Buried Treasure

In my mind, I’ve been writing a new novel, but very slowly.  I haven’t published a novel for years.  Considering the slowness with which I am writing this new novel, it won’t be published for years, either.  My working title is The Pirate Book. 

The protagonist of The Pirate Book is a present-day archivist who works at a 200-year-old seminary in Connecticut.  The novel is structured as a story-within-a-story.  Much of the action occurs among pirates in the late 17^th century.  The story is kicked into action when the archivist finds an uncatalogued document hidden inside the binding of an antique, family memoir.  The family memoir is an item in the seminary’s archives.  It recounts the history of a clan of 18^th and 19^th century missionaries, some of whom were graduates of the seminary.  The hidden document is electrifying because it casts a different light—and not a welcome light—on the clan’s history.  It fundamentally re-characterizes the clan’s founding father. 

As I said, I have not published a novel for years.  On the other hand, a new book of mine—which is a memoir—is about to be published this year, in June.  In this new book of mine, I look backward, first to recount what happened during the first sixty years of my life, and then to put what happened into a context by which to understand my life’s remaining years.  So my new book is about me and how I got that way.

It does not surprise me that I began writing the memoir at approximately the same time as I set down the first sentences of The Pirate Book.  Though it is fiction, The Pirate Book is powered by the same urgencies which underlie my memoir. 

My slowness at writing The Pirate Book is due to the fact that, as I wrote during recent years, I needed to choose between a fictional voice and my personal voice.  My memoir is written in my personal voice.  That was the voice I wanted to use. Of course, the novel requires another voice than mine, the voice of the contemporary archivist, while it also toys with the 17^th century voices of several of its principle characters. 

Some pirates buried their treasure.  One reason they sustain our interest, now, three hundred fifty years after their heyday, is that very treasure.  It’s out there, even now.  What beachcomber wandering across Caribbean sand has not imagined the finding of a doubloon, where it glints in the sun, exposed after all these years by the wearing away of the wind on the sand?   In another iteration of the same wonder, what archivist has not imagined the corner of a lost letter appearing from behind the illustrated plate in an old book, rarely taken from the shelf?  And then here is the novelist’s imagination—what would the letter say?  Why had it been saved, by hiding it away?  Who had hidden it?  It must have been precious, but was it alarming as well?  How might it affect its discoverer, the archivist—now, reading it in our latter days?  An archivist is a person who likes to read other people’s mail…but only at a comfortable distance in time. 

I said my memoir is about me and how I got that way.  One of the ways that I got to, and a way that I explore in my memoir, is the way of a Bible-believing, evangelical Christian.  Looking backwards in my memoir, I am studying the family line which led to me. 

My memoir characterizes my father, who was a poet of lyric fire when it came to nature, God, mankind, death, and beauty.  Dad is one generation back.  Dad was one of three children in a Minnesota family whose father was a successful businessman in the meat packing industry at the beginning of the 20^th century.  That man, my grandfather, was two generations back.  The third generation back was my great grandfather, who was a circuit-riding Methodist minister on the Great Plains during the late years of the 19^th century.    

As a Bible-believing, evangelical Christian writing about my family line, among other themes, I desired to trace my family’s theological roots and its profession of Christian belief.    

I know my father’s theological roots—one generation back—both from his talks with me and from his poetry.  I know about my great-grandfather’s theological roots—three generations back—partly by inference based on his profession, partly by my father’s stories about him. 

But what about my grandfather—two generations back?  His name was A.L. Eberhart.   

One responsibility I have to the publisher of my memoir is to supply it with photographs, so, rather like an archivist, recently I have pulled storage canisters from my barn in which my wife and I have placed family pictures away, always with the thought that—soon enough—we should get to the task of arranging them properly.  Alas, if I really were my fictional archivist character, instead of just me, I should already have arranged the pictures properly—catalogued them, ordered them, preserved them, and made them available at a moment’s notice.

In one of the canisters, I came across a familiar item.  I was familiar with this three-fold, leather, wallet-like holder of three lovely antique photographs.  The wallet is about four inches wide and six inches tall.  When opened out flat, the three photographs are displayed, each of them mounted on heavy cream-colored stock as was done in the early 20^th century. 

