The Search for the Homestead Treasure: A Mystery

by Ann Treacy

  He had hoped that the fire was just a tree ignited by lightning. But there was no doubt now that it was a building and the fire was at his place. His lungs burned but his feet wouldn’t slow. Ruby fell behind when she tired.

  Martin saw the two tall horses, backlit by the glow of blazing buildings. They paced, well away from the downed pasture fence, which had been flattened by the beasts whose usual gentle nature tolerated being corralled. He looked around the farmyard, taking in the scene in an instant. Everything was burning. Right through the space where the barn roof once stood he could see the house, illuminating the night with bright fire.

  “Ma! Lilly! Auntie!”

  Martin didn’t make decisions so much as he ignored things. He ignored the barn and the death calls of a lone cow. The well? No time. On his way to the burning house he ran through the side yard, tearing sheets from the clothesline, yelling their names. The main door to the house was engulfed. The roof blazed. He flew to the garden door; it writhed with fire also.

  Darkness and smoke made it impossible to see anything but the flames themselves. They had to be inside. If they’d gotten out, they would have answered him. “Ma! Lilly! Auntie!” He kept screaming, but the fire sucked the sound away. He put up his arm to protect his eyes from the waves of heat.

  There was no back door, but he raced to the back of the house anyway. How could it take so long to get around the tiny house? Back here smoke poured out of the single window, but flames had not reached it yet. Martin saw Sam’s back as the boy jumped and jumped again, finally getting a handhold on the sill and pulling himself up. Coughing, Sam struggled to balance, half in and half out. Martin ran up and boosted his friend over the windowsill into the burning house. He heard no screaming or shouting. Just the loud, living fire. Flames began to unfurl around the window frame and to emerge between the siding boards. Using the sheets, Martin swatted wildly at the flames leaping up the dry, unpainted siding. How would Sam find anyone in the dark when he’d never even been in the house before? Martin tried to jump up onto the high sill as Sam had done.

  Lilly swirled into sight at the window. Martin raised his arms to grab her—then his aunt too, as light as his sister. Now Mr. Perry was there, taking Aunt Ida from Martin’s arms and carrying her away. Sam appeared in the opening with a smoldering rug over his shoulders and head. He lowered Ma, feet first, to Martin. Then Sam tumbled out.

  They moved as a huddled mass through the garden toward the drive. Mr. Perry had stopped well back from the billowing fire. His horses champed and stomped.

  “They smell death,” Samson choked. “The cow, I am sorry. I only had time to go into the house.”

  Martin knew that somewhere inside he would feel sorry about Ella’s death, if ever he could feel again. But right now he couldn’t feel anything, not even his blistered fingers or stinging eyes. Everyone was safe; he could think of nothing else.

  Ruby caught up and spoke quietly with Samson, then disappeared down the road. Lilly shook as if cold. Martin picked her up and held her. They had nothing to wrap her in, not a jacket or a blanket. Ma, Aunt Ida, and Lilly climbed onto Mr. Perry’s wagon seat, Ma’s arms around the others. Mr. Perry offered to take the women to his house, but Ma refused, saying she couldn’t leave yet. There was something about the fire that demanded watching to the finish. Martin and Mr. Perry rested on the ground, leaning against wagon wheels. Martin had felt this useless only once before, on the day Dan died. The siding burned away to reveal the original log structure underneath; then that was consumed too.

  At first light it was clear there was nothing left to burn, that it was the dirt itself that still smoked. The trees that surrounded the house were half black, half green. The barn was such a melted wreckage that it was difficult to see where Ella had stood and died. The large horses kept their distance below the pasture, somewhat settled now by the familiarity of dawn and Samson, who sat with them through the night.

  Aunt Ida sucked her teeth and said defeatedly, “Everything’s gone, Martha.”

  Ma stood up in Mr. Perry’s wagon, waking Lilly, whose head had rested in her lap. Ma spread her blackened hands and arms to take in the devastation before them.

  “What everything?”

