by Morgan James
“Umm. Well, actually it isn’t an imposition because I wanted to talk to Mrs. Allen about something I found at the Perry County library.”
Susan lifted her eyebrows with interest. Some time ago, Fletcher Enloe dropped the bomb that he was sure my great-grandfather, January McNeal, had lived in Perry County in the early 1900s. At first, I resisted the allegation, sure that my intuition, of which I was overly proud, would alert me if I bought property in the same area that kin had once lived and died. My intuition suffered a major setback when I made several trips to the library genealogy room and learned Enloe was probably correct. I’d been procrastinating tracking down the facts until recently, when dreams of January McNeal began to play, and replay, through my already fitful sleep.
“There is a 1900 census report listing January McNeal, a farmer, living with his wife, Reba, and one child, on land he owned. I also found a sale in the land records showing January bought the land from Joab Sorley. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like Mrs. Allen’s property is old Sorley land. I wanted to talk to her about the Sorley/McNeal connection.”
Susan took a sip of her diet Coke. “She probably knows something about the land. But remember she came over here from Tennessee to marry Daddy’s granddad. She wasn’t born or raised up here.”
“How did they meet?”
Susan thought for a moment. “I think she told me they met at one of those revivals they used to have out at Foster Creek Camp. You know, people would come from all over to camp out in tents, meet old friends, and get salvation in between the pot luck suppers.”
“So that’s why they call it Foster Creek Camp. I thought maybe there was an old army or WPA camp out there. Sounds like you’re making fun of the old time revivals.”
“No, not really. I’d probably love going to one to hear the old music. Probably some of the best pickin’ around. It’s just that I like my religion a little more personal. No advertising. Shouting about Jesus isn’t my thing.”
My red coon dog visitor raised himself lazily from the rug with a yawn and stretched long and low. We looked his way. He shook his head; ears flapping like the sound of a leather belt being cracked. “So what are you going to name him? You have to do better than you did with the cat and her kittens. I can’t believe you still call her Cat, and him Junior. Good thing I took the little girl and gave her a proper name.”
I smiled at Susan’s chiding. “You call Mo-Jo a proper name?”
“It’s better than Junior.”
“So it is. I don’t know what to name him. Who knows if he’ll even stay around long enough to learn his name?” The dog lumbered over to where we sat and nudged my knee. I gave him the leftover slice of bacon from breakfast.
“Are you kidding? For bacon, he’ll stay. The big guy knows a sucker when he sees one.”
I stroked the soft fur between his eyes; he closed them in ecstasy. “Maybe something elegant, like Prince.”
“No offence, Miz P. but that dog is truly not elegant. You remember that old TV show, The Beverly Hillbillies? Didn’t they have a dog sort of like him?”
“Maybe. No, I think that dog was a bloodhound. Loved that show. Remember when Jethro signed up to take a correspondence course to become a brain surgeon? Lord that was funny.” We both laughed and the coon dog eyed us suspiciously. “I still say he looks elegant. Sort of.”
“I told you, you have sucker written across your forehead. He’s not a Prince. Looks more like an Alfie to me.”
“Alfie?” The dog’s ears perked up. “Where did that come from?”
Susan shook her head and stood up to leave. “No idea. Sometimes the universe just speaks. Gotta go, or I’ll be late for class.”
As the door closed behind Susan, Alfie yawned again and resumed his position in front of the fire.
4
After three back-to-back sessions at the women’s shelter, I was ready to talk about something other than family violence. Mrs. Allen’s property was about a mile down the two lane road from mine, though probably less, if you went as the crow flies, up and over the laurel and oak knob that caused the paved road to curve sharply like an inch worm in motion. Her small, weathered green, frame house faced Fells Creek, just like mine, but it sat some two hundred feet uphill. A ribbon of smoke trailed upward from the red brick chimney breaking the rusted metal ridgeline. With its narrow front stoop tucked under an aged roof overhang, the house seemed more indigenous to the Western North Carolina Mountains than my newly built large cabin, with its extravagant wrap around porches and stone fireplaces.
