by Joe Coccaro
He had grown exhausted by the lack of civility or substantive debate in the Trump-Clinton war, so by early summer he had decided to vote for neither of the front-runners, a stealthy sentiment building across the Eastern Shore of Virginia, rural America, and the Rust Belt. Jessep thought he might never vote in a national election again. Nearly every contemporary American president had been a major disappointment: Nixon the thief; Carter the incompetent; Reagan the senile spendthrift; Clinton the impeached whoremonger; W. Bush the doltish warmonger. As for Obama, well at least he was dignified and intelligent, but his political stripes were decidedly blue-black, polarizing those like Jessep, who were decidedly red-white.
***
Rose nearly gasped when she stepped inside Jessep’s home. Hand-carved bookcases covered the entire wall in the cottage’s small sitting area. At its center was a stone hearth big enough for a small boy to stand in. A leather sofa, a wooden rocker, and a reading chair and ottoman faced it. This was a man cave, a sanctuary of leather-bound books, old family photos, and heavily grained woods.
On the opposite side was a bar top milled from yellow knotty pine and a set of eight matching barstools. Jessep’s great-great grandfather had rescued the bar from a Richmond tavern burned and looted in 1865 by conquering Yankees. The pub had been owned by a relative killed by drunken bluecoats. Sherry, port, and cognac sifters were stocked behind the bar’s wooden shelves.
“This place is amazing, just amazing,” Rose said as her eyes soaked in the scene. The cottage was one large room with a billiard table at the far end, more shelves with books, and a wall of portraits and photographs, a visual anthology of the Greyson lineage.
The cottage’s magnificence had resulted from Jessep Greyson’s frugality. Stubbornly self-sufficient and pennywise, he had built a sawmill from old tractor parts and other mechanical odds and ends and had salvaged an old blade from a nearby abandoned farm. He had milled cottonwood, pecan, dying walnut, and a few white oaks and used it all to make new cabinets, a dining table, end tables, and ceiling-to-floor bookshelves for the cottage.
“Who is that?” Rose asked Jessep as she, Malcolm, and Carter followed a few steps behind. “That person looks exactly like you. I mean exactly!” She stared in amazement at a photograph of a Confederate sergeant, three large stripes pointing down on each sleeve.
“Well, that man is William Benjamin Greyson, brother of my great-great grandfather.”
“I swear he could be you,” Rose said. She bounced between studying the portrait and looking at the live version standing beside her.
Jessep smiled. “Perhaps that is me. Please excuse me while I get the coffee heated.”
After a bit more gawking, the trio settled in the sitting area by the great stone fireplace. They looked at each other, stunned. The place felt like a museum of photos and artifacts. But most impressive, especially to Malcolm, were the books. While Rose and Carter absorbed the family portraits and photos of the plantation, Malcolm’s eyes wandered down row after row of literary classics, philosophy, and poetry, and books on ornithology, climate, soil sciences, and entomology. The breadth of Jessep’s library would have rivaled Thomas Jefferson’s. Malcolm wondered where Mr. Jessep Greyson had attended university and how far he had advanced.
“So, let me guess,” Carter said, “you’re a College of William and Mary graduate. Or, perhaps Washington and Lee University in Lexington.”
“Neither, sir.” Jessep chuckled. “Why spend tens of thousands of dollars on something that you can get for free with a library card. Knowledge is absorbed, not bestowed.”
Rose immediately noticed that the focal point of most modern man caves was missing: a large, wall-mounted flat screen.
“No TV, Jessep?” Rose asked.
Jessep scratched his chin and measured his words. “I mean no offense, but TV atrophies the mind. I kept a TV for exactly sixteen months and found that period to be my most depressing and least productive. The programs I witnessed were vulgar, superficial, and, in my view, pandered to banality and egotism. They made our world seem unattractive and filled with despair. My time on this earth is precious. I prefer to use it constructively and to feel optimistic.”
“Jessep, if you don’t mind, may I ask you something personal?”
“Please do, Rose. More coffee?”
