Necessary Evil

by Killarney Traynor

  Farm work is never ending: there are horses to groom, exercise, feed, and care for, lessons to give, stables to muck out and supplies to haul, lawns to mow, and crops to take in, as well as all the paperwork, social media, and phone negotiations that a business requires. With the bills piling up and lessons dwindling with summer’s end, I’d starting asking my boss for extra work at the office just to keep us afloat. I work behind the receptionist desk at the veterinary office - a rather ironic twist of fate, considering I was in veterinary school until my uncle’s accident.

  The path took a turn, leading me away from the bright fields and deeper into the woods.

  I slowed to a jog and kept going. My legs were feeling better, the morning stiffness loosening with the exertion. The trail unwound before me, arcing out to the east until it touched the bank of the Pocatague River, a tiny offshoot of the Exeter.

  I paused, bending over to catch my breath and taking stock of myself. I wasn’t a supermodel, but I was in good shape and I prided myself that I could more than pull my weight on the farm. Work and worry had taken its toll on me, though: my face was weathered, my hands unusually strong for their size. I was capable, but I didn’t often feel pretty or attractive – not that it really mattered. There was little time for that sort of thing anyway.

  I didn’t stand still for long. I’d forgotten, as I usually did, that insects like the moisture around the boggy river’s edge. They swarmed, I swatted, and then I started to run again.

  I’ve been running since last summer, and even I have noticed a marked improvement in my endurance. I run for my health, my figure, to relieve stress, and to give me time in the morning before I have to face the day. It’s not the only reason I run every day, but I didn’t like to think of that other reason, so I would put that aside, too, and run on.

  Sometimes I wondered if I wasn’t trying to outrun my past, if the punishment I took on the hard-packed trails wasn’t some form of penance for crimes committed but unwritten, a forgotten neglect of duty, or a violation of a social custom. Perhaps it was a form of bargain, a sacrifice on the altar to the God of the Old Testament – I will flagellate myself in this way every morning and You keep the tenuous balance of my life from shifting back into chaos.

  That was blasphemy and I knew better. I’m a Roman Catholic and we don’t believe in bargaining with God. He knows best and we, as good and willing servants, do our duty with hope and joy and expectation. I told myself that’s what Aunt Susanna and I were doing: our duty, looking with expectation towards a bright future.

  Yet every morning, I tied my sneakers and worked out my penance on the unforgiving trails.

  Chapter 2:

  I first learned that Maddox was dead when I came into the kitchen from my run that morning. I was beet-red, drenched in sweat and early morning fog, and ravenous.

  The kitchen was large, silent, and clean. Decorated in shades of gray and cream, it looked almost institutional in the mornings, but there were so many warm memories here that I felt both at home and alien at the same time.

  Aunt Susanna was sitting on one of the stools at the counter, so quiet and still that she was nearly lost in the palette. Her blonde and white hair was pinned in the usual milkmaid braids around the crown of her head, only a little mussed by a night’s sleep. Her gray silk robe with the pink and black Asian print had aged well, but it was too big for her now. Folds of fabric spilled on the counter as she crouched over her laptop, emphasizing her recent, involuntary weight loss. Engrossed in her reading, she didn’t look up to acknowledge me, but there was an extra mug of steaming coffee on the counter beside hers.

  Her walker was parked within easy reach, but under the lip of the counter, out of her line of sight. She hated it almost as much as I did, and I felt a twinge of sympathy as I skirted around it. The walker was used. Our doctor had procured from a woman who, he assured us, recovered just fine from the same surgery. He thought it would help, but it didn’t. The walker offended my aunt’s sense of autonomy, and the cheerful bunny stickers that the previous owner decorated it with only made things worse.

  I tossed my iPod on the counter, and took the mug of coffee gratefully. You’re supposed to have something healthy after an intense workout, like water, juice, or something with electrolytes. I always rebelliously opted for caffeine, as though striking back against a strict coach: You can force me to run, but you cannot control what I drink.

