An Object of Surpassing Beauty

2018

“Keep on digging, son. You’re almost there,” Jax Gershon said. He watched as Jeremy dug out a spacious hole near the creek behind the house. He looked at the other seven crepe myrtle trees that dotted the landscape in the area, all planted in the last five years.

Jeremy wiped the sweat from his brow and kept on digging, though he was less than happy about it. Why can’t the fools just ground me instead of this shit?

The sun was already making life miserable for Jeremy, despite it being only March. The trees had already leafed out, but the scant shade where he was digging was not enough to offer much relief.

Jeremy jumped out of the hole when his father had judged it to be deep enough and wide enough. The couple then proceeded to carefully unwrap the crepe myrtle so that the root ball would stay intact and then place it gently into the hole. Jeremy didn’t need any further prompting from his father; he started piling the dirt back around the tree.

The shovel struck something hard. Jeremy looked at his dad in surprise, for neither had noticed anything when the dirt left the hole. The man and the boy pulled the dirt away to find what had been struck.

It was a necklace of surpassing beauty.

1857

Chester didn’t want to, but he was forced to kill his partner in crime. It was a philosophical difference that got Rafert killed; he wanted to wait before they spent their loot and Chester didn’t.

Chester pushed Rafert’s body off of the train and went back to his seat to sleep, like everyone else on board. The diamond necklace was aching to be spent, and Chester knew just where to spend it. Being a man with grand plans but limited vision, he felt that the proceeds from the stolen necklace would be best spent travelling the southwest in search of the best whiskey and the prettiest whores.

Phoenix seemed like a good place to find both of his wants, so he got off of the stagecoach and immediately checked in to a modest hotel. He had plenty of ready cash from the robbery, but he was a man who didn’t believe in paying much for anything. That would change soon, he thought. A little whiskey and a little lovin’ is all I need tonight. No need to put it off just because he hadn’t sold the necklace yet.

The Red Ox Saloon was his kind of place, he thought, as he entered the establishment. Plenty of whiskey available, though the quality was probably as suspect as a snake-oil salesman’s trustworthiness. Lots of whores too. Some of them were even young. Ruby was the one that caught his eye.

They quickly made their way upstairs, ready to haggle over the price. Chester had a plan.

“I’ll let you wear this here necklace if’n you gimme a hour betwixt yore legs,” he said.

Ruby sighed and took off some clothes – but only a few. She left enough on to accentuate her wares.

“Twenty minutes,” she said, eyeing the necklace with obvious avarice. She now had a plan.

“Forty!” Chester was not going to deny himself plenty of her pleasures.

“Thirty. No more.” Ruby slipped off her stockings slowly, revealing her bare legs up to her thighs. Chester was suddenly amenable to thirty minutes between her legs.

Clothes were quickly discarded and Chester climbed between the legs of the lovely Ruby. Soon, he was moaning in pleasure. And then he shuddered violently, probably because Ruby had just inserted a long, thin blade into his neck.

Ruby pushed the unfortunate man off of her, washed up, dressed, and packed her meager belongings. She went out of the window and down the back stairs to the stable, buying a horse with the money she took from Chester’s pocket. In less than an hour, Ruby was on her way out of town and headed southeast.

No one came to look for Ruby, even after finding a dead man in her room. This sort of thing happened a lot in Phoenix, and it wasn’t worth bothering the sheriff about. He might decide to do something crazy like investigate the murder. Probably not, but it would be best to just bury the man out in the desert and keep one’s teeth together.

Ruby fondled the necklace as she rode towards wherever the road would take her. The string of sparkling fire would set her up for life. No more pleasing men and their vile tastes in bed. No more listening to the madame telling her that she needed to screw more men. She would screw men for pleasure now – her pleasure.

Lost in thought, Ruby was unprepared for what followed. Her horse jumped sideways and back, spying a diamondback rattlesnake to the right. Ruby lost her balance and landed heavily on the ground, the necklace flying out of her hand and into the brush. She quickly scrambled to her feet, casting about desperately in her search for the necklace. She didn’t find the necklace but she did find the rattler.

A sudden strike and a sharp pain in her ankle sent Ruby to the ground again. The snake slithered off to points unknown, disappearing into the brush; Ruby pulled out her pistol and shot aimlessly in the direction the snake went.

She stood shakily, the pain in her ankle radiating upwards and burning her skin. She stumbled. The necklace! Must find necklace. Must…

Ruby fell and was unable to get up. She was now thirty yards from the road and nowhere near the necklace when she died. Her body would never be found.