A wind chime of worn silver spoons and chunks of colored glass clinked to life above the back door when I knocked. No answer. I knocked again, and called out, “Hello?”
“Hello yourself. Come round to the side. I’m aback here.”
I retreated from the back porch and followed the voice. Mrs. Allen was leaning uphill into the slope of the back yard, hoeing furiously at a circular burned out patch of grass. A single charred ladder-back chair lay upended in the middle of the circle like a burnt offering.
“Mrs. Allen, what in the world are you doing? Can I help you?”
“Why, Lordy no. I’m done here.” She straightened up to her full height of about my own five foot four and wiped soot from her forehead with her apron. “You can take this here hoe for me, if you would, whilst I put this old chair in the pump house.”
I took the proffered hoe and looked for somewhere to lean it against the house. “That’s fine. Just prop it any old place where I won’t step on it and knock a knot on my old head. It sure is good to see you, Miz Promise. Come on in and I’ll make us a cup of tea.” She shoved the burned chair through the door of the concrete well house and ushered me to the back door. “You know, I believe I can find a slice or two of pound cake left in the pantry. Let’s have us some with our tea. There ain’t anything better than a little sweet treat of an afternoon. Don’t you agree?”
Having survived raising a teenaged son, I knew that a constant patter of talk usually serves as a sleight of hand to distract. Mrs. Allen obviously didn’t want me asking about her burned chair or the odd coincidence that both of us had fires on the same day. I’d play nice and have tea, then ask questions.
With a wave of her hand, Mrs. Allen directed me to one of five kitchen chairs—all identical to the burned carcass now in the well house— grouped around a big oak table. I sat. She washed her hands at the kitchen sink, poured water from a simmering kettle on the stove into two mugs, and moved a bulbous brown squirrel cookie jar from the counter to face me at the table.
“Here you go. Just take that lid off and choose a tea flavor to suit you,” she said, and pulled out another chair, which was already occupied by a fluffy, neon blue, stuffed elephant. “Well, would you look-a- there, that girl’s done gone out to play without her elephant. She don’t hardly ever do that.”
I must have looked confused because she went on to explain. “She hauls that stuffed thing everywhere she goes, even to the bathtub.”
I nodded and chose a peach flavored tea bag from the squirrel’s ceramic belly. Mrs. Allen sifted through three or four packs and finally settled on orange spice. “Susan told me you have company. I think she said a grand niece from over in Tennessee?”
“Well, I do have company. Pretty little thing. Missy. Don’t talk much, but she purely does love playing around in the woods and down by the creek.”
I smiled, dunked my tea bag a few times, and waited for more information on her visitor. Maybe there was a niece. Maybe I could report back to Susan that dementia was not an issue. Then I remembered the burned chair. What logical reason could Mrs. Allen have for setting a chair on fire?
“I suspect she’ll come back directly. She probably just got spooked when she seen you knocking at the back door.”
Before I could ask the little girl’s name, Mrs. Allen changed the subject. “Well now, you said on the phone you wanted to ask me about something. What would that be? I’m all ears. Wait a minute. Don’t tell m
e yet. I got to get that pound cake for us.” After cutting us generous slices, she sat back down. “Okay, I’m ready now. Eat your sweet treat and ask away.”
The first bite was sweet and light; the second saturated my senses with a buttery taste. “Wow. This is delicious. What’s your secret to making it so airy?”
“It’s the confectionary sugar and room temperature eggs that do it. It ain’t no secret. Is that what you come about? My pound cake recipe?”
“No ma’am. I’d love your recipe, but that isn’t it. It’s something I found at the library when I was researching a McNeal family living in this area. I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about them”
She tilted her head to one side and cleaned her wire-rimmed glasses with a napkin lying folded on the table. “Is that why you come to move up here from Atlanta, to search for your long ago kin?”
