Alvarado Gold (2 page)

Then, Grandfather died. I was numb. No job, no boyfriend and a mountain of guilt I hadn’t spent more time with my beloved grandpa. A few more pebbles slid away.

The service ended as the soloist sang
,
“Shall We Gather at the River.” I looked across the neatly trimmed carpet of green to tiny yellow rosebushes dotting the parkway, the same type of roses that grew in Grandpa’s yard. Another mourner, a hundred yards away, looked in our direction. Then he stooped and brushed the leaves from a large, marble marker.

****

“Ms. Brown?” David Darrow said, interrupting my thoughts. “Shall we continue?”

“Yes. Please read the will.” I was surprised to hear I was appointed executrix. I had thought it should have been the oldest, Clay but this was all a plan of our grandfather’s design. From our long conversations, he knew my work demanded careful restoration of something threatened by its fragility. At this moment nothing was more fragile than our family. He’d handed me the reins and I took them without hesitation.

The reading turned out as Eric expected, the house and its contents, a bank account with $2,000, and the box David Darrow had placed in front of me. A box full of more secrets.

As the four of us rose to leave, I made one last query. “Are you aware there’s one more cousin, Mr. Darrow?” I looked at him hesitantly wondering if anyone else had found our missing link.

“Yes.” He answered slowly, “Your Uncle Joseph’s son, Donald.” He looked up, his hand still resting on the lid of the box. “I’ll set up a bank account and his part will be kept for him until he’s found.”

“Do you have any idea where he is?” Clay’s masculine voice resonated from the other side of the room. He startled me. Since we’d been introduced to the lawyer, none of my cousins had said a word.

“You looked for him, too?” I questioned Clay.

“We all have.” Mel spoke up as Susan solemnly nodded her head.

That simple statement made me realize we weren’t such strangers after all. We’d all looked for Donnie but finding him would be difficult. He’d struck out on his own and disappeared.

My thoughts drifted back to the funeral where I’d uncurled my fingers from the carnation that belonged to Donnie. I deposited it into the abyss. The act drove home the finality of Grandpa being gone and the realization I might not have the affinity I hungered for. But I had a family, it seemed, in these new faces staring at me. The landslide had stopped, for now.

Chapter Two

While Clay slowly eased his van back onto the freeway, I took a few minutes to evaluate my cousins. My new family had adhered to me as easily as I did to them. Prying into history gave me a second sense to look beyond what was right in front of me. The four of us were alike in so many ways, yet so different. We were all hungry for one another and yet, until Grandpa’s death brought us together, we hadn’t explored the possibility of family unity.

Clay, who was well over six feet tall with dark, wavy hair and olive skin, had a macho quality about him. His attire was impeccable right down to Bacco Bucci slip-ons. Stress had pulled lines into Clay’s face and his muscles sagged with the gravity of age but he was, in a rugged sort of way, good looking. He had a strong resemblance to my brother, Eric, who was slightly shorter than Clay, but even with the slender build inherited from our father’s side of the family Eric had a lot of the Barnes’ characteristics. I wondered if Donnie looked like either of them. Clay was a good man with a heart as big as they come.

All of us sported varying shades of brown hair. However, Susan’s was highlighted with blonde. She was cute and bouncy. Her unruly, curly hair framed her face and her smile gave her an impish quality. Her suntanned, soccer-mom appearance gave her a straightforwardness which was contradictory to her reticent, quiet behavior. As the baby of the family, she was coddled by her siblings.

Mel, on the other hand, was pure business. If her hair wasn’t twisted up in a bun, it was securely clipped at her neckline. She’d worn a peach colored suit that morning which clearly spelled power. She knew what she was doing and where she was going. I also knew where she’d been and I admired what she’d made of herself. Mel could have been a cover model if she’d chosen to go that route and to earn a little extra while she was in college she’d registered with an agency. Her glamour and beauty brought her many print model offers during her years at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but she wanted a career in business, and not just any business, but one with her name on the door. She and I had corresponded over the past few years. I found her e-mail address shortly after my mother died and searched out Mel’s real estate firm on the internet from the return address on the sympathy card. At first, we discussed the weather and what I was going to wear to the next museum opening. Then we got deeper into each other’s lives, yet we never discussed why our families weren’t connected. Why her father and my mother were never close. They had been once, though, I remembered.

