MacPherson's Lament

by Sharyn McCrumb

  I shook my head. “There couldn’t have been much money. The Confederacy was poor. Our soldiers had no shoes, no ammunition, no meat-”

  “I thought of that, too,” said Flora Dabney. “But the Union blockade cut off the Confederacy’s trade with other countries, which meant that there were no supplies to be had. That’s not the same as being without the money to buy them.”

  “I have been tracing the Confederate treasury for some time now,” said Lydia Bridgeford. “My dear father was one of the men responsible for guarding it.”

  “Your father stole the Confederate treasury?” I should have thought before I spoke, but, frankly, I was amazed to find that genteel larceny was hereditary.

  Lydia Bridgeford was thoroughly indignant at such an improper suggestion. “Stole it from whom?” she demanded. “The government had fallen and the officials were trying to flee to Mexico. I am sure that he was keeping it in trust for a time when the South would rise again.”

  “Oh, Lyddy, he was not,” said Dolly Smith. “You know perfectly well that your father spent his share and lost what he didn’t spend in the crash of ’29. What’s buried here is my father’s share.” Her eyes twinkled as she revealed these ancestral misdemeanors. “Our fathers were young sailors assigned to guard the treasury,” she explained. “And at some point after the retreat to Georgia, they took some of the gold bars entrusted to them and left for home. Lydia’s father managed to sell his gold and became a prosperous legislator. My father buried his on this island.”

  “And you’re only now coming back for it?” I was thinking that I wouldn’t have waited until I was seventy to go in search of the family inheritance.

  “I only learned of it recently,” said Dolly Hawks Smith. “When we were going through our belongings as we packed to leave, Lydia found an old letter from my father to her father. Father wrote it in 1901, long before I was born, when his first wife died, and he thought his life was coming to a close. I suppose he wanted his old friend to have the money.”

  “Father hid the letter in a loose cover of the family Bible,” said Lydia. “I confess that I don’t turn to it as often as I should, but really I do think it was Providence that led me to find that letter as I was leafing through it last month.”

  I looked at their beaming faces and at the metal detector resting against the seat of the picnic table. “But how do you know that the gold is still here?” I asked. “Mr. Bridgeford might have come back and dug it up after he got the letter.”

  “I think he planned to,” said Lydia. “After he lost all his money in ’29, he told Mother that we were going to a Georgia island to vacation. I was only a little girl then, but I remember Mother remarking on how strange it was that he’d want the expense of a seaside holiday when we were in such dire financial straits. Anyway, we never came here. Father had his stroke shortly after that. He was an invalid until he died.”

  “It’s still here,” said Flora Dabney. “And we intend to find it.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then you won’t be needing the million or so from the sale of the house, will you?”

  They gazed at each other with somber expressions. Finally Mary Lee Pendleton said, “We don’t want your brother to go to prison. If we find the gold, we’ll return the house money.”

  “In that case,” I said, “I would be happy to work this metal detector for you. An old boyfriend taught me how.”

  If Cousin Stinky was glad to see the Hill family’s newest attorney, he concealed the emotion with remarkable skill. It might have had something to do with the fact that “little Amy” had appeared at his office without an appointment and with no apparent regard for his schedule and prior commitments. It might have been the grim look of determination she wore in lieu of the deferential simper he preferred on a young female face. But most likely, it was the fact that with newsmen thick on the ground in Richmond government buildings, little Amy Powell Hill had the audacity to come to his office in the middle of the day wearing a Confederate officer’s uniform, complete with sword and plumed hat. Stinky (who had scotched that nickname two hundred miles west of Richmond) barricaded himself behind his mahogany desk, and prepared to humor his eccentric young cousin for at least seven minutes-out of duty to the family.

  “Well, Amy,” he said genially, “have you embarked on a movie career? Is there a Civil War epic being produced in the vicinity?”

  Powell Hill winced at the use of her first name, but she let it pass, saving her ammunition for bigger skirmishes. “No, sir,” she replied. “I’m still practicing law.”

