Confederate Gold and Silver (15 page)

Now turning his attention to the uniform blouse, Paul saw it was in relatively good shape except for three small holes in the left shoulder area. Over the years it had become stained from insect droppings and covered to some extent with bits of tree bark and dead insects. Looking at the small holes gave him the impression they likely had been caused by insects eating away at the cloth. As he picked the blouse up off the ground, besides seeing that it was also covered with almost one hundred and fifty years of windblown dust, he sensed it weighed far more than what it should. He quickly realized the blouse was about to reveal items which had been hidden within it since the day the soldier had climbed up into the tree. Reaching into the partially torn left exterior pocket, one still fastened shut by a button, Paul found three ten dollar gold coins, each of them minted in 1861. He could not believe what he had found. The coins were in excellent condition, but obviously dirty from their time being hidden in the blouse. Carefully he placed the coins in the left front pocket of the beige cargo shorts he was wearing. “What else could be hidden in the other pockets I wonder? More coins perhaps?” Checking the right front exterior pocket he found nothing.

Reaching into the left interior pocket of the blouse, Paul removed a dirt-stained brownish colored liquor bottle. Briefly examining the bottle gave him the thought it looked to be one that had once held about a pint of liquid. Remarkably the flask style bottle still had the cork in its neck. He gave the bottle a shake and heard something inside of it, but made no attempt to open it. Carefully he placed the bottle on top of the pants lying on the ground by his feet. Resuming his search of the blouse pockets, he found another bottle inside the right interior pocket. This bottle was slightly larger than the first one. While stained and faded from time, it appeared to have been bluish green in its original color. Looking at the bottle, he saw it had some type of cloth stuck into its fairly wide neck, apparently replacing the original cork that had likely been lost. As he had with the first bottle, Paul also detected something was inside the second bottle when he shook it, but like the first one he made no attempt to look inside it.

Next Paul picked up what appeared to be the remnants of the soldier’s hat, but it was in such bad condition that he was not even sure it was a hat he was looking at. “I want to say it looks like a kepi hat. I know Confederate officers wore them during the war, but it’s in terrible shape, I’m really not even sure if this is a hat or not.” He placed the hat on the ground and then picked up the pants again. As he looked at the pants, Paul saw there was no belt that went with the pants. “Had some of the rope been used as a belt I wonder?”

The object he immediately took an interest in was the soldier’s saber that now lay on the ground near the base of the tree. As he picked the saber up, he saw it had remained in very good condition. Paul’s first impression, due to the size of the saber, was it appeared to be the type a cavalry officer would have used during the war. “When I first knelt down I did not see this saber, I only saw the bayonet. So where did the saber come from? Was it hanging inside the tree or was it stuck inside the soldier’s pants?” Then he realized the saber did not have a scabbard with it. He again felt a chill go down his neck. “If this saber had been hanging somehow inside this tree it could have fallen at anytime and gone through the back of my neck when I was kneeling inside of the tree. Then what would I have done?” That scary thought stayed with him for several minutes as he counted his blessings over his continued good fortune. As he counted his good fortune, he wondered if the saber had been the object which had hit him on the back of the head when the bones and clothing had fallen on him. He quickly realized how close he had come to possibly suffering a serious injury.

Paul sat back down on the ground to go over what he had discovered. As he did, he again briefly wondered if he should call the authorities to report what he had found. Pushing his thought aside, he realized this had been a chance discovery which many people, including himself, would never have believed was possible. His thoughts then turned back to the soldier whose skull and bones were now lying on the ground around him. “Who was this soldier and why did he hide inside this tree? I wonder what unit he was with and what he was doing out here in what looks to be the middle of nowhere?” As he pondered his many thoughts, he realized he had found a bayonet and a saber, but had not found any type of firearm or any parts of one. “Could it still be inside the tree or did he discard it before he took refuge within the tree?” As he sat there pondering his many questions, his eyes focused on what he thought was one of the soldier’s femur bones, the bone he had pulled out of one of the pant legs minutes earlier.

Picking up the long bone, he casually inspected its two ends. As his hands cradled the bone, he felt a smooth object stuck in the middle of it. Turning the bone over to look at what his hands had first detected, Paul could see a small round object had penetrated the bone and had become lodged in it. Around the object he saw several small radial fractures in the bone, each approximately one inch in length. As he looked closer, he could only see the top of the object as the majority of it was embedded deep within the bone. His first thought was to try and pry the object out of the bone, but then his law enforcement training kicked in and he resisted the urge to do so. “If this really is a Confederate soldier, could this object be a minie ball he had been shot with so many years ago? Was the reason he was resting, or possibly hiding inside the tree, was because he had been shot?” The totality of his discovery continued to raise more questions than he could logically deal with in one afternoon.

The loud exhaust sound made by a large boat moving quickly nearby on the river snapped Paul back into a clearer mindset from the thoughts he had been having regarding the dead soldier. Now he realized he had to make a decision on what to do with what he had found. “Should I just keep a few of these items for myself and then put the rest of them back inside the tree?” It was a question he immediately felt guilty about asking himself. Just as quickly as he had asked himself the question, he was kicking himself for even thinking along those lines. He knew that was not what he was going to do with the items he had found. Believing for some unknown reason he had been selected to find these remains, Paul knew he had to do the right thing. That meant telling someone about what he had found. But he also knew he was now curious about what he had found. The thought of uncovering something special from the past tickled his still keen investigative instincts. He just needed time, and some of the clues he had found, to help him find the answers to the thoughts he was now just starting to put together.

Picking up the skull and the bones, he placed them all, except the bone with the apparent minie ball still stuck in it, back inside the base of the tree. Along with those items, he also placed a piece of the rotted rope, the decayed hat, and the apparent sole of a boot. Paul then covered them with leaves to make it look like he had never been there.

