ALL THAT GLITTERS

“Maddie, look! Down there, “ he said, excitedly pointing at something in the lower depths of the leaf- covered pond at our feet. “Something glittering. Like gold. But it’s so far down. What do you think it is?”

“Glittering? Maybe it’s a big fat good luck goldfish. Duffy, you are the eternal child. How can you see through all the gunk and muck in a pond that hasn’t been properly dredged since, I don’t know, the Neanderthals were stomping around Franklin County .”

“Neanderthals? Don’t make fun of my rustic pond, and by the way, Maddie, your geology IQ needs an historical refresh. Those dudes were stomping around, as you put it, some 40,000 years ago. In Maine, the continental ice sheets had retreated, and the state was temporarily flooded by the Atlantic Ocean (aka the Champlain Sea). As everything rebounded and sea levels stabilized, melting water began carving out the modern network of streams and creeks we see today. Like this one right here.”

Ok, your precious pond is post-glacial. And I don’t know what’s glittering down there, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t pirates' gold. Old Peg Leg Pete never even made it to Kennebunkport, as far as I know, or any historian smarter than me knows. And get Indiana Jones out of your mind. It ain’t the Cross of Coronado, either.”

“Maddie, you have no romance in your soul. Did you know there were Indian tribes, surveyors, and explorers all over this land at one time? And gold was mined in Byron at Coos Canyon!”

“Duffy, do you get out of those ripped jeans? Or is that what all the New England semi-retired struggling mystery thriller writers are wearing these days?”

“Ok, Maddie. Maybe to the jeans and we’ll forget pirates. I admit I’m the big picture daydreamer. I’ll take anything precious. Maybe it’s leprechaun's gold down there. Did you see a rainbow on your way here, pointing to this pond ?”

“No, Duffy, I didn’t opt for that tracking device when I bought my Land Rover.”

“I always had a feeling, Maddie, that there was something magical about this place, something calling to me, something mysterious and hidden in plain sight, something that would transform my life. If I could just get my hands on it.”

If I could just get my hands on it!

That was so Duffy! Duffy was such a full stop. dreamer. No longer a kid, at 40, with a legit log cabin and a rocky acre or two underfoot and not a neighbor in sight, Duffy had retired from a partially successful San Francisco startup and transitioned to writing quasi-mystery fantasies, and he was still 75% hippy. That was the part that probably led his not-so-hippy wife Sheila to divorce him, and before you could say “alimony”, to hook up with a big city hedge fund manager who probably had real pots of gold rather than just imagining them. Duffy had probably never gotten over the loss of Sheila, even after 3 years of her absence. Her elaborately framed photo still sat in the middle of his coffee table (that long blonde hair, tight smile, and those cold grey eyes) where she could remind him day after day that he had lost her to another man. Sheila was probably the real reason he had exiled himself out here in an out-of-the-way corner of The Pine Tree State. A quiet place to write and pine away, emphasis on the ‘pine away’, it seemed to me.

Duffy was my client and friend, not my romantic partner; still, I worried about him as though he was all those things. Maybe I could blame it on my mothering instinct.

“So, what do you think ? Should we go for it?”

I think I sighed. An adult sigh to an adult acting like a small child.

“ Duffy, I think you have better things to do, and remember, everything that glitters isn’t gold. Anyway, that mystery object is too far down there for us to reach without a….”

“Without a what?”

“I don't know, without fisherman’s waders, a pole, and a fish net. Anyway, some kind of a big scooper duper scoop.”

“Maybe a high-strength magnet. I think they use them to retrieve magnetic debris. Or in this case, to retrieve magnetic non-debris if that thing is really gold.

“Imagine what you could do with a bar of gold or a gold relic or a cross. I know I can imagine. Did you know that in Switzerland, major mints, like PAMP Suisse, regularly produce bullion specifically themed around "good luck" and prosperity. “I need some good luck. And prosperity.”

“Duffy, that’s pie in the sky. I am your real-life long-suffering friend and attorney, and this is not a fairy tale moment. It took me a couple of hours to drive out here. We are sitting in Maine on this lovely spring day beside your picturesque pond under this white cedar tree that I wish I could call my own, but we’re here to decide the fate of your real-life rustic cabin home behind us. It’s real estate, and it’s realer than that gold tease down there. Duffy, I think you are far too isolated out here. And this house and property could bring in some good money.”

“ What happened to my life, Maddie? Pretty soon, this cabin, which my father with his bad leg, and my uncle Pete, with his gimpy left arm, built log by log and nail by nail after the war, won’t belong to me any more than that gold thing down there in the waters, whatever it is, belongs to me, Maddie.”

I sighed again. An adult to an adult sigh, this time.

I could tell Duffy was in one of his glum woulda coulda shoulda moods. And it had begun to rain. We parted ways and agreed to meet the next day.

When I arrived the next day, with my lady attorney oversstuffed briefcase, official papers, and a sadness about everything that was happening to man-child Duffy, a sadness that I couldn’t completely put my finger on, I found the cabin empty.

I walked down to the pond. There was Duffy, alright. All lanky six feet of him in his ripped jeans and his Grateful Dead tee, not beside the pond, but in the pond underwater, both of his hands trapped inside that gold thing. It was a bear trap, a brass bear trap, that golden glittering thing he couldn’t resist. That thing that was going to change his life.

Duffy knew how to fly in his imagination to faraway places where there are pots of God and enchanted creatures and magic spellsfor the taking.

But fantasy writer Duffy had never learned how to swim.