and memorization; for Peter, it was semi-formal attire and a fancy cheese tray. Still, he liked to show his support for the little bugger.
Peter reassured his mother that he had made his plans for the day with full consciousness of his responsibilities which began early the following morning. Mr. Cranston would be just fine, because Peter would be home in time to get plenty of sleep. Gramma’s yard should not take too long due to the lack of rains and winds the preceding week; although he would never admit it in front of Mom, the labor was basically a welfare payment from his grandmother, although she always asked him to do something easy before bestowing upon him a payment that he did not work nearly hard enough to deserve. Gramma caught on years ago to the terms that this was the way the contract must be laid out, so that Peter may never be accused, whether by his conscience or the scorn of another, of accepting her money outright, without having done anything for the poor old widow. This timeframe, Peter explained to his mother, would give him plenty of time to get cleaned up and lay out his clothes before the recital. Lastly, the Sunday paper would be there all week, so that the application process is nothing to worry about, and no place worth working is open Sundays anyway.
After one final recount of his duties, his mother bid him have a pleasant trip and to drive safely along the winding, unpredictable roads of Route 22. Luring Hoagie around the side of the car, Peter then opened the passenger side door and his loyal companion faithfully jumped into the passenger’s seat, making himself at home almost immediately. He shut the door, circumnavigated the car, and sat himself down behind the steering wheel. On top of the console, alongside the emergency brake lever, sat the lockbox that he so meticulously, though scarcely, packed. He reviewed the files and pictures within, and was reminded of an article over which he deliberated as to whether or not he ought to bring.
Fine. Fine! Peter thought to himself, If it is giving me this much grief, I ought to bring it. He rolled the window down a crack so that Hoagie would not be discomforted in the late summer summer sun, and hustled inside the house, up the stairs and towards his room. As he opened the door to the only bedroom he had known throughout his entire life, he was reminded of the time, some ten years ago, that struck him as supremely bizarre. He had heard of Aunt Marjorie, his mother’s derelict sister, hiding stashes of drugs in the light fixtures, under loose floor panels, inside heating grates, and other generally inconvenient places. For so long, he wondered why, if she was to go through the trouble of hiding herself from what she knows she will use ultimately to hurt herself, would she not just dispose of the harmful materials altogether. As Peter’s experiences in life matured and become less like mazes and more like spiderwebs, he began to sympathize with his deceased aunt. Though what he came to get was in a very inconvenient place, he knew exactly where it was, and he thought about it regularly: in the closet, all the way to the left in the left breast pocket of an old winter jacket, was his desired article. A picture of days long passed, he placed it gingerly in his pocket and headed back out to the car where Hoagie awaited.
He started up the car, and faithfully as ever it hummed up to speed. This neighborhood was a staple all his life; aside from a few neighbors’ alterations to their landscaping over the years, the streets always looked the same. Peter was fond of familiarity. Merging onto Route 22 about fifteen minutes into his drive, he was reveling in his opportunity to bathe in the late-afternoon sun, and to breathe the fresh air of the forests that now surrounded him in innumerable acreage.
This region of the country which Peter called home was experiencing the aftermath of an economic implosion of sorts. Where once had stood great foundries and breweries were now locales of ill-repute and danger. Some called it consumerism, some blamed it on the Chinese, some blamed the unions, and some withdrew from the discussion to await the Rapture. Peter himself was uncertain what it was that replaced jobs and families with hopelessness and fear, what put food stamps where there used to be a garden. What he thought he knew was that a college degree was a one-way ticket out of the mess that made the front page, and into a stratum where the most taxing decision was where to go on vacation.
Peter has found himself, just like many of his contemporaries, caught halfway between the tail-end of the prosperity into which he was born, and the haughty achievements for which he was born. Unfortunately for him, some abstract, nameless boundary was repressing him from achieving that icon of abundance which he had always been under the impression was eager to meet him along the road of labor and industry, as was the case with the generations preceding him.
In a culture that prided itself on jargon, Peter wasn’t quite sure how he could identify that which denied his generation its own manifest destiny. Interest rates… Collateralized Debt Obligation… Derivatives… Mutual Funds… Exchange rates… He was swamped and drowning in a flood of technical words with incomprehensible definitions. That the “Information Age” has become the “Disinformation Age,” or the “Over-Information Age,” was a rant he was too-ready to administer to any listening ear.
One term he was quite familiar with was “debt.” Debt, according to the dictionary, is when a person or party, a “debtor,” owes under contract a certain amount of money to another person or party, a “creditor,” usually plus interest. “Interest,” according to economics, is the cost of borrowing money, and is how creditors make a living. “Credit,” though it is a bit more abstract than the aforementioned terms, is the liability risk of a creditor to invest in a person or party. Peter acknowledged his indebtedness.
According to Peter, “debt” is the cost of making misinformed decisions at the behest of a cultural paradigm. “Interest” is the rate which a debtor’s life and prosperity become closer to serfdom. A “debtor” is a serf. “Creditor” is a person or party who commits legalized fraud in the name of acquiring serfs. “Credit” is, for lack of a more appropriate definition, a measure of a person’s value as a human being.
Peter had only partially lied to his mother; while it was true that he was going to be on Route 22, near Uncle Tim’s, and he may spend some time in the woods, such was not the main motivation behind his travels today. He had, in fact, discovered a solution to his debt problem! Driving along the mountain-skirting roads of Route 22, Peter could not imagine a more effective solution to his dilemma.
Hoagie began grooming himself; he didn’t much mind debt.
The Problem
On the road, about halfway to Uncle Tim’s farm, Peter knew of a place that contained what is essentially a buried treasure. He had seen it on his way to the university each and every time he went back to school from a break, a weekend at home, or any other reason he had ever been headed in that direction.
Route 22 contained a rest stop not too far from where the family had turned off countless times on their way to Uncle Tim’s farm. Two toilets, a handful of rickety old picnic tables under a pavilion, and a rather spacious parking lot were nestled into the hillside just off the road, and this marked the rest stop. Peter had stopped there a few times in his ventures over the years; it was far enough away from civilization that kids from nearby boroughs thought it too long of a drive to go for some privacy, but convenient enough that he need not put his poor, old car through the ringer getting out to it. He did not visit the site as much as he would like to say he did, but it was good for an occasional mid-day getaway, or for reading and pondering.
The rich store of a prize rested just over the crest of the hill beyond the rest stop. Its concealment was best described as “Hidden in Plain View,” and truly it was only by happenstance that Peter had managed to connect the dots and discover the wealth withheld from the rest of the world. Peter alone was aware of the Treasure on the Hill.
Peter, carefully using his free hand, rummaged through the lockbox he kept between the seats, steering carefully with the other. He withdrew a statement that was issued to him by the bank that had lent him all of his student loan funds. This, he reassured himself, was why he had decided to unearth the Treasure on the Hill. The digits
