by Frank Felton
I had my foot in the door, at least for the moment.
13. Hank’s Secret
It should come as no surprise that the history of the Masons began in King Solomon’s Temple, the son of King David. Generals Washington and Houston, both, in their respective victories, were Master Masons. It was this band of brothers which held the secret to the Jewel of Hiram. It is why I found myself pursuing the Craft, way out here in Milam County, to return the Jewel to its true and rightful owner.
Nonetheless, at this stage of his life, Hank Benson knew little of his own storied past. He knew even less of Masonic history, and I questioned whether he even knew how to behave in public. He was country, a man who rarely ventured into the city. He didn’t need to. Everything he needed or wanted was right here in Milam County, but just as the crushing weight of the Earth compresses pure carbon to form a diamond, so too was the life of Hank Benson being fashioned into something much more potent.
His base of operations, his livelihood, his passion, and his only real ambition in life, all resided right here in this fertile blackland soil, nestled against the San Gabriel River and under the canopy of pecan groves. He was born H. K. Benson in 1927, but from day one they called him Hank. He wouldn’t learn what the H.K. stood for until many years later.
He hit the ground right outside of Rockdale, Texas, and came of age in the midst of the Great Depression. As a boy, he worked the fields for his grandfather, tending the cattle, and farmland back before machinery made the task less labor-intensive. His father worked in Galveston, visiting home only on the weekends. His mother died young, likely from pneumonia, although no one knew for certain. Shortly thereafter his father died in Galveston under strange circumstances, but it’s likely he was murdered.
Young Hank then fell under his own grandfather Aiden Benson’s demanding tutelage. Aiden was known around the area as Old Man Benson, 80 years old when Hank was born, but just as spry as he was in his 60s. Aiden Benson had many children, the last of which was conceived when he was in his mid 40s.
During the Depression, Aiden employed his numerous full-grown children and his daughters’ husbands as well. He provided the modern equivalent of a welfare system several years ahead of FDR’s New Deal. As Hank would say, most of those aunts and uncles didn’t have the good sense to pour piss out of a boot. It was an expression of which he was quite fond.
As a teenager, Hank notoriously outworked his lazy uncles and most of the farmhands, earning nothing extra aside from their spitefulness while laboring through the hot Texas summers. The lazy kinfolk seemed to be primarily interested in passing the time, living off Old Man Benson’s goodwill and stockpile of land and cattle. They had no ambition of their own. Hank never relented, nor believed in wasting a minute of time taking handouts. If he was out there, he was earning his keep.
Once, Hank had been assigned a day’s labor with two of his uncles to split firewood out of a pecan tree. It fell during a spring thunderstorm. The two uncles spent half the day goofing off, skipping rocks, and just being slothful in general. Hank endured the majority of the toiling. About noon, the trio broke for lunch. Soon enough, Aiden came driving up the road in his Model-A Roadster. The two uncles, while lethargic, were keen enough to sense trouble brewing. Not wanting to be caught slacking off, they immediately jumped up and furiously went back to work, leaving their sandwiches behind.
Aiden walked up to Hank, who continued to sit on an old pecan stump, eating his sandwich. He was exhausted, having picked up half a day’s worth of slack. Today, he was in no mood to be trifled with. It would be the first time in Hank’s life in which he would stand up to his grandfather, and tell him to stick it where the sun does not shine.
As the old man approached, he stopped for a second, observing the situation. He observed as the two uncles worked feverishly, feigning approval. Hank quietly ate his sandwich, staring at the ground. The old man chewed on a stalk of Johnson grass, one hand in the front breast pocket of his overalls. He then turned back to Hank, whose shirt was entirely soaked through with sweat. Two half-eaten sandwiches lie where the two uncles had been loafing minutes before.
“What say, boy. Why ain’t you workin’?”
“It’s lunch time.”
“How ‘bout them other two? Look like they workin’.”
“I don’t know. I guess they’re done eating.”
“Must not been too hungry. I see them sammiches layin’ there.”
“I guess not.”