“Jessep, you said that the person in the picture on the wall, your ancestor the sergeant, perhaps is you. You laughed, but I sensed that you weren’t teasing.”
“Cousin Hattie told me that you and your distinguished colleagues have open minds. Well, let’s see just how open. I believe, without an ounce of reservation, that I lived before as William Benjamin Greyson, sergeant in the First Virginia Calvary Regiment. I was killed on the third day in the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. I remember everything about that day and the years leading up to my enlistment and death.”
“So, you believe in reincarnation?” Malcolm piped.
“Reincarnation is, as I am sure you know, an imprecise term. In general, yes, I hold that some form of transmigration occurs. But whether it’s a spirit returning, as Hinduism prescribes, or memories and imprints passed biologically through our DNA, I cannot say with certainty. But I can say without reservation or reluctance that I have experienced the life of Benjamin Greyson.”
“Quite remarkable,” Malcolm said. “We’ve done considerable research at Edinburgh, and of the paranormal fields those experiencing transmigration seem to have the most precise and vivid recollections. The biological connection in a case like this, with a direct DNA chain, seems profound.”
“It certainly explains my predilections,” Jessep said. “Why else would a man who dwells in the twenty-first century prefer the medium of old books, solitude, and less than fashionable attire? I have two siblings nothing like me. My younger brother left the farm after high school and works for Microsoft in Seattle. My little sister is a pediatric surgeon in Raleigh. Neither have these links to the past, yet they live within me.”
Jessep spent the next hour recounting story after story about the visions, dreams, and wide-awake revelations he experienced through the eyes of his fallen kin. Each encounter was rich with detail and precision. There was nothing ambiguous or contradictory. He remembered full conversations with Sergeant Greyson’s family, wife, children, parents, neighbors, scenes from family picnics, the time he was kicked in the chest when trimming his horse’s hooves. He remembered the smell of his wife’s apple cobbler, honeysuckle in the spring, the first time he fired a rifle, and hunting deer with his brothers. He spoke of these things as if they had just happened.
“If you believe in an afterlife,” Jessep said, “then isn’t it conceivable that a beforelife exists too? Nothing in this world is linear. I believe Einstein proved that.”
“So right you are,” Malcolm said. “After a lifetime of study and research, I’m agnostic. It’s impossible to understand what we don’t comprehend.”
CHAPTER 14
BY NOON, THE clouds had cleared and the sun lit the sky a brilliant blue. The air was so clean you could taste it on your tongue. Jessep had served his guests oyster sandwiches, green beans, and tea, and, as was his daily practice, had sought out a bit of inspiration before setting out to the fields.
“So, do any of you admire poetry? Nothing like the wit of words to stimulate curiosity and put one in the right frame of mind. Can anyone cite a favorite rhyme?”
Carter’s throat tightened. Malcolm and Rose hunched their shoulders and looked away. Carter knew it was his turn to ante. He nervously cleared his throat.
“Jessep, I have on occasion made some effort at writing lyrics and happen to have with me a recent attempt. I’m not good at this—terrible actually—but writing relaxes me. I find it cathartic. Hattie says you love poetry, which is why I brought this along. I’d very much appreciate feedback. Would you mind? And please be honest.”
Jessep accepted the printout, stared at it briefly, and without a hint of reaction said, “I would be h
onored. Now, may I show you three the plantation and what I think you really came here to see?”
***
They walked by a hayfield and followed a worn deer trail through a narrow patch of woods. They emerged into a mowed parcel a few acres wide. Near its center was a concrete slab about the size of a manhole cover.
“In 2005, a group of geologists drilled down nearly 700 feet. This was one of about a dozen bore sites on the Shore and across the Bay. I recall that they spent nearly one and a half million dollars on this project. Scientists came from Austria, South Africa, Japan, and from throughout the United States to participate. A few lived on Greyson Planation and stayed in the main house while here.
