Ranger Merilyn looks at the two of us, slightly amused. “As I told Ivy before, this is a highly specialized permit request. We can’t normally grant access to historical parks like Grandview. But, given the information Ivy shared with us, we areallowing a one-time, one-hole dig. This is it, folks. You have an hour once the first shovel goes in.” She claps her hands. “So, where are we going? Up to the top?”
I look at Cam, waiting.
“No,” he says. He looks back at me. “We’re digging here.”
He points to the northern tip of the dune beside us.
“So you got that too,” I say.
Cam nods. “If the aerial of Grandview Park is a person, then right here is the chest, yes? Exactly where the locket fell on the woman in the scroll. But more importantly…”
He takes out a sheet of paper from his pocket and shows it to me. It’s his own version of the poem from the box, this time transcribed in his writing.
“If you seek the lock and key,” Cam reads aloud. “So we needboththe locket and the key. But the key on the necklace is useless, right? It’s not the real key.”
“It isn’t,” I say in agreement. “You’re right.”
Cam holds up the poem again. “And look, here it says, ‘No added ciphers.’ Which means preexisting cipher keys are fair game. You and I had it from the very beginning.”
He walks to the tip of the dune, right next to a street sign. One side for Fourteenth Avenue, the other for Fifteenth Avenue. They converge at this exact point.
“A giant between streets,” I say, walking next to him.
“Grandview’s the giant. And right here is the only point where a person can be between Fourteenth and Fifteenth.” Cam spins his shovel around and drives the tip into the ground. “So, let’s dig.”
Ranger Merilyn settles into her camp chair to watch us dig. I unzip my bag and pull out my gardening trowel from last time. We lay a tarp next to us and begin to move the dirt.
The soil is soft at first and moves easily. Then, once we reach twelve inches down, the ground becomes thick and densely packed. Cam’s turns get shorter and mine get longer, with me putting every bit of strength I have into chipping away at the earth before he hauls the freed dirt away.
“Twenty more minutes!” Ranger Merilyn calls.
My chest deflates. This is starting to feel like last time. But everything is supposed to be different now. Cam and I, we’re supposed to be getting things right, finally. Weneedto get this right.
“Let’s switch,” Cam says. “I’ll poke around, then you clean up.”
He offers a hand to help me out of the hole, then jumps in with his shovel.
“You want this?” I ask, holding out my trowel.
“Nah,” he says. He takes his shovel in both hands and plunges it into the ground with all his strength. Then, as if he were removing Excalibur from its rock, he pulls the shovel back out again.
On the third plunge, we each hear it.
A distinctive, delicate crack.
Cam freezes and looks up at me. He tosses his shovel out of the hole and pulls me into it alongside him. We drop into the dirt, arms and legs overlapping as we dig with our bare hands.
“I’ve got something!” I scream.
“Me too!” Cam yells.
Slowly, shakily, we both rise, each holding a piece of an ornately sculpted casque. It’s painted in beautiful, glimmering colors, shimmering with every shade of the rainbow. There are figures carved in bas-relief on the outside. I recognize some of them. Harvey Milk. Marsha P. Johnson. Judy Garland dressed as Dorothy fromThe Wizard of Oz.
Each figure is so delicate, so beautiful, that instantly I know I could see a piece like this in a museum. It reminds me of the ancient bowls and vases found from hundreds of years ago. I think Gilbert Baker did that on purpose. He wanted people to know that gay history is nothing new—it’s as ancient as humankind itself.
Ranger Merilyn leaps out of her chair and bounds over.
“You found it!” She runs until she’s standing just outside the hole. “Oh shoot. It’s broken.”
