A dark stretch of hardtop split the North Carolina coastal forest like the cry of a bald eagle soaring above pierced the afternoon's thick heat. Beside her husband in the Ford Model-A delivery van, Mildred Hammond worked her home-made fan with desperation. 
"Oh, Lou. Can't we start back home now? We got lots more places to visit before Hanford's in sight again, and here you are, driving so slow, s'hardly any air coming in!"
     Louis Hammond, still dressed in his best suit complete with hat and wing-tip shoes, waved his hand out over the dash. "Look, darling, at this nice, smooth, piece a road. Brand-spanking new highway. Takes us right through shagbark hickory country, ain't that what the young feller at the pump said?"
     Mildred laid down the folded newspaper to cross her arms -- never a good sign. "Besides the wedding, we came on this trip to relax, you said so yourself. Running through swamp woods chasing after nuts ain't my idea of a vacation. Hickory nuts may be worth a pretty penny in California, but how many do you think you're gonna find by yourself? Really, Lou! And anyway, our girls are probably wearing on each other about now like a thresher belt, and you haven't called home to check on 'em the whole week."
     Louis sighed. "Listen. Flo's a sensible girl; she's a whole lot more grown up than you give her credit for. Why she'd be almost ready to make a good farmer's wife, if she didn't have bigger plans."
     "Bigger than our pocketbook," Mildred emphasized. "How in heaven's name are we going to send her to college like she wants, when we could barely afford this vacation after twenty years? You know the last time we went more than a day's drive from home was on our honeymoon?"
     "I know, darling, and I'm sorry it worked out that way. Farming's a tough business in the best of times, which we ain't had, and you've been more'n patient. But now that we've got the store, and the van . . . . Look! Right there, that's what that feller was talking about!"
     A small pull-out opened along the causeway, right where a grove of hickory trees trailed the edge of a creek into the swamp. Louis braked hard and pulled the van off the road. Leaving his jacket and tie behind on the seat, he stepped out and rolled up his sleeves. Then around to the back, past the sign that read, "Hammond Implement Co., Farm Supplies and Service, Hanford, California," he opened the door and retrieved two buckets. 
     At the passenger window, he paused. "One last time, Millie, I promise." Millie, with a look of bemused resignation, pointed to his shoes. But Lou shook his head. "It's dry, it ain't rained for weeks. And I won't go far. If I don't find nothing, I'll be back directly." On impulse, he gave Millie a little kiss on the cheek. 
     "Oh, you -- you hurry up," she demurred. Lou scurried down the bank and jumped the ditch. "And watch for snakes!" Millie called after him.
     Diving under the shade of the trees, Lou followed the creek, gingerly scuffing his gleaming wing-tips through the leaf litter. He picked a few hickory nuts, dropped them in a bucket, and moved on. A few more feet, more clangs in the bucket. The brown gold lay in a seemingly endless trail deep into the woods. Soon, he had filled the first bucket.
     Before he started on the second, he remembered the first rule of sales: always check the merchandise. On the creek bank, he found a suitable rock, round and small enough to fit in his hand. Now, he just needed another. But bigger rocks were nowhere to be seen. Lou scanned the ground, but leaves covered everything in a coat of many colors. And Millie would be waiting, door open, her blue-flowered hat on, the little brown canteen in hand. Better hurry, like she said. As he swung his foot across, his toe hit hard on something hidden in the leaves.
     He bent down to check the damage to his shoe. The point of a deeply weathered stone barely projected above the leaf litter. "Ah, here we go." He selected one nut, placed the shell atop the stone, and whacked it with his simple hammer. The shell cracked wide apart, and the fruit fell. Lou reached down to pick up the fruit and placed one half in his mouth before his eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness among the leaves. Then he saw it.
     On the stone, near the top, was the faint trace of a crudely etched cross. Chewing slowly, he brushed the leaves aside. His finger followed down the vertical of the mark until it reached another -- a letter "D" carved in a line of text. "What the . . . ."
     Hands shaking, Lou began digging at the base with his little nutcracker rock. Slowly, the whole stone revealed itself, a dirt and moss encrusted slab more than a foot tall and more than two inches thick. Using his own spit, Lou rubbed at the letter "D" until he could just make out another letter beside it. A tombstone? A marker for buried treasure? Lou realized he couldn't know until he could properly clean the stone. He hefted it in his hands. At about twenty pounds, it was easy enough, though it soiled his shirt before he noticed. Leaving the buckets where they stood, Lou rushed for the car.

⁜

     The Model-A, sun flashing off its chromed radiator and headlights, jolted to a stop above a low, sandy bank at the foot of the Chowan River Bridge. Below, the river lapped languidly beneath the shade of fire-orange cypress trees, their trunks rising steep and silent from the water. Lou swung to the rear of the van and jerked open the door. There on the boards lay the mysterious stone. He tucked it under one arm, feeling again its weight, and headed for the water.
