Free It's Up to Charlie Hardin – eARC by Dean Ing Page A

complication was too much, and Aaron’s position crumbled.
    “Then I guess it’s finders keepers,” he said, “but you told me there was lots more in the pond. Whose is that?”
    “We’ll leave it for the governor,” Charlie offered, charitable in his new wealth.
    So it was agreed that, while they had done nothing wrong, they’d better not do it again. This wisdom extended to avoiding any mention about their little expedition to an adult. Or to Sue Ann or Jackie or, in fact, anybody else on Planet Earth. “What we need is a bank,” Aaron said.
    Banks were another full-blown mystery, with Charlie suspicious that a bank would ask exactly the kind of questions they hoped to avoid, and Aaron just as worried that a bank would demand payment for keeping track of such a huge sum as theirs. The simplest solution, Aaron said, was for Charlie to use up nickels and dimes in buying new clippers, and for Aaron to beg a few paper coin tubes each week from different grocers.
    They had liberated a small flour sack to hold the coins, and neither boy wanted to risk hiding such riches where they might be discovered. Aaron was especially firm on the point since his mother had the habit of searching every corner of her house on washday looking for stray socks and such. “My mom’s a boogerbear on finding stuff. I can’t even hide a piece of taffy,” he complained.
    “If we can’t hide it at home, we’ve gotta do it like pirates,” Charlie said after a dozen ideas had been argued to pieces. “They kept stuff forever.”
    “Buried it,” Aaron nodded. “Yeah, but—nah, this stupid dog would just dig it up. Probably eat half of it. Remember those two cherry bombs we buried? Lint wasn’t even there when we hid ’em but he smelled ’em through the dirt. Chewed ’em to gumbo, too.”
    Drawn into the conversation by hearing his name, Lint awarded a tongue-lolling smile to the boys until he recognized his owner’s sad headshake for what it was. “I was afraid to pet him for a week,” said Charlie, who had great respect for gunpowder. “But you know what? I bet we could hide it under a rock too big for him.”
    “Or a hunk of concrete. There’s lots of it down at the storm pipe.” Years before, a ferocious downpour, channeled partly by several storm drains, had sent an epic flood down Shoal Creek, carrying entire trees to the river while the concrete drainpipe lay almost submerged. One of those leafy battering rams had struck the pipe sidelong, scant yards beyond the usual creekbed. After the creek returned to normal, occasional storms still poured from the drain’s broken mouth, but now hunks of concrete large and small lay scattered for half a block beside the creekbed.
    Instantly persuaded by such an easy solution, Charlie pocketed more than enough coins for the clippers and forbade Lint to follow. Presently the boys made their way to the creek carrying the sack, judging this curve of concrete too large, or that fragment too small, finally choosing one the size of a sofa cushion half-hidden under runners of ivy. Lifting it was full employment for them both, and beneath it scuttled a civilization of bugs they should have expected. They kicked the insects aside, Charlie holding the curved slab on edge with wary glances around them while Aaron dug a football-shaped hole in the dark, pungent earth.
    Some distance away, disappearing into a shallow embankment, the sinister dark throat of the big pipe drew Charlie’s attention as it never had before. He knew its mouth held a cool musty stink and once he had seen Lint, hackles raised, reject it as a thing to be avoided. This in itself was enough to give a boy ideas sooner or later. After Aaron bedded their sack in the cavity he had dug, together they lowered the slab and stood back to view the job. Aaron rearranged bits of ivy, then gave an expert’s nod of approval. “As safe a treasure as Captain Guy’s,” he said.
    “You mean Captain Kidd’s,” Charlie corrected,