  I took a sip and recognized the bitter brew of Dark French Roast, too strong for my tastes. I added milk, then reached past my aunt for the sugar shaker. She noticed and shifted a little to make room.

  “Sorry, I forgot,” she said.

  “No worries.”

  I glanced at her breakfast plate as I shook crystal granules into my cup. Toast, unbuttered, and burnt again. There was a time when she would have turned up her nose at such fare, calling it a poor excuse for a meal. Had she come upon Uncle Michael or myself eating that, she would have rolled up her sleeves and whipped up one of her famous omelets, or - if she was feeling particularly continental - French Toast dipped in rum-based batter and dripping with butter and real Vermont maple syrup. You could protest about your waistline all you wanted, but she would have her way. She had been lively, youthful, and unstoppable in those days. But she was a different woman now. She was a woman who had quite simply stopped.

  I was too accustomed to this new way of life to feel more than slight regret. As I put the shaker back on the shelf and checked my watch, Aunt Susanna turned to me with wide, blue eyes. She looked so alert and so alive all of a sudden that I was startled.

  “What is it?” I demanded.

  “Did you hear about Professor Maddox?” she asked.

  My heart jumped and I started, hot coffee sloshing over my hand and onto the spotlessly clean tiles. I shook the hot liquid from my hand, then reached for the paper towels, wishing I had better control of myself. As it was, I was barely able to keep my expression placid under my aunt’s keen gaze.

  “Something happen?” I asked, as I dabbed at the floor. I was praying, Please, please, let it be something normal. Please, please…

  She turned back to her laptop and waved at the screen.

  “He’s dead,” she said.

  “Dead?” I leaped up to stare at the screen. Relief washed over me, followed quickly by guilt.

  It wasn’t an obituary my aunt had found, but an article about the funeral. It briefly informed the reader of Professor Maddox’s accomplishments as an eminent scholar, author, lecturer, father, husband, and long-time professor of American History at Braeburn College in California. He died at home, surrounded by his loving family. The eulogy was read by his colleague, the respected Professor Joseph Tremonti, on loan to a Massachusetts university for the year.

  My heart beat faster at that line. Joe was back on the East Coast?

  Not now, Maddie…

  “Such a nice man,” Aunt Susanna said, as I followed a link to Maddox’s college, where his list of accomplishments was more thoroughly outlined. “We should send a donation and a card to his wife, don’t you think?”

  “Mmm hmm…”

  I found what I was looking for in the second to last paragraph: “Among his significant finds were the 1862 Beaumont letter and the Carignan diaries, both of which shed light on little-known aspects of the American Civil War.”

  It was inaccurate – Maddox hadn’t found the letter, only authenticated it– but the mention was mercifully brief and unlikely to cause harm. I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned the computer over to Aunt Susanna. I didn’t know what I was worried about, really. The matter, so important to us, was unlikely to interest the college or the media very much, not when compared to Maddox’s other, considerable contributions to historical knowledge.

  Aunt Susanna was looking at me curiously and I realized that I hadn’t responded to her question.

  “What did you say, Aunt Susanna?”

  “I was saying, we ought to do something for Mrs. Maddox. They were both
so kind to us about the letter. What do you think?”

  I picked up my mug again and took a sip as I tossed the paper towel wad into the trash can. “Yes, we really should. You’re thinking of a donation to the scholarship fund?”

  Mentally, I brought up the checkbook and estimated how much we could spare. Even with my income from the veterinary office and the lessons split between Lindsay and me, we ran the farm on a frayed shoestring, and the number I was comfortable with contributing was embarrassing compared with what Maddox’s university colleagues were likely to give.

  There’s no shame in being poor, I reminded myself, but the twinge remained.

