At that very moment, Ruth was down at Potter Beach with Senator Simon Addams again. She was beginning to be depressed when she spent time down there, but she didn’t know what else to do with herself. So she continued to stop at the beach a few hours every day to keep the Senator company. She also liked to keep an eye on Webster, for the sake of Mrs. Pommeroy, who constantly worried about her oldest, strangest boy. And she also went there because it was difficult to talk with anyone else on the island. She couldn’t very well hang out with Mrs. Pommeroy all the time.
Not that watching Webster dig in the mud was still fun. It was painful and sad to watch. He’d lost all his grace. He floundered. He was searching for that second tusk as if he was both dying to find it and terrified of finding it. Ruth thought Webster might sink down in the mud one day and never show up again. She wondered whether that was, in fact, his plan. She wondered whether Webster Pommeroy was plotting the world’s most awkward suicide.
“Webster needs a purpose in life,” the Senator said.
The thought of Webster Pommeroy seeking a purpose in life depressed Ruth Thomas even more. “Isn’t there anything else you can have him do with his time?”
“What else, Ruth?”
“Isn’t there something he can do for the museum?”
The Senator sighed. “We have everything we need for the museum, except a building. Until we get that, there’s nothing we can do. Digging in the mud, Ruth, is what he’s good at.”
“He’s not so good at it anymore.”
“He’s having some trouble with it now, yes.”
“What are you going to do if Webster finds the other tusk? Throw another elephant in there for him?”
“We’ll take that as it comes, Ruth.”
Webster hadn’t found anything good in the mudflats lately. He hadn’t turned up anything other than a lot of junk. He did find an oar, but it wasn’t an old oar. It was aluminum. (“This is magnificent!” the Senator had raved to Webster, who looked frantic when he handed it over. “What a rare oar this is!”) Also, Webster had uncovered a vast number of single boots under the mud, and single gloves, kicked and and tossed off by years of lobstermen. And bottles, too. Webster had found a lot of bottles in recent days, and not old ones. Plastic laundry detergent bottles. He hadn’t, though, found anything worth all the time spent in that cold, loose mud. He looked thinner and more anxious every day.
“Do you think he’ll die?” Ruth asked the Senator.
“I hope not.”
“Could he snap completely and kill somebody?”
“I don’t think so,” the Senator said.
On the day Pastor Wishnell called Mrs. Pommeroy, Ruth had already been at Potter Beach with the Senator and Webster for several hours. She and the Senator were looking at a book, a book Ruth had purchased for the Senator at a Salvation Army store in Concord a month earlier. She’d given it to him as soon as she returned from visiting her mother, but he hadn’t yet read it. He said he was finding it difficult to concentrate because he was so concerned about Webster.
“I’m sure it’s a super book, Ruth,” he said. “Thanks for bringing it down here today.”
“Sure,” she said. “I saw it sitting on your porch, and I thought you might want to look at it. You know, if you got bored or something.”
The book was called Hidden Treasure: How and Where to Find It. A Finder’s Guide to the World’s Missing Treasures. It was something that, under normal circumstances, would have brought the Senator all sorts of excitement.
“You do like it?” Ruth asked.
“Oh, yes, Ruth. It’s a swell book.”
“Are you learning anything?”
“Not too much, Ruth, to be honest. I haven’t finished it. I was expecting a little more information from the author, to tell you the truth. You’d think from the title,” Senator Simon said, turning the book over in his hands, “that the author would tell you how to find specific treasures, but she doesn’t give much information about that. So far, she says that if you do find anything, it’s an accident. And she gives some examples of people who got lucky and found treasures when they weren’t looking for anything. That doesn’t seem to me like much of a system.”
“How far have you read?”
“Just the first chapter.”
“Oh. I thought you might like it because of the nice color illustrations. Lots of photographs of lost treasures. Did you see those? Did you see those pictures of the Fabergé eggs? I thought you’d like those.”
“If there are photographs of the objects, Ruth, then they aren’t really lost. Now, are they?”
“Well, Senator, I see what you mean. But the photographs are pictures of lost treasures that regular people already found, on their own. Like that guy who found the Paul Revere goblet. Did you get to that part yet?”
“Ah, not yet,” the Senator said. He was shading his eyes and looking out over the mudflats. “I think it’s going to rain. I hope it doesn’t, because Webster won’t come in when it rains. He’s already got a terrible cold. You should hear his chest rattle.”
Ruth took the book from the Senator. She said, “I saw a part in here-where is it? It says a kid found a marker in California that Sir Francis Drake left. It was made of iron, and it claimed the land as belonging to Queen Elizabeth. It had been there for, like, three centuries.”
“Isn’t that something?”
Ruth offered the Senator a stick of chewing gum. He refused it, so she chewed it herself. “The author says the greatest site of buried treasure anywhere in the world is on Cocos Island.”
“That’s what your book says?”
“It’s your book, Senator. I was thumbing through it when I was coming back from Concord and I saw that thing about Cocos Island. The author says Cocos Island is a real bonanza for people looking for buried treasure. She says Captain James Cook stopped at Cocos Island all the time with loot. The great circumnavigator!
“The great circumnavigator.”
“So did the pirate Benito Bonito. So did Captain Richard Davis and the pirate Jean Lafitte. I thought you’d be interested…”
“Oh, I am interested, Ruth.”
“You know what I thought you’d be interested in? About Cocos Island, I mean? The island is only about as big as Fort Niles. How about that? Wouldn’t that be ironic? Wouldn’t you be right at home there? And with all that buried treasure to find. You and Webster could go there and dig it up together. How about that, Senator?”
It started to rain, big heavy drops.
“I bet the weather’s better on Cocos Island, anyhow,” she said, and laughed.
The Senator said, “Oh, Ruth, we’re not going anywhere, Webster and I. You know that. You shouldn’t say such things, even as a joke.”
Ruth was stung. She recovered and said, “I’m sure you two would come home rich as kings if you ever got to Cocos Island.”
He did not reply.
She wondered why she was pursuing this. Christ, how desperate she sounded. How starved for conversation. It was pathetic, but she missed sitting on the beach with the Senator for hours and hours of uninterrupted drivel, and she wasn’t used to being ignored by him. She was suddenly jealous of Webster Pommeroy for getting all the attention. That’s when she really started to feel pathetic. She stood and pulled up the hood of her jacket and asked, “Are you coming in?”
“It’s up to Webster. I don’t think he’s noticed that it’s raining.”
“You don’t have a waterproof jacket on, do you? Do you want me to get you one?”
“I’m fine.”
“You and Webster should both come in before you get soaked.”
“Sometimes Webster comes in when it rains, but sometimes he stays out there and gets wetter and wetter. It depends on his mood. I guess I’ll stay until he wants to come in. I’ve got sheets on the line at home, Ruth. Would you take them in for me before they get wet?”