Nada (7)

(December 20, 2011) A slight aside here; the characters and settings, while very close to reality, are about to change. For those who have been following, who think they know Joe and Ransom, please do not take anything that happens next as a premonition, a desire, a need, a want, or anything that might occur in reality. Seriously. Ideas are often fleshed out in this manner, using what is comfortable, and then, BAM, that character you thought was you turns out to be an axe murderer on the side, or that character you thought was your wife was really Chuck Norris in drag and she/he’s about to kick some ass.

In other words, as the characters develop, they will move away from the comfortable, and I, the writer, will go with them. I can’t help it. I can’t stop it. It just is.

Ransom then grabbed the cord and headed around the house to the outlet, arriving back at the mixer just as Joe walked up with the drinks.

“Am I mixing or are you?” Joe asked.

“If I remember correctly, it’s your turn,” Ransom replied.

Joe set to work adding the water, sand, and mortar to the spinning drum as Ransom began to pick out stones for the wall. He was looking for mostly white stones so they would remember where the bag was hidden and so the lack of mortar would not show as easily. Ransom had devised a plan while burying the bag and plugging in the mixer. The face of the wall where the bag was hidden would look mortared solid, like the rest of the wall, but the back wouldn’t be mortared at all. Above the bag they would place a large stone that could be lifted off when the time came to count the money.

“Any ideas on how to do this,” Joe asked, breaking Ransoms train of thought.

“Yeah,” Ransom answered, “We’ll work on this section where the back is lowest. The bag will go in first, we’ll pile stone around it, and set that big one over there above it. We’ll use a couple of thin stones on the face here, then we’ll do the same thing about 6 feet down the wall. One big one in back, thin ones out front. It’ll look like we know what we’re doing.”

“Sounds good, I’ll dump this batch and get the next one started, looks like we have a lot to do.”

They worked on the wall for a couple of hours, Joe’s wife Linda had come and gone and the sun was dropping behind the trees in the west.

“That’ll do it,” Ransom said as they set the second big stone. “Now it looks the same, no one will think to look in a stone wall for a bag full of cash.”

“Let’s clean up and grab something to eat,” Joe said, “I’m starved.”