by Ron Fisher
I thumbed through the pages to an article from the late fifties, announcing the sale of the Clarion to a local journalist named Garnet Bragg. The young publisher promised “sweeping changes” in the reporting of the area’s news and events.
Several pages later, I came across an article about the Pulitzer. I didn’t have to read it; I knew the story well. Grandfather won it for a series of editorials he wrote in the sixties about the last lynching in Upstate South Carolina—a shameful event that occurred back in 1947. What wouldn’t be in the article was that in addition to all the accolades that Grandfather received for his editorials, he was also on the receiving end of lot of hate from local bigoted citizenry. I remembered my father telling me about the night, as a teenager, he awoke to find a fiery cross burning on the front lawn of Still Hollow.
His editorials recounted the story of a black man who was arrested for the murder of a white cab driver. On a cold, dark February night a mob of about fifty white men stormed the Pickens County jail, hauled him off to a grove of Cottonwoods by a railroad track in Greenville County, and lynched him. Thirty-one of these men were arrested, charged with murder, and brought to trial. But even though many of them confessed to their part in the lynching, a white jury acquitted them all.
That verdict left a smoldering coal of outrage burning within Grandfather, and as the civil rights movement became a raging storm in America in the sixties, he decided to revisit this ugly episode in upstate history. With a series of articles, he chronicled an event that brought out the worst of the human condition. The editorials dredged up names and memories that some people in the upstate would rather have kept in obscurity, and proved to be unpopular in certain circles—as the cross burning on the lawn of Still Hollow would prove.
I flipped through the rest of the pages quickly, stopping only to glance at things that caught my attention. Many of the clippings were about the newspaper and the recognition and awards it had received over the years. I made a mental note to photocopy some of them, thinking they might impress a prospective buyer.
I skipped past anything about my parents’ fatal car accident—another story I obviously knew all too well, and scanned a paragraph of a plaque I’d won in a creative writing contest in the sixth grade, and a second place ribbon a year or two later for a science project entered in the state science fair. There was nothing in the book about my prowess on the gridiron, but that was no surprise.
Near the end of the album, my name jumped out at me again, this time as the byline of a story I did a couple of years back during a brief stint with the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It was about an insurance scam among thoroughbred horse breeders. Several unscrupulous owners were killing their horses for the insurance money, and my investigative efforts were responsible for their arrest and conviction. I reread it, thinking it was some of my best work. There was a positive, honest energy there that lacked the cynicism that would eventually creep into my writing. I closed the book and placed it back into the drawer. Finding the horse-breeder story I wrote was a surprise. I didn’t know that grandfather had ever read anything I wrote, much less clipped it out and saved it.
A search of the other drawers turned up the usual assortment of pens, pencils, and miscellaneous office supplies, but nothing to reveal how grandfather spent his last hours. I was about to give up my plundering when I noticed the edge of a yellow legal pad peeking out from under a stack of advertising contracts on the desktop. I pulled it out and recognized the old man’s wild scrawl, his handwriting like a doctor’s, almost impossible to decipher. As kids, Eloise and I got the idea that his scribbles weren’t the result of poor penmanship, but a way to keep his notes from prying eyes. We spent an entire summer working like two Egyptologists interpreting hieroglyphics, learning to read his writing. I examined the page and saw that I hadn’t completely lost the knack.
At the top of the page he’d written red car, Eastatoe Valley, and Barry Beal. This was obviously done while talking with me on the phone. Next, was a list of what I recognized as several area hotels and their phone numbers. The list was surrounded by a maze of geometrically shaped doodles and wildly drawn stars, the kind of thing you do while you’re on the phone. Toward the bottom of the page were the letters “WS” and below that, the name “Cecil Hood,” and a phone number with an Atlanta area code. A line of doodled question marks followed both these last entries. I knew Cecil Hood. He was an old farmer who lived in Eastatoe Valley, and a life-long friend of Grandfather’s, but I didn’t know why he would have an Atlanta phone number. I looked at his name again and saw that it was Carl Hood, not Cecil. Him, I didn’t know. I didn’t know what the “WS” meant either, or why Grandfather had written either of them on the pad.
The rest of the pages were blank. I looked back at the list of hotels. Their locations appeared to range from the college town of Clemson in the west, to the city of Greenville in the east; one of them was located in the north, just over the state line in North Carolina. All of them were within a thirty to forty-minute drive from where I was sitting. The only other thing they seemed to have in common was that they were all among the priciest, most upscale lodging in the area. There wasn’t a budget motel in the bunch. Was this list related to Grandfather’s search for Beal’s victim? If it was, I couldn’t see the connection. I tore out the page, folded it, and put it in my pocket. If there were a clue here as to how Grandfather found my missing woman so fast, I didn’t see it. Maybe it would come to me.
I went back out to the reception area. Mayfield and Brown were still at work as I quietly moved past them and along the row of small offices where the rank and file employees labored—writers, advertising sales, accounting, circulation and so on.
