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Drew heard his dog, Chester, barking in the distance, but kept still as the wind coursed though the high grass on either side of him.
He watched intently with his chin pressed against the ground as the Union gunboat slowly glided past the sandbar. Eyeing the big guns in their portals he marveled, as it swept wide, presenting a menacing starboard broadside to the entrenched enemy.
He had found a good vantage point just above the curve in the channel where he could see the Confederate camp just down stream. Cannon had been placed on a rocky overlook with field artillery hidden some distance back from the water’s edge on the inside of the bend. He had been watching for sometime and had observed no movement in the rebel camp but he was sure that once the ironclad came into view, all of that would change…
“James Andrew!”
He jumped up from his hideout and quickly snatched the warship from the waters. He gathered the rebel soldiers as quickly as he could and bounded off through the brush.
A call of “Andrew” from his mother would bring a boy reluctantly in for supper, but “James Andrew” usually meant some form of reckoning was looking for him.
“James Andrew!” His mother called again.
“Coming!” he answered, struggling to maintain both armies as Chester, the Border collie, was now running haphazardly under foot. A rebel soldier fell by the wayside, which did not go unnoticed. Chester quickly snatched it up and streaked across the yard and up on the porch where he dropped the little man at the feet of Drews’ mother. He sat back and gazed up at her almost smiling, the way dogs do.
“You are such a tattle tail”, She said as he kept glancing back at Drew who was coming across the yard.
Drew frowned at Chester. “Traitor”, he said, as he aimed one of the cannon his way. Chester had a way of wearing a halo when things hit the fan, something that Drew could not seem to master.
“Drew, I asked you to cut down those bushes behind the shed. Did you do that before you went to the creek?”
Drew dumped the soldiers on the porch and replied, “No Ma’am,” knowing that she already knew the answer anyway.
He walked around to the garage and gathered up the axe and an old pair of loppers. The bushes had been there since before he was born and had only recently died, of old age, he assumed. He failed to see the immediate need to clean up the area but would not argue the point with his mother. He only hoped that there would be some kind of adventure in it, though the prospects looked very unlikely.
He hacked away at the bushes and before long he had gotten to a point where what little was left was thick branches down close to the ground. He went back to the garage and returned with a shovel and began digging at the base of each bush. Drew was growing tired of this chore and became frustrated at the depth of the root ball.
He stopped for a moment and stepped back as Chester sniffed the excavation. Drew could not understand why such a job couldn’t wait till a time when he actually wanted to do it. He began to think about doing other things and wondered how he could manage an escape.
“What cha doin’?”
Paul had managed to slip up on Drew unnoticed, something he enjoyed immensely, usually finding Drew talking to Chester and carrying both sides of the conversation. Another minute and he might have done just that.
“Mom wants me to dig up these bushes,” Said Drew.
Drew resumed working with his shovel as Paul stood overlooking an ever-increasing hole around the bushes.
“I just came up from the creek,” said Paul, “Thought you’d be there.”
“Was.” Drew scraped the loose dirt from the hole and stopped again. “I got captured. Got hard labor. Working on an escape.”
Paul squinted, “Digging your way out, huh?”
“Yep.”
They both grinned and grabbed the low branches of the bush and gave it a good shake. These chores always seemed to go faster when Drew’s friend Paul showed up. The end result being that they might finish sooner and vacate to a more favorable endeavor.
The digging went on for about another hour broken up by several distractions involving the finding of an old piece of chain, an iron rod and two halves of the same arrowhead.
Finally, the ground surrendered the remaining ragged stump and the two boys leaned back against the shed on either side of the hole. Drew thumped the ground with the iron rod as they discussed the possible scenario of a band of Chickasaws trying to find a lost arrow, and maybe having to finish off a wounded bear. He drew back with the rod and speared it into the hole, making a strange metal sound. Both boys stopped and looked at each other.
“Treasure!” they said almost at the same time.
Drew pulled out the rod and both boys began digging with their hands and soon cleared the soil from around the edges of what appeared to be a small metal box.
Paul stopped digging and leaned back from their find.
“Do you smell that?” he asked.
“What? Smell what? I don‘t smell anything” Drew stopped, and stared at Paul in bewilderment.
“Where’s your septic tank?” Paul asked, looking at his hands.
“What are you talking about?”
“Last week Polly Tabors septic tank was pumped out and it smelled just like this.” Paul waved his hands toward Drew’s face.
Drew shook his head, “So what you’re saying is, you fell in the mess and never washed your hands?”
Paul was laughing now but then thought about it and stopped again. “Well, where is your septic tank?”
Drew studied for a moment.
"Other side of the house,” He said, “Sort of down the hill.” He pointed at the metal box, “This ain’t it.”

Work in Progress.