“They were doing hydrology and sediment studies to determine how the crater affects the water table in Southeastern Virginia. I’m assuming you know about the asteroid strike, correct?” Jessep paced around the sealed hole capped with concrete. Pointing down at it, he said, “They determined that this is ground zero, a two-mile-wide swath that stretches from where we are standing to Cape Charles. Yes sir, right here, about a mile below us, is the core of the comet that created the land we stand on. It must have been a magnificent sight.”
***
Indeed. Thirty-five million years ago, the asteroid blazed in from outer space at 76,000 miles an hour, a bolt of light that would have blinded anything seeing it. The iron fireball pulverized the earth, launching debris sixty miles into the sky and evaporating millions of tons of water instantly. The space rock ripped through a mile of sand and sediment until it smashed into bedrock granite. The dislodged ground rippled into a concentric circle, like a rock thrown into a pool of water. It created what looked like an upside-down sombrero with an upturned rim.
A firestorm of boulders from the impact rained hundreds of miles away as the earth fractured and quaked. Tsunamis crashed into the Blue Ridge Mountains, submerging under water more than two-thirds of what is currently Virginia. Eventually, that water rushed back into the center of the sombrero, a hole as deep as the Grand Canyon, sweeping up everything in its path.
“There are 170 known craters made by asteroids on earth, and this one is ranked the sixth largest,” Jessep said with pride. “Good thing the dinosaurs died about thirty million years earlier, because the Bay crater would have annihilated them.”
“Unfathomable,” Malcolm said. “The human mind is incapable of grasping the enormity of such events. Our worlds are so micro.”
“Indeed, sir. There is so much we’re incapable of comprehending,” Jessep said.
“Jessep, your cousin Hattie mentioned that there are unusually strong magnetic readings attributed to the comet. Is there anything you can tell us about that?” Carter asked. “Is there any truth to that?”
“It’s a difficult science to understand, but here is what I’ve discerned from reading academic papers from the research: Yes, there are what have been described as magnetic anomalies here. Scientists have found elevated readings right here and beneath Cape Charles.”
Malcolm and Rose grew excited and quickly exchanged nods. Their research, and that of other parapsychologists, had correctly correlated the intensity of magnetic fields with paranormal experiences. Dr. Malcolm Dunbar himself had written a paper mapping paranormal hot spots. He and graduate assistants, including Rose, had combed data on magnetic field readings from oil companies and academic geologists worldwide who were exploring for oil, gas, water, and fault lines.
“We’re quite familiar with the magnetic force here and anecdotal reports about apparitions,” Malcolm said. “That’s principally why we’re here. We’re looking for manifestations, or at least people experiencing them. Plus, Rose has a personal interest as well—a family member who decades ago vanished in Cape Charles.”
Standing in the field on that sunny afternoon, Rose and Malcolm elaborated on their hypothesis. They explained that, in theory, strong magnetic waves stimulate interaction between the right and left lobes of the brain. The increased mental friction heightens sensitivities and, for some, receptivity to otherwise invisible forces and energies.
“It wakes up parts of the brain that are dormant or disconnected. At least that is the hypothesis,” Malcolm said. “Introducing strong magnetic waves essentially increases the polarity between lobes. It’s like letting light into a dark closet. It’s like massaging a muscle to improve blood flow.”
“Your cousin Hattie told me about a local fella—I think his name is Major—who had bipolar syndrome,” Carter said. “After living here a few years, he seems cured.”
“Major, yes, of course,” Jessep said. “We hunt geese together on occasion. His dog Minor is one of the best retrievers in the county. He’ll swim 100 yards to fetch a crippled bird. Major is a splendid chap. Always upbeat. Very bright and generous toward others. That’s why I like sharing a duck blind with him. Indeed, on one of our outings he told about his recovery from disambiguation. Neurologists performed magnetic resonance scans and found enhanced activity in his hippocampus. They had no explanation why. I can only surmise that the elevated magnetism from the crater played some role. Moving to Cape Charles was the only variable in Major’s life that had changed.”