  Mr. Perry stood. Martin stood too, nervously uncertain just which Ma—the improving Ma or the Ma of this past year—was going to speak.

  “We hated that little house, and yes it’s gone. But my children aren’t! The barn is a loss, and I’m sorry about Ella. But a cow can be replaced. The garden is planted, and thank God it wasn’t up yet to catch fire. We didn’t even have a scarecrow out to burn. It’s a farm, Aunt Ida.” Ma of the outstretched arms turned from right to left on her wagon pulpit. “And it’s still here! Look. It isn’t all gone. It’s just starting.”

  Everyone looked where her filthy hands invited. Beyond the charred sticks that grew up from yesterday’s foundations lay the fields. A green fringe covered them, lightly, like mist. Martin was unprepared for his feelings, both of loss and of joy that so much was growing. He had to find Sam, be sure Sam saw it. He remembered Sam saying—it felt so long ago—Land is hopes.

  Full light found the friends below the barn, taking stock of the damage. The fire’s own din had commanded silence, and in its confusion no one had asked yet who Samson was. Both boys’ eyes were pink ovals in blackened faces. Martin’s voice was cracked from hacking and screaming. He surveyed his entire home and barn, reduced to nothing. “What did I do? Did I leave a lantern lit? Did Meehan torch the barn?”

  Sam wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “No. I don’t think so. Maybe it was lightning. The barn was on fire first. It is bigger,” he said, raising one hand above the other, “taller than the house, and sparks showered down.”

  “Thank God you got here when you did, Sam. Thank God you got my family out.” While thinking of all he was grateful for, Martin winced at the thought that Pa could have lost his family a second time here.

  A great commotion rose from the direction of Mr. Perry’s wagon. Standing in the wagon, Aunt Ida pointed and screamed where the road turned into the farm. The boys came running.

  “Here they come! The murderers, they burned us out.” Aunt Ida’s finger looked a foot long as she pointed down the access road. “Gypsies are coming.”

  The boys raced up. Mr. Perry, unable to cope with a hysterically screaming woman, stood between the heads of his two hitched horses.

  “Where’s Lilly?” his aunt shouted.

  Martin jumped onto the wagon and grabbed her arm. She was thin yet surprisingly hard like a chair rung.

  “I don’t know where Lilly is, but she’s fine. These people who are coming are my friends.”

  Aunt Ida went stiff. “They live in Gypsy wagons like that photography fellow? Regular folks wouldn’t do that.”

  “They live in wagons, Auntie, because they are Gypsies.” Martin turned her face from the road to look at him. “And this is Sam. Samson. He’s Roma too.”

  Samson looked down at the dirt.

  “But all that matters is that he’s a friend. And he saved your life last night.”

  Aunt Ida looked shocked.

  Ma looked from boy to boy. “Yes, Martin, what was he doing here in the first place?”

  “He’s my friend, Ma. I could never have done all the work this spring without him. Sam helped me every day with rocks and plowing and planting.”

  Martin could tell his mother was still confused. “I was gone last night, Ma, and Sam knew it. I wasn’t in the barn. If he hadn’t come here . . .” He turned to Sam. “Why did you come?”

  “To see Finn and Marshall.”

  “Gone where?” Ma asked Martin.

  Mr. Perry walked up to Ma. “I can vouch for the boy, ma’am.” He gestured to Sam. “This here’s a fine boy. He can work for me for as long as he cares to stay.”

  While the group sorted out Samson’s identity, two beautiful wooden caravan wagons pulled up, drawn by matched sets of horses. Ruby managed one wagon while Sam’s
grandmother sat on the front seat of another next to a driver. Aunt Ida, soot-faced and speechless, looked upon their arrival as a fate worse than the fire.

  Martin was glad to have the diversion so he didn’t have to answer his mother’s last question about where he’d gone last night. From her wagon seat, Grandmother smiled infectiously on them all. She had the kindest smile Martin knew, one that did not seem out of place in the face of such hardship.

