Confederate Gold and Silver (44 page)

“Duke, I would have to agree with you on that.” As he listened to Duke, Paul realized CSA did not refer to anyone by the name of Charlie or any other name, but instead stood for Confederate States of America. As Duke spoke more about his property, Paul only heard parts of what he was saying. His mind was concentrating on the letters carved in the wooden cross. “That was a clue he left behind. It would have helped Francis find the gold and silver he buried there only he never made it back. But I bet he had those initials carved in the cross in the event he could not make it back there. It was meant to help him, but it was also a clue he was leaving for someone else as well. Pretty ingenious of him to plan ahead like that.”

Back from his thoughts about the cross, Paul caught the last few words Duke said in describing his property. “Duke, I’d like to come up with a couple of my friends and look at your place. Is tomorrow too soon?”

“Tomorrow sounds fine to me. I’ll be around most of the day.”

“Duke, just out of curiosity, does anyone else know about this site?”

“Just a few folks, mostly my kin and some of my employees, that’s about all.”

Paul was pleased to hear Duke had not called any reporters to tell them what was displayed in one of his fields. “Duke, I look forward to meeting you tomorrow.”

“Likewise. Tell you what, better make it tomorrow afternoon. I just remembered I have some business out of town early in the morning, but any time after 1 pm is fine with me, I’ll be here. You know, thinking about what you asked me a minute ago, I’d have to say outside of my family and perhaps a couple of my friends who have seen the grave site when we hunt back there, and maybe a couple of my hired hands, no one else knows about it. Not sure why anyone else would be interested in it to tell you the truth.”

“Sounds good! Duke, I appreciate the call and I look forward to meeting you tomorrow afternoon some time. Before I let you go, I guess I’d better get some directions from you.”

After jotting down the directions Duke gave him, Paul again thanked him for calling. The phone call barely had time to disconnect when he was punching the numbers on his phone’s keypad. Excitedly he made a phone call to Chick.

“Hey, Paul, any news yet?”

Still too excited from talking to Duke, he did not even bother with any small talk. He just got straight to the point after Chick answered the phone. “Chick, get in touch with Jayne and your film guy, what’s his name? Oh, yeah, Pete. Tell them I just spoke with a farmer in North Carolina. He has the spot we are looking for!”

Paul’s news caught Chick by surprise and he sought to make some sense out of it. “What makes you so sure we are not heading out on a wild goose chase?”

“Chick, he owns a large hog farm which sits on property his family has owned since before the war. Guess what his granddaddy found on the property years ago and guess what this farmer still has hanging in one of his barns?”

“Don’t tell me a wooden cross.” Paul could tell he now had Chick’s attention.

“A wooden cross! Want to guess what is carved into it?”

“I don’t know, perhaps ‘Dig here and find gold’?”

“Funny, Chick, real funny, but it’s even a shorter clue than that. Carved into the cross are the letters CSA. What do those letters mean to you?”

The silence was brief as Chick quickly made the connection between the letters and what they stood for. Now excited, he loudly answered Paul’s question. “Confederate States of America! That’s a clue someone left behind. It’s just that I bet, it’s a clue!” Chick was almost screaming into the phone by now.

“I’m going to North Carolina tomorrow to meet this farmer. I’m leaving at eight in the morning.” Then adding a tease to the conversation, Paul asked Chick a question similar to the one he had asked of Bobby Ray after the Press Conference in Wilmington. It was a question he already knew the answer to. “You thinking of tagging along?”

“Damn straight I’m coming along. So is Jayne and Pete, they just don’t know it yet. I’ll get in touch with them. We will meet you at the Dunkin’ Donuts up on Highway 17, the one in Garden City. I’ll make sure we are all there by eight. I’ll need a cup of coffee for the ride. You can fill me in with the rest of the details then, OK? You bringing Bobby Ray along?”

“I imagine I will. We will need at least two vehicles, perhaps three with all of our gear. Bring your van if you can. Better make sure everyone packs for a couple of days, maybe three. I’ll see you at DD in the morning!”

