by Frank Felton
Even the best of farmers sow a bad crop every now and then.
Aiden loved genetics. From a young age he had noticed traits passed on through animals the family had raised as livestock, or even the wild animals which he tried to domesticate. He often opined about what he saw, and kept records in his own journals. He’d observe the behavior of everything from feral cats, to owls, to squirrels. In each, he found a certain subset brave enough to interact with humans, and he would gain their confidence by leaving food. Eventually these animals would spawn, and through successive generations, he found himself surrounded by more and more animals that flocked to him like Noah.
The same idea worked with cattle. Over the years, he could literally feed his herd from the palm of his hand. Cattle are smarter than people think, and they would only eat from Aiden’s hand, which irritated the heck out of Mary. They simply did not recognize her as their master.
Those tricks never worked with his eldest son. When Miller ran away, he took up with a cattle drive leaving out of Austin. He made it as far as the Red River, before he was run out of the outfit by the captains for stealing another man’s wallet. He was on the verge of being hanged, when the Captain realized Miller was Aiden Benson’s son. Aiden was now a well-respected name in the cattle business, and was trading with the famous Charles Goodnight.
This knowledge bought Miller a reprieve from the noose, because the captain would not administer frontier punishment without Aiden’s blessing, lest he have hell to pay at the hands of Mr. Goodnight. Instead, the captain sent the derelict on his way, knowing that in these parts, his fate would follow close behind. Miller headed north to Indian Territory, a land as lawless as his own ambitions, in search of his destiny. Aiden’s reputation was now out of his reach.
Back in Milam County, the same realization dawned on Aiden. A directionless boy such as Miller would soon become an outlaw, and his time would be limited. He still wished the best for his eldest son. He prayed he would change and become a good man. Yet, he had serious doubts given his observations of the kid since he was a child that he would get, or much less deserved, any further leniency. His pattern of pernicious thoughts and actions were bound to fetch a reckoning.
Miller was the product of the worst elements in the genetic line – stupidity, and malice. Aiden had six other children to look after by now. He’d given Miller everything he could. Miller had many chances to reform, and he never took them. He was simply incorrigible, and unable to adapt to a more civil society.
Unfortunately for the Benson family, and as predicted by Aiden, Miller met that fate at the end of a rope in 1886. Arrested by a U.S. marshal for murder, cattle rustling and other serious crimes, Miller was sentenced to be executed by Judge Isaac C. Parker, the famed “hanging judge” who presided over the U.S. District Court of the Western District in Fort Smith.
~~~
While Aiden might have quietly blamed his wife’s lineage for Miller, Mrs. Benson wasn’t the only side of the family with genetic imperfections. They were the only side thus far exposed. Aiden’s side of the family also had a few itinerant genes that predicated mental ailment, though they would not become visible until a few generations later.
One example was a distant nephew born in the early 20th Century named Forrest Benson, who went on to write popular novels, and even became a candidate for Alabama governor in 1970. However, the fool ran for governor as a white supremacist and had a long history of sometimes violent association with the Ku Klux Klan. He was soundly defeated and lampooned in the media for his madness.
Aiden himself would have never supported such association. Even during the events leading up to the Civil War, he agreed with Sam Houston in that Texas should not join the secession efforts, and not just because it was madness to fight the Union, but because it was morally wrong to endorse slavery. To hold such useless beliefs some hundred years later, as did his great nephew, well that was just lunacy.
Aiden’s mental faculties would be tested over the years. He found himself in a constant state of flux; torn amongst the growing responsibilities of a large family, his expanding stature within the territory, and his innate desire for adventure. His duty to family and community caused him to neglect his adventurous side, but the Jewel of Hiram continued to pull at his curiosity. It lie buried within the ground upon which sprouted the fruits of his labor. It kept in on a righteous and prosperous path.
In the daily grind of raising a family and expanding his land and holdings, Aiden would lose sight of that key ingredient to his success. He had dutifully followed Sam Houston’s wishes, taken charge of the designated land, and now almost forgotten why he came here in the first place. Thus, the genius in the General’s final masterpiece explained.
Aiden Benson would never find the Jewel.
Found or not, the sacred ground provided his family a blanket of protection and a great fortune. In his earlier days, he charted numerous possible locations. Over time he lost his bearing as he began to clear large swaths of pecan trees in order to create more farm and ranchland. He would forget about the Jewel completely until later in his life, but it was there, nonetheless, hidden safely away from view. The Jewel would only reveal itself at the time of its choosing.
At the turn of the century, Aiden Benson had expanded his land to include more than 1,500 acres. The 2nd tragedy of his life occurred in 1915, when Mary died of cancer. She did not die suddenly, and the ever-deepening state of her frail body exacted a mighty toll on his conscience. He was heartbroken. His true love was gone; the woman he’d traveled halfway across the country to find had left him alone.
They had lived a long life together, yet he would have many years remaining. He didn’t want to go on without her, but he had no choice. He almost wished he had never taken that trip back to find her, so he could forego the pain he felt today. Such thoughts he pushed aside as nonsense.