  Grandmother got down and put her hand through Samson’s arm. “You help me speak, yes?” She turned to Martha. “You are Martin’s mother, yes? Your Martin is a special friend to us. Once, in the spring, he save my Samson from drowning. He’s been our true friend, something he must have learned from you.”

  She released Samson’s arm and touched Martin’s filthy face. “I have been waiting to help you.” She gestured toward the caravan Ruby occupied. “For you. This we give you to live in. It is a full home, no? You take. Come see.”

  Grandmother’s eyes challenged Aunt Ida to get down. For a moment Martin thought she wouldn’t budge, but curiosity appeared to get the better of her. Grandmother walked to the back door and threw it open. She petted a goat tied to the wagon.

  “This is for milking. And this is for living.” She climbed three stairs and demonstrated all the comforts of the miniature house on wheels. Grinning at Martin she explained, “We had a wedding. Two people became one and only need one home. This we do not need for now. We leave until another year.”

  Grandmother and Ruby set a table and chairs outside by the garden’s edge and efficiently organized a meal. In Grandmother’s wagon they cooked eggs and coffee that they served with sweetened bread and butter. Even shy Mr. Perry ate.

  Chapter 24

  News of the disaster reached town, and by afternoon three wagons of people had arrived to assess the fire and offer help. Happy to stay on the edge of the crowd, Martin was the first to hear the clickety-click of Mr. Meehan’s car pull off the road and climb toward the farmyard.

  Martin had no barn to turn into, so he stood waiting for Meehan to pull the automobile to a stop. “Morning,” the man said, clutching the thin steering wheel.

  Martin didn’t answer. It certainly wasn’t any kind of a good morning.

  “How’s your family doing? I heard about last night. Did everyone make out fine in the fire?”

  “All but the cow.”

  “And the buildings, of course,” Meehan added. “It would have been best if you folks had sold to me before this happened. Affects the value.”

  The weeks of intense work had hardened Martin like hickory. He looked down at the man on the seat. “As you can see, we’re still here.”

  “And your pa is still behind on payments. I’ve been too kindhearted to put out a family that has fallen on hard times.”

  The chances of harvesting the fields and getting moved into a permanent structure before hard winter did look impossible. But at least they had survived. So had Finn and Marshall. True, they had no money, but they had friends. Friends were something Meehan would never understand. Mr. Perry would loan his cultivator, harvester, and other implements without even being asked. And Sam and his grandmother had already provided a home that would serve a good five months until winter. By then Martin could at least build a sauna building. He still had plenty of trees and could borrow an ax and saw. Many Scandinavian immigrants had spent their first winter or two living in the structure that would later be the family’s sauna building for bathing, which was built large enough to have two rooms—one for changing and the other for the woodstove to heat water. Martin would make it maybe twelve by fourteen feet. They could spend a winter in that. They’d be cramped but warm.

  “You don’t even have a wagon. With no home, no barn, and no harvesting equipment, you’ll be out of here in a month.”

  Martin leaned over the door until Meehan recoiled from the rancid smell of Martin’s clothes. “Maybe so,” Martin said. “Like you say, we’re poor all right, but don’t you ever come near this farm again.”

  Chapter 25

  By late afternoon Ma, Lilly, Aunt Ida, and Martin had bathed in the caravan wagon and changed into clean clothes brought out by the townspeople.

  Before Samson’s grandmother left with her driver and the horses that had pulled the spare wagon, she instructed Samson in Romany.

  “My grandmother says to tell you ‘Every disaster courts opportunity.’”

  Martin couldn’t wrap his exhausted mind around a riddle. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

  Grandmother let go of Sam and embraced Martin, smiling, while she struggled to find her own words. She squeezed his arm four times, once for each word she spoke, “From bad comes good. Remember the things I have told you; look to the ones you love for answers.”

  Later, while Ma and Aunt Ida napped, Samson sat with Martin on chairs at the garden’s edge. A brightly colored fabric flashed under the largest pine at the end of the garden.

  “There’s Lilly, playing with her dolls,” Samson observed, exhausted from his nightlong vigil and long day.

