MORE THAN TWO-and-one-half centuries after the 1720 sinking of the Estrella Norte, an overloaded Spanish treasure galleon, there were not more than a handful of people who gave that lost, ill-fated ship anything beyond a passing thought.
One of them was Kup Donovan, a twenty-eight-year-old man still living in the weathered, clapboard house he’d grown up in along with his much younger brother, Vance. The house, an embodiment of deferred maintenance, sat on a garbage-strewn, sandy lot on the outskirts of Ankora, Florida. A forgettable little beachfront town tourists mostly drove through enroute to someplace desirable, Ankora was situated on the Sunshine State’s east coast, a bit south of its midpoint.
At 5:30 a.m. Kup, asleep, tossed and turned on damp, rumpled linens in his childhood bed, unaware of the pleasant outdoor sounds of chirping sparrows and small waves gently breaking on the shore.
His eyes clamped shut, random disparate components of a dream coalesced in his subconscious in their illogical, enigmatic way, and then made themselves known.
Alone at sea, on an overcast night in a small, wooden, open boat, Kup’s outboard motor died. Disgusted, he grumbled and looked down. Seawater began seeping in between gaps in the boards, along with shimmering light that, inexplicably, he knew emanated from far below.
Drawn to the mysterious light, Kup peeled off his T-shirt and donned a dive mask, fins and snorkel.
The small boat, at the mercy of the volatile sea, pitched violently. Looking out to sea, he saw whitecaps forming and quickly dissolving on wave crests in endless succession.
The time to get in the water was now. Kup stepped up on the gunwale, then plunged without hesitation into black water.
A few feet below, he bent at the waist, kicked hard and descended.
Shafts of golden light rose from an undetermined depth. Kup dove deeper, struggling in the turbulent water. Kicking furiously, his lean muscular body had to fight for every additional foot.
Farther and farther, he submerged, periodically expelling a thin stream of precious air bubbles that scattered like unstrung pearls.
Now far below the surface, the golden light suddenly dimmed. Kup paused, regrouped and sensed his strained lungs and dark, ominous surroundings. Fearful and frustrated over having taken this risk for seemingly nothing, he tilted his head back and gazed upward.
Below Kup, a grimy, mangled hand emerged from the eternal blackness and latched onto his foot. His eyes shot downward. Horrified at its sight—plus some-thing else on the arm, something baffling, yet also familiar, beyond its wrist—he fought to free himself, and in the process lost a mouthful of air. Three hard tugs with his leg finally released him from the unknown attacker.
Kup bolted to the surface, his scorched lungs yearning for that first life-assuring breath.
Reborn, Kup burst through to the churning ocean’s surface, ripped off his mask and gasped. Delivered, his sense of safety was ephemeral. Looking in all directions, Kup felt an icy shiver seize his spine—his boat was gone!
Awake and hyperventilating—adrenaline coursing through every blood vessel—Kup eyed the alarm clock next to the bed. It read 5:40 a.m.
He rose to a seated position, drew his knees up close to his chin and momentarily reflected on whether the dream revealed anything different this time. His breathing slowed. “It’s bullshit, as always,” he concluded.
Faint dawn light, unwelcomed, invaded the room via its sole, unadorned grimy window. Kup swung his legs over the side of the creaking mattress, then cautiously stood, having recalled how much tequila he had consumed the previous night.
Seconds later, in the kitchen, Kup, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, stood in front of the open door of the household’s rumbling, ancient fridge. He pulled out two cans of beer—the last two—still attached to their plastic rings. He placed an empty ring in his mouth and clamped down. Perusing the fridge’s paltry contents, he grunted and slammed the door shut. Beers in hand, Kup exited the kitchen and headed for the nearby cellar stairs. His bare feet thumped in rapid succession as he descended, each step reflecting his eagerness to get to work.
Standing in the dingy basement, Kup pulled off a can of beer, popped it open, took a long swig and belched. He set the remaining can on the rough-hewn wooden table in front of him. Reaching up, he pulled the chain on the overhead single-bulb fixture. Its thirty watts illuminated a primitive workshop.
From a drawer beneath the tabletop Kup extracted a hand sledge and a cloth bag filled with metal discs, which he flung onto its surface.
He released the bag’s drawstring and pulled out five, irregularly-shaped, half-dollar-size blanks of silvery base metal and arranged them in a row. He casually dropped the bag back into the drawer, took another sip of beer and savored it while thinking of his next steps.
Kup then rummaged through a second drawer, until he found and opened a thirty-power jeweler’s loupe. Kup would use it to examine two metal dies resting near the table’s edge. He picked one up and, before inspecting it, considered how purely by chance he had found the pair in the house’s rafters while doing a recent repair.
Years ago, Kup’s dad, Jack, while on his second quart of malt liquor, regaled his older son with a tale of how he had acquired the dies while serving in the Merchant Marine in the early 1950s. His ship had docked in Havana for three days. During shore leave, he visited a dockside flea market and bought the pair from a vendor who told a convincing story about how they were the only casts of original dies that dated back to the early 1700s.
“And now they’re mine, old man,” said Kup. “Too bad you hid ‘em, instead of putting them to use. Well, you never did have much in the way of guts, except when you ran off from us.”
He shrugged and inspected the dies. Satisfied, he placed a blank slug in one and secured its stem in a vise. Then he set the second die on top of the first and connected both with two sturdy C-clamps.
Kup picked up the hand sledge, reared back and struck the top die hard. Eager to see the fruit of his dishonest labor, he threw down the sledge, separated the dies and ejected the homemade coin onto the table. He smiled at the ringing sound the bouncing coin made. Kup scooped it up, scrutinized both sides and blew on it. “Good, really good.” He brought it close to his eye, rotated it and was fascinated by its detail and plausible authenticity. Kup beamed. “Right out of Treasure Island. Hell, I’d buy it.”
He rubbed the coin between his thumb and index finger and grew concerned. “Maybe it’s a little too clean.” Not sure how to solve the problem, he ruminated over it for a while and in the interim repeated the striking process four more times.
Still working on a solution, he jingled the finished pieces-of-eight in one hand and looked into the basement’s dark recesses. His eyes lit up at the sight of an old vacuum cleaner—specifically, at its collection bag. “There we go,” he whispered.
Kup removed the bag from the appliance and unzipped it on the work table. He felt inside and removed a handful of dust, then a second. He picked up the coins and vigorously rubbed the two together, filling the air with a blizzard of randomly moving particles. When he finally stopped, he held one coin to the light, then set it down and finished off the can of beer.
Morning light streaming in through the small basement window behind Kup drew his attention. He flipped the coin in the air and smiled. “Now the fun begins.”
