The Hollow Tree at Dead Mule Swamp

Copyright   2012   Joan
H. Young

ISBN:
978-
0-9765432-6-5

The Hollow Tree at
Dead Mule Swamp

Black and white stripes filled the
field of my binoculars and I momentarily thought a zebra had invaded Dead Mule Swamp. However, a quick adjustment to the rocker bar revealed the shape of a
lovely black-and-white warbler, closer to me than was expected. I watched,
fascinated, as it walked first up, and then headfirst down, the trunk of a
large tree, searching the crevices of the bark for insects. Without ever
spotting me, the bird fluttered off.

I was seated, somewhat
uncomfortably, on a stump surrounded by poles stacked like a three-sided log
cabin. It was a broken-down deer blind, abandoned by some hunter. I had come to
Dead Mule Swamp about two months ago, but had only discovered the old blind
two days ago. It amazed me that I, Anastasia Joy Raven, had changed in six
months from a suburban housewife to a new divorcee who owned a fixer-upper
house at the end of a dirt road in the Northwoods.

My former husband, Roger, had
exchanged me for a partner named Brian, but I had left with a large settlement,
paid in monthly sums, which should last the rest of my life, if I were careful.
Our only son, Chad, was studying Wildlife Ecology at Michigan Tech. That freed
me to try out the single lifestyle, and I was enjoying it. I was working hard
on the house, presently finishing the living room, although that activity had
been interrupted when an old newspaper found inside the wall had contained
information which led to the murder of a neighbor. Frankly, I was glad that
excitement was over.

I leaned down and lifted the bird
book out of my daypack. Turning to page 243, and pulling my pencil from above
my ear, I placed a check mark beside the warbler and noted the date, May 17. I
returned the pencil to its resting place. My light brown hair falls around my
face in a thick pageboy, and helps keep the pencil in place. Warblers are a bit
of a mystery, but I was determined to learn a few new ones this year. The
leaves were almost fully unfurled, and there wouldn't be many more days of easy
birding.

It was early morning and the birds
were moving about, so I raised the binoculars again and began searching the
branches for unseen singers. As I scanned the trees, I caught sight of a piece
of twine hanging from a large hole about ten feet up a tree. I thought the tree
looked hollow, and wondered if a squirrel had pulled the twine up the tree for
nesting material. However, when I followed the twine to the lower end I saw
that it was looped around a small broken branch. It wasn't exactly knotted, but
it didn't look like the kind of tangle that might have happened naturally. I
went over to investigate.

I pulled on the string, and it rode
easily enough over the scarred edge of the hole in the hollow tree. There was
something with weight on the end, and I pulled until a blue cloth bag popped
over the edge and dropped at my feet.

The bag was crudely made from the
cut-off lower leg of a pair of jeans. Someone had sewed the bottom edge
together with yarn, in uneven overcast stitches. The top had been gathered with
the same yarn by using large stitches, making a drawstring, and the twine was
tied to that. Obviously, whatever was in the bag belonged to some human. I was
only a short distance off my own property, just beyond the west fence line.
After my recent unpleasant experiences with a person chasing me into the swamp,
I thought I'd find out who was using this tree for a safe or a post office.

I opened the bag, and there was a
large white envelope and a small rock inside. On the envelope was a crudely
drawn picture of three crossed twigs. I shook my head. Previously-it seemed a
lifetime ago-I had taught literature at a community college. Although Nancy
Drew was not exactly literature, my love for books extended to all genres, and
I was sure I recalled a Nancy Drew story where envelopes bearing a drawing like
this were placed in a hollow tree, and then someone else would retrieve the
message. I racked my brain for threads of the story. Those envelopes held cash
which gullible women placed there thinking they were supporting orphans at the
Three Branch … something.

Well, I'd gone this far. I looked
around and saw no one. The envelope was not sealed, so I probably didn't have
to worry about being found out if I was careful to replace everything the way I
found it. I slipped my thumb under the flap. Inside were two twenty-dollar
bills, two fives, and seven ones. Behind them was a folded and wrinkled sheet
of lined notebook paper. I replaced the cash, and opened the paper. On it, I
saw the following:

Obviously this was the work of a
child.  However, $57.00 was quite a lot of money to hide away in the
woods. It seemed to suggest something more than a game. The code was a simple
one, known to anyone whose children had played with cryptography at all. Even so,
I couldn't translate it without making a key. I pulled a tablet from my
backpack, and using the pencil again, copied the figures exactly. Then I
replaced everything in the denim bag. It took me a few tries to throw the bag
through the hole, but I quickly learned that the rock made this task easier,
giving the bag some weight. I hadn't unwound the tangle that held the twine to
a twig, so I was hopeful the owner of the stash would not notice the intrusion
on his or her privacy.

This tree was only about a quarter-mile
from my house, just off one of the many old two-tracks that led into the swamp.
I followed it back to East South River Road, and then turned southeast,
reaching my house in just a few minutes.

