Vann had leaned back completely against the support post and closed his eyes. I gave him a few minutes of rest as I ran through the part of the story I had just been told. I had to admit that I had been pulled into this tale completely and had a persistent tick in my mind driving me down a road filled with unanswered questions. I glanced over and could tell Vann was starting to breath more quietly, drifting off, which I just could not allow for the moment. I spoke more loudly than I had previously, just to be sure I pulled him back.
“Did anyone actually ever look for Tom? Or did they just assume he was dead? When they went to scuttle the boat, is that when they pulled all the stuff off of it, all of those items you said you saw? How long did it take the railroad to take his land? What about the ….” Vann, eyes still closed, held up his hand.
boat being scuttled courtesy dailymail.co.uk 4-26
“Easy, my friend, easy.” He breathed a deep sigh and then rubbed his face roughly, shaking himself awake I supposed. After another sigh he continued.
“Yes, when they went to scuttle the boat they did take the items off although that was not really part of the usual process. Mostly they would have taken off anything of real value, and maybe in some cases the personal effects if they knew someone to give them to, next of kin or whatever. In this case they had no information as to whom Tom might want any of his effects to go to. The first search of the boat had given them a pretty good idea of what valuables might be aboard, and they surely intended to take those. They had aboard a local Duluth man though who was a bit of a history buff. He had spent much of his time in the area researching just how that part of the territory had been explored and settled. He was curious when the first reports had come back and intrigued by what he heard about Tom’s strange collection, and managed to get himself aboard for the return trip. By the time they arrived at the wreck he had convinced the captain of the boat that they needed to remove all of the items aboard so he could keep them, use them for his research.”
“And the captain agreed to that? Aren’t there salvage rights to the captain and wouldn’t he have wanted some of that stuff for himself?”
“He did, I think anyway, I mean that’s part of the payment for doing work like that. But in the end the historian bought him off with the fifteen silver coins.”
“That’s it?”
“Well, that and a few pieces of the boat the captain wanted, the sail and stuff like that. But yes, basically just the fifteen coins. He was a fairly persuasive man I guess. He wrote about it later, some of the things he surmised had happened, a few random details that he came up with along the way. He was fairly passionate about it, however he died before he could really get too much into the story.”
The sound of coyotes howling started up right then, off somewhere in the distance, a usual sound in Arizona but slightly unnerving when you are outside the usual security of city and home. When I turned back Vann was drifting off again.
“Why did they have to scuttle the boat anyway? It was just grounded so I figure they could have fixed it up?”
“Not really. Apparently the damage that Tom couldn’t fix had become considerably worse in the few days it had sat on the sand bar. They determined it just couldn’t be saved, or wasn’t worth the cost.”
“Did this historian guy ever figure anything else out?”
Vann shook himself awake again. “A few more things. He goes on for a bit in one of his papers about the picture of the chess piece on the side of the boat. It was after reading what he thought and learned about that I ended up going off on my own little side journey into the history and meaning of chess pieces. It’s quite a trip,” and here Vann shook one of his bony fingers at me, “and I suggest you avoid it. I don’t think that it has anything to do with, well anything really.”
In my own mind I still thought that this was a rather large loose end but I realized that Vann was unlikely to be swayed in his thoughts on the matter.
“That’s it?”
“More, yes there is more. He did some of the preliminary research on Tom’s background in the area and left some good notes on that. He also searched for Tom, actually trekked up to the northern parts of that area and asked around, visited a few Indian tribes, even tried to track down Mashkikiikwe but no luck. He did find John Beargrease who apparently claimed he knew nothing about Tom at all, which would have been unlikely, so read what you want to into that.”
“Did he keep all of that stuff he took off the boat?”
“Yes. That’s where the inventory came from and he kept really good track of it, which is part of the reason the provenance is so good on the items.”
“Who was this guy?”
Vann’s eyes settled on me for a moment and then he smiled, just the same way he had when he finished brushing his teeth, then he shrugged and waved his hand loosely in the air.
“I can’t quite remember. You could find it out pretty easily though.”
I kicked my foot against the ground, a little frustrated with that answer. After tapping it a few more times I asked him about the railroad’s seizure of Tom’s land.
“They took it all almost right away. It was before the story about his stranded boat even made it back to the area. They were already in the process of leveling everything on his property when they received that information. I figure it just served as another justification for the land seizure. They kicked off all the tenants, except the Acre like I told you before, and got busy building.”
I remembered something Vann had said near the beginning of his story.
“So, that’s how these candlesticks survived a murder, a shipwreck and a fire all in the space of a year.”
“No.”
“That’s what you said, that was their big story I thought.”
“It is, but that fire at Tom’s wasn’t the one I was talking about.”
…to be continued
jack mesenbourg 