  “So I heard. I believe your mother said you had a tiny little practice in Danville. A low-rent affair. Have you tired of being stubborn already?” He rifled the papers on his desk, as if to indicate all the job openings he might be able to find for qualified young attorneys.

  “No, I’m not tired of the practice,” said A.P. “I’ll stick it out, thanks. I came here to discuss two matters. One is my law partner, Bill MacPherson. Your state legal beagles are hassling him because he accidentally sold the Home for Confederate Women.”

  “I’ve heard about that,” said Stinky with an ill-concealed grin. “Is that young fellow your law partner? Oh, my. There’s more than a million dollars unaccounted for, isn’t there? And isn’t he under some suspicion of having done away with the residents of the home?”

  “I can clear that up.” A. P. Hill reached into her briefcase and pulled out a fax message. “Here is a copy of an affidavit signed by all of the former residents of the home, indicating that they are alive and well and they removed the paperwork regarding the lien from the courthouse before my partner did the title search. And here’s an agreement signed by John Huff, the present owner of the house, agreeing to sell the property back to the state for his purchase price plus ten percent.” She paused and looked thoughtful. “I hope the restoration people were planning to do some remodeling. Mr. Huff seems to have done a lot of damage to the house. Holes dug in the yard, plaster removed from the walls… I take it he didn’t find what he was looking for.”

  “Can we sue him?” asked the attorney general, momentarily distracted from the case at hand.

  “You don’t own the house, remember? I talked to a couple of my law professors about this. They agree with me that if no lien was present in the courthouse records, then the transaction was legal as it stood. Mr. Huff bought the house fair and square. Bill was within his rights as an attorney to handle the sale. He is not liable for the money. Which”-she tapped the fax document from Jekyll Island-“the former residents admit to having in a numbered account in the Cayman Islands. They will not be returning to testify, by the way.”

  “This won’t look good for your lawyer friend when it hits the papers, Amy.”

  “It won’t hit the papers. That’s where you come in. I want you to use all your influence to make this whole problem go away, because if you don’t-”

  Cousin Stinky frowned. The seven minutes were surely up by now. Why didn’t his secretary buzz him? “If I don’t-what?”

  A. P. Hill stood up and straightened her plumed hat. “Why, Cousin Stinky, if we have any trouble at all about this matter, my entire regiment of Confederate reenactors will come and camp on the lawn of this building, and we’ll give press conferences left and right telling people how the Commonwealth of Virginia evicted a bunch of senior citizens from their home because you were too cheap to pay their utilities! And I’ll make sure the reporters know that I’m related to you.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Sure I would,” grinned Powell. “And I’d be sure to mention how the old ladies outsmarted you by stealing the documents, so that you’ll have to spend nearly two million dollars of the taxpayers’ money to buy the house back.”

  The attorney general’s face had gone from good-old-boy red to the delicate green of aged cheese. The buzzer on his intercom sounded insistently, but he made no move to communicate with the caller. Finally he said, “I suppose I could speak to a few people and see that
this gets hushed up.” He had been considering running for a Senate seat in the next few months. A Confederate rally on his behalf would do nothing to help his chances at higher office.

  “Good,” said A. P. Hill. “I’ll tell the boys to reschedule the rally for the other location.”

  “Reschedule it? But you said-”

  “Oh, I’ll leave you out of it,” his cousin promised. “No one will know we’re kin. But I’m going to stage a photogenic demonstration at the headquarters of the Park Service. That will give them one chance to back down before I sue them.”

  “You’re suing the Park Service?”

  A. P. Hill narrowed her eyes and set her jaw. “Damned straight. They told me that I couldn’t participate in reenactments because I was a woman.”

  “So you’re going to give them a real war instead, eh, Amy?” He was smiling in spite of himself, possibly at the thought of the legal fees that such a battle would generate.

  “Yes. I’ll fight them all the way to the Supreme Court if I have to. And I hope I have to.”