Before he called Bobby Ray, Paul walked into the kitchen and grabbed another beer to replace the one he had spilled in the garage. As he closed the refrigerator door, Donna walked into the kitchen after just getting out of the shower. As she continued to dry her hair with a large blue towel, she asked him if any of the phone messages had been important ones. Trying to suppress his excitement, he did his best to nonchalantly answer her question as he opened the can of beer. “Just a few from some writers who needed a couple of points cleared up for articles they are writing. Oh, and one was from some hog farmer in North Carolina who basically told me the missing Confederate gold and silver is buried on his property.”

Standing there with only a towel wrapped around her, Donna shrieked at the news he had given her. When she did she also jumped into the air due to the excitement of the moment. Landing on the kitchen floor caused her towel to fall to the floor, but she did not care as she knew Paul had gotten the phone call he had been waiting for. “Nice butt!” Paul smirked at the picture of her standing there naked in the kitchen. Bending down, he picked both towels up off the kitchen floor. He was happy to see her as excited as he was. Grabbing a roll of paper towels off the kitchen counter, he headed back out to the garage to clean up the mess he had made. He also had to call Bobby Ray.

After speaking with Bobby Ray on the phone, Paul could tell his friend had tried to suppress his excitement upon hearing the good news regarding Duke’s call. “He’s too much of a Civil War nut not to be excited about this. He may not have sounded too excited, but I bet he’s already stuffing clothes into an overnight bag.” He sensed his friend was looking forward to seeing what they could find in North Carolina. Before hanging up the phone, they made arrangements for Paul to pick him up at his house at seven-thirty the following morning.

******

The following morning after meeting at Dunkin’ Donuts, and with Paul leading the way, they started the drive up to Duke Johnson’s farm on a beautiful summer morning. Along the way Paul and Bobby Ray talked about what they expected to find buried on the property. As they often did when they got together, they also spent time arguing with each other over the strategy the Confederacy had employed at Gettysburg. It was arguing that had lasted for years. After driving for almost two hours, Paul pulled off of Highway 17 before driving the short distance through Wilmington to I-40. Pulling into the parking lot of a Kangaroo Express Mini-Mart, he parked his truck near the right side of the building. The brief stop was going to fill two immediate needs for them as Bobby Ray needed to use the bathroom and they both were ready for their second cup of coffee. Getting out of his truck to stretch, Paul could see Jayne was sleeping in the reclined right front seat of Chick’s van. She had a navy blue blanket wrapped around her. Pete was parked nearby in his Jeep and was pounding away on his steering wheel as listened to some type of music playing on his Apple iPod. Paul laughed at the picture of him pounding away on the steering wheel. The dark red tinted sunglasses Pete was wearing only added to Paul’s amusement as he watched him keep up with the beat of the music.

Shortly after they had gotten back onto the highway, with his second cup of coffee only halfway gone, Bobby Ray was fast asleep. It always amazed Paul how fast Bobby Ray could fall asleep and that he could do so almost anywhere. Now he was fast asleep, his head leaning against the passenger window as his friend drove north towards Maple Hill.

The rest of the ride took only took another hour and fifteen minutes to complete. Paul spent the hour Bobby Ray was asleep rehearsing what he was going to tell Duke when they met. He knew he had to be upfront and honest with him from the beginning as he could not violate the trust Duke had shown by calling him. Misleading him could have tragic consequences for trying to find the Confederate treasury.

Arriving too early to meet with Duke, they stopped in town first as Paul wanted to get a sense of what Maple Hill was like. While in town they grabbed an early lunch at a small barbeque restaurant on North Carolina State Route 53 before driving to Duke’s farm.

After eating lunch they drove the short distance down S.R. 53 to Duke’s hog farm. As they pulled into the entrance of the farm, Paul and Bobby Ray could not help but laugh at the large sign hanging on one of Duke’s barns. The large colorful sign greeted visitors to the hog farm. The animated sign, which had a smiling red pig’s face on it, read
‘Our
pork
products
will
make
you
squeal
for
more!’
. Bobby Ray, a good old boy himself, could not help but laugh uncontrollably when he first saw it. “I wonder who the brain behind the sign was. I like it though; it’s a simple country kind of sign.”