Grandpa’s box lay on my lap and I picked it up and shook it with the same enthusiasm as a child at a birthday party. The case, the color of cognac and chocolate, trimmed out in ivory at the lip, measured eight or ten inches square.

“Clay. Why don’t we stop by Burger World on the way back to Grandpa’s? We’ll look at whatever is in this while we eat.” I reached over and nudged his shoulder from the backseat.

He rolled his eyes. “Burgers? Please.”

“Okay, it is either that or Chinese. Take your pick.”

“All right. Hamburgers, it is but this is the only time.”

“Excuse me,” I laughed. “I forgot we have a great chef in our presence.” He owned a restaurant at a resort in Arizona where he catered to the expensive tastes of the wealthy. My opinion was if you didn’t need a couple of napkins to keep the grease off your fingers, how good could it be?

Clay slowed down and turned into the fast food drive-through lane and while we waited in line, quickly jotted down our requests on the back of an envelop he retrieved from the dashboard. After he ordered, he said
,
“That reminds me. I’ll stop by the market and get something for dinner.”

“Let’s look at the box first,” Mel broke in. “We have lots of planning to do this afternoon. This week is going to be a short one.”

Clay down-shifted his van and looked over in Mel’s direction. “I’ll do the yard work and you, Addie and Susan can do the house. Is that fair?”

“It is more than fair to me,” I answered for her.

From my vantage point in the backseat, I surveyed the well-manicured lawns in the neighborhood. From my summer visits, a childhood snapshot developed. Grandpa’s precision cut grass carpeted their front yard and Grandma’s tiny yellow roses beckoned me as a seven-year-old as I hauled my suitcase up the walkway. I had felt so much love when I was here. Now secrecy defined my return. There were no secrets then.

“The yard’s a mess. The next-door neighbor, Mrs. Jenkins, told me her two grandsons would be here for the summer starting tomorrow. Maybe we can get them to help you. Did Grandpa even have a working lawnmower?” My question went unanswered as we rounded the corner.

Once we were around the kitchen table, burgers and fries in hand, I opened the box. “A bunch of old letters.” I let out a sigh of disappointment.

Susan looked anxiously at the pile in front of me. “Read them.”

“Okay. I don’t know where to start.” I rummaged around in the box and retrieved one dated September 13, 1946. “This one is addressed to Grandpa from a Bud Barnes, Cleburne, Texas.”

Dear Addison:

It was good to see you yesterday at Mother’s funeral. You asked me if I knew anything about Mom and Dad and the family history.

Mother’s name was Annie Taylor. She married Harold Barnes in Texas on December 23, 1875. The Barnes family owned land around Alvarado. The cemetery is still there. Annie and Harold Barnes had ten children. I’m the oldest and your father the youngest.

Our grandfather, John Barnes, and his brothers took a herd of cattle to California in the summer of 1867. After being gone over two years, they buried their profit, mostly in gold bars. It was never found.

In 1889, the entire family including Grandfather Taylor made another trip to Seattle. I remember the trip well. At thirteen, I was thrilled to be considered old enough to ride with the men.

We came back to Texas, sailing from San Francisco. Your father was born in Barnesville in 1893. Mom and Dad remained there until their deaths.

Sincerely,

Uncle Bud

“What gold?” Clay said.

“Is that the only part you heard?” I laughed. “Can you imagine being gone three years on a cattle drive?”

“What gold?” Clay repeated.

“I’m surprised you don’t know the story. I’ve heard it all my life. Mom said your dad and Uncle Joseph went to look for it as well as Grandpa.” Why did my family keep so many things concealed?

