“No.”
He passes through another door, and I follow him into what was clearly the kitchen.
That’s an old stove.
Anoldkitchen stove. There’s also a fireplace hearth and a large porcelain sink without a faucet.
No refrigerator.
Obviously no dishwasher.
“Is there plumbing in this cabin?” I whisper in case I’m intruding on pirate spirits.
Could Davis’s great-grandfather have known Thorny Rock and Walter Bombeck? I try to do math in my head, and I fail. I don’t think so? But I don’t know.
“No,” he says.
“And your great-grandfather lived here in modern times?”
“He died in the 1950s.”
So the cabin’s been empty for roughly three-quarters of a century.
No wonder it’s falling down.
Also?
It’s small. Like he didn’t have a bedroom. Just a main room and a kitchen and a basement.
No visitors for Great-grandpa, I guess.
Nice cabin for a hermit.
Davis turns into a short doorway, ducks, and shines his flashlight down the stairs. “You sure you want to do this?”
No. No no no no no no no. “Yes.”
He stares at me like he knows my brain is protesting, then turns without a word and heads down the stairs.
They creak worse than the floor.
Much, much worse.
I flip on the flashlight on my phone and follow once he’s all the way downstairs, feeling the steps sag beneath my weight. As the wall beside me turns from wood to stone, I lean against it to try to take some of the weight off the steps.
No idea if that works, but it makes me feel better.
Davis is sweeping the metal detector over the dirt floor when I join him in the musty-scented basement that reminds me of my grandma’s basement back in Iowa.
And that reminds me that I still haven’t answered Nigel’s text from earlier tonight, which feels like it came in four days ago.
Was that really tonight?
It was.
Well, too bad, Nigel. You don’t get a response tonight because I’m hunting for a pirate treasure.
I take a minute to scan the walls with my phone.
