Finders keepers

Mark's farmhouse had a root cellar - it was connected to the house, and shared a stone wall, but you walked down into it from the outside, and an ancient door, solid thick wood, would close on you as you were down there. Mark kept a few things down there but it was a small space and he didn't have big plans for it - he figured he would use it if a tornado ever came through.

He had fixed his farmhouse up pretty well, well enough to have visitors, but he never had any. People just didn't go out into Iowa 100, 120 miles on scenic drives, or going out visiting. It was as if, though he'd bought the perfect, beautiful farmhouse on perfect, beautiful land, he had sentenced himself to isolation. He worked on his own from home, with a good computer network. He rarely talked to anyone except when he got groceries, and even then it was just "how are you?" and "fine thanks." At first he liked it that way, but by now he'd settled into a kind of funk. Didn't know anyone, had trouble meeting anyone, and now the house seemed like a lost corner of civilization.

He did have a friend, though, an old friend from college. The friend one day texted him and told him he was driving through Iowa soon. This friend, Avram, had always been into diving, and had moved to Israel knowing full well that there were some sunken treasures off the coast of Israel. Avram met someone who knew how to find them, and they dove together until they'd found a few of those treasures. Now Avram was driving through Iowa and asked Mark if he could visit. Mark of course said yes and sent directions by text.

When he saw Avram, who arrived at his farmhouse about three days later, he saw an incredible energy in him, as if he wasn't done doing what he was doing. Avram was healthy and happy, but secretive. Avram explained his story and asked Mark for a favor.

Basically the law was unclear about what one had to do with sunken treasure that one found. Authorities in Israel demanded that they be handed over. People like Avram and his friend Peter felt otherwise, especially if the treasure was out a ways, not directly on Israel's coast. Peter had given Avram a bag of old coins, and Avram brought them in from his car to show them. Then he asked Mark if he could hide the coins in the root cellar or someplace for about a month. He had reasons, he said, but wasn't really free to divulge them. Mark agreed. In exchange Avram gave Mark a single gem with a picture of a lute on it. It was one of those ancient lute symbols, and may have represented something, or may just have been a kind of money. In any case, it was now Mark's. Then Avram set out for the coast.

Mark knew, because Avram had told him, that the authorities and perhaps others were after Avram, and it would be better if he didn't have any coins on him. He knew that the small bag of coins was worth a small fortune, maybe a few thousand. He knew that he shouldn't keep calling Avram or give people reason to believe that Avram had stopped here on the way. He had kept his phone off the whole time. He had erased any texts to Mark or previous communication. Mark kept the large canvas bag of coins in the root cellar, and didn't move them or change them in any way, but he kept the one with the lute on it under his pillow, for some reason, where it seemed to alter his dreams.

He thought about the things Avram had said; he was clearly hiding something. It wasn't the authorities that Avram especially feared. Yes, they wanted the goods, and the coins were only part of a much larger cache, and they wanted the whole cache. Yes, Israeli authorities believed it belonged to the government, but they weren't about to cross the ocean to go chasing after a single guy on his own driving across the middle of the USA. It was someone else - maybe Peter, or a group of collectors, who knew he had something valuable and were after him. Somebody would apparently do whatever they had to to get those coins.

Word came by text about three days later that Avram had been killed in Salt Lake City in a car accident. Mark was very hesitant about answering the text, but felt impelled to know more - would there be a service? Did he have family still in the USA? He had lots of questions, particularly about how it happened. It didn't sound right. He didn't answer the text. He didn't want anyone to think he had anything to do with the treasure or the coins. It didn't matter; the FBI showed up at Mark's farmhouse about a week later. Specifically it was two burly guys, a little rough on the edges, in a newer car with New Jersey plates. They introduced themselves as Benjamin and Walter, and they had badges which they showed. Mark invited them in and they sat at the kitchen table. It occurred to him that they were acting, and weren't really the FBI, but they were good actors, and polite to a fault, as FBI agents generally are. Benjamin was the slicker of the two and did most of the talking.

They said it was a little bit more than sunken treasure, but they weren't free to disclose. They confirmed that Avram had eliminated all trace of Mark from his phone, but said they had ways of tracking Mark down anyway, so he wasn't going to be able to keep that treasure hidden indefinitely. They said they had a warrant or the capability of getting one easily, so the best thing for him to do would be to just hand it over directly and spare them the trouble of finding it the hard way. In this part they alluded to doing whatever they had to, and Mark got the sense that it might not all be nice. But there was one point where Walter, the quieter of the two, accidentally addressed Benjamin as Peter. It was over in an instant and Mark, surprised, didn't quite know what to make of it at first; he wasn't sure that's what he had heard.

