The tallest farmer, wearing a brown plaid shirt and a dirty baseball cap, shook his head.
“Son, Lake Erie is nearly a mile from here.”
The third man grinned.
“Maybe the boy thinks pirates used to grow corn.”
More laughter followed.
The boy's father lowered his eyes.
He wanted to defend his son.
But the morning had already gone badly.
They'd rented the excavator to locate a collapsed drainage channel that was slowly drowning the eastern section of their farm. The equipment cost more than they could comfortably afford, and every hour of delay brought them closer to another bill they couldn't pay.
He couldn't afford a treasure hunt.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let the men finish.”
The boy looked up.
“But Dad—”
“Please.”
The father rubbed his forehead.
“We need to find that drain.”
The boy's expression tightened.
He looked toward the rusted iron.
Then back at his father.
“Just one more minute.”
Before the farmer could answer, the boy pressed his shovel against the loose earth beside the object.
A clump of soil slid away.
Something black and circular appeared.
Then another circular shape.
And another.
The boy stopped breathing.
He lowered the shovel.
Then brushed away the remaining dirt with his gloved fingers.
A chain.
Not ordinary farm chain.
Not something used to pull a tractor or secure a gate.
Each iron link was almost as long as the boy's hand, thick with corrosion and packed tightly with a century of soil.
The chain disappeared into the ground toward the northern edge of the field.
Toward the rocky cliffs overlooking Lake Erie.
The boy stared at it.
Then slowly turned toward the three men.
“Then explain that.”
The man in the blue cap stopped laughing.
The tallest farmer stepped closer.
His grin disappeared.
The boy's father crouched at a safe distance from the excavation edge.
He looked from the enormous anchor to the rusted chain.
Then toward the distant cliffs.
Something troubled his expression.
He knew those cliffs.
He'd grown up beneath them.
He'd watched storms crash against their rocky base.
And he'd heard his own father tell strange stories about something lost beneath the hillside long before the first tractor ever crossed their land.
Stories he had dismissed as nonsense.
Until now.
The blue-cap farmer folded his arms.
“Old machinery,” he muttered.
The boy shook his head.
“Not with links that big.”