I set up a pot of coffee, and while
it brewed, I tore a page from the tablet and wrote out the key that would crack
the coded message:

With my large midnight blue mug,
the one with cream and brown glaze dripping down the sides, filled with fresh
coffee, I sat down to translate the page. When I was finished I had the
following two lists: Important, Fun. In the Important list the following words
were crossed out with dates beside them: notebook, paper, backpack, jeans,
jacket, angel, new tire. Below that, not crossed out, were: washing machine,
sisters.

The list headed Fun contained three
items, none of which were struck through: skateboard, baseball glove, X-Box.

My first reaction was that this
must be a very determined young person to be saving money for such a long list,
and secondly I thought it sad that he hadn't bought anything from the fun list.
Except for the angel, it seemed like a list a boy would make. I finished my
coffee and headed for the living room. My plans were to spend the day attaching
board-and-bead wainscoting around the walls, which I'd painted a light
Wedgewood blue, with one end wall a slightly deeper shade. The wainscoting was
going to be white. I'm handy with tools, and except for big projects, I was
trying to do as much of the work on my house as I could without help.

As the day wore on, thoughts of the
boy with the bank in the hollow tree kept crowding into my mind. The dates
beside the entries led me to believe he'd been keeping money here since last
fall when he'd bought school supplies and clothes.  I wondered why he'd
bought a tire-for the family car? The angel had me completely stumped, as did
"sisters."

I thought school was still in
session, and I called a friend, Adele, to confirm it. Adele owns a store in
Cherry Hill, the seat of Forest County. Her family business is Volger's
Grocery. She's a kindhearted and generous widow, but she loves to know
everyone's business. I didn't want to tell her what I had found, but I knew she
would have the information I needed. I punched in the number of the store.

"Volger's Grocery. How may I
help you?"

"Hi Adele, this is Ana
Raven."

"Ana! What are you up
to?"

"Working on my house. Say, do
you know what date school lets out? It must be soon."

"The last day is the 20th, the
end of this week. Why?"

I had to think fast. "Oh, I
might want to hire a boy to help me haul some trash out of the woods," I
temporized.

"You remember Bella
Hanford?" Adele asked.

"Sure," I said. I had
gotten to know Bella just a couple of weeks previously. "But she's too
small for what I have in mind." I didn't really have anything in mind, but
there was that old manure spreader I wasn't sure how to get rid of…

"Not her. Her older brother,
Thad, does odd jobs sometimes. Do you want me to talk to him?"

"No, no! I'm… um… just working
on a list. I can call when I'm ready. But thanks for the tip."

"No trouble. Would you like to
come to church on Sunday? The coffee and singing are good, and the sermon
usually is too."

"I haven't been to church in
years, Adele!"

"No better time to
start."

"I'll think about it."

"OK, take care."

A little before three, I cleaned up
the mess in the living room, took a plastic garbage bag and my binoculars and
walked back to the old deer blind. The bag was to sit on. I knew I'd need to
stay low to the ground to be hidden well enough from a human. By three-thirty,
I was in place. By four-thirty, I was stiff as a board. No one had come to the
tree. I was just thinking about taking a chance on standing up to stretch when
an old bicycle with only one gear rolled down the mostly forgotten lane. I
lifted the binoculars to my eyes so I could see more details. The bike had two plastic
milk crates fastened to it, one on the handlebars, and the other on a rack over
the back wheel. In the front crate I could see a number of shiny tin cans.

Peddling the bike was a thin boy
with fair skin and black straight hair that fell into his dark eyes. He looked
to be about ten years old. He glanced around, but didn't see me; then he pulled
the bag from the tree. It looked like he put some money into the envelope, but
I didn't see him add any marks to the paper. He quickly flung the bag back
through the hole and pedaled off. My suspicions were confirmed, but I had no
idea what to do about it. It wasn't any of my business, but I thought if I'd
found the money that easily, someone else might, too. And, someone else might
be perfectly willing to steal what was now more than $57.00. This boy was
clearly worried about having the money taken by someone. Why else would he hide
it so far away from where he lived? There were no houses within several miles
of mine.

Giving the boy plenty of time to
get away, I waited another twenty minutes before rising stiffly and returning
home. I wanted to sleep on this puzzle.

The next morning, Wednesday, I
awoke with the conviction that I should try to talk to the boy, and decided I'd
wait in the woods near South River Road. If I could find a good enough place of
concealment, I would see when he rode down the old lane, and then stop him when
he came out again. I left the house at two-thirty to give myself plenty of time
to find a hiding place. I finally settled on crouching behind some honeysuckle
bushes that were already fairly dense with leaves. It wasn't great, but it was
the best I could do. This day, I brought a book, which made the wait more
tolerable. I hunkered down behind the bushes till five o'clock, but no one at
all, not a bicycle, a car, or a stray cat, came down the road. That was the
normal amount of traffic on my back road.