The old man grabbed three fingers of chewing tobacco from a pouch, and put it in his mouth. Once it had nestled to his lips, he stood for a moment, chewing the syrupy leaves. He turned, and with a flicker of his head, unleashed a spittle of brownish juice, taking out a grasshopper.
“Well then, how much longer you gonna sit there?”
Hank sighed. His emotions bristled. His grandpa had a coy smile as he chewed on his tobacco. The old man knew what was going on, but the subtlety flew right over Hank’s head; he was already in a defensive posture. The old man knew long before today his sons-in-law were a couple of worthless hands, but he thoroughly enjoyed pestering Hank. Toughened him up a bit. Such was the manner in which young Hank came up.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been at this all morning. It’s lunch time. I’m not going back to work just ‘cause you fuckin’ drive up.”
The old man let out a mighty “Hmmph”, a bit perturbed at hearing young Hank use the F-word for the first time. This was a seminal moment in a young man’s life. While the F-word was not out of bounds for mature adults, most children in this era knew that using it was grounds for a whipping. Kids might use it around each other, but never in front of an adult.
The old man, in his wisdom, realized the boy was not the one at fault here, but he was the only one of the three who was worth the time to discipline. Instead of a whipping, Hank got a verbal admonishment. Besides, Aiden was far too old by now to administer a whipping, and Hank was, as they say in the business, built like a brick shit-house.
“You watch that goddamn cussin’ boy.”
The old man was proud that he had been stood up to; he just needed something to complain about sometimes. At his age, and with his fortune, it didn’t happen too often. He turned his attention towards the two sons-in-law. The duo feverishly swung their axes; glancing back to make sure someone was watching them work.
They weren’t even worth Aiden’s bother to complain. It made him wish he could go back and slap sense into his daughters. It wouldn’t have mattered. They simply didn’t inherit the good sense of their momma, though sometimes he wondered if they could have raised them better. It was all water under the bridge now, regardless. He nodded his head, spit, and wiped the sweat from his brow. He gave a long sigh, as if to ask advice from his grandson on how to deal with his two indolent son-in-laws.
“Well, you grandmamma and Miss Maria are makin’ tamales tonight. Break off ‘bout six and come on to the house.”
“Yes, sir.”
And that was as much of an appreciation as Hank ever got from his grandfather; at least until the day the old man passed away.
14. The new Job
Hank offered me the job. I became so enthralled with his personal story I can’t recall if we even talked about what the job was. I assumed I’d be a crew supervisor, which is what I had been doing, but he had something else in mind.
He recruited me into his budding business with a 20 percent pay raise and my own truck. When I inquired about the 50 percent he promised, he stated that if I lasted three months, I’d get the full 50 percent. In Hank’s mind, that wasn’t a renege, it was a shrewd maneuver. I’d just have to get used to it.
Even with Hank taking me under his wing, I’d still have to deal with the obligatory gossip and condescension of being the new guy. Small town folk just can’t comprehend why a city boy from Austin would move out here. Normally the migration is the other direction. It took Elmo three weeks before he actually acknowledged my existence.
Thorndale was
at least 45 miles from the bright lights of Austin. In those days it was at least a two hour drive. Hank found me a house even further out in the country, seven miles north of town on the old Schramm place and a few miles from his property. It was peaceful. The twinkling of the stars seemed 10 times brighter. I could sleep at night and hear nothing but the occasional howl of coyotes, or the hooting of owls. Hot summer days gave way to a crisp nighttime breeze, as winds through the pecan groves were cooled by moisture evaporating off the San Gabriel River.
Milam County was my new home.
Over the next two months, he hired dozens of new hands, putting me in charge of four crews. The work seemed menial, and I suspected it was just busy work in preparation for something greater. He secured several pieces of real estate and bought parking lots full of equipment. Every day revealed a new surprise, a new clue to what he was up to.
I hadn’t a clue as to what he was brewing. He kept it strictly confidential, and far as I knew, he didn’t tell a single soul at the Thorndale detachment. He spent quite a bit of time in meetings with people I didn’t know, and traveled quite frequently down to San Antonio. He gave me orders, mostly putting together bid proposals and screening candidates to hire as supervisors and shift leads. On occasion, I was sent on a fool’s errand to pick up a load of gravel. He kept us all in the dark.
