Zion

by Dayne Sherman

  ZION

  A NOVEL

  Dayne Sherman

  Copyright © 2014 by Dayne Sherman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Accendo Books, L.L.C.

  1905 W. Thomas St., Ste. D, 137

  Hammond, LA 70401, U.S.A.

  www.accendobooks.com

  Email: accendobooks@gmail.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Author’s Note: No rednecks were harmed in the making of this novel.

  Book Layout © 2014 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Author Photo: Kristy Williams

  Cover artwork: Dayne Sherman: Acrylic on Burned Southern Pine.

  Zion: A Novel / Dayne Sherman. -- 1st ed.

  For my son

  Contents

  ZION COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  PART I: MORNING

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PART II: NOON

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  PART III: NIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION

  AUTHOR Q & A WITH DAYNE SHERMAN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  ABOUT ACCENDO BOOKS

  OTHER WORKS

  To set the state of perfection too high is the surest way to drive it out of the world.

  --The Works of John Wesley, May 13, 1772

  By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.

  --Psalm 137:1

  PART I: MORNING

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tom Hardin sat on the small back stoop of the old farm house with a cotton rag and an unloaded rifle in his hands. A half-dozen bullets were lined up on the top step like tacks in a row beside a small tin of Western Field gun oil. He was a meticulous man as precise as a surgeon, and he took good care of his guns and tools. He’d never put away the rifle after hunting without wiping it down with oil, thoroughly cleaning the barrel and action. He heard a vehicle cross his iron cattle guard near the blacktop road, the thump-thump noise of tires. Then his dog barked. Jubal was a large stud dog, half Catahoula and half bulldog, weighing over eighty pounds. The dog was chained in the yard under a live oak tree not far from the house. The vehicle was pulling into the gravel driveway. Tom picked up the Winchester and six bullets, stood, and walked around to the back corner of the house. The horn honked twice, a rapid beep-beep, and Jubal barked even more. Tom could not see the car, so he slid the six rimfire cartridges into the rifle tube and worked the pump action once.

  He held the rifle in the crook of his left arm as he passed the front corner of the house and saw the Ninth Ward Marshal standing at the door of his white Plymouth. Both Tom and Marshal Donald Brownlow were lifelong members of Little Zion Methodist Church in the community of Zion in Baxter Parish. They sat on opposite sides of the center aisle of the church on Sundays with their families. Though never close friends, they were always cordial.

  The lawman grimaced and said, “You aim to fire on me with that peashooter?”

  “It’s not a peashooter. It’s a .22 magnum,” Tom said. “And I wouldn’t shoot a man unless he truly deserved it.” He pointed the barrel toward the ground.

  Tom walked over to the patrol car. The men shook hands.

  “You don’t deserve shooting, do you, Marshal?” Tom asked, smiling.

  “Well, if I did, I’d never tell you.” He laughed a strange-sounding snort and fished in his shirt pocket for a pack of Winstons.

  Tom was compact and thin, built wiry, the kind of man who could climb a tall tree by scooting up the trunk without any help beyond the strength of his legs and arms and will. Barely five-seven, he had good posture and muscled biceps and a natural discipline that caused him to appear taller than he really was. He was a contrast to the dough-faced Marshal Brownlow, a flabby man of six feet. In a fair fight, Tom would beat Brownlow to a ripe pulp.

  “It sure is getting cool out in the evenings and mornings. I guess it’s getting to be a good enough Saturday to kill a few squirrels,” the marshal said.

  “It is. I bagged three this morning,” Tom said.

  “Any of them have wolf worms in the neck? I’ve seen them before in barn cats this time of year. That’s the bad thing about squirrel hunting early in the season.”

  “No, we’ve had a frost. They were all fine.”

  “Where’d you kill ’em?”

  “Over on Turnpike Road. But you didn’t drive over here to talk about the weather and squirrels.”

  “No.”

  “Then what can I help you with, Donald?”

  “Why don’t you put that rifle on the hood of my car? You make me a little uneasy holding a gun.” The marshal struck a match on the car mirror and lit his cigarette. He took a drag.

  “I kind of like holding the rifle,” Tom said. “It keeps me from feeling uneasy myself.”

  Brownlow let out a lungful of smoke. He gazed at Tom for a few moments.

  “Say what you came here to say. Or do you plan to arrest me for something I know nothing about?” Tom asked.

  “I didn’t come over to arrest you,” Brownlow said.

  “Donald, you’re kind of making me nervous. Please get to the point.”

  “Okay. Last night more than a hundred acres of young pines burned. Land owned by Fitz-Blackwell over on Traylor Branch. It was torched to the point of ruin, at least two-thirds’ll have to be replanted, they say.”

  “That’s a shame. Probably just heat lightning, an act of God.” Tom scratched his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “It did seem a bit smoky last night and this morning.”