  The attorney general shook his head. “Legal battles like that can be both time-consuming and costly. I think you’d better drop this idea and get back to that struggling little practice of yours before you and your partner go broke.”

  “That brings me to the other thing I wanted to ask you about,” said A. P. Hill. She reached into the pocket of her trousers and fished out a copper coin. “Do you know what this is? A Confederate penny piece. I had it verified at a coin shop before I came over here. Do you know how many there are in existence?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “Eight. They were made in Philadelphia as samples for the new government, but metal became scarce in the Confederacy, so pennies were never minted. This one must have belonged to one of the members of Jefferson Davis’s cabinet. It’s worth over half a million dollars.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “One of the Confederate ladies gave it to Bill. Her father acquired it after the fall of Richmond.”

  “Shouldn’t you give it back, Amy?”

  She shrugged. “Elizabeth MacPherson-that’s Bill’s sister-says that the women are leaving the country and they won’t tell anybody where they’re going. I guess they just don’t trust your government, Stinky. Speaking of the government, I thought I’d ask you if the Commonwealth of Virginia would like to make us an offer for the coin before I put it up for auction. It would be a wonderful addition to the museum.”

  “I will consult with the appropriate officials,” said her cousin cautiously.

  “Great! Well, I guess that’s it, then. Bill is off the hook-and I’m going to take on the Park Service.” She patted her cousin on the shoulder. “Take it easy, Stink!”

  The attorney general winced. “Goodbye, Amy. And could you please exit by the back way in case any reporters are lurking in the hall?”

  I-95 again. This time northbound. It’s even more boring this time because it’s a rerun of the previous days’ drive. Same old pine trees, same old sandy soil. End of adventure. I felt a certain sense of accomplishment. The Confederate Eight, as I’d come to think of them, had been kind enough to draw up a notarized document attesting to their well-being and taking the blame for the real estate scam. I’d even bought a disposable camera at the drug store and taken a snapshot of them standing by the post office sign that said JEKYLL ISLAND. One of them was holding up today’s newspaper, just in case anyone should doubt their affidavit. By now they would be packing to leave the Comfort Inn, heading for points unknown. I didn’t ask. They weren’t exactly the trusting type.

  I will always remember them tramping through the sand in their crepe floral dresses, bickering about the directions in Gabriel Hawks’s letter. Was that the oak tree that he meant? Exactly how long is a pace? And we kept getting interrupted by cars full of sightseers or people wanting to ask silly questions-like when was the island settled. As if we’d been there that long! By one in the afternoon it was becoming oppressively hot. Even the sea breeze had little effect. They wouldn’t quit, though. Dolly Hawks Smith said that she for one wasn’t getting any younger, and she didn’t want to postpone the hunt for one more minute. The others agreed. I think, too, that they were afraid that since I had found them, other people might, too, and they were in a hurry to get moving again. We tried everybody’s interpretation of which tree it was and how long a pace should be and when to turn left. But we always reached the same conclusion: that is, we ran out of island before we ran out of instructions.

  “I don’t understand,” said Flora Dabney, swabbing her damp forehead with a little square of cambric. “Surely one of our interpretations might be right.”

  “And you’re getting no reading on the metal detector?” asked Ellen Morrison with a worried frown.

  “None,” I said.

  “Well, I can’t figure out what we are doing wrong,” said Lydia Bridgeford. “Of course, my father didn’t write those instructions!”

  “No,” Dolly Smith replied. “Your father spent his gold as fast as he could.”

  “Wait,” I said before the bickering could begin again. “There is a possibility we haven’t considered. The directions could be perfectly correct-for 1865. But the island may have changed since then.”

  They looked at me with widening eyes, considering the implications of what I said. Finally Mary Lee Pendleton nodded and whispered, “Hurricanes.”

  “Yes. There have been quite a few bad hurricanes in the last hundred and thirty years, and at least half a dozen of them have hit this part of the eastern seaboard.”

