Chapter 3: The Cave

http://www.geologypage.com/2014/12/the-state-of-shale.html

     "Okay you two, dig at the bottom of the slide," commands slender Beat, her hazel eyes turning the same bronze as her tanned complexion as she leads her diminutive siblings across the brook to a sloped hillside of exposed shale. "There's a cave under there where a soldier died."

"I call knife," enthuses black-haired Beulah, hefting a hunk of crumbling red rock into the fishing hole just downstream of the ledge.

"Rifle," calls Beat while wading upstream and peering into the slight pool below each riffle.

Little Wiley redoubles his effort at pulling out flat rocks while imagining the sword fight he would soon be having.

"Keep digging!" admonishes Beat, continuing her piscine search under the Route 28 bridge as a big black bird calls from up on one of the columns.

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     Fishing was a favorite pastime for children in a town surrounded by streams. Every stretch of the aquatic border was claimed by an adjoining neighborhood gang. The Green Brook to the east was patrolled by the raggedy East Enders below Union Avenue and by the mysterious Crazlewood Gang to the north. The Middlebrook along the western boundary had the Italian West Enders at it's lower stretches, our Roadies along the Downs Manor subdivision, and the feral Crescent Drive Kids north of Union. Then there were the Needers.
     The close-knit family was new to town and spilled forth each day from an abandoned victorian house with a crumbling roof and absent window panes on West Second Street. Children walking past knew to hold their breath until well beyond that haunted house known as the Kluzacs for it's former squatters. Living there marked the Needers as dangerous, as did having a child who spoke broken English and Czech in nearly every grade at nearby LaMonte School.
     When a new fish arrived in one of the boundary waterways, word got around fast. Soon every group of kids was on the lookout for the rainbow trout that escaped downstream from Tom's Brook behind First Watchung, for those black eels coming upstream again from the Raritan, for the suckers sitting on the bottom of clear pools, for lampreys below the river spillways, or for that gargantuan green eel in the deepest hole.

     Rumors of a golden carp in the Middlebrook had spread quickly in the spring of 1962, and ideas of how to catch it were equally infectious. Only a number six Eagle Claw hook would snag it's huge mouth. Not just any worm would call it over, only the fattest night crawler. White bread wouldn't do it, but a ball of cornmeal might. It wouldn't be tempted by regular flies, but a monarch butterfly might be where it's color came from. No one knew who actually saw it, but everyone and their fishing poles were on the lookout for this rarest of the Raritan fishes. 

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     "Run home now, quick!" screams Beat, her brunette bangs flashing in the sunlight as she splashes back downstream pointing up on the hillside. "The Needers are coming."

"Faster Wiley, faster," calls Beulah, waving him over to the hidden path back to Hanken Road as a rock whizzes past.

     When the three of them are finally back in their yard, Beat calls a huddle.

"Don't tell anyone about the cave," she breathlessly begins. "We don't want to have to share the loot."

"What about the golden carp?" asks Beulah, shaking her head to agree with keeping the treasure a secret.

"What golden carp?" Beat retorts with a wink.