At the end of the hall I descended the stairs that led to the archive room in the basement, known as “the morgue” to anyone in the newspaper business for more than fifteen minutes. It was where all past articles, clips, and back issues of the Clarion were stored. Management types at the big papers were continually trying to change the name “morgue” to fancier monikers like “resource retrieval center,” or “data archives resource.” Most old hands resisted this, knowing that it was just a thinly veiled attempt to justify to a board of directors the cost of the scanners, computers, and man-hours needed to bring a newspaper’s archives into the age of technology.
The Clarion was yet to fully enter this area of the hi-tech world. The paper’s repository of a hundred years of upstate history remained stored mostly on spools of microfilm in several battle-ship gray filing cabinets lining the wall. An old microfilm viewer sat near them, a tall metal stool the same color as the cabinets perched in front of it.
A couple of microfilm boxes sat on the side shelf of the viewer, the film from one of them still threaded through the sprockets of the machine. The label on the box read “June - August 2003.” Mostly out of curiosity, I switched on the projection light and leaned toward the screen. What I saw was an article dated July 15th, 2003 that bore the headline, “Local man sentenced in Atlanta.” I sat down and read it.
Carl Alvin Hood, the Pickens County native convicted of second degree murder in the beating death of Leon E. Waldrop outside an Atlanta nightclub last year was sentenced yesterday by 5th District Georgia Superior Court Judge, William Horton III. Hood was sentenced to a term of twenty years in the Georgia State Prison at Reidsville, with the possibility of parole in ten years.
Hood, 35, with a lengthy record of prior arrests and convictions, previously served time in the Pickens County Correctional Farm for aggravated assault.
Carl Hood is the son of Cecil Hood, a respected farmer and lifelong resident of the Eastatoe Valley Community in (please see Hood, A3)
Now I knew who Carl Hood was. He was the son of Grandfather’s friend, Cecil Hood. I never knew he had a son. Since this Carl appeared to be quite the recidivist, he probably wasn’t around much when I was a boy. Maybe Grandfather knew him, but he never mentioned him to me.
I heard footsteps on the stairs behind m
e. I turned to find Kelly Mayfield descending the stairs, showing signs of renewed irritation.
“So, here you are,” she said. She dropped a file folder in my lap. “Most of what you asked for is in there. Anything else will take more time.”
She leaned over my shoulder and peered at the article on the viewer. I could smell her perfume and feel the warmth of her breath behind my ear. I turned and looked at her, which placed our faces so close together that I could see tiny flecks of amber in her otherwise dark eyes. Aware of the sudden closeness, she took a step backwards.
“Please return the microfilm to its proper place when you’re finished doing . . . whatever it is you’re doing,” she said, and turned to go.
“This was already on the viewer when I got here,” I said.
She came back and looked at the screen again, her pretty brow wrinkling.
“Garnet must have—”
Whatever she was going to say, she didn’t finish.
“Garnet must have what?” I said.
She continued with the puzzled frown.
“I was going to say that Garnet must have left that out when he was writing the story about the accidental death of a friend of his named Cecil Hood. But that was several weeks ago.”
“Old man Hood is dead?” I said. “He and Grandfather were close.”
“Yes, I know. Garnet was quite upset about it.”
“You said accident. What kind of accident?”
“He fell out of his barn loft,” she said, still looking at the microfilm.
“Well, he had to be about ninety years old. He probably shouldn’t have been up in a barn loft in the first place. I guess Grandfather forgot to put the microfilm up.”
She gave me a look that said that wasn’t even remotely possible.
“I was down here Tuesday morning, and this wasn’t here. Whoever was looking at this would have had to do it that afternoon.”
The afternoon Grandfather died. I turned back to the screen with a newfound interest. What was it about Cecil Hood’s son, Carl, that would make Grandfather, on the last day of his life, write his name and number on a pad, then come down here to look up the man’s checkered past?
I noticed Ms. Mayfield was staring at the screen as if she were wondering the same thing.
She then straightened up, gave me a hard look again, and motioned to the file folder she’d given me.
“That should answer most of your questions, Mr. Bragg, so unless there’s something else you need, I’d like to get back to my work.”
Before she left I asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know a girl about your size and shape who’s sporting a black eye and a busted lip, would you?”
She looked at me as if I might be dangerous, and made a hasty retreat.
“I guess not,” I said, and watched her go.
I spooled down to page A-3 and read the rest of the Carl Hood story. There was a photograph from the trial that showed Hood leaving the courtroom with a man I assumed to be his attorney. Hood was caught glaring into the lens with a fierce look. He was lean, dark, and broad-shouldered, with a bad-boy look that some women find terribly appealing.
I rewound the microfilm, put it back in the box and returned it to its rightful place in the file cabinet—a gesture to the comely Ms. Mayfield’s sense of order.
As I left, computer keys were clattering again from down the corridor. I didn’t bother to say goodbye, quite sure no one there expected me to.
Ellis Hagood III was waiting for me when I returned with the Clarion’s financial records. He was now wearing white shorts and a blue jersey with “Legal Eagles” written on the front. He looked about sixteen years old, and mumbled something about softball practice. I fought to keep my remarks to myself.
Ronnie Burns of the accounting firm, Burns and Galloway, was also present. He had already been briefed about his task. Burns took the file and departed, promising to get back to us as soon as possible. After he left, Hagood motioned me to a leather sofa across from his desk.