  Ellen Morrison shivered. “I remember Hazel in ’54. I was so frightened. I just stood at my window watching trees fall.”

  “So you think a storm has altered the island since Dolly’s father buried his share of the gold here.” It wasn’t a question. Flora Dabney’s tone said that she knew I was right.

  “Look at the instructions,” I said. “Go from that tree-or any of these trees for that matter-and walk twenty-five paces and turn left. You can’t. And there are even more paces to walk after that, heading west. Do you see where that would put you?”

  Dolly Hawks blinked back tears. “In the sea,” she whispered.

  “People get treasure out of the sea,” said Lydia Bridgeford, patting her arm. “National Geographic had an article about some skin divers who found a sunken Spanish galleon.”

  “But it took them years,” I reminded her. “And it cost millions. I don’t think a saddlebag full of gold bars would be worth quite that much, even at today’s gold prices. Maybe two million, tops. If you financed an expensive recovery operation, you’d be lucky to break even. And the publicity would alert the government, who would probably confiscate the gold anyhow. The Confederacy took it from the U.S. mint in the first place, remember?”

  “Besides,” said Ellen, “we probably wouldn’t live to see the recovery anyhow. I say we take what we have and enjoy ourselves.”

  Flora Dabney gazed out at the sea with a thoughtful frown. “I had hoped we would have more than a million and a half. After all, there are eight of us. We’ll have medical expenses.”

  “We can invest the money,” said Mary Lee Pendleton. “If we don’t live extravagantly, we’ll be fine.”

  “We could always sign a book deal,” said Dolly Smith. “I hear that pays well.”

  We went back to the inn after that and had seafood salads for lunch while we talked about what our respective ancestors did in the war. “But we mustn’t go on about it too much,” Flora Dabney whispered to me after my story about the Battle of Fort Fisher. “You know, poor dear Julia is the only soldier’s widow here, but she isn’t, strictly speaking, a Confederate woman. The late Mr. Hotchkiss was a Yankee from Abingdon. The mountains had a lot of Union sympathizers, you know.”

  “Why did you let her in the Home?” I whispered back.

  “Well, dear, that was a long time ago. And we felt we had a great deal in common. It’s our little secret.”
r />   Julia Hotchkiss reached for the last three hush puppies, blissfully unconcerned with her guilty secret.

  After lunch, I left them to pack for points unknown and drove back to Danville-with nothing to think about but the other civil war in my life. MacPherson vs. MacPherson in divorce proceedings. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I wondered if I would prove any better than Abe Lincoln at preventing a secession.

  “Well, here we all are,” I said brightly for the tenth time. I was smiling like a neon sign. I could feel every muscle in my face. “Here we are.” I glared at Bill, mentally nudging him to say something positive, because I could feel my words falling with a crash into the center of this silent, strained family reunion. Our parents were in Bill’s apartment, summoned at our request, politely sipping tepid white wine out of jelly glasses and behaving like hostages who were determined to be civil to their demented captors.

  “Yep!” Bill caught my glare and straightened up with a nervous start. “Here we are,” he chirped, flashing our parents an oafish grin, which they returned with plaster smiles.

  They wouldn’t look at each other. They sat as far apart as it is possible to get in the hamster cage that Bill calls a living room. Mother passed the time between sips by asking me carefully neutral questions about Cameron, and how things were in Scotland. She seemed determined to consider Dad a large, quaint piece of sculpture that she refused to comment on. Dad resembled a guilty schoolboy who has been hauled to the principal’s office for a well-deserved whipping: determined to brazen it out by feigning indifference. Meanwhile my brother the host, to whom housecleaning is an unconfirmed rumor, kept offering to run out to the store for everything from napkins to crushed ice, but I knew better than to let him act on these alleged impulses of hospitality. He would run out to the store, all right. Probably to one in the next state, and he would contrive to prolong the errand until he could be sure his guests had fled. I wasn’t about to be left holding this unsavory bag.