**************

1901

Miguel Hernandez was a little put out. All of his friends had gone away for the summer, leaving him at home to work with his father. To earn money for your mother’s birthday present, the father told Miguel. Miguel loved his mother, but he also loved playing with his friends when school was out.

He was currently doing what he wasn’t supposed to be doing, and that was walking through the brush towards the road. There were snakes out there, his father warned. Miguel didn’t care. He wanted to be away from everyone and have some time to himself. Their small house teemed with an abundance of siblings, leaving Miguel little time to himself and no space of his own.

Something sparkled in the evening sun. Miguel bent down and picked up the object. A necklace. A necklace of surpassing beauty, despite the layers of grime on it.

Miguel spent the next three days cleaning up the necklace. He still had to help his father feed the cattle and mend fences, but he now had a birthday gift for his mom. He proudly presented the gift to her two days later, complete with several lies about its provenance and acquisition.

“The tinker, madre. It fell from his wagon and I picked it up. He sold you that worthless pan for an entire American dollar, so God gave me this necklace for you,” Miguel said.

His father suspected that this was a lie, but he was willing to let it go. Necklaces do not fall from the back of a wagon. As a God-fearing man, Miguel’s father believed that God helped out his son, and his son gave his wife something very beautiful. It must be worth two American dollars. Maybe three.

The mother wore this necklace at every opportunity, which wasn’t much. She didn’t wear it to church because God didn’t like people showing off their finery. She did, though, wear it to social events such as dances and community picnics. The necklace was admired by all of the women, and all of the women were jealous of such a fine piece of jewelry. Their son, it was whispered, was in league with the devil to have bought such a thing.

When the mother died forty years later, she was buried with the necklace. Or so it was believed.

**************

Carl Womack was an assistant to the undertaker, and he lusted after the necklace. After the burial, he dug up the elderly lady and stole the necklace; he was smart enough, though, to make sure that the gravesite appeared undisturbed. He didn’t need anyone on his tail when he left his place of employment rather precipitously.

San Antonio. That’ll be a good place to sell this thing and set me up. Wine, women, and a big house. That’s the ticket. No wife, though. Don’t want anyone spending my money.

Carl left the train station and hunted for a hotel that didn’t charge an arm and a leg for a brief stay. He had little ready cash and this limited his choices for a temporary abode.

The Drake Hotel fit his needs. A dollar a night. The room was not clean, and the bed was merely a thin mattress accompanied by a thin bed cover. The bureau was decrepit, as were most of the residents here. Good enough for a few nights.

Carl went in search of someone willing to take on the job. The man would have to have the connections to sell such a valuable item and also not be terribly law abiding. It was turn-of-the-century Texas; this sort of man would not be difficult to find.

Mr. Lewis Throckmorton was the man he found. It took a mere three days to find him, and another day to finalize the deal. He was to be paid $1.1 million for the necklace, which caused Carl to gasp inwardly. He expected less.

Carl arrived at the Throckmorton establishment with the necklace in tow and a brand new life to look forward to. Mr. Throckmorton cut those dreams short with a rope placed around Carl’s neck, tightening it until Carl’s last labored breath left his body. He dumped the body in the San Antonio River and bought a train ticket to New York. The necklace was worth over $3 million, and he wasn’t about to let a little toad like Carl get any of it.

The body of Carl Womack was found the next day by a couple of boys that were out fishing. The police couldn’t identify him and quickly had him buried where all the rest of the vagrants were buried. Carl Womack was not missed by anyone.

**************

Lewis Throckmorton dozed in the first-class carriage of the Union Pacific train barreling to New York. It was sleek and modern, reaching speeds of fifty miles an hour in open territory. The problem with open territory, though, was that the tracks weren’t cared for as well as they could have been. Corporate greed demanded that payroll be lowered in certain areas, and track maintenance in the less-inhabited parts of the country was where cuts were made.

The effect of this was catastrophic and immediate. A portion of the track in rural Indiana had buckled severely. The speeding train leaped off of the rails and tipped over, falling and skidding sideways before rolling over several times before the individual cars came to rest. Fires flared up and explosions were heard for miles around.

Lewis Throckmorton did not survive the crash. In fact, he was burned beyond recognition and buried with all of the others whose bodies had not been claimed. The necklace found its way into a nearby ravine.