  “Look, I’ve heard that men are repeating a slogan, ‘For every oak a pine.’ It’s just plumb crazy talk. Folks can’t go around playing arsonist in the whole damned parish. Burning one pine for every oak killed, or a hundred pines for every oak killed. It’s just plain loopy. The fires are getting out of control. This is 1964. It ain’t 1864.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, a week ago, Fitz-Blackwell brought in some arso
n investigators from Salem, Oregon, plus Louisiana state forestry men, and the Lord only knows who or what else they’ve sent down here. That was on account of the Rogers Road fire, and more fires are ablaze all over God’s creation. They say somebody started the fire by horseback and on foot and maybe by automobile. Seems like it was more than one person, a true conspiracy. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it, would you?” The marshal released a trail of smoke out of the side of his mouth.

  Tom frowned. “No, I don’t know anything about it. Not about Traylor Branch or Rogers Road. Like I asked, what brings you to my door?” His forehead wrinkled with the question. He had wondered if his friend James Luke Cate and some others were behind the fires, but he’d never say a word to the marshal.

  “Tom, I seem to recollect that you’ve got a riding horse?” The marshal took a pull from the Winston.

  “Yeah, a horse that I use to plow a garden and ride, work my stock with, but having a horse is something I’ve got in common with about half the men in Zion.”

  “Is your horse shod?”

  “No, I don’t shoe horses. I don’t have the extra money to pay for somebody to come do it.” His horse, Sam, was not shod, but he could indeed pay the six dollars for a farrier to nail a set on the horse if necessary. The gelding was mostly Appaloosa, and his hooves were as hard as stone. Unless he rode the horse on asphalt, Sam didn’t need iron shoes.

  “Tom, I’m here because one of the Fitz-Blackwell men said you was watching them whilst you was riding horseback off Kinchen Road. They was killing some hardwood trees to plant pines a week or so ago. Said you more or less tried to stalk them. They felt threatened. Said you had a high-powered deer rifle with you. And the investigators told me that the arsonist had him a horse that wore steel shoes. I’m just trying to look into this thing from all possible directions.”

  “My horse doesn’t have shoes. He’s never had a set of shoes since I bought him four years ago. Now I did see them out yonder killing oaks with some kind of poison, jabbing the base of the trees with long hollow spikes full of herbicide. I was looking for my hogs, which had wandered behind the old Gibson place on the Big Natalbany. As you well know, I’ve been forced by the new law to catch up all my stock by the New Year. That said, it’s a free country, and watching somebody do their work isn’t illegal. Not yet. Watching them doesn’t mean I was the one that started the fires either. I tell you, I did not start any fires. The fires were probably from lightning anyhow. You’re welcome to go inspect my horse’s hooves.” He motioned to back lot with his hand and shifted the rifle to the crook of his right arm.

  Tom hadn’t burned any woods, though he’d pondered doing it himself after watching the men kill healthy hardwood trees, grown trees, for no better reason than they were less valuable than the pines, and the pines needed space to grow, more daylight and less shade.

  “It means something, you watching them out yonder,” Brownlow said.

  “No, sir. It means nothing at all. I don’t know the men. They don’t know me. I was out there and saw them. I’m not denying it. But that doesn’t mean I was threatening them or burning pines. How would they know I was the one watching them anyway?”

  “Sloan Parnell, Judge Parnell’s grandson, says you were out there last week riding a sorrel horse with a white snip or blaze on his face, a horse with a few black and white spots on his hips.”

  “Hum. There’s your answer, Donald. Sloan would be my number one candidate for lighting the fires. That’s if you’re asking me. I had trouble with him once before when I was hunting in the woods near his place. I said near his place, not on his place. He’s no good. It’s like folks thinking the CIA had a hand in assassinating President Kennedy. Most unnatural wickedness is an inside job. Sloan is real sorry, just like his daddy and Judge Parnell, too. The Parnells and the timber companies have robbed the public coffers as empty as a dry well. All the land they stole from widows and poor people back in the Depression. But I never saw Parnell in the woods that day.”

  The marshal stared past Tom. He smoked the Winston in silence. “I’m not accusing you, but you need to stay far away from the workers doing their jobs and—”

  Tom cut him off. “It ought not to be any man’s job to kill perfectly good hardwood trees and let them rot in the forest. The hogs and what few deer we have live off the acorns. Squirrels like them, too. Besides, the trees are pretty to look at. Can you believe that they are leaving the trees in the woods? They won’t even let folks cut firewood off the dead timber anymore. It’s a true disgrace and a crime.”