Eventually Mark just went and got the coins and handed them over. They were polite to Mark and grateful that he just handed them over without making a fight about it or making them go to the trouble of searching, finding, roughing him up, killing, whatever.. They hinted that Avram was in over his head with a crowd of people that would do anything for treasure like this, and that it was very possible that his death wasn't an accident. And then they were gone. He watched the newer car with Jersey plates go off into the distance and take the road back to the interstate.

Mark had a friend in another city who was capable of checking on such things, who he called, and eventually he found out that the FBI had done no such search at all; in fact it was imposters. What made Mark mull it over and check was the replaying, in his memory, of Walter's calling Benjamin "Peter." He hadn't been sure, at first, that that's what he'd heard, but with time he became more sure. There had just been that subtle clue that they weren't what they said they were. But he also figured that, if Peter was in on finding the treasure in the first place, there was no better person to end up with it than him. And he had put on a convincing performance.

The farmhouse was isolated, and Mark quickly got back into his isolated routine. But the gem under his pillow seemed to change his dreams. The lute symbol was from the time of the treasures, around the time of Jesus, but Mark couldn't seem to find more about it outside of what Avram and the two men had said. His dreams frequently took him back to that time, but he couldn't generally figure out if they were trying to tell him anything. Often the lute would actually be in the dream, or he would hear it, but he wasn't sure if he'd know lute music from any other kind. He came to feel lucky that he'd been spared, and given a window into that world, even though he didn't understand most of it. When he thought back to the two men, Benjamin and Walter, he pictured them as seamen, accurately or not, more comfortable in a boat than in a rural Iowa kitchen. But at times it seemed like they all, even Avram, were reliving those past times, traveling across continents and out into the sea to dredge up clues about what went on before.

Old friends from Clockville

The year was 1899, and this is actually based on a true story. The National Association of Elocutionists was meeting in Chautauqua, New York, a place on a lake that was considered an ideal, isolated spot for discussing intellectual ideas.

It had two problems; one was that train connections were bad, so that some elocutionists arriving from bigger cities like St. Louis or Pittsburgh found they had to wait too long at rural train outposts and some actually turned around and went back; it was just too hard. Also, the auditorium had the advantage of fresh air but the disadvantage of bad acoustics, so people who were in the back couldn't always hear everything.

Of course the social life was big. After the convention each day the steamboat would take everyone out on the lake and they would have a grand old time socializing. The big hoop dresses of the early 1890's had given way to a more sensible approach but ladies were still beautiful in beautiful gowns; it was called the mauve decade because a mauve or lavender dye had become available and was popular.

To elocutionists, practiced in the art of giving speeches and poetic performances in the best and most effective voice, listening to speeches about elocution was something to look forward to. Our friend Elizabeth, an elocutionist in Toledo, had come all the way out to Chautauqua to give a speech of her own.

By far the headliner was Alexander Melville Bell, Alexander Graham Bell's father, who was a stunning orator and had a system, which he described, of teaching speeches to the deaf.

But to Elizabeth, besides her own speech, which was perhaps the highlight of her public speaking career, there was a personal angle to this particular convention. She had gone to high school in Clockville, New York, and a friend of hers from high school, Mattie Chapman, came to visit. Mattie was dressed in a gorgeous gown and made everyone's head turn.

Mattie, however, was now Mrs. Charles E. Remick. Her husband, Charles, had been the Supervisor of Oneida County but had lost in a bitterly fought election; actually he was a Democrat in Republican territory, so it might not have surpised everyone that much. In any case, they compared notes. Elizabeth had kept her name, though she had added her husband's, and was now Elizabeth Mansfield Irving; she had two children, a boy 16 and a girl 10, but her husband had died a couple of years back and she was now a single mother.

Mattie, on her suitcases, carried the stickers of women's clubs around the nation. She apparently traveled quite a bit, and may not have brought Charles along; if not, was this a scandal? She'd have to take several kinds of trains and buses to get down to Chautauqua to see her high school friend Elizabeth. Perhaps they were out on the edge here, in a rural place, a large convention of well-spoken men and women, a couple of wild women on the social scene.

The social scene at Chautauqua was actually this huge old steamboat that went out on the lake and then, ultimately, came back at night. It was decked out like most steamboats of the day - with a calliope, and a large social area, where all the well-dressed, fine speakers would enjoy each other's company and perhaps go up on the upper deck and watch the stars and the lake. Many of the elocutionists did not bring their spouses, but people trusted each other more those days, not that there were no scandals, but more that Charles, for example, probably felt that Mattie could go see this childhood friend and then turn around and come back.

Mattie had no children that I know of. Her gown was noticed by everyone as stunning. She and Elizabeth, old high school friends, had a lot of catching up to do. Elizabeth promised to send her something from the Toledo Women's Club. Out west, she said, things were a lot different than here in New York. Her children were probably on the farm of her nearby sister. Her daughter was my grandmother. Within a few years, women would get the right to vote, but there would also be a war, and a pandemic, and a new century of things to worry about. At this point, on this night, all they worried about was having fun.