BY JOEY HEDGER
Sammy collects his old baby teeth in a small, plastic communion cup and stores them in his special drawer, the topmost drawer on the dresser his mom had bought used last year. He keeps many things in the drawer, including dried playdough husks, birthday cards, a pocketknife with a nail file where the blade should be.
At church, a pastor in blue jeans says that the world is ending, but he says it casually, because he’s not a street preacher, he’s a man of God, a man who believes there’s little time left, so they could not waste it, but must pursue greater goals, of faithfulness, or resolution, of collecting souls for the Lord.
Sammy does not know what souls look like. He guesses they resemble his cup of teeth.
After the service, mom folds chairs in the church building. Someone invites everyone to lunch, but nobody says yes or no. They all seem to be waiting for something else to happen in the air-conditioned community center where the church meets. Maybe the apocalypse.
In the warm rain outside, Sammy finds a trail leading into the adjacent saw palm woods, so he follows it. Vanishes from the line of sight of the church members heading to their cars. Half an hour passes before mom realizes he is gone. The adults collect each other’s cellphone numbers, then go after him, calling, Sammy, Sammy.
Sammy’s friend Rachel says she saw him go that way, so mom follows her pointed finger, calling, Sammy, Sammy. Did anyone call the police? Some time has passed by now, still no sign of Sammy. She goes into the woods, alone.
When the rain clears, mom finds Sammy standing on a path covered in soggy pine needles. Clothing all wet, he is walking back toward the church, and his pockets are lumpy with rocks. Grabbing him, mom asks about the rocks in his pockets, because she is crying and does not know what else to say to him. Sammy shrugs, hands her one. It looks like gold, but mom cannot be certain. She is stunned by its shiny glow. Why is there gold in the woods, she asks. Sammy shrugs, says, I can show you where I found it.
So they go further into the saw palms, the faint voices of churchgoers still calling Sammy’s name. Mom wonders if she should text them, tell them Sammy’s all right, but before she can, he points to a pond. But it is not really a pond, because the water is too clear, too empty. It is a spring, fresh water visibly seeping upward from deep below. Sammy says, watch, and wades into the water, his tiny legs gradually sinking into the sand, sinking, sinking, until he seems to stop, the water up to his bellybutton. Then he digs his hands around him and finds another gold rock.
Sammy, get out of there, says mom, but bring that rock. Sammy complies. They notice, once he’s on dry land, that the pond is growing. The clear spring water seems to be rising, rising. Not stopping. Mom wonders why gold is coming up with it, and if something like lightning has punctured an underground aquifer, letting its contents spill loose. She often thinks about sinkholes, about what goes on below the soil.
Mom and Sammy head back toward the church, but mom stops, remembering that somebody probably called the police. Let’s just put these somewhere safe, she says to Sammy, and they bury the rocks underneath a pine tree. It’s like my special drawer, says Sammy of the burial place, and mom nods, then leads him back to society, where a police officer is taking notes on a tiny pad that he keeps in his shirt pocket. The pastor, standing by the door of the community center, points to mom and Sammy when they emerge.
There they are, says everybody, and Sammy feels like a celebrity for a moment, until the police officer kneels down, tries to scare him with all the bad potentials out there: alligators, ticks, hypodermic needles, old men with unzipped pants, coyotes, kidnappers. Sammy starts to cry, so mom grabs his shoulder and makes a rude comment to the police officer. The pastor shakes his head at this, but it does not matter. Mom takes Sammy into the car; they pick up McDonald’s on the way home.
In the evening, they return to the community center during another rain shower. Mom has a flashlight, though it is not dark yet, and Sammy wears galoshes. When they reach the saw palms, they try to remember which path leads to the buried rocks, but in each direction, they only find water. The place, it seems, has been swallowed by the rising spring, has turned into a swamp.
We can swim, says Sammy, and he begins to wade into the water. But mom grabs him. Hold on, she says, because she wants to swim, too—she wants to dive into the clear water, open her eyes, and make her way throughout the buried woods, lifting trees and branches and passing the shadowy, floating forms of animal until she finds and unearths their pile of gold. But the water keeps rising. So mom says, no, and Sammy looks disappointed, but he is not a good swimmer, would not be able to keep up anyway.
On the drive home, she keeps repeating to herself that they were probably not gold rocks. Just normal rocks. Not gold. Fool’s gold with no value. Sammy is not sure if she believes this, but when they get home, he immediately goes up to his room and opens his special drawer. Inside, he digs around, swearing that he’d placed a leftover gold rock alongside the communion cup of baby teeth earlier, the tiny pile of bony souls. He thinks the gold rock would make his mom stop crying, but he cannot find it, so he closes the drawer and goes back downstairs.
Joey Hedger (he/him) is author of the novel Deliver Thy Pigs (Malarkey Books) and the chapbook In the Line of a Hurricane, We Wait (Red Bird Chapbooks). A born and raised Floridian, he currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia. You can find his writing at joeyhedger.com.