Sword-Cursed Part I: The Hidden Treasure of Mister Zumba

As a very young child, I had only one prized toy. It had not come in a box, or from a store, or from anything as mundane as a factory. Rather, my prized toy was a stick I had taken out of a nearby forest. Using only my imagination I often danced around my yard, pretending it was an enchanted sword cutting down swarms of evil enemies. As my sister made a habit of “accidentally” destroying anything I showed a great deal of interest in, and one stick could hardly be distinguished from among many, I figured my magical toy was safely hidden in the forests. Evil, however, is as patient as it is cunning….

Although Rachel would occasionally catch sight of me destroying an invisible foe, she knew that she lacked both the speed to catch me before I could hide my toy and the strength to break it if she did. Taking these base assumptions as her inputs the wheels of her primitive mind began slowly turning, in screeching jerking circles.

On a cool autumn afternoon, having decided that a misshapen fern bush just off of my deck was in fact an “Ice Queen” –something my father referred to in hushed tones when talking about my mother- in disguise, I quickly retrieved my weapon from its well memorized hiding place and went to work.

Observing my furious attack as well as my father preparing lunch through the kitchen window, Rachel needed only move herself between us to complete her planetary alignment of malice. Placing herself directly in front of the kitchen window, Rachel, made not attempt to run at me, but instead put her hand over her eye and began to do the only thing she was really good at: cry. As Rachel was bound to cry over anything, I continued my forward march unperturbed.

My father however, seeing my sister with a hand over her eye and a stick in my hand, he drew his own conclusions and came running outside. His stomping feet shook the entire deck.

Looking up like a startled hare, I could do nothing but stare at the ape-like, lumbering charge of my father. It was like watching an on-coming flash flood in a narrow canyon. There was no escape. “God damn it, BC! If you put her eye out, I’ll spank your ass raw with that fucking twig!” Rachel took advantage of my momentary fright and my father’s turned back to stick her tongue out at me.

I made a break for the tree-line. My father caught me long before I could seek the shelter of the looming pines. His hands and his knees accomplished his method of justice, by breaking the stick in two roughly equal sized pieces. Ever since the magic in that ancient stick was broken, I have been sword-cursed. My first indication of this came several years later….

Having never lost my love of swords, and their simple gleaming beauty, my passion was taken to new heights the first time I saw “Medieval Times” in Los Angeles. Completely in love with the twenty-something goth waitress, who gave me chicken and let me refer to her as “wench,” I cheered the Green Knight so loudly my voice was hoarse for several days afterward. My mother and father murmured something about “free shit” from “assholes trying to sell time-shares” and how “it might not be as great as it was made out to be.” While commanding my wench to bring more orange soda, I decided right then and there that I needed a true weapon to replace the one I had lost all those years ago.

A lengthy talk with my father about responsibility, an embarrassing tantrum in front of the King of Medieval Times, and half my saved vacation money later, I owned a cheap pot-metal sword… with the words “TOLEDO SPAIN” thickly written on one side. It would appear that there is not a sword in the universe that some fucking country hasn’t tainted with their name.

To say that it became my treasure would be an understatement. It was my shining glory, a piece of my soul cast in cheap metals and covered with cheaper pyrite. I held it wherever I went, whether I was eating cereal or getting ready to take a shower. Occasionally, putting on a pair of shorts, I would hold it above my heads with both hands and invoke the powers of Castle Greyskull to fill me and the family cat, Roseanne.

For the most part, Roseanne decided to sleep through our thrilling and epic adventures as He-Man and Battle Cat. Only when I would chose to roll down a hill, holding onto both her and my sword did she show enough annoyance to actually leave me on my own. In such circumstances, I had to spend at least an hour bemoaning her death at the hands of Skeletor and avenge her before it was acceptable to end the fantasy.

I spent half a year thus, wandering the woods around my house, wistfully slicing through branches, vanquishing evil creatures wherever I found them. It was a fateful Saturday morning, dancing through the front yard as my father slept the day away that I decided to re-enact the Arthurian Legend by plunging my sword deep into the ground. Given the surface area of our front yard and the size of object that I struck, I have at present calculated that the odds of such an occurrence were less than one in twenty-five thousand. Truly I was sword-cursed, for when I pushed my blade into the ground, a distant, but audible metallic “clink” came up through the earth to greet me like the imagined sounds of dwarves hammering away in their mines.

