Part 3 — The Red Line
The broken pencil point sat on a creek bend with the words, Everything you will need is buried under the flat stone. I knew that creek. Dad took me there every autumn for deer season, and I had skipped stones on it when I was six.
The lawyer, Mr. Palmer, put a hold on the cabin sale before I left his office. Then he called the Allegany County sheriff, who sent a deputy named Reese. Kurt was asked to remain in town. He sat in the waiting room, jiggling his knee, while Marv drove me three hours into the West Virginia hills.
Deputy Reese met us at the cabin gate. We followed the red line on the map, the way Dad had drawn it, along a deer path and down to the water. The flat stone was where it had always been, near the bend, with moss on its edge and a pair of crossed twigs set on top. Dads old signal.
Under the stone, in a hole lined with a feed sack, was a steel ammunition can. The lid was sealed with beeswax. Inside were a manila envelope, a small camera, and a spiral notebook in the capital letters I would know anywhere.
The envelope held Dads real will, signed in March and witnessed at the Frostburg bank. It left the cabin and forty acres to me, and a fair share of everything else to Kurt, on one condition. Dad had written, Kurt may keep the truck and the tools if he keeps his hands clean.
The notebook explained what Kurt had been doing. Every Saturday he drove the blue road to an abandoned quarry, where he parked a flatbed. Dad had followed him once and photographed what he found. Stacked behind a tarp were stolen generators, catalytic converters, and a skid steer with its serial numbers filed off.
Dad did not write that he feared for his life. He wrote that he was ashamed and that he meant to give Kurt one chance to confess before going to the sheriff on Monday. He wanted his stepson to have a head start in doing the right thing. That was how my father was made.
The medical examiner reviewed his case at the sheriffs request. Dad had died of a heart condition, quietly, in his chair, a day before he could keep his appointment. No one had harmed him. He left a map not to accuse anyone, but to make sure the truth would find its way home.
Deputy Reese took the photographs and the notebook to the state police. Within a week they had searched the quarry and recovered over ninety thousand dollars in stolen equipment, most of it traceable to farms in three counties. Kurt was arrested at the lawyers office on Baltimore Street.
He was charged with receiving stolen property, theft, and attempting to sell property he did not own. The cabin sale was voided, and the buyer received a full refund. Kurt pleaded guilty and agreed to repay the owners of the stolen equipment. The judge gave him a chance to go home on probation if he stayed straight.
He asked to speak with me before he left the courtroom. He held out Dads Army dog tags and the wallet. He said, I should have listened to him. I took the tags and told him Dad would have wanted him to go to work in the morning and keep going.
That fall I spread the atlas open on the dashboard of Dads truck and drove the red line, from the house to the creek, with Marv beside me. I stopped at the flat stone, and I set a smooth pebble on top, and I traced the route back with my finger, the way he always taught me.