year, so there was nobody there but me and an unfinished, overdue Soc paper, which lay on the desk staring accusingly at me. I had just had a talk with my adviser about job prospects. They were as grim as the weather. I was preparing to be a Phys. Ed. teacher, not because the prospect of coaching fat little girls appealed to me, but because there isn’t much else you could do with my skills, or lack thereof. Assuming I could latch on to a job for the following year, it wouldn’t start until September; and that meant a summer of clerking in the drugstore or waiting on tables. The idea was less than alluring, especially after all the fun I had had the previous summer.
So, when I heard the knock on the door, I was glad to have something interrupt my gloomy thoughts. I was a little surprised, because I had stuck up a big sign-“Term Paper. Do not interrupt on pain of death”-and usually my friends were pretty good about that sort of thing. At that point, though, I’d have even welcomed an enemy.
Maybe that’s who it was-an enemy. I knew him right away, although he had changed a lot since the picture in the magazine was taken. I knew him in my blood and bones. It was my father.
Chapter 2
I
I COULD HAVE RESPONDED TO THE APPARITION IN ONE of two ways. I might have said coolly, “Yes?” as if I didn’t know him. Or I might have come up with something coolly ironic-“Well, well, long time no see,” or some other equally witty remark. The key word is cool. I was not cool. I was thunder-struck; and my expression showed it.
I would have found him easier to deal with if he had been shabby and stooped and defeated. He was shabby, all right; his suit coat didn’t match his pants, and it was worn and spotted, but the impression was one of disinterest, not of poverty. And physically he looked impressive. He was taller than Jim and he didn’t have Jim’s little pot tummy. I couldn’t help making the comparison; it was disloyal, but I couldn’t help it. If you had seen the two of them side by side, you’d have picked this man as the athlete. He had hardly any gray in his thick brown hair. Even his face was young looking. His eyes were a funny, frosty gray; they studied me with detached interest from under heavy dark brows. He didn’t smile. His chin was square. It was my chin. I had never particularly liked the shape of my chin.
He looked me up and down, with that irritating, impersonal stare. I felt like a horse being appraised by a prospective buyer. Then he said,
“Ariadne. Yes, I would have recognized you, even without the photograph in National Geographic. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
Still speechless, I stepped back. He came in and closed the door. Then he sat down in the sole armchair the room boasted. Casually, quite at ease, he glanced around. The room was a mess. Papers, books, clothes, sports gear all over. The bed wasn’t made. He didn’t seem to notice. His eyes lit on the photo on the dresser. It was my favorite picture of Mother and Dad, enlarged from a snapshot I had taken. They were in the front yard. It was a breezy day, and Mother’s hair was blowing. She was laughing, and she looked about twenty. Jim had his arm around her. He was laughing too, and he looked like the wonderful guy he is, bald head, pot, and all.
Something in my father’s expression made me angry. The warmth loosened my tongue.
“Mother is fine,” I said.
“I assumed she would be.”
“Oh, did you?” I sat down on the bed and glared at him. “You certainly never bothered to find out.”
“Why should I?”
If he had sounded angry or defensive, I would have had an answer. But he didn’t. He just sounded surprised. Before I could find sufficiently cutting words, he went on, in the same calm voice.
“It was obvious, even when you were an infant, that you would not be interested in pursuing a scholarly career. Perhaps if you had been a boy I might have communicated with you more regularly.”