  The Chase family hadn’t been wealthy since the 1800s; but still, Uncle Michael had been well able to keep both himself and his wife comfortable while contributing to my college fund. That I was barely keeping the place open spoke volumes, I thought, of my inability to husband the farm he’d so carefully built up.

  There was some consolation in the idea that the financial trouble had started before Uncle Michael’s accident. Ever since the debut of the Lost American Treasures episode featuring the mythical (in my opinion) Alexander Chase treasure, our respectable family farm had been inundated with treasure hunters and curious tourists who frightened off our clientele and, worse still, left the marks of their search behind them, with devastating effects.

  The Chase Treasure story itself is a fairly typical buried treasure myth: Alexander Chase, the black sheep of the respectable Mayflower family, stole money and goods from his employer, merchant Jasper McInnis of Charleston. It was just before the Battle of Fort Sumter, and it included a box of prized silver Kirk spoons, intended as the wedding dowry of McInnis’ daughter, Mary Anna. Local lore has it that he buried booty somewhere on the Chase property when he came home for a brief visit in April of 1861, just before he joined the 3rd New Hampshire Voluntary Infantry. The location of the treasure was lost when Chase died after the Battle of Sucessionville in 1862. “Treasurists” - a term invented by my Uncle Michael - believe that the McInnis treasure is still on the property somewhere, proof that Chase family counted thieves among their members.

  Family members and some historians disagreed.

  Anti-Treasurists bring up the fact that Alexander Chase’s reputation was fairly clean, aside from occasional bouts of drinking and gambling, and insist that he was as ardent an abolitionist as was his father. They maintain that the thievery charges brought against him by the McInnis family after the war’s end were just another case of so-called ‘lost causers’ trying to recoup their wartime losses.

  A third theory, one that I subscribed to, is that Alexander Chase did steal from the McInnis money, and then lost it gambling in one of the seaports that he frequented. These people believe that he was a thief and probably indifferent to slavery, a position that my Uncle Michael found repugnant in the extreme. A mild-mannered man, he was known to actually argue with people about Alexander, holding until his dying day that the private died a slandered but essentially good man.

  Those who believe in the treasure have two pieces of evidence to support their theory. One is that Avery Chase, Alexander’s half-brother, spent his entire lifetime searching for the treasure, even while refuting the McInnis’ claims. The second piece of evidence comes from one of Alexander’s own letters, which was discovered by my uncle in an old box in the barn several years ago. Written to his mother just weeks before his death, Alexander commended his “earthly” treasures to her care, and reminded her of his favorite hymn, ‘no. 29’. Chase’s step-father, Obadiah, was a deacon, and Alexander and Avery were practically raised in the pew. On page twenty-nine of Psalms and Hymns, an 1853 hymnal that Alexander would have been very familiar with, are two songs: Come, Ye Thankful People, Come, and Gather the Golden Grains. Treasurists are adamant that this rather benign sentiment is actually a clue to the treasure’s location.

  As Mark Dulles, the handsome Ivy League host of Lost American Treasures, pointed out, both are songs of thanksgiving that speak of the fields. Come, Ye Thankful People, Come, even specifically mentions corn and wheat fields. Since Obadiah Chase was a conscientious log-book keeper, who recorded every ear of corn that ever grew on his farm, this clue led generations of hapless treasure seekers to search particular fields on our land, some of which we still use for haying now.

  While filming, Mark Dulles and his crew worked in the fields, demonstrating with the latest equipment that there was nothing buried there. They were forced, reluctantly, to conclude that there was nothing to find, something that should have ended all further attempts.

  However, in the closing scene of the episode, Mark Dulles looked out over the fields of tender green shoots, and in a voice-over, said, “Whatever our conclusions today, one thing remains: the mystery of Alexander Chase and the McInnis treasure remains unsolved, an intriguing footnote in the tragic history of America’s Civil War.”

  I can still remember Uncle Michael’s satisfied tone when he called me at my dorm that night after watching the special.