“I’ve managed to contact C. Wilson McCrary, the prospective buyer we discussed,” he said. “He informs me that he’s still interested.”
I was about to say “terrific” when I noticed Hagood studying his Nike cross trainers and wearing a hangdog look.
“You don’t seem too happy about it,” I said.
He was slow to look up.
“If it were my newspaper, I don’t think I’d sell it to this man. The more I learn about him, the more I feel that your grandfather’s reservations about him have merit. In addition to his extreme political views, his business model is to strip the papers he acquires to a bare minimum, especially staff-wise, with quality and substance taking a backseat to low budget and his canned editorials. If a guy like that gets his hands on the Clarion, he’ll turn it into something that I don’t believe will benefit the community. I live here, you don’t.”
When I didn’t comment he dropped his eyes from me again and sighed.
“As soon as we get a better idea of what the paper is worth, we’ll open a dialog with him,” he said.
I was getting tired of people judging my character.
“Just for the sake of argument,” I said, “how much would it cost to run ads in the Atlanta, Greenville, and Charlotte papers—and maybe the Wall Street Journal? Is there some kind of industry trade publication or publishing grapevine we can tap into?”
Hagood smiled. “Whatever the cost, I think a good accountant like Ronnie Burns could find a way to write it off.”
“And maybe there’s a broker somewhere who specializes in these sort of things.”
“An excellent idea.” Hagood was practically beaming now.
“Then do it,” I said. “And make any other inquiries you think necessary. But please hurry.”
I left him to pursue alternate avenues for potential buyers, which he quite obviously preferred to C. Wilson McCrary. I caught myself thinking that Kelly Mayfield would hate me even more if I sold the paper to someone like him, and was surprised to find that what she thought about me actually mattered.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I stopped by a greasy spoon on Main Street and ordered a chili cheeseburger, and asked the teenage waitress for directions to the County Registrar of Deeds Office. She hadn’t a clue, and went to consult the elderly fry cook in the kitchen. He came out and personally gave me directions, taking the time to draw a map on a napkin, illustrating Southern hospitality. The office was located, he said, in the County Government complex, several miles south of town. I paid the check, tipped generously, and headed out.
At the edge of town, I went too far into a yellow light to stop before it changed to red, so I sailed right through it. My mind had wandered off into some other zip code. I quickly searched the rear view mirror for signs of a cop car among the cars lining up at the light. It appeared I’d lucked out. There wasn’t a cop in sight. Suddenly, a white pickup truck three cars back in the line, pulled out, sped around the other cars, and ran the red light too. Once through the light, the truck settled down to a reasonable speed and fell in behind me. I couldn’t see the driver clearly, but it was someone in a billed cap. I guess he thought if I could do it, he could too. “Rednecks,” I said to myself. There was no explaining them.
A couple of miles later I walked into the Registrar of Deeds Office and found a pleasant looking elderly woman replacing a book the size of a coffee table on a shelf with dozens of others just like it. Plat books, I presumed. I walked around a long table and a bank of cabinets with dozens of small drawers to stand next to her. She turned and smiled. A nameplate on her blouse-front read “Betty Roper.” I asked her if she was working last Tuesday afternoon. The question obviously took her by surprise and it was a moment before she answered.
“Why yes I was,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m trying to find out if my grandfather was in here that afternoon.”
She stopped and looked at me. “Who is your grandfather?”
�
�Garnet Bragg,” I said.
She quickly brought her hands to her face. “Oh my word,” she said. “Yes, he was here. We were all so sorry about what happened. Oh my word,” she said again.
“Do you happen to know what he was looking for?” I asked.
She was shaking her head, “He knew his way around in here,” she said, “and he didn’t seem to need my help. He just said hello and went right back to the records.”
“Did you notice what record or deed he may have looked at?”
“No, but I got the feeling whatever book he wanted, Darryl Watson already had it out.”
“Darryl Watson?”
“Yes. He’s here all the time,” she said, with a tone that left no doubt that Watson was not one of her favorite people.
“Mr. Watson was sitting at the table looking through one of the deed books when your grandfather came in,” she continued. “Your grandfather sat down with him and they looked at the book together. They didn’t sit there long. Mr. Bragg seemed to become disturbed about something and left rather hurriedly. It was probably something that Darryl Watson said to him. He has a way of irritating people.”
I felt sure that one of the people Darryl Watson irritated most was Betty Roper.
“I don’t think I know Mr. Watson,” I said.
“He’s a local realtor. His office is on West Main in Pickens next to Blue Ridge Power. Watson Realty.”
I thanked Betty Roper for her help and left to pay Watson Realty a visit. But as I came to the intersection with the road that would take me back to town, I spotted a sign pointing the way to the Pickens County Sheriff’s Department, straight ahead. I decided to go there first, since I was so near. I soon came upon a two-story brown brick building with a sign out front announcing that it housed the County Detention Center, County Traffic Court, the Office of Magistrate, and the Sheriff’s Office. Next to the building, a chain-length fence enclosed several automobiles. One of them was Grandfather’s old Cadillac.