Duke Johnson was just getting out of his Ford Expedition when Paul’s caravan; comprised of Chick’s Dodge minivan, Pete’s Jeep, and Paul’s Chevy truck, pulled into the farm’s parking area outside of Duke’s office. As they got out of their vehicles, the smell of the hog farm was overwhelming. Jayne was taken back by it immediately. She softly murmured her displeasure at what she smelled to Chick. “Oh, my goodness! This is horrible! How could you stand this smell all day?”

Chick, an educated country boy, but one who had been raised on a dairy farm in western South Carolina, just looked at her. “What smell?”

The loud voice boomed from across the other side of the large parking lot. “Looks like you brought the whole dang team with you!”

As they walked across the parking lot towards each other, it was Paul who spoke first. “Duke, I’m Paul Waring, thanks for calling me and for agreeing to meet with us. We are excited about the possibility of finding such an important historical location right here on your farm.” He then introduced Duke to the others. As they exchanged some small talk with each other, he advised Duke they were planning on making a documentary film on the discovery he had made. He also told Duke they hoped to make a connection between the remains of the soldier he had found to the remains they hoped to find in the grave on his property. “We would like to include your farm and the grave site on our video if we can make the proper connections between all of these remains.” Duke initially expressed his reluctance to allow the grave site to be disturbed, but soon convinced by Paul’s promise to treat the grave with respect and dignity he gave his consent for them to proceed with their plans. “Duke, even from our brief conversations, I can sense how important this site is to you and your family. We promise to treat it with the respect it deserves. Nothing is going to be desecrated, I won’t let that happen.”

Even with what had just been said, Paul could tell some concerns still existed in Duke’s mind about allowing the site to be disturbed. “Duke, if we find any remains in the grave, and we expect to based on the clues I have in my possession, I promise you we will work with your local historical society, with the North Carolina Historical Society, with you, and with whomever else we have to, to find a proper resting place for these soldiers. We believe, as I am sure you likely do as well, these brave soldiers deserve a proper resting spot and a fitting ceremony to honor them for their service to the Confederacy. We would like you to be a part of this with us.” Duke simply nodded his head at what Paul had just said to him.

As Pete, with Bobby Ray and Jayne’s help, unloaded some of his video equipment from his Jeep, Paul and Chick spoke with Duke about the history of the Johnson farm. As they talked, they learned more about Duke’s father and granddaddy, and about the original wooden cross which had marked the grave site. As they stood talking in the parking lot, Pete started to film the small talk which started their relationship with Duke. Jayne also documented this first meeting by taking digital pictures with her Nikon camera.

“You folks are serious about this, ain’t you? Taking these here pictures and videotape and all.”

“Duke, we just want to put together a storyline for our documentary and part of the story is meeting you for the first time. We thought we would start by taking some shots of us just talking and getting to know each other.”

“Sounds like a plan. How do y’all want to start from here?”

“Can we start by seeing the wooden cross you told us about?”

Duke led the way to one of his large red painted wooden barns. It housed a great deal of the equipment needed to run his large hog farm. In the barn were tractors, backhoes, bags of feed and grain, and other similar supplies, as well as a small office Duke used when he needed to get away from the business end of the operation during the day. As they entered the barn through two large sliding doors, Paul noticed Duke had already taken the wooden cross off the wall. It was lying on top of a sheet of plywood which sat on the concrete floor of the barn. “I kinda figured you folks would want to see this so I got it ready for y’all to look at.”

As Pete and Jayne documented what they were looking at with videotape and photos, Paul and Chick knelt down to examine the cross and its carved letters up close. After examining it for a few minutes and after running his fingers over each of the letters roughly carved into the wood so many years ago, Paul looked up at Duke. “This is a very special piece of American history, very special. I am honored to have the chance to see it. Do you have any idea what kind of wood this is?”

“Its hand cut rough hewn pine which was probably harvested from pine trees grown in Virginia or North Carolina. I imagine the wood was likely cut at a family run sawmill. My family has suspected for years the wood may have originally been part of a wagon of some kind as you can see some holes where bolts were in place at one point.” After they spent close to an hour looking at the cross, Paul asked Duke to take them to where it had once stood. Bobby Ray had just finished a rough drawing of the cross and with Chick’s help they added several measurements to it