  “This will get people talking,” he said. “Only now, they won’t be so focused on the treasure - now they’ll be talking about Alexander and what really happened during the Civil War.”

  Even before finding the letter, my uncle had been Alexander’s fiercest defenders. A quiet, peaceable man by nature, he surprised Aunt Susanna and me by allowing Dulles to film on his property. When we asked, he’d explained, “I’m getting nowhere with my own research. I want to bring this Chase treasure business into the public eye, then maybe someone else will take on the project.”

  The night of broadcast, he was sure that someone would.

  “They cut out most of my interview, but I think there was enough left in there to intrigue people,” he said.

  I was in veterinary school at the time, a straight-A student who thought a little too much of her own intelligence. I felt obliged to point out that people didn’t often react in the ways we wished them to.

  “It’s more likely we’re going to get a few more treasure hunters trespassing,” I said – prophetically, as it turned out.

  He snorted. “After Dulles and his team failed? No one will be looking for that nonsensical treasure anymore.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said, sincerely.

  But he wasn’t.

  Not long after the episode aired, we started finding people wandering about our fields with metal detectors, shovels, and copies of Come, Ye Grateful People, Come, or Gather the Golden Grains. They were a nuisance, leaving test holes when we didn’t catch them in time. Uncle Michael felt sorry for them, while I was only annoyed. While he spoke sadly of their disappointment, I would rail about destruction of property.

  At first, the incursions were few; but as time passed, the story began to permeate. All over the web, Treasure Hunter websites spread word about the special, and the siege began in earnest. Hunters from across all fifty states, and even beyond, flooded our small town and congregated on our front stoop.

  These visitors ranged from passersby who wanted their picture taken in front of the house, to Civil War enthusiasts looking for more information, to invasive hunters with metal detectors who often forgot to ask for permission before they started digging up likely sites, leaving pockmarks in the fields, paddocks, and trails.

  It was like being under siege. The police did their best, but they were unable to handle the problem. These invaders disrupted the lessons, disturbed the horses, wearied my aunt with phone calls and visits, and drove my sweet uncle to such a nervous state that the normally hawk-eyed sage never saw the gouge in the trail before his horse, a fine spirited stallion, tripped in it. The stallion broke his leg. My uncle broke his neck. The finest man I’d ever known was killed over an empty promise of treasure.

  The incident broke my aunt’s heart, and she withdrew into herself to grieve. My uncle was a popular man, and his funeral was a big affair; but even with all of the news coverage, and the increased police protection, the incursions on our lan
d didn’t stop. The morning of my uncle’s funeral, I found a fresh excavation in the north pasture.

  Even death doesn’t stop the gold hungry.

  I don’t know what we would have done without the Beaumont letter. While cementing the charge of theft, it conclusively proved that the treasure had never been buried on the farm. Its discovery and public authentication by Professor Maddox was covered by the press, and picked up by the treasure hunter blogosphere. It took long enough for things to calm down, but now it’d been months since I’d found any evidence of trespassers. For that, my family owed a debt of gratitude to Professor Maddox.

  I agreed with Aunt Susanna that the farm should send something, but with the mortgage due on top of the usual bills, and this year’s disappointingly small sign-up for summer classes, there wasn’t much capital to spread on lavish gifts.

  “What were you thinking of sending?” I asked and braced myself. Aunt Susanna sometimes forgot that we had no money and I hated whenever I had to remind her that we couldn’t afford something.

  She was looking at the on-screen picture of Professor Maddox, a kindly looking man in the obligatory tweed jacket. We’d met him in person only once, but it was enough to impress upon us that he was as kind as he looked.

  The thought of that kindness and that reputation made my stomach churn and I turned away from the picture, pretending to look out the back window.

  “Would it be foolish to send flowers?” Aunt Susanna asked.

  I looked at her, surprised.

  She gestured to the screen. “It says to send a donation in lieu of flowers, but I dunno, a donation seems – seems so impersonal.”