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.

Jim’s map was only a fragment, but it had enough names and landmarks on it for him to determine that the area depicted lay somewhere near the mouth of Lake Ontario, so when he heard that there was a circus coming to town, and that they were hiring boys and girls for summer work, and that they were traveling west, he jumped at the chance, and was the first boy on the lot when they arrived.  Shortly after that he was passed off to the cook.  As it turned out, the cook, too, had a keen interest in pirate lore.  But he wasn’t just some kid, he was a veteran sea-cook who’d been studying and searching for pirate treasure for over forty years.  He knew a lot more about Kidd’s treasure than Jim did, and one thing that article didn’t include was a little known story about the events surrounding Kidd’s capture.  Before Kidd was arrested there was a stand-off, and under cover of darkness several skiffs were dispatched, laden with the treasure of a hundred kingdoms, and sent up the St. Lawrence River.  They went all the way up the river, rowing only at night, and landed the treasure on an island at the mouth of Lake Ontario, and that island was covered in oak trees.  There were seven men in all, and before they buried the treasure they drew straws, and the man with the short straw was shot and left in the pit.  The remaining men made a map, split it into six parts, and went their separate ways.  Over the years, through painstaking and exhaustive research, the cook had located and collected five of the six pieces of that map, and when he arrived at the spot where he believed the last piece to be buried, he found that a hole had already been dug, and the box already smashed open.  But, being an experienced tracker and a seasoned treasure hunter, he knew how to work the locals for information, and he had come across the name of Bloody Jim.

“Yer lookin’ fer bloody Jim!” shouted the codger.

So on that first morning in Halifax, when he heard one of the new boys was named Jim, the cook made sure the boy was assigned to his crew, so he could keep an eye on him, and keep him close.  And on that first night, after the card game, when the cook brought out that weathered bundle that took forever to open and unravel, he made sure it was Jim who was assigned to sweep that stock car.  When Jim noticed all of the pieces laid out on the table, he stopped sweeping.  He thought the map piece he had looked an awful lot like the gap that was left over when the other pieces were assembled.  Then he noticed there were two men behind him, and they didn’t smile back.

“Why don’t you come over here and take a look at this, Jimmy boy,” the cook said sharply, not turning around to look at him.  Jim weighed his options, and there weren’t any, so he sat down with the cook.  When the cook started questioning him about digging, and treasure, he knew the jig was up, but he also knew if he gave up the map piece these guys were just going to muscle him out, so he told the cook that he hid the map piece somewhere on the train, which was true, and that they’d never find it without him.  The cook seemed to have anticipated that and offered right away to partner with Jim.  “We’ll split the treasure,” said the cook, “even steven.”  Then he asked Jim if he noticed anything about the piece he had that was different from the pieces on the table.

“Well, yeah,” Jim said.  His had an ‘X’ on it.  Then the cook explained something that Jim already knew very well: you can’t really go hunting for treasure without an ‘X’.  Jim agreed that they did need to see the whole map in order to properly plan the expedition, so they arranged for another meeting in just under a week’s time when they would be stopped in Fredericton for two days.

It was when he was sitting with the cook that Jim noticed the letters on the map.  Each of the map pieces had a letter printed on it, right at the edge, and he remembered that his map piece also had a letter on it, right by the edge.  It was the letter ‘E’.  He thought it was funny the cook didn’t mention the letters, so he didn’t either.  He already knew that the six letters formed the password that would have to be spoken before any diggin’ was done, so as not to awaken the guardian, because that would not be good.  So before he took the map piece to the next meeting, he tore off the edge with the letter on it and he ate that part.  When he handed the rest of it to the cook, the cook was not impressed.

“Where’s the letter, Jimmy boy?!”

“Relax Cooky, it’s up here,” Jim said, pointing to his noggin.  “I’ll tell you the letter when we get to the dig.”

The cook groaned.  “Ugh . . . bloody Jim!”  He didn’t think beating it out of the kid was going to work.

It would be a full three weeks before they rolled into Kingston where they would be stopping for two days.  “That’s our window, Jimmy boy,” the cook said.  So until then, they just had to bide their time and do their jobs, and the cook would arrange for transport to the site.  But a lot happened in that time.

The next night, after the train had departed from Fredericton, Jim was fumbling around in one of the baggage cars when he heard the cook approaching, followed by two of the new boys who had signed up, and were now expecting some wages.  Jim quickly hid behind the little apple cart that Harry the dwarf rode around in when he played Sir Lancelot in the pageant.  The cook was coaxing the boys along, saying things like: “Right this way,” and “just through here.”  When they passed through the far door Jim heard two loud howls, followed by a sliding of rocks, and then nothin’.  Only the cook returned, crossed the car in silence, and exited out the other side.  Rather than pay the two boys their two days’ wages, the cook had apparently opted to red light them.  That is, to throw them from the moving train.  With no wages.

That’s when Jim realized that the cook was a dangerous man.  He’d brought his kid sister along with him, and she was working for the cook too.  He didn’t want to have to think about what he’d have to do if the cook did something like that to his sister.  So, short of warning his sister and all of the other children not to go anywhere alone with the cook, he knew he needed to come up with a plan.

At 96 feet in length, the Leviathan is the largest stock car ever made.  It was specially designed and built for the transport and exhibition of the mummified remains of a blue whale.  Still clearly visible and covering one side is a full-length graphic of the gargantuan animal, with title lettering at one end reading: BIG BLUE.  When the show went belly-up, the car was acquired by the Blaze & M_____ Magic Show, and they have since transformed it into their massive workshop on wheels.  It has always been assumed that their interest in the car was for its size and for its spaciousness, and that they had gutted the car upon purchase, as is standard with any new circus car.  However, the remains of Big Blue have never been exhibited publicly anywhere ever since, and their whereabouts remain unknown.  Some have recently speculated that the remains of Big Blue are still inside the Leviathan.  Whether or not such a claim is true I honestly can’t say, because I’ve never been inside, and anyone who has is sworn to secrecy.

