Torn ~ JJ Maybank

Chapter 38

"Hey, guys. So, like, my dad's already gonna kill me. So what's this mandatory meeting about?" Pope asked, as John B and JJ had gathered the rest of us round a fire pit in the woods for a mandatory Pogue meeting. 

"Might as well tell him, man, before we're gaffed." JJ said as he and John B exchanged looks, signalling that they knew something the rest of us did not.

"You ready for this?" John B asked, looking around at the rest of us dramatically. 

"Yeah." I answered, growing impatient.

"So, the gold never went down with the Royal Merchant." John B exclaimed, earning sighs from Kie and Pope.

"Oh, my God. Here we go again with this." Pope sighed, annoyed John B was bringing him back to this topic again. 

"No. All right, wait. Hear him out, all right?" JJ tried to reason with the boy. As he looked around the group, our eyes briefly met, but he quickly snapped them away again. JJ had changed out of his suit, and back into his white top, with cargo shorts, and his traditional cap situated on his head.

"It's been here the whole time. It's on the island." John B revealed, earning gasps from the rest of us. 

"Are you serious?" I asked, a little bit in disbelief.

"Oh, my God." Kie mumbled, hope laced in her voice.

"I'd like to voice my skepticism." Pope made his unconvinced tone known.

"I'm sure you would, Pope, but can I please present you with my evidence, sir?" John B continued.

"Proceed." Pope gave him the green light, nodding and waving his hand for my cousin to continue.

"All right. So, in my backpack, I have a letter from Denmark Tanny." John B reached into his backpack and pulled out a letter, waving it for all of us to see. 

"Who the hell's that?" I asked.

"Denmark Tanny was a slave that survived the Royal Merchant wreck. Check this out." John B said excitedly as he handed the letter over to Kie to look at. "Okay, slaves weren't mentioned as crew members on the ship, but my dad, he found the complete manifest. That was his big discovery. So Tanny used the gold from the Merchant to buy his freedom." 

Kie looked over the letter, before whistling which caught my attention as she passed it across the log and to me who was sat in between Pope and JJ. I took the letter and scanned it over, all of it being written in a different language so I couldn't decipher it. I passed it to Pope who was next to me, as he was incredibly keen to verify that John B was in fact telling the truth. 

"After that, he bought his farm. Drumroll, please, because that farm is..." John B continued, all of us slapping our knees giving him a drumroll as he requested, before he announced "Tannyhill Plantation."

"Tannyhill?" I asked in disbelief, "As in where the Kooks live?"

"Yeah. So, after that, he used his money to free even more slaves, and then he sold a shit-ton of rice, which pisses off all the white planters, and then they decide to lynch him. So on the day they were coming to get him, he writes a letter to his son as a farewell, and in the last line of that letter, he leaves a coded message about where to find the gold." John B explains.

"Where?" Kie asks.

"Harvest the wheat in parcel nine, near the water. Except... there's no wheat. You see, wheat is code for gold. Check this out." he grins as he sits next to Pope and begins pointing at the connection between the wheat symbol on the gold, and the wheat symbol used on the letter. "The gold is in parcel nine, near the water."