Buried Dreams Read Free Page A

developer in the late 1800s came up with the tale, to help move some beachfront property. That's the story of the rock, though the town museum is too polite to say anything about it."
    I thought about the first time I had met him. "So if the Vikings never came here, why are you out searching? Looking for something else?"
    He looked at me and there was something in his eyes, something haunting, like a man seeing a dream from a very great distance, a distance he wasn't sure he'd be able to cross. "I never said the Vikings didn't come here, Lewis. I'm sure they did. And I'm going to find the evidence. Just you wait and see."
     
     
    Back in my spot in the pew, I folded my arms as the priest continued the funeral mass. Rain continued to spatter against the stained glass. I found that my eyes kept on turning to the casket, not more than a handful of feet away. In that box and on the cushions were the remains of a man who had traveled the world, and loved and laughed and had lost, and through all of his days, had always fought to reach his dream.
    Always.
     
     
    An inadvertent encounter at the center of town one day, after I picked up at my mail at the post office, led to lunch at the Common Grill & Grill. After lobster rolls and chips for the both of us, I said, "Okay. Vikings. Why do you think they came here?"
    He took a swallow from a Diet Coke. "They had to come somewhere south, didn't they?"
    "Sure. But why New England? And why New Hampshire? We've got the shortest coastline in America. It seems the odds would be against it."
    "I agree," he said. "Lewis, look. When I joined the army, they found out I had an aptitude for numbers. So I crunched numbers for the army, all thirty years that I was in their service. And when I came out of the service, I came back home to Tyler, crunched numbers again as an accountant. Had my own little firm. Me and the wife. More numbers, more crunching. Pretty dull, don't you think?"
    "Seeing how terrified I am every April 15, I can see how it wouldn't be that dull."
    He smiled, reached back, and pulled out his wallet. "But all those times, I had a dream I was following, a dream I had when I was a little kid. Look." From his wallet he retrieved a folded-over piece of white paper, which he handed over. I pulled it apart and saw a blurred photocopy of what looked to be a coin.
    "All right," I said. "A coin. What about it?"
    He put a finger on the paper. "That's a coin that was found up in Brooklin, Maine, in an excavation of an Indian camp near Blue Hill Bay. It's a Viking coin, minted between 1067 and 1093 A.D. Get that? About sixty-five years after the Viking settlement up in Newfoundland, a Viking coin found its way down to Maine."
    "Maybe it got there through trade," I said. "Doesn't mean that it fell out of a Viking pouch on the Maine coastline."
    "True," Jon admitted. "Except for one other thing. You see, I've seen another coin, just like that."
    "Where?"
    "On Tyler Beach. Right after a storm."
    I looked in his eyes, to see if he was joking, but there was nothing humorous in that gaze. "All right. When?"
    'When I was kid. Thirteen years old. Even back then I was interested in history, and I did a lot of beachcombing, especially after big storms. This one was some unnamed nor'easter that came through, and I dug around and looked around, and found this same kind of coin. Right here in Tyler Beach."
    I folded up the piece of paper, handed it back to him. "Where is it now?"
    He shook his head. "Blame it on greed, blame it on stupidity, blame it on a younger brother. I brought it home and my parents didn't think anything about it, but my younger brother, Ray, he said I should sell it. To a coin collector, down in Newburyport. And whatever money I got, I could buy some model airplanes or some damn silly thing. You see, Lewis, money was always tight when I was growing up. And maybe that's why I was good at numbers, keeping track of every spare penny or nickel. But we didn't have an allowance, didn't