Paul decided he would return the following morning with a flashlight to investigate the inside of the tree even further. He was sure the tree had not yet given up all of her secrets. After that he would decide who to call to report what he had found. As a Civil War buff, he wanted to make sure this soldier finally received a proper burial; leaving the soldier’s remains within a hollow tree was totally unacceptable. He did not yet know who he would call, but he knew he would make sure this soldier was properly laid to rest.

As he gathered up the bayonet, the sword, the femur bone, and the soldier’s other belongings, including the two bottles he had found within the blouse, Paul started to make his way back to his boat. As he did, he looked over his shoulders several times to make sure no one had been watching him. He could sense that his heart was beating almost as fast as his brain was racing. Both were trying to process what he had stumbled across. “What the hell have I found?” It was a question he repeated to himself several times during the afternoon.

As he walked to where he had tied the boat up, he found himself repeatedly checking his pocket to make sure he had not dropped any of the gold coins he had found. Climbing back onto the boat, Paul had the fear someone at the marina might see what he had found. As he tried to figure out how to hide the items he had found, he spied his new Igloo cooler. After draining the ice and water from his cooler, he placed the items inside the cooler to keep them from being seen. Not wanting any moisture to further damage the blouse he found, he took the time to wrap it inside the plastic bag he received when he purchased his drinks at a nearby Kangaroo Express Mini-Mart that morning. He did his best to hide the saber from view by wrapping it in the beach towel he had brought with him. Satisfied he had done his best to hide everything from view, and now perspiring heavily under the hot summer sun, he grabbed a cold bottle of water and sat down under the boat’s canopy, relaxing for the first time in a couple of hours.

“Hey, boy, whatcha all doin’ over there?”

The gruff voice startled him as he sat relaxing on the boat, his eyes closed as he drank the cold bottle of water. Quickly sitting up, Paul saw the small green and brown camouflaged colored
War
Eagle
fishing boat first; then his eyes focused on the male operator. The operator was standing up as he steered the small fishing boat closer to his. He could see no one else was in the small boat. In his haste to hide what he had found, Paul had not taken the time to see if any other boats had been present and now one was. He quickly became upset with himself for not taking the time to look. As the boat got closer, he recognized the operator to be the same guy who had been with Chubby at the diner, the one who had glared at him. “Great, just what I need. Some pain in the butt poking around seeing what I am up to. I need to get rid of this guy quick.”

“What’s that?” Paul yelled back at Swamp. It was the name Betty had referred to him as.

As the small boat drifted closer to his, Paul saw Swamp had been trolling along the shore with two fishing lines running off the back of his boat. He had been using his electric MotorGuide motor as he fished and not the Yamaha 50 horsepower motor which was mounted on the back of the boat. The electric motor allowed Swamp to troll without scaring the fish. It had also allowed him to approach Paul’s boat without being heard. Swamp then hollered to him again, asking him if he was having problems with his boat.

“Nope, no problems with either the boat or the motor, it’s running just fine.”

As Swamp’s boat drifted closer to his, Paul saw Swamp was sizing him up. “Well, y’all ain’t hunting then in there is you? That’s illegal you know.”

“Nope, I’m not hunting or fishing. I’m just relaxing on the boat, enjoying a bottle of water and having something to eat. That’s not a problem for you, or is it?” The last part of Paul’s response was meant to be as sarcastic as it sounded. Now he turned away, hoping Swamp would get the message that he did not care if the conversation went on any longer. Paul also could not help but think Swamp was someone who really did not care what the laws were when it came to hunting and fishing. Silently he thought, “Like you’ve never broken the law regarding fishing or hunting too early, or too late in the season, you fat bastard.”

“Well, alright then.”

Swamp slowly began to move his boat back down the river and away from where Paul’s boat was still tied up. As he did, Paul chuckled at the thought he just had regarding Swamp’s likely disregard for hunting and fishing laws as on the right rear of Swamp’s boat he now saw a South Carolina DNR sticker displayed. The
‘Stop
Game
and
Fish
Violators
—
Call
Operation
Game
Thief’
sticker was a nice touch he thought, but by the looks of him Paul’s impression was he likely fit the mold of being one of the area’s bigger violators rather than that of an enforcer of the South Carolina hunting and fishing laws. As he watched Swamp move away down river, Paul’s law enforcement training kicked in again. “Call it profiling or call it whatever, but that guy is bad news.” He now knew Betty had been right when she referred to Swamp
‘as
a
pain
in
the
ass.’
He had been all of that for sure.

After waiting a few minutes to make sure Swamp had left the area, Paul untied the boat and headed back to the marina. As he did, he started to put a game plan together for the following day when he planned on returning back to where he had found the soldier. “First thing is to head home so I can look over the items I have in the cooler; then I need to head over to Wal-Mart and get a good flashlight, or maybe even a portable spotlight, so I can have something to look up into the tree with tomorrow.” He still had the feeling the tree might be hiding other items inside of it and wanted to make sure he left nothing behind. Paul then wondered if he had missed any other items which might have been hidden under the layers of leaves that had accumulated in the tree and on the ground. As he steered the boat towards the boat launch, he had another thought about what he needed to bring with him the following morning. “Perhaps I also need to bring a metal detector with me.”

******

On a blanket that covered the top of a small folding table in his garage, Paul had laid out the items he had found. Deep in thought as he sat by the table examining the gold coins, he was startled by the noise that came from his Stanley garage door opener. The garage door opening signaled Donna’s arrival home. Looking up at the battery operated clock on his garage wall, he realized he had simply lost track of time as he looked over the femur bone and the other items. “This is the second time today I have been spooked. I hate when that happens.” As Donna got out of her car, he quickly covered the items on the table with two beach towels which had been drying on a rack in the garage.