Two more of his children would die before they reached the age of 40. None of them turned out as well as expected, having been born into the trappings of a decent life. His dedication to family began to wane. His subconscious compensated by devoting thoughts to the Jewel. As he aged, with his legacy firmly in place, his attention focused clearly on finding the Jewel. He became obsessed with it; for what reason, he couldn’t say.
His longing for the Jewel caused him to lapse into fits of mania. He regaled those near him with great visions of wealth buried beneath the ground on which they stood. With Mary gone, he longed for another of his first loves; a long lost childhood memory. He wished to find it despite neglecting it for nearly a lifetime. He was overcome with a deep-seeded desire, just as he had when he first courted Mary. It was though the Jewel was within his grasp, but evaded him, and he would have to move Heaven and Earth to find it.
As he passed the age of 80, his search was still fruitless.
Discovery of oil and lignite in Milam County in the early 1900’s gave Aiden a glimpse of heavy equipment which could pry deep into the Earth. There was only one way for Aiden to find the Jewel, and that was to simply dig for it, far and wide. In the 1930’s he sought to do just that. As his years on Earth were dwindling to a close, he invested a substantial fortune in equipment that allowed him to dig deeper, and deeper, tilling up the blackland soil, and overturning land that had never been disturbed by mankind.
He unearthed many things; lignite coal and entire skeletons of mastodons. Lignite would eventually make his grandson, Hank, a wealthy man and dinosaur fossils would have been of great interest to modern day archaeologists. Yet he found no Jewel. These items were cast aside as mere inconveniences to him as he searched for something of much greater value.
Alas, the treasure he found was not the treasure he sought.
He was dismissed as a crazy old man by his children, who nevertheless continued to live off of his generosity. They turned their back on him public, and waited for him to die. Most had long since moved away. Rather than take his side, they sought to distance themselves from the Benson name, lest they be
ridiculed for their relationship to an estranged old coot that lived out in the country.
As he sat alone in his quiet hours, rejected and abandoned by his own family, he poured through the brittle parchment left him by Sam Houston; falling prey to the General’s last feint. His wife had remained by his side for 50 years, and before she left the world, interpreted the Spanish in which most of it was written. In his last days, he re-wrote as much as he could, detailing the history and chronology, hoping that a clue would present itself to the location of the Jewel.
But it would be for naught.
Approaching 98 years old, he saw the light. He was finally blessed with a clear vision. He was now ready to die with the only respect that matters. Respect of self. He wasn’t crazy. He was merely a foot soldier in a game played by powers far greater than mere mortals.
The vision showed him that he would never find the Jewel, but his grandson would.
His grandson was the only heir who could carry the charge where Aiden left off; a man who was aptly named for the Jewel he sought. At the time, he was but a child, an orphan left behind in Aiden’s care. He would now be granted the same burden which Aiden had been handed at the same age. The boy was one Hiram King Benson.
But his friends called him Hank.
In Aiden Benson’s last days, he made it so. The burden passed to him eight decades earlier was lifted from his shoulders. He died with the knowledge he had fulfilled his duty, and left secured the Jewel beneath the ground, keeping it safe from even himself.
Despite his years, he would not die of old age.
PART 3
23. Boots on
And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book. – Revelation 22:19
Aiden Benson went out with his boots on. He died in September, 1944. He was found slumped over the steering wheel of a wrecked 1939 Ford pickup. It crashed into a tree on his property, which grew at the base of a slowly tapering hill. While the cause of death for a 98-year-old man should not be difficult to ascertain, the local magistrate scratched his head over this one.
Aiden had blunt force trauma to his torso, as well as cuts across his forehead. The truck was badly damaged; the entire front end smashed into the front wheel wells. An initial ruling stated he suffered a heart attack while driving and crashed into the tree.
In a twist, the coroner overruled the justice of the peace. He could find no evidence of a heart attack. He pointed to numerous things, such as scuff marks on Aiden’s boots, indicating his foot had been on the gas pedal, and the truck remained in third gear at the time of the crash. If the driver had a heart attack, it is unlikely a vehicle with manual transmission would continue moving forward. He noted that both hands were still on the steering wheel. By these indications, Aiden was still conscious and alert when the crash occurred. The vehicle was traveling at 40 miles-per-hour upon impact.
As such, the coroner ruled this death a suicide.
Now, it might have been left at that, except for an odd sequence of events that followed. Just as dogs awaiting scraps from the dinner table, Hank’s children salivated at thoughts of their upcoming payday. He’d barely entered rigor mortis yet they’d already planned on which assets to sell first. They didn’t have the work ethic to keep a ranch in business. For them, Aiden’s death was great news.
They were truly mortified to learn that Aiden bequeathed the lion’s share of his wealth to Hank; their nephew and Aiden’s 17-year-old orphan grandson. In Aiden’s will, he stipulated very specifically who got what, and only Hank would retain the original San Gabriel River property granted him by Sam Houston. He rightly should have given his entire estate to Hank, but Aiden fell prey to the same empathies as many parents. He gave the others an equitable share of the surrounding property; primarily out of pity.