**************

1947

The necklace meandered its way, through flash floods and scavenging animals, all the way to Missouri. This is where Russel Crabtree found it. He picked it up with his left hand – he not being in possession of a right hand, or arm, any longer – and inspected it. Being a man who knew a few things, he suspected that the brilliant sparkles emanating from the necklace were real diamonds. He took it home and tested it, putting his pistol down on a bureau.

The glass gave way to the diamonds with ease; a thick trench etched it way through the window pane like a knife through butter. Russel took a deep breath and put the necklace in his pocket. He put the pistol away as well, seeing that there was no further need to kill himself today. Deliverance in the form of a necklace had found its way to him and his wife.

Russel spent the next few days cleaning the necklace with a combination of tooth powder and Comet. The setting was old fashioned but still beautiful in its own gaudy way. Whoever this belonged to had lost it long ago, he surmised correctly. No one would be looking for it now.

Celia Crabtree arrived home as she did every night: tired from cleaning other people’s houses and apprehensive about the fate of her husband. He hadn’t been the same since he returned from the war. He felt useless without his right arm, and she understood that. No one would hire him. Her husband spent his days cleaning the house, cooking for them, and tending a rather splendid garden that gave them all of their vegetables. He also raised chickens, providers of eggs and meat. All in all, they had a decent life, if not an opulent one. The problem was Russel.

Celia had found his pistol on the bureau too many times not to understand Russel’s intent. Every day she would come home and dread what she might find. Or not find. Today, though, she found a gift for her, ill-wrapped and in the hand of her husband. She blinked and cocked her head sideways, wondering why he had a gift for her. It wasn’t her birthday or their anniversary.

“I found it in the woods,” Russel said. Celia knew why he was in the woods and she shuddered slightly.

She unwrapped the gift and let out a cry of amazement. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life. The necklace radiated fire, even in this dull light, and the heaviness of the necklace spoke of solid gold to hold the diamonds in place.

Russel put it around her neck and beamed. His beautiful wife was even more beautiful now.

“But...but I…Russel…”

“I found it, like I said. I was meant to find it, I think. For you.”

Celia sat down heavily, trying to figure it all out. How could this be? A necklace worth millions of dollars just laying around in the woods? It’s so fantastic and hard to believe! Was it meant to be? What in the world is happening here?

“It’s a lot to take in, Celia, but it’s yours. No one’s gonna claim it, it’s so old and it’s been there for quite a while. We would have heard about it if it had happened recently.”

Celia nodded at the truth of his words.

“If,” Russel continued, “you want to sell it and become rich, we will.”

Celia looked at Russel sharply.

“Or not,” she said, her words as sharp as her look.

Russel, for the first time in two years, grinned at her. Celia’s heart melted at the sight. Her husband was her husband again, at least for the moment.

“I’m glad to hear you say that, hon. Really really glad.”

Celia kept the necklace and wore it for her husband every night. He was her husband again, and the threat of suicide receded and disappeared. The necklace, the thing of surpassing beauty, had saved two lives just by being what it was.

When Celia died many decades later, Russel tossed the necklace into the river. Maybe someone else was in need of saving.

**************

“What’ll we do with it, dad?” Jeremy spoke.

Jax didn’t take long to respond.

“Finish tamping down that dirt around the crepe myrtle, son. I’ll give it to your mom. She’s good with things like this,” Jax went to the house. Jeremy had no idea what the old man meant by that. Good with things like this? How often has she dealt with something worth millions?

Lisa Gershon knew exactly what to do with the necklace, and it didn’t involve a new car for Jeremy.

“Why not?” Jeremy whined. They were, for all intents and purposes, newly rich.

“Do you have good food here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jeremy muttered.

“Good clothes? Nice house?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then you have nothing to want. You’ll get a car when you earn the money for it. And we’ll re-start your allowance when your grades get up to snuff. Now go wash up for dinner.”

Jax ducked his head and grinned. He loved his wife so much at this moment.

“What’ll we do with it, hon,” Jax asked after Jeremy left the room.

Lisa looked at her husband and smiled a small, soft smile. The man wasn’t greedy. All he wanted was a good partner and a good son.

“Not to worry, sweets. It’s taken care of.”

**************

2018

The Immaculate Mary Catholic Church just received an unexpected gift today. A necklace was found inside the vestry last week, by Father O’Brien. He told us that the necklace was valued at $13.1 million. They’ll use the proceeds for their outreach programs and food bank. Wow! What a gift, right, Mari?

Right you are, Rob. A wonderful gift that will keep on giving. In other news…