  “The men are required to kill the oaks because the pines are what keeps the lumber business going, and the timber companies pay a whole lot of taxes, and them tax dollars pay my salary.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. They don’t pay a mere tithe of their rightful taxes on what they ought to be paying. Fitz-Blackwell alone has more than thirty thousand acres in this parish, and the crooked tax assessor lets them pay nearly nothing. Pennies on the dollar. He assesses their land for fifty dollars an acre when everybody knows it’s worth two hundred, and some land’s worth more. Fact of business, a lot of it is worth close to four hundred dollars an acre. You ought to go today and lock up the assessor and every one of the Fitz-Blackwell men up at their Ruthberry office. But that would mean trouble, wouldn’t it? I hear the tax assessor has a daughter studying up at Louisiana College in Pineville on a full scholarship, as people tell it, paid for by Fitz-Blackwell. Don’t you reckon that’s more of a coincidence than me watching some men work while I was riding horseback and then a stand of pine trees catches fire? Doesn’t it all sound a little peculiar to you, Marshal Brownlow?”

  “Be careful is all I’m telling you, Tom,” he said. “You’re a decent, God-fearing man, and you ought to keep it that way.” He got into his car and shut the door. “I’ll be calling on you again,” the marshal said out of the open window.

  CHAPTER TWO

  At the kitchen table, the Hardin family gathered for supper. After Tom said grace, the family ate the squirrels that had been cut into quarters and cooked in brown flour gravy with black pepper and milk. Sara, Tom’s wife, baked buttermilk biscuits that were light brown on top, passed from hand to hand in a small cloth-covered wicker basket. On the oak table sat a jar of mayhaw jelly along with fresh butter. Ten-year-old Wesley placed a dollop of jelly on his biscuit. Sara dished herself some boiled okra from a blue and white ceramic bowl. She had picked a mess of fresh okra from the garden while Tom was hunting earlier in the day.

  A radio played in the background. The station was in nearby Pickleyville, Baxter Parish Radio, 1410 AM. Bill Evans was on the piano. He was a jazz musician who’d graduated from the local junior college and gone on to become famous. Tom knew Evans from his short stint as a student at Baxter State Junior College during the late 1940s. The Hardins liked listening to the radio every evening, though some neighbors said the jazz music was a backdoor attempt at integration, liberal claptrap pushed by the meddling station owner. Because of the nightly jazz, many of the folks out in the country had quit listening to the radio at night. However, few of them dared to miss “Swap-n-Shopper,” a live classified show that sold everything from rebuilt carburetors to plow mules. It aired three times daily and had a fanatical following.

  When the station wasn’t playing jazz late in the evening, the disc jockeys spun old-time country records such as Maybelle Carter, Flatt and Scruggs, and Bill Monroe. The Hardins liked both the jazz and the bluegrass music.

  They had no television despite Sara and Wesley’s wishes. The Hardins were frugal, prudent out of necessity and habit. Though they had enough money saved for a new GE, which cost two hundred dollars at the Goodyear store in downtown Pickleyville, they were delaying the purchase until an after-Christmas sale. If Tom had his way, they’d probably never purchase a television set at all. Tom put aside money for hard times, and he believed hard times loomed just around the corner. He planned accordingly, predicting the struggles were apt to
start as soon as he sold the hogs and cows on a flooded local market for half their value.

  “Tommy, what did the marshal want this morning?” Sara asked.

  “Not much. He stopped by to shoot the breeze,” Tom said, knowing she suspected more. He thought perhaps she had watched them from the window, and he’d already been evasive earlier when she asked about the visit. They’d been married for thirteen years.

  “The marshal is one to talk a lot,” Wesley said, eating a long, slimy piece of boiled okra, his fork stabbed through the center.

  “That’s right. He talks plenty,” Tom said.

  The land along the Baxter-Louisburg Parish border was Tom’s native country. He had lived in the area all of his forty years, except for three years spent in the U.S. Navy Seabees. He was the only child of an old jackleg carpenter and farmer. He did not have to go to war but enlisted anyway during World War II. After naval service, he returned to his home in Zion, where he’d lived ever since. The community was founded in the 1880s as a logging camp during the time when the virgin timber was clear cut. The area had water access to Lake Tickfaw through the Big Natalbany River. The village earned its name from Little Zion Methodist Church, a congregation founded during a brush arbor revival in 1883. The Hardins were among the first members of the Methodist congregation. Tom’s grandparents were charter members and builders of the first sanctuary. They were distantly related to the son of a Methodist circuit rider, John Wesley Hardin, the Texas outlaw.

  Tom owned nearly one hundred head of hogs and two dozen cattle. They foraged the unfenced rangeland, most of which was owned by Fitz-Blackwell, a multinational timber company. But a month earlier, the Baxter Parish Police Jury passed a binding ordinance in the dark of night, which would make the grazing of livestock on the open rangeland illegal on January 1, 1965. Tom hunted wildlife and ran his animals on the timber company land, property soon to be posted. This already caused him to feel somewhat like an outlaw. He realized that in a measure of two months this way of life would end forever. Unlike the relative calm of a late October day, the fires of change were already stirring. Tom was not ready to make adjustments, but he knew he would have to make changes soon enough.