The Legacy By: Georgepat Copyright: 2005 by Georgepat Josh drove his new pick-up truck hard down K-18, his speed control set at sixty-eight miles per hour. He nestled his ass comfortably, after a few wobbles, in his soft leather captains chair It had been twenty-five years since he had left the small town of Junction City, Kansas; his dreams and expectations unfulfilled. Thirty years later, it was important that he be there. He had scores to settle, many, many scores that needed closure. He didn’t want to miss that. He briefly thought back to his youth, his eyes darting quickly across the road in front of him. His parents lived from hand to mouth, every month of every year. Day by day, it never changed. He had been shunned at school because the kids felt that he wasn’t good enough be one of them, and had made his existence miserable. He saw the turnoff ahead and slowed his truck to make the sharp turn onto the old dirt road that led to his boyhood home. His eyes darted back and forth as he remembered the days when he would return from school, beat up and sore, and walk down this same road to his house in the woods. The road narrowed and the over hanging tree branches slapped against the sides and top of the truck as he slowly made his way down the path. The grasses growing along the sides of the road were tall and green, a breeze causing the tops to sway as if telling him to turn around and leave. He turned the last corner and saw his old house standing broken down and in great disrepair. He parked his truck and stepped out, the noises of summer surrounding him. He smiled at the memory of running through the woods as a kid and collecting the split open exoskeletons of cicadas off the trees. Walking through the front yard he saw that all that was left of his parent’s truck were the wheels and axels. He shook his head and wondered who would have bothered to take the rest of it anyway. He remembered helping his dad paint the house one spring weekend so long ago, his mother coming outside every so often and pouring cool glasses of lemonade for them to drink and admire the work that had been done. His dad and he had talked while they worked and asked him if he could keep a secret. He was amazed to learn that five years earlier, his dad had been leaving town after buying supplies, when an armored car had slammed into a telephone pole and then turned over. Both the driver and his passenger had been killed and the bags of money had scattered everywhere when the rear doors burst open from the impact. After the police and the ambulance had come, the local bank manager showed up with two of his employees and collected all the money bags they could find for safekeeping in their vault. Dad stayed until everyone had left and it was almost dark and then slowly walked the area once again. Over one hundred feet from the crash site, he came upon two bags lying in a small depression. He couldn’t remember any of the bank people coming this far to look and figured that finders keepers and picked them up after making sure that no one was around. He ran back to his truck and tossing the two bags into the back, started it and left for home. He told me that he never had told mom because she would have wanted him to start spending it and folks would have known that he was the one that had found and walked off with the missing 250 thousand dollars. He said that every month he added one hundred dollars to his account at the bank and had told mom that he had received a raise in pay at work. She was happy with what he did bring home, so she never said a word. Two years later, when I was eighteen, we had celebrated my birthday with my favorite dinner of roasted chicken and while mom was cleaning up the dishes, dad brought out the Jack Daniels and poured him and me a shot. Mom joined us for a short while and then excused herself to take a bath and get ready for bed. Dad and I walked outside and each had a few more shots as he smoked a cigarette and mentioned the money again. He led me down a small path towards the stream that ran behind our house and stopped under a large oak tree about six feet from the base. He looked over his shoulder towards the house and told me that he was standing on my future. I looked at him standing there with a big smile lighting his face as he told me about burying the bulk of the money here. The rest was buried at another location out in the woods and that was the money he used to pad his account at the bank and would last him and mom for the rest of their lives when he retired. We had one more shot of whisky and called it a night. Two days later, both he and mom were killed in a car crash caused by a drunk driver and three days after that, I stood by their graves as the preacher said a few words over them. When all was said and done, I received a large settlement from the insurance company and was able to leave this area and attended college in another state. Upon graduation, I joined the army as an officer and spent the next thirty years serving our country in various capacities. I walked to my pickup and removed a shovel and a digging bar from the back, then walked into the woods behind the house until I was standing on the same spot my dad had stood on all those years before. I removed my shirt and began to dig in the hard earth. Three feet down and with the sweat pouring off me, I felt my shovel hit something and dropped to my knees to examine what I had found. Using my hands to extract my find, I removed a large roll of oilcloth with a canvas sack inside about two feet long. I pulled it out of the earth and excitedly cut the strap holding it closed and pulled it open. Looking inside, I was not surprised to find that it was full of money. Twenty stacks of wrapped hundred dollar bills, ten thousand dollars in each stack. I sat back on my ass in the dirt and considered my situation. The money had been missing for over thirty years and I was sure that the insurance had covered the loss a long time ago. I figured it out quickly. I would take a trip to the Cayman Islands and deposit the money there and when I returned to the states, would have them wire some of the money in ten thousand dollar increments to my account at my bank. This would keep the Feds out of my business and my wife and I would be able to travel to our hearts content. Suddenly, settling those old scores wasn’t as important as it had been and as I stood up, gathered my tools, the money and returned to my truck, I took one last look at my youth and drove away.