Martin’s morning duties consisted of stock, prep, setup, stock, prep, double-check, repeat, et cetera.  Once the show began the pages were constantly criss-crossing back and forth between the big top and the Leviathan, running errands and making sure the magicians had everything they needed.  Depending on the layout of the railyard, which of course differed from town to town, this distance could be quite short, or really quite far.  On day one he’d been paired with another page who had introduced himself as Artie, but Martin later overheard some of the older magicians referring to him as “Dodgy Art.”  The first thing Artie did was lift Martin’s pocket watch and disassemble it, and leave a trail of tiny clock parts all over the workshop for Martin to find.  He never did get that thing ticking just right again, not for many years.  Another thing Artie was responsible for was the constant displacement of items that Martin had been specifically sent to fetch.  Martin would have to spend an extra thirty to forty seconds searching the workshop, only to find the items in the last place he would ever think to look.  In addition to that, several times when he was sent to fetch linens, and had to make his way in and out of the workshop and back through clown alley, he was bumped along the way by a figure roughly the same size and shape as Artie, but wearing a hood and saying something like: “So soorry sah!” and when Martin reached the big top, he found the bottom two linens in his stack were soiled, and he had to go all the way back to replace them with fresh ones to maintain a precise count.  Magicians always require a precise count.

Martin was allowed one fifteen minute break from morning duties, and he usually took it just before the first show.  On this morning he ran straight to the pie car, where he put in his order for bacon and eggs and a bag lunch for Lucy, and then ran straight on to the costume car, and was seated with Lucy in under a minute.  He sat with her for two minutes just talking and making sure she was in good cheer.  Then Piper asked if he was going back to the pie car, because she knew he was, so he carried her cup over to the pie car and gave it to the men there, and they all knew how she took her tea.  Then he had to carry his tray, Lucy’s bag lunch, and Piper’s pipin’ hot tea, and that journey took about a minute and a half, round-trip.  He sat with Lucy while they ate, and then he showed her a few of the new magic tricks he’d learned.  That always made her smile.  Today it was string and loop tricks.

“I’m sorry Lucy, I have to go early today,” he told her, “I need to spend my last five minutes with Jim, he said it’s important.”

Lucy nodded.  Martin kissed her on the cheek, and then spent the next twenty or thirty seconds following Piper around her workshop and thanking her profusely for looking after his sister.  Then he ran his tray back to the pie car and found Jim behind the cook’s tent, peeling potatoes.  He sat down in the grass, pulled out his cards, and practiced his flourish.

“Okay,” said Jim.  “So you guys use a lot of coins in your acts, right?”

Martin confirmed that with a nod and a “Yes.”

“So you must have a mint in there, so you can stamp your own coins?” Jim asked.

Martin could neither confirm nor deny that.

“Okay.  Here’s the thing: the cook has this lucky coin, as he calls it, and when it comes time to make a choice, he’ll flip for it.  What I need to do is make an exact copy of that coin, but with both sides coming up heads, and the weight’s gotta be perfect.  So if that’s possible, gimme a wink.”

Martin looked upwards, thinking for a moment, and then he stuck his tongue out briefly, which counted as a wink between them.

“Okay.  Before he starts cooking, he empties his pockets and hangs up his keys behind him, so I can get you that coin, but I’ll need a replica of a silver coin about this size,” Jim produced a piece of paper and drew a circle on it, roughly covering the palm of his hand, “so if he turns around he won’t notice it’s missing.  Can that be done?”

Martin crossed his eyes momentarily and smiled.  That counted as a wink too.

Thing is,” Jim added, “when he ain’t cooking, he’s fiddling with that coin all day.  If I swap it too early he’s likely to notice.  But once we set out, there won’t be much light, and he’ll be focused on the hunt.”

“So you need to make the switch just before you leave,” Martin injected.

“Exactly,” Jim confirmed.  “But I’m no pickpocket.”

“You know what, Jim,” Martin chuckled, “I think I know just the fellow.”  His smile dropped.  “He’ll probably want something in return though.”

“Uh huh.”  Jim had already thought of that.

Later on, when Martin told Artie about the black spot, and how it had been passed down through Jim’s family for generations, Artie was very interested.  “You know they’re said to be cursed,” he said.

Martin agreed.  “He showed it to me once,” he said, “I told him to put that thing away and never touch it again.”

So a meeting was arranged for that evening in one of the baggage cars.  When Jim arrived he found Artie right where he said he would be, and when he gave him the rag, Artie turned it over a few times, laying it flat on his hand so he could examine each side, then he looked up at Jim.  “How do I know this is the genuine ah-ticle?” he asked.

Jim looked him straight in the eyes, and shook his head slightly.  “Ya don’t.”

“Hmmf.”  Artie continued examining the rag with a deep sigh before handing it back to Jim.  “Alright.  I’ll do it.”

They spat in their palms, shook hands, and parted ways.

The next morning Jim swapped in the replica when the cook had his back turned, and he took the coin over to the back of the Leviathan, where he knocked three times on a vent that Martin had marked with chalk.  The slats opened and a face appeared upside down, it was Artie.  Jim slid the coin through the slot and Artie told him to come back in twenty minutes.  The slats closed and Jim ran back to the cook’s tent to clean fish.  The cook liked his fish fresh.  In twenty minutes Jim wiped the fish scales from his hands and ran back to the Leviathan for the coin.  Artie returned it with a “Cheerio!” and closed the slats, and Jim then made the return switch.  Now the boys had a copy of the coin with both sides showing heads, and the cook was none the wiser.