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,