“Everyone knew. Some of them pretended they didn’t, or acted like they couldn’t see it coming, but after a while, it was clear as day. We couldn’t win. There were just too damn many of them. They were siphoning them out of the slums in the big cities—throwing them into the army and sending them to shoot us even as they got off the boats, trying to immigrate. Lots of Italians and Irish. Lots of others too, who didn’t have much choice, or didn’t know they did. They threw them at us. Those bastards like Sherman, they didn’t care how many men died because they knew there were always more poor back where they had come from. And there were more coming in every day.
“It wasn’t the same for us. We couldn’t compete with that. But we knew it before Appomattox. And we started making plans.”
“Plans?” Pete asked without as much enthusiasm as his uncle might have expected. But Pete didn’t like plans. Plans had gotten him into all the trouble he’d ever known.
“Plans—with men like Andrew and William. They took men they knew they could trust, men who understood the way the world worked…and they starting doing the only thing they could.”
He paused, for drama’s sake, and Pete leaned forward.
“They started moving the gold.”
“Gold?”
“The treasury of the Confederacy. If the Union got it, every ounce would have been lost for good. The war was clearly going to end against us; but it didn’t have to break us too. We couldn’t let them take everything. We were going to need that money to rebuild—we would need it to start over. And we weren’t going to let them have it.”
Pete frowned. “So…so what did we do? Where did we put it?”
Rudy let go of the television and turned away towards the kitchen. “Here and there.”
“What, that’s all? Here and there?” Now Pete was getting pissed. What a stupid story, one without even an ending that was worth tacking on. “Nobody knows, do they?”
“Not exactly, but don’t be like that about it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. They sent it off, but they didn’t just drop it into a hole and shoot all the diggers. They made plans. They took precautions.” He pointed a stern finger at Pete’s chest. “And your ancestors were part of it.”
“Andrew and William knew where the money went?”
“Some of it, anyway. Davis didn’t just write out a check for the whole amount and hand it off to some flunky. They split it up. They broke it into big chunks, and sent it in different directions. Andrew was a bank man, and he kept the ledgers. He kept all the records of where the money was going to go and how it was going to get there. And I think that they put the Buford brothers in charge of the chunk of change that went out west. William had already spent time out there, and he could’ve made arrangements someplace. And Andrew was coming along behind him. I think, with the paperwork.”
“So what happened? Where did the gold go?”
“You’d have to ask Andrew. But you can’t, because he’s dead.”
Pete threw himself back against the couch and tossed his hands into the air. “Then what’s it all about? Why are you all wound up about it, if nobody knows and it don’t matter now?”
“Well it would matter.”
“How do you figure that? Those brothers have been dead for a hundred years now, and—”
“One hundred and forty, more like it. But if anyone knew where either of them finally fell down, it could mean a whole world and a ton of gold—that’s why it matters. William, we might never know. Rumor has it he ran off to Mexico after the war, but I don’t know if that’s true or if he died with the secret in his mouth.”
“And Andrew?”
“Andrew went down at Chickamauga.”
“You lie.”
“You know I don’t.” Rudy snapped his fingers. “And I can prove it. There’s a letter. I mean, there was a letter. Your mother had a photocopy of it. She found it in some archives and ended up donating it to the museum out there at the battlefield. But she copied it before she got rid of it.”
He shuffled off into his sister’s bedroom and opened drawers, closing them hard when he didn’t find what he wanted. A minute later he whooped a cheer and came triumphantly back to the living room, waving a folded sheet of paper that had once been white.
“Here it is, right here.” He held it under Pete’s nose and whipped it back up to his own face, peering hard at the narrow, crooked handwriting. “It’s hard to read.”
“Let me see it,” Pete asked, holding out his hand.
“No, I’ve got it. I’ve got the gist of it, anyway. It’s from some young private Andrew knew. He’s the one who wrote the family after Andrew died. It was the kind thing to do; soldiers who lived tried to do that much for the loved ones of those who died, and this fellow Bentley did that for us.”
“Bentley?”