His clandestine work would soon slip the bonds of secrecy. I found the answers to Hank’s mystery, and so did the rest of the world, as it were, because it was all over the news one morning. It headlined the Milam County newspapers: the Rockdale Reporter, Thorndale Champion and Cameron Herald. The towns were abuzz with fervor. The vibrancy lost in the 1930s would soon come roaring back with a vengeance.
Hank’s work over the past six months left him ready to cash in.
First, a little background; half a century before, in the early 1900s, Milam County had a mini economic boom when massive underground deposits of lignite coal were discovered. Unfortunately, the boom soon fizzled, as oil was discovered further east at Spindletop. Oil was much more utilitarian than the brownish, watery lignite. It could be pumped from the Earth rather than mined. Petroleum became en vogue as the fuel of choice for Henry Ford’s contraptions, and would launch Texas as an energy giant.
George Sessions Perry wrote of the fateful economic landscape in the county Milam:
But these happy times had to end. The great oil fields near Beaumont had been discovered along about the turn of the century. By 1920 many of the old lignite customers had got around to installing petroleum-burning equipment. By 1925 the change-over was relatively complete. The businessmen of the town, who had invested in lignite and once prospered so lavishly, were now broke and badly in debt. The mines closed and the mining camps lay desolate and abandoned.
Saturday Evening Post, December 27, 1952, The Town Where it Rains Money
After the economic bust, Milam would join the rest of the country in Depression and return to agriculture as its primary stock in trade. Such were the tales of Mr. Perry’s greatest novel. Milam’s lignite coal would lose its value as economic factors beyond its control converged. Up until 1950, lignite was considered the most substandard among the many varieties of coal. Even beyond the newly found oil, lignite had a strident competitor in natural gas. Natural gas became readily available in Texas in the deep caverns which produced the oil.
Lignite is too watery to be shipped long distances, so it remained buried, unused and unappreciated, deep within the bowels of Milam County. As a result, the Sandow mine near Rockdale, named for the father of bodybuilding Eugene Sandow, closed in 1950 due to low demand. Milam would be unable to follow the United States into prosperity, even long after Fat Man and Little Boy accomplished their deeds in World War II.
~~~
I hearkened back to my second meeting with Hank. He’d invited me out to his cabin on the river. It was just three of us, Hank, Claude Guthrie, and I. We’d run trot lines up the San Gabriel that morning, and pulled in a nice haul of catfish. By noon, Hank had gotten so drunk on Jim Beam whiskey that he could barely stand, let alone form a coherent sentence. In that state of mind, he’d tell you just about anything.
I’d all but written off that discussion to drunken ramblings, until I read those newspaper headlines.
“Mac. I have, I have a secret to tell you,” Hank said.
He looked me directly in the eye. His body swayed to and fro, and his arms tried to steady himself as he sat at the table. In one hand, he held a paring knife with which he attempted to filet a fish. In the other, he had a grip on his cup of whiskey. He had a wry smile on his face. Claude giggled, and then let out a loud, obnoxious belch. They were both entirely inebriated. I stood alone as the only sober soul.
“Go on, tell him, Hank. Tell him,” Claude yelled.
“Alright, okay. I will. Just gimme a minute, Guthrie.”
“Spill it, Hank. I’m listening,” I replied.
“I don’t know, Guthrie. He might tell,” Hank retorted.
“He ain’t gonna tell. If he does, I’ll cut him right open with this goddamned knife,” Claude replied, tapping his knife on the table and glaring at me.
Claude turned his attention to me. He was a beast of a man; not large, but muscled and lightning fast. He’d been to hell and back during his time in the military. He was as tough as he was cocky. And I was certain he knew how to use that knife. Claude was a recent business associate of Hank from down in San Antonio.