“Oh, no ma’am. I didn’t even know I had ancestors who had lived here. I just came to visit, and then saw the creek and the house…and….” I stopped, loosing the thread of my explanation. My hasty decision to exchange my city life and secure counseling practice for the uncertainty of the mountains was a mystery even to me. I don’t know why I did it. True, I felt burned out in Atlanta, needed a fresh start, needed… hell, I don’t know what I needed. I probably needed therapy, that’s what I needed. But I opted to sell my Atlanta house and move. I loved my new home, loved Susan, and yes, loved Daniel, but after three years something still felt unsettled, transitory.
Thank goodness, Mrs. Allen interrupted the dialogue I was having with myself. “These McNeals. When was they living in Perry County?”
“Maybe around 1900. I found a January McNeal, his wife Reba, and a child listed on the census for that year. Fletcher Enloe seems to think this January McNeal was my great grandfather.”
“Is that a fact? I wish I knew something to tell you; but it ain’t likely I’m going to be much help. I didn’t move over here from Tennessee until 1947. That’s when I married Mr. Allen. I don’t rightly recall any McNeals.”
She warmed up our tea and I fished around in my purse for the scrap of paper containing notes about January McNeal. “Here it is. The census says January McNeal, a farmer, lived on rented land belonging to Joab Sorley. When I checked the location of that parcel of land, it seems it is located just north of my property on what is now called Fire Mountain. Then I found a deed from Sorley to McNeal dated two years later for the same piece of land. It seems the land Sorley sold was cut from a larger tract. You and I are sitting on what remains of that larger tract.”
My information seemed an astounding revelation to me, and I was excited to share it with Mrs. Allen. I waited, and watched her face for surprise. The look was about the same as if I’d told her it was daylight outside.
She washed down her cake with a swallow of tea. “Well, that don’t seem out of the ordinary. This here has been Sorley land since the late 1700s. That’s when the whites begin to steal it outright from the Cherokee.”
She shifted in the hard oak chair and seemed to be considering where to begin her story. “I didn’t know no McNeals. But I can sure tell you how come we’re sitting and sipping tea on Sorley land. You see, I was a Mullins; my daddy was Big Jack Mullins from East Tennessee. The Sorleys were cousins. That’s how I come to meet Mr. Allen. It was a Sorley cousin who introduced us at a camp meeting. When Mr. Allen died about five years after we married, I didn’t feel right keeping the Allen land. Mac’s daddy bought me out. At that same time, he bought out Daniel’s daddy’s share too, on account of he already had bought him a place over yonder where Daniel and Susan live now. Mac, Sheriff Mac Allen, got the Allen family land when his daddy died. I reckon you’ve met Mac?”
I nodded.
“Well, I can see you ain’t smiling, so maybe you don’t think much of Mac. But give him a little due. He’s honest enough and tries to do the right thing. It’s just that when a creek don’t run very deep, you wonder if much can settle to the bottom. You know what I mean?” I smiled. I did indeed know what she meant.
“Anyway, the same year I sold my share of the Allen land, cousin Jeffrey Sorley died. He didn’t have no children and willed what was left of the Sorley land, and this old house, to me. It’s about twenty-six acres betwixt the paved road, Fire Mountain, Fletcher Enloe, and your property. Fact is I think Jeffrey Sorley sold your piece to Fletcher Enloe years ago, and Fletcher sold to the Goddard twins when his wife was sick with the cancer and they had so many doctor bills. Ain’t the twins the ones who sold you your land?”
I nodded yes, not wanting to go into the details of how much I loved my house and land, but not the memory of the Goddard twins scalping me on the other half of the deal—Granny’s Store—a non-earning asset if there ever was one.
“I reckon my point is, Sorleys have bought and sold land in Perry County near about forever. Course it wasn’t Perry County back then. It was still part of Buncombe County, I think, or maybe it was Haywood. I don’t rightly remember. Anyway, the tale is a Sorley bought about the original government land parcel sale. Paid two pounds, ten shillings for the first hundred acres, so the story is told, and got the rest for one shilling per acre. And you can rest assured the Cherokee didn’t get a dime, or a shilling. But, that’s another story all together. Fact is Sorleys certainly could have sold your great granddaddy a piece of Fire Mountain. I do seem to recall hearing a story about that little mountain being named so because of a terrible timber fire that pretty near cleared it off. The old folks said you could see smoke from that fire clear down to the Georgia line.”