Rose looked under the brim of Jessep’s homburg and into his shaded gray eyes. “Perhaps, Jessep, this explains your special gift. Perhaps living here has enabled your perceptions. Perhaps, as you theorize, there is a nexus between the past and the present that you are able to experience because of your proximity to this magnetic anomaly. And Malcolm and I surmise it’s why Cape Charles has such a high concentration of apparitions. It’s one of the hot spots discovered in Malcolm’s research.”
“You mean the woo-woo,” Jessep said with a grin.
“Precisely,” Rose said, “the woo-woo.”
***
The quartet returned to the cottage, mostly in silence as each tried to connect the dots plotted by real science and pseudoscience. At the bar, Jessep poured each of them a glass of the sherry Malcolm had brought.
“I’d very much appreciate a copy of your research about hot spots and magnetism,” Jessep told Rose. “And I think I might be of further assistance regarding manifestations. There is more to what I have encountered than re-experiencing a past life. Greyson Plantation has several apparitions who appear quite frequently—at least to me. That’s why I live in the cottage. The main house is, how shall I say, inhabited. It drove away my first wife and chased off my brother and sister. They wanted no part of that legacy and fought mightily to deny what their eyes witnessed. ‘It’s just young minds playing tricks,’ they used to say. Both of them, by the way, hated Halloween.”
Jessep refreshed his glass and continued.
“What’s odd is that some houseguests over the years have seen the inhabitants while others were oblivious. Two of the geologists who stayed here, for example, were happy and perfectly comfortable. The third, a sedimentologist from South Africa, left after a few nights and rented a hotel room in town. He never told his colleagues why, but I was suspicious, so I sought him out. He said he woke up twice and saw a black man and black lady leaning over his bed smiling at him. He described Cecil and Whinny, former house servants. Both died on the plantation in the late 1800s and are buried in the family plot down the road. There are pictures of them in the family photo album. If I brought a lady friend home, and she spent the evening, they would toss her clothes out the window. One lady friend was drying her hair after a bath and saw Whinny holding a towel and staring at her in the mirror. As you can imagine, that puts a crimp in one’s love life.”
“Are there other apparitions on the plantation?” Rose asked.
“Yes. There’s Mr. Henry. He took care of the horses and livestock here for decades. Every morning at sunrise he would walk around the farm, listening to the birds and smelling the morning air, especially in the spring. He was a big fella, with a full, thick beard—a mulatto, you know, high yellow. At least a few dozen times a year I see Mr. Henry walking in the field. He died fifty-three yea
rs ago, when I was a boy.”
Carter and Malcolm sat silent and mesmerized, as if in a movie theater.
“Who are the others?” Rose asked. “Former servants or family members too?”
“Sometimes I see other people walking around here, but I can’t be sure who they are. They seem to just be going about their business, carrying a basket with vegetables, or walking down the stairs in the house, or standing in a dark corner in the barn or next to a horse in the stables. Sometimes I even see animals—cats mostly—just perched somewhere and leering. I’ve seen Hunter, my rude chocolate Lab, barking at them. The people I see don’t bother me none, but those cats do. They’re evil in death just as in life. I do my best to keep the feral ones thinned out. They’re destructive and full of disease.”
“Jessep, I believe you, every word,” Rose said like a convert at a Baptist revival. Her eyes glazed. “I haven’t experienced these types of things, but I do have a heightened perception. It’s hard to explain, but sometimes I feel the presence of things or have premonitions. I’ve felt more sensitive, more aware, since we arrived. Would you mind if we work together?”
“Surely,” Jessep said. “However I can be of service, my lady.”
Jessep’s eyes lit up as if he had hit triple bars on an Atlantic City slot machine. Carter, on the other hand, felt like he had gone bust.
“I can think of nothing more enticing or invigorating,” Jessep said. He lifted Rose’s hand across the bar and gently kissed it. “When would you like to perform this . . . research?”
“Soon, very soon,” Rose said.
***
“You seem smitten,” Malcolm teased after he, Rose, and Carter had strapped on their seatbelts in the SUV. “I thought you might swoon and faint.”
“All in a day’s work,” Rose countered. She stared at the tree-lined avenue as they exited Greyson Plantation. “You boys told me to turn on the charm, remember?”