Ace Merrill seeks and digs up the buried treasures of Pop Merrill

Ace Merrill’s search for Pop Merrill’s buried money is a reversal built around a treasure map: what appears to be a route out of debt and dependence instead reveals that Pop’s old associate has already taken the fortune and arranged for Ace to receive only one dollar. The excavation at the Camber property converts Ace’s expectation of sudden wealth into a final encounter with the family history and criminal bargains he hoped to leave behind.

The map and the promise of escape

At five o’clock, Ace drives into the Camber dooryard with the treasure map in his back pocket. Leland Gaunt has thoughtfully supplied a pick and shovel, and Ace takes them from the trunk before sitting on the leaning porch to study the map. The immediate cocaine high has worn off, but his heart is still pounding; treasure-hunting itself has become a stimulant. He imagines the site as the place where he can leave the Flying Corson Brothers behind forever and get rich. Beneath the ground, he seems to hear a fortune singing to him, and he whispers that it may amount to a million dollars.

The map gives this hope a concrete shape. Ace searches the west side of the house, finds a large flat stone hidden among the weeds, and begins digging. The shovel strikes metal; he uncovers a Sherwin-Williams paint can, pries open its stubborn lid with a pocketknife, and sees what first looks like sheaves of bills. The apparent money proves to be Red Ball trading stamps, obsolete since the company went out of business in 1964. The find is a false reward, and Ace’s outburst of anger gives way to renewed dependence on the map: he checks it again and notices another cross behind the barn.

A decoy and a second cache

The useless paint can makes sense to Ace as a deliberate decoy. He reasons that Pop may have anticipated someone following the flat-rock markers and used a bait-and-switch, leaving one worthless cache to hide another, more remote one on the same property. The discovery briefly restores his confidence: with the map, he can distinguish the false trail from the real one. But when he reaches the second marked spot, the rock has already been thrown aside. A pile of dirt, casually scraped back into the hole, shows him that someone has arrived before him—and recently.

Ace ignores the tools lying nearby and paws through the dirt until he finds a Crisco can. Its contents are not money but a white envelope. Inside are a typed letter addressed to Ace and a smaller envelope. The buried container has become a message left for him, and the order of its contents delays the final blow: first the letter explains who has taken the treasure and how; only then does the smaller envelope disclose what Pop’s associate has decided Ace deserves.

The letter from A.P.

The letter is signed A.P. Its writer says he visited Pop once a month after sending Ace to Shawshank, receiving a hundred dollars each month in return for allowing Pop to continue making illegal loans. During one visit, Pop excused himself to use the toilet, leaving his desk unlocked. A.P. looked through it and found a map marked with many crosses; the red cross identified the Camber hiding place. After Pop died, A.P. came to the property, dug up that cache, and found more than $200,000.

The explanation connects the treasure hunt to a long-running arrangement between Pop and the person who has now intercepted Ace. A.P. claims he never let Pop know he had seen the map, then describes taking the money and leaving Ace what he considers appropriate. The letter’s mocking tone makes the transfer more than a practical theft: its writer has turned Pop’s secret into a delayed taunt, timed so that Ace will discover it while expecting to claim the fortune himself.

The one-dollar ending

After the letter slips from his numb fingers, Ace opens the smaller envelope. A single one-dollar bill falls out. The amount is the episode’s decisive reversal: against the imagined million dollars and the letter’s report of more than $200,000 in the cache, Ace receives a token that makes the promised escape impossible. He picks it up with shaking fingers and whispers an insult at the absent writer.

The search thus ends with Ace finding neither the money nor a way clear of the Flying Corson Brothers. Gaunt’s supplied tools and Ace’s renewed faith in the map carry him to the Camber property, but the decisive knowledge comes from Pop’s surviving arrangements and A.P.’s letter. The cache exposes how the past continues to govern Ace’s choices: a fortune hidden by Pop, discovered through an old associate’s access to Pop’s desk, and finally converted into a cruelly small payment. The map delivers Ace to the place where his hope collapses, while the dollar makes that collapse tangible.