Red Light

I held the Bible in my hand
as I sailed, as I sailed,and I buried it in the sand
as I sailed.—anon.

Jim had a nickname among the locals where he grew up.  The old codgers especially had taken to calling him Bloody Jim.  Not because he was vicious or violent, or because he did horrible things, but because he was always digging those bloody holes everywhere.

“Bloody Jim!” shouted the codger.

You see, Jim’s father was a cartographer, which is a maker of maps.  One room in the house was devoted to maps and the making of them.  It was also where the various knick-knacks that made up his nautical collection were displayed, and the windows in that room were framed like portholes on a ship.  There was a spyglass, and a flintlock, and a big compass, and some instruments for reading the stars, but no one could remember what they were called.  He also had a few framed articles and letters, and a legal document pertaining to piracy.  The prize of his collection was kept in a small, wooden box up on the top shelf, and was only brought out for a select few.  He had taken it down once to show Jim, and when he opened the box, he gently picked up a small square of black cloth and draped it over his knee.  It had a circle at the center that was faded more grey than black, as if the rag had been tied up on a post, or over the top of a staff, and exposed to wear and the harsh elements, and there were two red circles on one corner that certainly resembled drops of blood.

“What is it?” Jim asked.

“It’s a black spot,” his father answered.

“What’s a black spot?” Jim asked.

A black spot is a secret pirate summons.  It’s used as a last resort, and generally, the pirate being summoned doesn’t come willingly.  Jim’s great, great grandfather had been a kitchen and bus boy down at the Bendbow Tavern, and he was standing right there one day when this black spot was thrown down on a table.  He didn’t even hear the approach of the tall man in the red coat with the peg leg, it was like he was just suddenly standing there.  The man at the table froze, and the pub went quiet.  Then the pistols were drawn, and all hell broke loose.  Jim’s great, great grandfather narrowly escaped by diving behind the bar.  When the shooting stopped, and both men were dead, he ran out of there, and on his way by he grabbed the black spot, which in those days was not a very smart thing to do, but he kept it a secret and never told anyone.

In the evenings, after dinner, Jim and Liz would sit in the map room and listen as their father told the stories of the famous pirates: Captain Avery, and Teach, Henry Morgan, and Kidd, and his personal favorite: the story of Alexander Godfrey and the Legendary Lunenberg Privateers.  He also showed them special maps that he had made that were marked with some of the routes and landmarks from the stories, and the kids loved it.  Sometimes, after pouring over the maps and hearing the stories all evening, Jim would have dreams where he was digging for treasure—and finding it!  When he woke up he would remember the spot where he was digging in the dream and he would mark it on a map.  Then he would go there, and dig.  He only did this maybe four or five times before his father died, and he never found anything.  But after that, well . . . how to put this?  We all deal with grief differently, and when it comes to kids you just never know what you’re going to get.  Lizzie stayed pretty close to the house, she said that’s where she felt safe.  But Jim . . . Jim went diggin’.  And that’s when his activities earned him the nickname of Bloody Jim.

“Bloody Jim!” shouted the codger, “always diggin’ them bloody holes everywhere!”

Jim had a whole collection of rusty hinges, and rusty pulleys, garden tools, some bent cutlery, and plenty of fishing weights and lures, and he did find a grappling hook once, which was pretty cool, but nothing that could really be considered treasure.  Except for one time, and he’ll never forget that day.  It was the day he found an article in his father’s desk about a group of local treasure hunters who were going out for a dig on Oak Island.  Jim could hardly count the number of different variants he’d heard of the legend, but he’d never sat down before and read an account that contained a lot of the so-called facts.  One of the stories in the article made mention of a tree that had a pulley mounted on it.  It was theorized that this pulley was used to lower a treasure hoard down into a pit.  This reminded Jim of one time when he found a tree with a pulley on it.  He had taken the pulley, because he wanted it for his pulley collection, but he remembered the tree.  And he went there.  And he digged deeper than he’d ever dug before.  And eventually he hit a box.  When he lifted the box out of the hole he thought it was pretty darn light, and when he held it by his ear and shook it, it sounded pretty darn empty.  But he smashed it open anyway, and inside he found a map fragment, with an ‘X’ on it, and to Jim that was treasure.