I have always liked the three photographs stored inside, which are skillfully done.  On the right panel is a photograph of my father’s brother at about age two.  On the left panel is a photograph of my father, also at about age two (though he is two years younger than his older brother).  The middle panel has the largest of the photographs.  This is a profile picture of my father’s mother, my grandmother, who is revealed as a beautiful woman of about thirty.  It was in memory of her that my wife and I gave her name to our oldest daughter—Lena.    

After I had admired the photographs one more time, I was about to put the wallet aside when I felt something odd.  The panel which displayed my uncle’s photograph was slightly thicker than the other two panels.  Something was stuck behind the picture of my uncle.  I prodded a bit, and out slid an envelope with a folded piece of paper inside. 

Eerily amazed to be in precisely the same circumstance as my fictional archivist, I examined the address on the envelope.  I recognized the handwriting.  It is the handwriting of my father’s father, of my grandfather, whose handwriting I had often seen in other documents.  The letter was sent from Austin, Minnesota, to my grandfather’s mother, who was at that time staying at Rosslyn Hotel in Los Angeles, on April 7, 1906…postmarked at 4:30 pm.  On the back of the envelope, a note is written in ink, also in my grandfather’s hand.  The note says, “For Clara, September 13, 1929, A.L. Eberhart.” 

Not knowing that the financial world would be rocked sixteen days later, I surmise my grandfather was just filled with love and with commitment when he gave his 1906 letter to Clara.  Clara was the woman A.L. loved after he recovered from the sad death of his wife Lena in 1921.  I do not know how A.L. came to re-possess the letter he had sent to his mother in 1906, twenty-three years after he sent it, but he must have perceived the letter as precious, and perhaps Clara did so as well.  Years ago, important family documents were tucked for safe keeping in the family Bible. This important family document was similarly tucked away—inside the icon of A.L.’s wife and his first two children. 

A.L. must have considered it precious, else why should he have tucked it so carefully away, to be preserved until it was found, by chance, by me, his memoir-writing Christian grandson, in 2015, eighty-six years later?  

With tender fingers, I extracted the letter.  It is written in pencil on heavy, cream-colored stock, seven inches by twelve inches, folded in half and then folded in four, in order to allow it to fit into the small envelope.  Here is what my grandfather wrote, when my father was two years old, and here is what he later gave to Clara, when my father was twenty-five.   

 

Austin Minn.

April 15 – 1906

Dear Father & Mother:

This is Easter Sunday and this letter will relieve my conscience of one of its heaviest loads and I trust be the means of bringing much joy and happiness to you both.  Ever since I backslid after my conversion in Chicago, I have feared that the death of one or both of you would deprive you of the joy of knowing before death that I again decided to serve Almighty God.

At a men’s meeting this afternoon Mr. Hormel and I went forward and publicly declared thereby to live a Christian life to the best of our ability in a meeting of [illegible] Sunday.  There were 3000 men there and a number followed our example.  I have attended almost every meeting for the past four weeks and have heard more sermons in that time than for the last fifteen years.  It was either 1889 or 1890 that I was converted and since the termination of my short religious life of about a year I have never opened a bible or offered a prayer but on account of the early training you gave me, eternally branding on my conscience the difference between right and wrong and because of the simple, fearless presentation of God’s messages to man by Billy Sunday the Evangelist I will read from the bible tonight and pray to God to take me as I am.  You have waited long and patiently for me but now our family is a unit.  I am going to begin at the bottom just as I did in business.  I have been successful in business so I want you to give me some verses of scripture to read that will help me.

Lena has asked me to go forward with her and she is going tomorrow.  Don’t expect too much of me at once for I have a big battle on for a while I am sure, but I have health and an iron will and will try and hold fast this time.  Where is that verse “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ?”  You have always prayed for me to keep on don’t quit I need them now.  With love from your son

Alpha

The children are well—

 

Praise the Lord for this most excellent of buried treasures!

 

 

Copyright Dikkon Eberhart, 2015