The Treasure

Elizabeth Milligan
Writing Assignment for 25 May 2005
A story sandwiched between a random sentence from two books. I used Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
\

THE TREASURE
“Not at the station, at Plastunov’s, at the inn, it’s a way station, too.”

It was a dark and dreary winter night and we had a week to covertly transport the treasure from Casca across the continent to Trevi. Stella knew that it was important to stay hidden from the robbers and that robbers hung out near way stations – making travelers who stopped there easy prey.

Discovering the treasure was such an intense twisting and turning of events. Where to begin? I’ll begin with Stella (that’s me) and my friends. We lived in the dreary streets and alleys of Casca. We were, what you call, pretty low profile. Only the police noticed us.

Several years ago, we befriended Rosie when she wandered into our life and made it better. Petit, wizened, and gray Rosie always hid behind sections of greasy, gray streaked strands of hair. She never ever parted with the plastic shopping bag, the color of Dijon mustard except for the green and blue flowers covering it, slung over her good shoulder. Somehow Rosie knew exactly where the police would be, when they would be there, what they were or were not allowed to do, and how we could talk with them so that they left us pretty much alone. We exchanged cell phone numbers and always alerted each other of police-on-the horizon.

Late last night, at one of our regular head counts, we found Rosie dead and frozen in a recessed side entrance to the Cia’s department store. She was curled tightly in a corner for warmth, her knees tucked under her chin. Her gnarled hands clutched the plastic bag, still on her good shoulder, in a death grip. Believe me, it was no easy task to get that bag away from Rosie so that we could see what was inside. We were disappointed.

All we saw was a bundle cocooned with layers of ragged gray cotton and linen like the tattered clothes Rosie always wore. Although it was tempting, we did not scatter to search out heat vents. We blew on our hands for warmth, wrapped our clothes around us even more tightly, and peeled off the layers of cloth swathing Rosie’s bundle. We started to feel packets of bills; lots of packets of bills. We were amazed. We were freezing, too. Our fingers were cracking from the cold and we could not feel our brilliant red noses and ears. We moved our investigation to the closest, best sheltered, and least policed heat vent.

There were 27 bundles of ten $1,000 bills each wrapped with soiled white paper. And there was a note from Rosie. She wanted us to take the money to her old orphanage in Trevi. All of it except what we would need to spend to transport it and to buy ourselves warm clothes, new shopping carts, and medical insurance.

I edged a cell phone from under the torn lining in my jacket sleeve, called information, and got the number for the only orphanage in Trevi. I spoke with the Sister Superior of the orphanage, told her that we were coming, why we were coming, and that she could expect us in about a week. You know what she said?

“Dear Lord, she begged, Make us poor again the way we were when we founded this town so that you will not collect for this squandering in life.”