Had I been born with typical parents, I most likely would have dismissed this sound as a subterranean stone, or a bit of scrap metal that had worked its way into the soil over the decades. However, given my parents I knew without a doubt that what I had struck could not be metal. I felt deep inside, that I, with the truth of my steel’ish sword, had at long last found the hidden treasure of Mister Zumba.

When I was a young lad of six or so years, I made the mistake of waking my father up to play with me. Given the long hours he worked on night-shift in the local saw-mill, as well as his general unruliness he imparted three morsels of wisdom to me that I took deep into my heart.

1. He was “very tired, god damn it.”

2. All he wanted was “some peace and fucking quiet.”

3. Didn’t I have “anything better to do than bother him?”

At the last, my father had a rare moment of clarity and realized that perhaps a six year old really didn’t have anything better to do than talk to his father, so he decided to give me something else to occupy my time. “Listen, BC I know you get lonely here with me sleeping on the couch all the time, but you can’t be waking me up just to talk.”

Crying softly into the arm-rest of the couch I nodded agreement, then shook my head into the fabric to clear away the two-rivers of snot flowing out of my head. With my seasonal allergies still in play year round it would be some time before I would learn that it was actually possible to breath through one’s own nostrils. “I’m sorry Daddy.”

“Anyhow, I think it’s about time I told you the secret. The… uh… secret of… Mr. Zumba? Yeah, the secret of Mr. Zumba.” As my soft brown-eyes widened in wonder, my father revealed that the house we lived in had once been owned by a local lumber baron. Despite all of his commercial success, and all his millions of dollars, Mr. Zumba had never had any children. Over time, the fountains and stables he had built on our property had fallen into disrepair and rotted away. “And that’s why BC, when he died an no one found a penny of his fortune, a lot of folks figured he buried it right here.” It wasn’t until a few months ago during a visit to the local museum I found out, quite by accident, that my childhood home had in all probability been either a death-house for people dying of infectious disease or a brothel. I’m not sure which I would prefer.

Therefore, when I heard a metallic clink resonating only two and a half feet in the earth below me, I logically deduced that I was a few shovels full of dirt away from a life of luxury. Shaking my hands in wild excitement, I quickly retrieved a shovel from the garage and set to work. The work of thirty minutes revealed the top half of a six-inch steel cylinder. Another thirty revealed even more. However long this strange cylindrical chest was, it was going to take more than me to dig it out. Luckily, my neighbor Charlie Woods came by several minutes later.

“Whatcha diggin’ up, BC?” Charlie’s dog Nelson was held with great effort on the end of a red leash. Charlie’s parents had purchased him a large dog in order to make up for the fact that Charlie was a three-quarters of the size he should be and all bones. They had figured Nelson would protect him from being picked on by neighborhood bullies. Frequently, Charlie found himself the target of both Nelson and bullies. Around that time Nelson had begun to take a sexual interest in his master, very often trying to lure Charlie into holding onto the leash so he could be pulled over and humped for several minutes of leisure.

“I’ll cut you in for ten-percent. Take this shovel.” Without explaining anything other than that there was “gold” I took off to get another shovel. In another half an hour, Curtis Long and his little brother Pete joined the fray. Eager to find riches of their own and leave their parents behind, they dug with earnest. It was a rare sight to see one of them without a black eye. According to their mother and father they “fell down” a lot.

While my father slept inside, I had soon assembled a work force of several other neighborhood companions. Ortensia DeVold tried to get away with not digging by giving us cups of water we hadn’t asked for, causing no end of arguments. Her cousin Harry Oldman, the near-albino would occasionally rise in her defense, but mostly just wondered how he had gotten suckered into digging a hole on a Saturday.