For his generosity, he would be despised by those children after his death for the unforgivable crime of not giving them more. When you feed a stray dog, it keeps coming back. Teach a man to fish, and so forth. The fools could never grasp the value of this land lie not in dollars, but in a mystery from the ancients that they could never fathom.
That mystery was not listed in the will; it is impossible to bestow such a thing. However, hidden among paperwork attesting to his material possessions of land, money, and artifacts was Aiden’s journal. It was from this journal Hank now relayed to me his intriguing story, and which held the secret; it provided a bridge to the Jewel from Aiden to Hank.
Old, brittle parchment by this time, the journal was the real treasure of Aiden’s lot, and the only thing he cherished at the time of his death. The journal would yield not only a marvelous tale, but provided a moral guidebook for Hank’s life. In principle, at least, he followed it more closely than some righteous men might follow the Bible. Every word of the hallowed manual became sacrosanct to Hank.
When Aiden died, he was alone in the world. While Hank and Aiden would scarcely speak to each other in life, the words of Aiden came alive beyond the grave to escort Hank through his coming tribulation. Tragedies which beset the young Hank at an early age would soon be vanquished, but not before they reached a crescendo which would galvanize his morality in stone at the tender age of 17.
Barely old enough to walk, Hank had witnessed the burial of his mother beneath an old oak tree on Alligator Creek. A few years later his father would be buried at the Masonic cemetery near Little River at Port Sullivan. Finally, his sole progenitor and only father figure, Aiden, would leave him. He would turn to this journal as the only source of paternal guidance remaining.
And now, the final tragic turn would round the corner as the aunts and uncles hired lawyers to challenge Aiden’s will. Once the period of mourning was over, perhaps even sooner, they filed lawsuits and enacted vengeful attacks against Hank. They even spread spiteful rumors that Hank was responsible for Aiden’s strange demise. As a result, a full inquiry into cause of death was undertaken.
The result of the new forensic analysis would be more thorough, and overruled both the findings of suicide, and the heart attack. Experts demonstrated that Aiden was merely feeding cattle when his truck became stuck in a patch of mud. Even two months later, the ruts were clearly visible in photos taken by investigators; dried into the blackland soil they were as good as a fossil record. As Aiden felt the truck tires lose their grip, he “gunned” the engine to get enough traction to clear the sludge, spinning the tires ever more quickly. It was at this point that the gas pedal of his truck became stuck.
The truck eventually broke free from the slippery muck, and found ample sod in the rolling bluestem prairie grass. It quickly gathered steam going downhill. With the engine revved, Aiden could not shift out of gear. He tried in vain to free the pedal with his feet, his other now on the brake pedal. The ride was too bumpy for him to reach down with his hands. The brakes of the truck, which harnessed only the rear wheels, were heavily eroded after this quarter mile run. The right drum completely failed, being no match for a revved V-8 engine. The truck entered a slowly arcing turn to the left as it continued to gain speed.
The truck decelerated from 40 to zero instantaneously upon encountering the massive tree. Without a seatbelt, Aiden Isaac Benson, age 98, died instantly.
He had both hands on the wheel, and rode it right up to the end.
~~~
Hank had been talking for nearly two hours and it was almost sunup.
The mesquite wood crackled, sending a shower of sparks from the belly of the old wood stove. Hank grabbed the tea kettle and poured another cup. It wasn’t normally his style to burn mesquite, as he preferred his beloved pecan.
Regardless, every year he stacked cord after cord of either. Having cut his own pecan wood, he received the mesquite from Mexican Joe. Mexican Joe was a neighbor who always owed money and was far more likely to pay in goods and services than cash. He was a hard worker. Hank was always willing to entertain a trade, particu
larly as splitting wood was difficult work.
Hank believed pecan wood burned just as hot as mesquite, which is actually true. Common thought has prevailed that mesquite is the hottest burning of all wood types. To argue this would never yield an accord, just as arguing which genus of pepper will set a man’s tongue ablaze more adeptly. Whether one imbibes a habanero or cayenne, many circumstances dictate the level of heat an individual experiences. Only fools argue such things.
To its distinct advantage, pecan is not given to shooting out embers that would cross the room and singe arm hairs. This much is rather easy to observe, even for a fool. To its disadvantage, pecan wood is nigh as durable as mesquite, as cut pecan soon deteriorates to brittleness. Within three years of being felled, it is little more than dried honeycomb.
Mesquite, on the other hand, only gets harder as time marches on. It is an undeserved encore for the mesquite tree, which lives its entire life as a nuisance to the land. It only finds a suitable use in death. Conversely, pecan trees are universally beloved for the nourishing fruits they provide over hundreds of years of life.
Little things such as these were the lens through which Hank Benson looked at life.
He offered me a cup of the black stuff. I obliged. It was strong, with a smoke-tinged aroma that caused my eyes to open wide. It held far more caffeine than I was accustomed, which was now a necessary ingredient to my given state.
Day was about to break. The owls now hooted a fevered pitch, eager to catch one final meal as they prepared to slumber. They investigated the two coffee-drinking interlopers in their midst. As the first rays of the sun signaled its grand appearance, they perched near us, knowing their nocturnal duties would soon be at an end.