“It’s a family name; don’t you mock it.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Now Bentley was there at the battlefield, and he was one of the lucky ones who made it home. This is what he said. He said, ‘Dear Mr. or Mrs. Buford, I am sorry to write you with news like this. I was out at the fields with your son on the nineteenth of September, and I am sorry to tell you that he was killed in the woods out behind the cabin at Dyer’s farm, and there he is buried with too many others.’ This next part is hard to make out, but it says something about him fighting bravely. Or maybe boldly—it’s tough to read. Anyway, he then goes on about how hard the war has been on everyone, and how many friends he’s lost, and how he counted Andrew among them.”
But Pete was confused. “He died fighting at a farm?”
“Well yes, boy. All those fields out there, those were farms back then. There was Dyer, and Snodgrass, and Poe, and a few other families too, I think. Some of those old homes still stand. The park preserved them.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
And then the wheels began turning. “And we know, pretty much, where Andrew’s buried?”
Rudy laughed. “Well, Son, there’s ‘pretty much’ and then there’s the battlefield—which is miles and miles square. Dyer’s farm is sitting between a big open field and some woods. I went out there a few times and looked around; I wasn’t looking to dig or anything, ’cause you can’t do that out there, and I don’t figure I’d know Andrew’s body if I found it. But maybe I’d know his father’s pocket watch, and maybe I’d know the ledger.”
“There was a ledger?”
“Yes, I told you—there was a ledger. And as far as I know, no one ever did find it. It’s not in the museum there, either. Some of the artifacts taken off the battlefield were put into that visitors’ center, but I went through that thing a dozen times and I never saw it. They might have some stuff downstairs in storage, but if they do, I don’t know how to get to it.”
“But you thought about it.”
Rudy nodded. “Yeah. I’ve thought about it. It’s hard not to.” He quit pacing altogether, then, and dropped himself onto the couch beside Pete. They both stared straight ahead without speaking for a few moments.
Pete broke the quiet first. “You said there was a pocket watch, too?”
“A family heirloom-type piece. Real silver, or that’s how I hear it—and it was engraved with Andrew’s father’s initials: C. L. B. It might be nice to see that watch, and it might even be worth some money. But that wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket compared with that ledger and the gold it ought to lead to.”
“How much do you think that gold would be worth now?”
Rudy shook his head, then leaned it back against the wall. “I couldn’t tell you. Millions, at least. If anyone knew where it was, or if anyone knew where Andrew’s ledger was.”
“And the ledger is probably with his body.”
“So far as anybody knows. As I said, it might be in the museum. A tour guide there told me they keep some things in storage, so they can switch out the exhibits every once in a while.”
“Huh.” Pete leaned his head back too, settling his skull against the thin wood paneling with a thump. “Isn’t that something?”
Rudy sat forward then, and slapped Pete on the leg. “Yeah, it’s something all right. But it’s nothing, too. And it’s tragic, on top of that. Because it doesn’t mean shit to us now. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
But that night Pete lay awake and stared at the ceiling.
He was not forming a plan. He hated plans. Besides, he didn’t have enough information to make a plan.
Not yet.
10
What Whispers
According to the news, police were canvassing the battlefield looking for the shooter, who had nearly killed a cameraman working with the Marshalls. We hadn’t been alone out there, but I was glad we hadn’t run into them.
Dave and Lu were home when I returned from the party. I thought about hiding yet another story from them, but then thought the better of it. I felt like the secrets were getting out of control, so I told them the truth. Luckily, they kept the freaking out to a minimum—though they both expressed some concern about my “habits” of late, bringing up my battered fender in a way that made me feel all the more guilty.
“But nothing happened,” I assured them. “There was no danger where we were. And to be on the safe side, after it happened we put out the fire and called it an early night.”
“Did you see anything?” Lu wanted to know.
I told her no, of course not. “It was dark. And we were a couple of blocks away at the party. None of us saw a thing.”
“You only heard the shots.”
“That’s right. Three of them, I think. But it was a long ways off from where we were. We weren’t even sure what the first one was, when we heard it. Where did they say the fun went down, over near the park entrance?”