He was a rugged former Marine who served in the Korean War. He made his way back to Texas in 1951 after being seriously wounded in combat. He fought at Chosin Reservoir, a 17-day battle which became a decisive turning point in the war. U.S. forces were outnumbered more than two-to-one, and found themselves surrounded by the Chinese army which had secretly crossed the border into North Korea. Claude’s outfit was trapped in treacherous terrain and freezing conditions, but managed to fight their way through the lines and inflict crippling losses on the Chinese.
Claude’s father owned a construction firm in San Antonio. He would join the family business upon his return and work closely with Hank on numerous projects. The two companies eventually merged many years later. Claude became the third leg of our tripod when he was in town, but he and I didn’t always get along. Perhaps it was in no small part due to the rivalry between the Army and Marines.
I would make the mistake, just once, of referring to him as an ex-Marine in conversation, during a formal business meeting no less. I was quickly corrected. “There ain’t no ex-Marines, just former Marines, but I wouldn’t expect a little peckerhead Army Ranger like you to know the difference.” Claude had impeccable delivery, amidst his spitting of tobacco juice; he got right to the point. He was confrontational to a tee, and could be a man’s best friend or his worst enemy. This made him both an asset, and at times a liability for the company.
Claude was born to end lives, both as a rifleman in the Marines, and later on when such energies were manifested in the proving grounds of west Texas. He loved to hunt. Once on a trip to Uvalde with Hank and I, Claude took down an 18-point buck on a 400-yard shot with his .300 Weatherby Magnum. It was Christmas Eve, and the wind chill had to be in the teens. Vapors wafted gently over the animal as we approached. While the carcass was still warm, Claude cut out its heart with a Marine-issue KA-BAR combat knife. He then took a bite to make sure his spirit lives on.
Hank nearly lost his stomach as the blood dripped from Claude’s lips. Claude looked to enjoy it as much as a bite of warm apple pie. I don’t know if he just enjoyed getting a rise out of us, or if the man truly had a few screws loose. He claimed to be three-sixteenths Comanche. No one really knows for sure, but around these parts of the former frontier, chances are good somewhere along the line a Native American entered the blood line. What I do know is the man was at least three-quarters insane.
~~~
Back at the cabin, Hank stood ready to make his revelation.
“You ain’t gonna say nothin’, are you, Mac?�
� Guthrie demanded.
Claude had the look in his eye. It was his predatory inclination manifested. It told me I should leave well enough alone. He was not a man to be trifled with. He was big, and no doubt good with the blade. I ascertained that even inebriated, he would be a force to behold. I was not one to encourage such manner of fisticuffs, so I obliged:
“You got my word, Claude. I won’t say anything. To anybody.”
“Alright then, dammit. Tell him Hank. Or I will.”
I’d disarmed the brutish Claude, albeit by allowing him the upper hand. He was now on my side. Claude and I were matched up against Hank. Hank nodded his head. He was giddy; ready to spill the beans.
“You see. You see, there is a fortune buried out here.”
“Where?” I replied.
“Here. Right here. Right beneath, beneath the very ground of Milam County. Is going to, it’s gonna to make us all rich.”
“Hank,” I questioned.
“What?”
“Does this have something to do with a buried treasure?”
“What the…what the hell? No, I ain’t, I’m not talkin’ ‘bout no damn gold,” he replied.
“Oh. Sorry. Must be my mistake.”
“What the hell are you thinkin’? You’re as crazy as that sumbitch Snively everybody lookin’ for. I’m talkin’, talkin’ about lignite coal, brother.”
And there it was.
He knew about Snively. It was a triumphal moment for me. It verified my longings, despite the fact that he and I were in pursuits of completely different treasures. He was talking about lignite, but I was far more interested in Snively. I couldn’t let him know it. I knew for certain I was onto something, so I let Hank ramble on.
He regaled me with stories of a light-weight metal called Aluminum. It was the most sought-after material used in the manufacturing boom of post-World War II America. It was used to build airplanes. As America grew, so did her need for more aircraft. The Korean War exacerbated this need. Hank told me that an aluminum manufacturer would soon expand production, and they would be coming to Milam County to produce that very thing, courtesy of the lignite coal beneath the ground. The coal was needed to derive massive amounts of electricity to melt elementals into liquid, thus forming this precious metal.