     From the car window, Millie cautioned him again. "Be careful! You twist your ankle or something, who's gonna drive?"
Lou ignored her and, shaking with eagerness, pushed through the grassy undergrowth that lead to the waterside. Once on the sandbar, he began to vigorously scrub the moss-encrusted rock with a wire brush. More letters revealed themselves beneath the cross. Lou sprinkled some sand in the depressions, until he could at last make out three lines of text: "AnaniasDare y / Virginia went Hence / vnto Heaven 1591." 
     "Just as I thought," he murmured to himself, "a grave marker. But . . . so old!" Louis couldn't remember from his history class the exact date for the first colonies on the east coast. In California in the early 1900s, all that had seemed a world away. And, anyway, his brother had always been the scholar. Louis had known from childhood that he wanted to be a farmer, maybe even a mechanic, but never any sort of man tied behind a desk. He could afford to have fun in school and draw pictures in the margins of his notebooks when the teacher wasn't looking. Only now did he wish he'd paid a bit closer attention.
     He turned the stone over and scrubbed again: more letters, but smaller, and packed tightly together, so close it was impossible for him to decipher them. This was unlike any gravestone he'd ever seen. He called out to Millie, "C'mon, darling, and have a look! This is sure a strange rock."
     Millie stepped gingerly out of the car and picked her way to the edge of the causeway. From her vantage point, she could see the mouth of the Chowan River stretching away to the west and south, where it emptied into Albemarle Sound. Beneath her, tangled grasses sloped down to the sandbar where Louis was busily cleaning the stone.
     "I ain't climbing down there dressed like this! Tell me what you see," she called out, hands on hips.
     Lou squinted at the odd assemblage of letters made visible by the light golden sand. Suddenly, he had an uncomfortable feeling of being watched. Glancing back at the swamp, dark shadows gathered into inscrutable thickets. In the water next to him, the ancient cypress trees seemed to whisper secrets as their needles fluttered in the breeze.
     "If it's a tombstone, it must be one of the oldest around here! Talks about Ananias Dare . . . and a Virginia, that died in 1591. But I probably oughta put it back. Bad luck an' all."
     From the causeway, Millie pressed him, unperturbed. "That name, Virginia . . . wasn't that the name of the girl? In the play, I mean. The one about the Lost Colony that we saw on Roanoke, before the wedding? You know, Virginia . . . Virginia Dare! It's her; it has to be. Oh, dear God, Lou, what're we gonna do?" 
     "I think I better bring it back up to the car first," Louis responded, eager to escape the foreboding sensation on the sandbar. He    hefted the stone to the van and showed the lettering to Millie. "If this is connected with that colony, what next?" he continued, shaking his head. "City folks'll be descending on us like they did the Hanford airstrip after Miss Earhart disappeared, asking questions everywhere. And what if it's not? Maybe it is a grave marker. In that case, I should just set it back down where I found it, you know?" 
     Millie, however, was not convinced. Being a mother, she felt a certain sense of responsibility. "The whole colony disappeared, Lou. Those English people were never heard from again. And think about it, if Virginia died, and someone lived to carve this stone with her name on it, that means someone survived until 1591 at least."
     "So?" Louis shrugged. "Surely they buried some from time to time. It's not --"
     "No! Oh . . . just wait!" Millie turned and rushed inexplicably to the front seat of the car. A few seconds later she returned, waving her folded newspaper like a flag instead of a fan. "It's here; it's in the article! The year, Lou." She unfolded the paper on the front page, where a subheading read: "Roosevelt Gets Enthusiastic Reception at Virginia Dare Celebration." Pointing to the column, Millie prompted Louis hopefully. "The 350th anniversary, Lou. Remember? She was born in 1587! This stone was carved four years later! How can that be? And why here? This place is miles and miles from Roanoke." 
     Louis looked down at the river, rippling a dark blue between the jagged strips of land that marked the edges of a continent, a whole ocean away from the home of those time-distant travelers. If Amelia Earhart could vanish without a trace in this modern age of airplanes and radio, how completely lost must those English have been in a world without phones, or telegraphs, or even steamships? Their only lifeline might be a few words carved on a ragged rock -- a hope beyond hope that someone, someday, might get their message: a message which now lay in his hands.
     Louis pulled an old towel from underneath his toolbox and wrapped it around the stone to protect it from the assortment of tools and supplies he always carried with him against trouble on the road. With the inscription covered, the atmosphere seemed to lift, and Louis gave Millie a hug. "Well, I guess you're right -- we better take it with us, until we can figure out what it is, at least. But you know this sort of thing's not in our lane, darling. I think it's time I called my brother for some advice, after I call home, of course."
     "Of course," Millie echoed with the faintest twinkle of a smile.