“I was just looking.”
“You look with your eyes.”
The boy stepped closer only after the sawyer nodded.
His small gloved fingers picked up the brass tube.
One cap resisted.
He tried again.
The old sawyer took it gently.
“Let me.”
He twisted.
The cap loosened.
Inside was tightly rolled paper wrapped in waxed cloth.
The sawmill went completely quiet.
The boy unfolded the cloth.
The first paper was handwritten.
The ink had faded but remained legible.
At the top were two words.
Not a name.
Not a treasure map.
A simple description:
North Grove Collection.
Below it were numbers.
Twenty-seven pieces.
Measurements.
Approximate weights.
Tree locations.
Harvest dates.
And beside twelve of the entries, a small mark shaped like a triangle.
The boy looked confused.
The old sawyer did not.
He took a slow step backward.
“What?”
the boy asked.
The sawyer looked toward the pile of ugly burls stacked by the wall.
Then at the paper again.
“Those marks.”
“What about them?”
“I’ve seen them before.”
The bearded buyer suddenly looked pale.
The boy turned toward him.
The man who had mocked him only minutes earlier was no longer smiling.
The sawyer pointed at the handwritten notation beside one entry.
“Old-growth hard maple.”
Another line.
“Recovered after the ice storm.”
Another.
“Do not slab until fully seasoned.”
Then, at the bottom:
If the outside scares them off, leave it that way. The wood is safer ugly.
The boy’s fingers tightened around the paper.
He knew that handwriting.
His grandfather.
Not from letters.
From labels.
Tool drawers.
Coffee cans full of screws.
The old man had written on everything.
The boy whispered:
“Grandpa.”
The bearded buyer stepped closer.
“Let me see that.”
The boy folded it instinctively.
“No.”
The man looked at him.
“Kid, you don’t even know what you have.”
The old sawyer turned.
“He knows it’s his.”
The buyer frowned.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what matters first.”
The boy looked toward the pile.
There were twenty-six more.
Some smaller.
Some enormous.
All ugly.
All purchased for forty dollars total at a farm-estate auction two days earlier.
The buyer’s face had changed completely.
The boy noticed.
“Why are you looking at them like that?”
The man did not answer immediately.
The old sawyer did.
“Because if the rest are anything like this one…”
He stopped.
The boy waited.
“What?”