Mel motioned with one of her now limp fries. “What else is in that box?”

“Nothing much. More old letters. Here’s one from my mom, a couple from your dad and even one from me. I must have been about six. Look at the printing.”

Clay furrowed his brow and reached for the letter. “Why is the one letter so important Grandpa would have the box at the lawyer’s?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just family memorabilia. It gives us a little of our history. Oh, well.” I shoved the container to the edge of the table. “Let’s get our plan together for cleaning this place. Clay will do the yards. What about you, Mel? Any favorite place you want to tackle?”

“I’ll do the general clean-up in the house. After we get out what we want, we might as well sell this place furnished instead of having two separate sales.”

“Great idea. I’m glad you thought of it.” Mel knew the logistics from her real estate background to make the sale work in our favor. “Okay, Susan, that leaves the attic for the two of us.”

Clay positioned himself at the refrigerator, door open, making a list. “Hey, SusieQ. Let’s go to the market. We can leave these two alone for a couple of hours. They seem to manage to talk about almost anything. Especially, things of no importance.”

I bounced an empty Burger World bag off the back of Clay’s head as he went out the kitchen door. I was truly amazed how quickly we’d become family. I did need to talk to Mel. I knew she’d heard the story of the gold before.

After the screen door banged shut, I leaned in closer. “Mel, what do you know about the gold?”

“Dad mentioned it, once. He and Uncle Joseph went out to Barnesville and looked for a while. They were in their early thirties. I thought it was just a lark. I urged Dad to tell me more but he changed the subject. Something about the trip bothered him.”

“How come Clay and Susan don’t remember your dad’s trip?”

“Clay was in the army at the time and Susan was just a kid. I always hung around Dad, absorbed his every word. I never thought about it until now.”

“Grandpa went to look for the gold, too. Do you think it’s still there?”

“Nah. Probably not. Someone most likely dug it up fifty years ago. Speaking of digging, let’s go checkout the living room before they get back.” Mel walked across to the doorway, unbuttoned her jacket and dropped it into a nearby chair. I followed her gaze as it encircled the room decorated with brown mohair chairs with summer cushions turned to reveal an intricate tan and mauve tapestry and crystal lamps topped with silk shades sitting on Duncan Phyfe tables. The lace curtains in the window and the tassels on the lampshades fluttered slightly from an unexpected breeze.

“This should be the easiest room to work on. It’s small and pretty much the way Grandma left it,”
Mel said. “I’ll start here first thing tomorrow morning.”

We returned to the kitchen where we’d left the remains of our fast food foray. After eating a few cold fries, I mentioned, “I don’t think this is going to be as bad as it seems, but the attic is going to be tough. I peeked up there yesterday. Boxes and boxes of stuff.” As I stood, I hit the table leg with my knee. In an effort to catch my thirty-two ounce diet cola before it rocketed across the table, I knocked the tortoiseshell box to the floor. “Oh! Look, Mel, I broke it. What a klutz.”

“What about your knee? Sounded like you broke it, too.” Mel stooped down and picked up the scattered wooden pieces. Placing them on the table and rearranging them while she spoke, she said, “You know what? It’s made to come apart, like those Chinese puzzle boxes.”

Mel turned the slats over in her hand. She took the box completely apart before she reassembled it and discovered a false bottom. “Look, Addie. There’s something else in this box. Something really old.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

Smoothing the oilcloth with her hands, she laid down the paper. I saw the pulp marks on the yellowed sheet and reached out to touch it, my instincts keen. Every thing I knew about old documents raced through my brain. I held my breath hoping it wouldn’t be torn. As she gently pulled back the folded corners, an ink drawn sketch became evident. “Addie. Look at this. Is this a map?”

I bent over the drawing and looked it over closely. “This is the layout of a town. It shows where it’s positioned, south of Alvarado and west of Cleburne. This has to be the land mentioned in that letter.”