so gone

Cut from the novel 1
OK,” Jason said. “What did he want it for?”
“He had an idea again about where that money might be buried,” Carl said. He heaved in a third box and went around to the passenger side.
Jason nodded. The buried money on Eldon’s farm was an old story. A cache of silver coins, maybe some gold, that Eldon’s great grandfather had buried during the Spanish-American war, when he’d been convinced that the U.S. was going to be invaded. This conviction turned out to be the first part of his going crazy, and by the time anyone thought to try and find out exactly where it was that he’d buried the coins, he was too far gone to say, or maybe too paranoid to trust even his loved ones. The amount that he’d buried was variable, according to who told the story, and had grown over time. Searching for it was Eldon’s hobby, along with auctions.
They rattled half a mile down the road to Eldon’s driveway, and then past his neat fields, planted already, probably in soybeans and the microgreens Eldon had gotten into since he found out how much they were going for in the Athens farmers’ market. Eldon’s house was white, blue-shuttered, with a pond in the front spewing water from a pipe in the middle, and a new pole barn up against the hill. “I’ll just run in and get it,” Carl said, but as they came to a stop, Eldon came out with his wife behind him.
“Well, stranger,” he said to Carl. “And hello to you, too, son,” to Jason. “You know Jason Plain, don’t you, Gussie? His grandmother worships over at the Baptist church.”