Despite all this, the mounds of dirt rose higher and the hole sunk deeper. I had stuck my sword right by the edge of the hole, to remind me of the valuable role it had played in my newfound wealth. Mr. Zumba’s cylindrical chest was now several feet long and had a foot of clearance underneath it. I figured now was the time to surprise my father. There was no way he could be mad at me if I showed him that he never had to go to work again. I kissed the pommel of my sword before running inside, thanking it for the good fortune it had brought me.

Stretched on the sofa like a lion after a kill, my father snored softly in the living room. I approached him excitedly, wrapping my tiny fists around his large protruding fingers. My father’s hands were the size of hams, and his fingers hung of his palms like thick Dell pickles. “Dad! Dad, wake up! I found Mr. Zumba’s buried treasure!”

“Go away,” my father replied, turning to put his face into the cushions.

“For real Dad, I found the buried treasure you told me about!” I pulled on his fingers until he balled them into fists, and forced me to release them.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The treasure of Mr. Zumba! I found it!”

Scratching his hair, and blinking rapidly to clear his vision my father shot me a bewildered look. “You found the treasure of Mr. Zumba?” I nodded eagerly.

“You never have to go back to work again!”

My father pushed himself quickly to his feet. Buttoning his pants he motioned for me to lead him. “Okay, BC. Let’s see what you’ve found.” I bolted for the front door, jumped off the front deck, and ran to be near my sword. In the distance I saw my father exit the front door, put his hand to his eyes, and look at where I was standing. For a moment his jaw worked wordlessly, then suddenly sound erupted from his lungs like lava from a volcano.

“WHY IS THERE A GIANT HOLE IN MY YARD?” My back stiffened straighter than the blade of my weapon. Charlie Woods scrambled up the side of our hole and bolted down the street, arms pumping like an Olympic athlete. He accelerated even faster when he realized that his dog Nelson was chasing him again. Kurtis and Pete Long disappeared into the hedges like shadows under the noon-day sun. They might as well have turned invisible. Ortensia splashed some water in my face, then began running after Nelson, hoping that she could get to Charlie in time to stop the dog from seriously hurting him again. Harry rolled out of the hole, and climbed up a nearby tree, although with his complexion he still shown like a 40W bulb. I grabbed my sword, looked into the murky reflection of its metal, and wondered what “TOLEDO SPAIN” was like this time of year.

“ANSWER ME GOD DAMN IT! WHY IS THERE A GIANT FUCKING HOLE IN MY LAWN!”

Almost like a church mouse, I peeped the words “treasure, no work, happy” and then decided the best course of action would simply be to cry until I died of dehydration. At least that way my father wouldn’t be able to get to me first.

With my face tucked firmly in the grass, I observed a shadow falling across my entire field of vision. Words crackled above me like thunder. “BC, why in God’s name did you dig up the sewer pipe? You’re lucky you didn’t crack it and cover everything with shit.”

Sobbing so that there was a pause between every word, I explained incoherently. “I th-thought it w-was Muh-Mister Zumba’s hi-hidden treasure. A-and I thought yuh-you’d b-be ha-happy.”

“How’d you find it in the first place?” I grabbed my sword to my chest protectively.

“I-I wuh-was pre-pretending to b-be K-king Arth-thur and I-I…” my father ripped the cheap toy out of my hands.

“You and this stupid toy! I’m sick of it! No more!” Then, with his meaty arms my father bent the blade at a right angle just above the hilt. I screamed out loud like my spine had been snapped. Then, grabbing the middle of the blade, my father bent it at another right angle and threw it over his shoulder. It landed in a confused heap, looking approximately like one half of a swastika. I ran to it like the body of a brother I had lost in combat, and clutched it crying. I wished I could have exchanged my health with its own. Like the wooden stick before it, the sword had been my only friend. Now it was nothing but a twisted piece of metal, dead even to my imagination. I cried an ocean of tears.

As is the nature of adults and children, my father was unable to grasp the entirety of what he’d done. To him it had been a simple bauble. To me it had been the symbol of a nobler world. A holy grail now crumpled. A shroud of Turin stained with mud. Consolingly he slapped my back, “You’ll be fine. Just fill this hole back in before I get home.”