My dream of January McNeal watching the fire and screaming a warning to run for the cave came back to me. A shudder skidded up my neck. “Have you ever come across a burned out cabin on the mountain? A woman at the library told me she remembers hiking Fire Mountain as a kid, and seeing the charred ruins of a house. She says it was near a waterfall.”
Mrs. Allen looked away, over my shoulder. Something, a change in the temperature, or the far away look in her eyes, made me turn my head to follow her gaze to a high row of windows in a tiny room off the kitchen. There, the arms of a coat hanger wire mobile, decorated with deep blue, glitter strewn construction paper moons and stars, moved to a breeze I could not feel. As if to join in the play, the spoon chimes outside over the kitchen door, chattered a furious, fast tune, and then stopped.
“Did you hear that?” She cocked her head, listening.
“The wind chimes?”
“No, not that,” she said, shaking her head, “It’s that little song she sings: Ring around the roses, pocket full of posies, upstairs downstairs, we all fall down.”
“You mean your visitor? Your niece? No, I didn’t hear her singing.”
She leaned across the table and covered my hand with hers. “Mercy-me. Not Missy. Another little girl. The singing’s been coming on for years. Susan says you got the sight, so I thought maybe you could hear it, too.”
I felt the need to speak softly. “Oh no, Mrs. Allen. I’m sorry. I don’t have the sight, just intuition, like a lot of people.” She held my gaze, then closed her boney fingers on mine, waiting. “I really didn’t hear the singing, but…” I paused. Did I want to tell Mrs. Allen?
“But…but what?”
“Sometimes, bits and pieces of other peoples lives find their way into my dreams. It’s like a movie of their sorrows, or unfinished business. It’s nothing I can control. The dreams just happen.”
“That’s the way of having the sight. It ain’t like having a telephone number you can call up. Can’t nobody control it. Least ways nobody I know. No ma’am, the sight just comes and goes, as it will. And you been having dreams lately?”
“Well, yes. I’ve had bad dreams about January McNeal. In the last dream he was watching a fire from a barred window, a jail window. I think my great grandmother, and a baby, were trapped in the path of the fire.”
She nodded slowly. “So, that’s it. Well, I reckon I understand now why you’re hunting stories about
McNeals.” She closed her eyes. Her hand, warm and wrinkled from a life of canning and gardening, stayed on mine. Was she listening for the song again? Finally she came back to the kitchen and spoke. “What did you say was her name?”
“Reba. My great grandmother’s name was Reba. I found the marriage record saying her maiden name was Reba Connell, born in 1882. I also found a death record for her. She died in 1905 when she was twenty-three. The record says she died of “fever” and was buried in the Methodist cemetery. My grandfather, William McNeal, was only four when she died. I haven’t found birth or death records for January McNeal. Not yet.”
“Reba, that’s what I thought you said. Seems to me that name does mean something to me. Mercy-me, it’s purely sad she left a little one behind. Must have broken her man’s heart clean in two.”
Suddenly she bolted for the kitchen door, threw it open, and called out,
“Missy, you come on in here. It’s getting too cold to play outside. Come on. Right now. Miz Promise ain’t gonna mind you none.”
I joined Mrs. Allen at the open door. The yard looked empty, unless you counted the towels hanging from the clothesline, snapping in the wind.
“Do I need to leave so she’ll come out from her hiding place?”
“No. It’s all right. She’ll come in directly. I done remembered where I heard the name Reba Connell. Come on in here and help me dig for it.”
5
I followed Mrs. Allen into the tiny, sun filled room adjacent to the kitchen. Together we dragged a large, faded blue, plastic, suitcase. It must have weighed fifty pounds. How did anyone in the 1950’s schlep these Samsonite monsters around? We sat on a narrow quilt covered bed under the windows and she began to rifle through the contents.