  Martin stood and stretched. “I haven’t seen her since breakfast.” He left his friend and walked to her through the planted rows that would become beans and carrots.

  Lilly sat with her back to a tree trunk from which huge roots radiated across the top of the soil. She sat in the V between two large roots. One root over, her doll was tucked under a quilt. Little things were placed all around the tree as if each space between roots were a room.

  “How did you have time to save Stella in the fire?” Martin asked, stooping down before her. He had never knelt down to Lilly’s height before, only just looked down at her.

  “She was here. She always sleeps out here in dry weather. This is her room.” Lilly indicated the triangle of pine needles between two tree roots.

  He fingered Stella’s blanket. “Did you make this from those squares I gave you?”

  Lilly nodded. She turned to her other side and indicated a setting of dishes. “This is my parlor; you can come in. It’s cool here.”

  Martin sat between two large roots and looked out at the fire-flattened hilltop. The pines were old; their bottom branches, eight feet from the ground, created a natural roof under which to play. He imagined Lilly had spent much time here all spring, but he’d never noticed. It was indeed the coolest place on the site, and he realized the caravan should be placed here in the shade. He stood to get Finn and Marshall to pull it.

  Martin walked back through the garden, away from Lilly’s little playhouse in the trees. Snippets of Cora’s diary tried to come to him through his weary mind.

  we played in my doll’s house to escape the sun

  we took a nap in the shade of my doll’s house

  the dowry, which I hid safely in my doll’s house

  Martin spun on his heel and studied the care with which Lilly had created a perfect little house, a doll’s house. His neck went cold at the realization that another girl had played on this hill in a doll’s house, a doll’s house no one could find.

  But it couldn’t have been. According to the homestead picture at Mr. Perry’s, these five trees had been tiny when Cora was a child, the height of bushes—too small to sit under. He shook his head and walked toward the smoldering house.

  Martin passed his chopping stump and wondered about the many lives of this tree. He pictured it as the tall elm it had been in the painting that hung at Mr. Perry’s. How lush and full it was when his grandparents built in its shade. Eventually it had died but remained for years as a handy chopping stump, the rest becoming fuel or maybe furniture. Now the stump was charred and strewn with debris. But this tree that both he and Aunt Cora knew—each in their own way—had once been the centerpiece of the yard.

  He studied its huge dead roots, roots he had steadied his foot on hundreds of times to swing the ax. He imagined a young girl playing under the tree, and through the imagining felt for the first time as if he saw things clearly. Martin turned o
n his heel and ran to the garden.

  Aunt Ida’s spade stood there, filthy with ash but usable. He ran back to the stump and went to work digging. When he’d finished in one area, he stepped over the root and dug in the next space.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Digging. Digging under the whole stump,” Martin said to Samson. It seemed an adequate explanation between friends. Samson retrieved the steel rod, which had survived underneath the stone boat away from the barn. Silently, Samson placed it under the rotted root where Martin was digging and bore his weight down on the end. They needed an ax to sever the roots at the soil line, but all of the tools had burned. Martin thought about that, about each of his grandfather’s woodworking tools melting to nothing in the fire, actually fueling the fire with their ancient wooden handles. One by one Martin beat the roots with the spade as Samson bore down on the pry bar. They found the backbone to dig a while more. Every time he heard the scrape of the spade against a buried rock Martin poked around, dislodging baseball-size stones from the tangled roots.

  Long after sweat made muddy streaks down their filthy faces and necks, the spade struck something with a dull but solid thud. For the first time the object he hit didn’t sound like a rock. Martin fell to his knees and scooped cool dirt with his hands. He reached deep into the hole as Sam kept levering back on the pole that supported the stump just enough so Martin could work under it.

  Thirty minutes after they began, with breaks only long enough to reposition themselves, Martin dragged a small wooden box from the ground. The soot- and soil-blackened boys exchanged questioning glances.

  Martin sat down on the earth, breathing hard, and brushed off the box. Samson abandoned the prying pole and sat with him. For a minute Martin just held the box.