Guarded Keepsakes Read online

He knew no ability towards which to turn when arthritis swelled and stiffened the hands that once made him a boxing champion. He had no health insurance to cover the hospital bills after a splinter flew from the lathe and destroyed Gus's unprotected right eye. He had no savings to cushion his fall. He lost all credit. He was placed upon the brink of losing his home.

  The hustle was Gus's last skill, and thus he had few friends. For in time, Gus could not deny the temptation to scheme to separate even those who would befriend Gus from whatever dollars they may have scraped into their pockets.

  Gus envied people like Jay Logan, who so easily and quietly passed through the years. Gus knew that Jay was a kind man, a man with a good, caring heart. But Gus's experience had taught him that kind and good men never amassed wealth, never built empires. He could not escape his ways, and Gus could only gauge his friendship with Jay as one based upon the dollar – could he persuade Jay's trusting nature to pay the bill to get his van's transmission overhauled, would Jay fill his van with gas so that he could consider a vehicle listed for sale, would Jay help cover a utility bill before the lights were turned off? Gus never regarded himself uncaring. He was but a man of capital commerce, and true to his ideology, all relations boiled down to matters of the dollar.

  “Jay's got no idea of what he's tripped into,” Gus shook his head as he strolled down the second story's hall, admiring the gilded picture frames on the walls, the center tables and armchairs aside the doors. “He's probably terrified of losing that meager ninety-grand. If only I had a pile of money, if only I had Jay's credit, I would turn that kind of money over and over again.”

  Gus's mind kept a tally of the value he passed as he progressed through the home. He found two cast-iron stoves in the kitchen, each worth at least a grand to the right collector. Drawers brimmed with costly sliver. Oriental carpets covered the steps climbing throughout the home. Japanese fans and military sabers decorated the walls. Grandfather clocks still ticked and chimed in the corners. Gus marveled at the fine, mahogany boxes with secret latches and hidden drawers.

  Vintage radios and parts crowded a room on the second story. Gus twisted a dial on a large radio and smiled as golden light back-lit the frequency numbers. Electricity hummed through the wooden cabinet. Hidden vacuum tubes whined and popped as Gus explored the airwaves. Perhaps he would tune in Oregon or Maine. Perhaps he would hear strange tongues of other lands bouncing through the atmosphere. A working, antique radio could remain a powerful receiver, an item many collectors cherished. Gus twisted the dial through static as he searched for a station to fill the radio with worth.

  The dial popped, and a harsh voice grunted words Gus could not understand.

  “Un'ghhe' imnehst Arat'khen eenour Khuns Lleung Omthe!”

  Gus slapped the side of the radio. He twisted the dial, but the voice refused to abandon the machine.

  “Un'ghhe' imnehst Arat'khen eenour Khuns Lleung Omthe!”

  “What the hell?”

  “Un'ghhe' imnehst Arat'khen eenour Khuns Lleung Omthe!”

  Gus pulled at the growling radio to reveal its hidden back. He pulled at the power cord and heard it pop out of the wall. Though no longer plugged into any source of power, the radio continued to mumble for several more seconds before the light finally ebbed dark from behind the dial, before the harsh words went silent.

  “They must store a little power,” Gus told himself. “Likely not many stations left broadcasting through the airwaves. Old speakers and tubes must have garbled the words.”

  Gus continued down the second story hall and entered the small corner room where the locket waited for him beneath old quilts. The pink wallpaper and thick, white carpeting appeared fairly new compared to rest of the home. Dust had not settled upon a large, oval dresser mirror. Gus leaned into the mirror to again consider how the years had scraped and carved at his face when his good, green eye perceived a glimmer in the mirror's reflection. A dresser drawer was slightly ajar, and a slight tug on the quilts within further revealed the links of golden chain.

  Gus lifted the necklace out of the drawer and found a round and golden locket on the other end. A pure, white pearl rested in the locket's center, a bauble that, had it not been set within such gold, would have alone drawn a jeweler's admiration. Four glittering, red rubies surrounded that pearl at the compass points, small planets of treasure which orbited their pearl sun.

  “What a piece,” Gus whispered, “and Jay gets all of it for only ninety-grand because the rest of the county is afraid of a dead family named Turner. He's got to let me claim a few of these pieces for myself. He owes me at least that.”

  Gus turned the locket, and fine filigree twisted floral patterns on the reverse side. It was careful and custom work, the kind of craftsmanship that would move an appraiser to put down his book of values and take a breath before underestimating the locket's worth.

  “The Turners must have arrived here with all kinds of wealth to afford work like this.” Gus grinned as he held the locket in the sunbeams that pierced through the curtains. “Folks in these parts likely never recognized all the riches those Turners unpacked into this home. Wonder what the Turners did so long ago to gather such treasure.”

  Gus's arthritic fingers trembled as they felt for the locket's clasp. Once found, the clasp opened easily.

  “Jay's the luckiest man alive.”

  The locket's front face slid open to reveal a sparkling diamond embedded upon its interior. Gus stared at the stone and grinned.

  “All I'll need to is remove that stone from the locket,” the focus of Gus's good, green eye shifted to consider the locket's other side. “Though they must've been loaded, the face in this locket hints those Turners must sure have been ugly.”

  The female face captured in the sepia-toned photograph had not been blessed by attractive features. Though Gus knew that the limitations of early photography might have been to blame, though he thought the exposure may have been too bright, he could not avoid thinking the the woman's skin exceedingly pale. Such a complexion made the eyes look beady and small, like the eyes of a burrowing creature, eyes fashioned to pierce into the dark, eyes that must have pained when exposed to the sun. The woman's hair grew in sporadic patches above a high hairline. Growths and knots of swelling skin twisted the woman's face and pulled her attempted smile into a frown.

  “Poor woman,” Gus sighed, “but I hope you can understand why a face such as yours can't remain in a locket like this.”

  Gus pried at the photograph with his fingernail, but the glass beneath which the photograph lay would not budge at his prodding. He would need a jeweler's fine tools and assistance if he hoped to remove that woman's image without harming the locket. He had time. He would remain patient.

  Gus snapped the locket shut and placed his find into his pocket, careful to make sure that no golden link dangled into the light. He had found the piece to make his trip worthwhile. Perhaps selling that locket would give him the dollars he needed to purchase a new van, to fix his home's aging roof, to buy another piece of antique furniture. Too many outbuildings and rooms brimming with relics waited for Jay. Jay would never guess that Gus kept something back.

  The Turners were dead. No one would miss a golden locket.

  Nonetheless, that anonymity that Gus enjoyed since he had retreated from his old empire of the street, that invisibility that had cloaked him into his old age, vanished the moment he put that golden locket into his pocket. Gus Holcombe once more became a marked man.