Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing

by Morgan James

  “This here was left by one of my Sorley cousins. Stuffed mostly with papers, old photographs, and I don’t know what all. Just get yourself comfortable, Miz. Promise. Little Missy don’t mind iffen we sit on her bed.”

  Instinctively, I looked to the kitchen door, half expecting a curious little girl to come through and ask us what we were doing. If a little girl really existed, outside Mrs. Allen’s imagination. The phantom breeze that had stirred the moon and stars mobile breathed across my cheeks and brought with it the scent of rosemary.

  “I ain’t thought much about the suitcase for years. Excepting of course when the twins come around a year or two ago asking if they could read through the papers.”

  That got my attention. “Do you mean the Goddard twins?”

  “Why yes, it was a good while after they sold out to you. I was busy putting up peaches that day, so I just let them carry it out to the porch and plunder through. They was both big into all that Civil War playacting, you know. Had them Confederate uniforms and all. Course you know, my home part of East Tennessee was pretty much divided between the Union and the Confederacy—just like Western North Carolina. I don’t get excited one way or the other. Yankees, or Crackers, either way killing don’t set right with me.”

  For some reason I was disturbed to hear Mrs. Allen say the twins looked through the Sorley papers. I considered the twins criminals and knew whatever they were looking for would lead to problems for someone else. “But why would they want to go through the suitcase?”

  Mrs. Allen handed me a stack of papers bound by a length of frayed, pink knitting yarn. “Here, look through these for an old envelope addressed to Joab Sorley. Well, if I remember rightly, that feller down at the historical society told them Goddard boys about the Sorleys being here since God was a baby, and they said they wanted to hunt anything written down about the war years in Western North Carolina. I reckon they thought finding something would make them big shots with their Rebel playmates.”

  “Did they find anything?”

  “No, they rummaged through about every piece of paper; but went away disappointed, so far as I could tell.” She held up a yellowed envelope to the light and then handed it to me. “Here it is. I knew it was here somewhere.”

  It was indeed addressed to Mr. Joab Sorley, Charleston, North Carolina. “Where is Charleston, North Carolina?”

  “Back then, I believe, Bryson City was known as Charleston. I think the mail come to the Sorleys by way of there. Can’t say why.” She smiled and tapped the envelope with excitement. “Just go on and open it. As I remember, your Reba is mentioned. Read it out loud.”

  I unfolded two pieces of well-creased paper and read the neatly penned words:

  August 25, 1882

  Dear Cousin Joab,

  We all desire the best for cousin Nola’s baby. Thus, by your counsel, we made haste to locate Mr. Beauchamp. Two Christian Temperance League ladies working for cousin Lewis’s release are to be thanked for this effort. They set fellow workers in Baltimore the task of locating him in the household employment of Mr. and Mrs. John Garrett, also Nola’s employers since her arrival from Wexford. We agreed with you that once Mr. Beauchamp was informed that Nola died giving birth, he would want his child with him.

  Our angels of mercy sent word they did indeed call upon the Garrett house. Mrs. Garrett received them most graciously. She expressed sorrow at Nola’s passing and met them with Mr. Aiken Beauchamp, who is her butler.

  The ladies write Mr. Beauchamp is as Nola described. He presents himself as educated, gentlemanly, and handsome. Though he is lighter of complexion, and seems quite respectable, he is, by his own account, counted as a man of color, owing to his mother being a mulatto woman from the West Indies, bought into service to the elder Mr. Garrett. Mr. Beauchamp declared he was in agreement with Nola’s decision to journey to her South Carolina relatives, and to raise the child here. The ladies write he wept when he was given the news Nola died in childbirth. Nevertheless, he is steadfast in his belief that the baby would have little chance of a happy life as a person of color in Baltimore. Further, we all agree that to send the baby to the Connell family in Ireland would be just as unfortunate a choice.

  Thus, dear cousin, we arrive back where we began, and trust you have not had a change of heart. We pray Nola’s child will be the daughter you and Enid have prayed for these many years. If this stifling heat should ever relent, our John will bring the baby, Rebecca (Reba), along with cousin Adeline Redmond, who has nursed her with her own sizeable brood, to you in Charleston. I have no knowledge of the time by wagon from Seneca, but I am certain John will make haste as well he can. We are told the roads can be dangerous and fraught with thieves, thus three of the Redmond boys will accompany the wagon on horseback.

  We are also sending a chest of household items from dear departed Papa Connell’s home for little Reba’s future dowry, with a prayer she will choose more wisely than her mother. I will remain here to tend the farm, and my rowdy students at Rocky Bottom School.

  Cousin Adeline offers her kind regards and thanks you, again, for your assistance during this time of Lewis’ incarceration. Without your guiding hand, she has no doubt her family would be prey to many a roving Yankee bandit. Dear Adeline. She is a brave mother and faithful wife. We all pray the rumors of Governor Hampton beseeching President Arthur to pardon Lewis are true. How grateful we would be to have him home.

  The letter was signed Margaret Connell. Questions collided in my mind. Nola Connell? Cousin to Margaret? An Irish immigrant in service to a household in Baltimore? Her daughter, Reba, born in South Carolina and brought to North Carolina to be raised by other cousins who were Sorleys. Was this the same Daniel Joab Sorley who sold January McNeal the Fire Mountain land? Who were Lewis and Adeline Redmond? Margaret writes Adeline was yet another cousin. My Lord, how many cousins were there? Did the letter say Lewis Redmond was in jail? Was this Margaret person saying Reba Connell McNeal’s grandmother was a slave from the West Indies?

  Mrs. Allen patting my knee, and wind shaking the porch chimes to life brought me back to the room. “It’s a March wind for sure out there today. More winter coming. And somebody needing to be laid to rest.”

  I smiled and nodded, finding it oddly comfortable that this lovely old woman would equate a restless breeze with troubled spirits. “I’ll have to read the letter again. I’m not sure I have all of it straight in my mind. So many cousins I didn’t know about.”

  “Well sure you need to read it again. It’s a lot to take in with one big swallow. I’ve probably read Margaret’s letter a hundred times over the years, so I know it most by heart. I just never knew why I was holding on to the thing until today. Ain’t that something? Don’t know why I still get amazed at the power of the spirits to guide our ways. Just like with little Missy…” Mrs. Allen stopped short of finishing her sentence.

  She stood up, arching her back as though to stretch out a kink. I wondered if hoeing down the fire in her backyard was the cause of her stiff back, and took a breath to ask her again about the mysterious little girl. Too late. “Well now, that little Missy is a story for another day. I’ll warm up our tea and you come on out to the kitchen when you’re ready.”

  I read the letter again and let my eyes wander around the small room. Had this room been Reba’s? The bed I sat on was less than single size, but longer than a crib. Maybe an old youth bed with rope, not wood slats, crisscrossing under the mattress for support. The rainbow-hued Texas star quilt smelled of clean, but old, batten. A faded red plastic Etch-a-Sketch toy peeked out from under the foot of the bed. That certainly had not been here in my great grandmother’s time. Was this where the little girl, Missy, slept? Smoothing the quilt and tucking the toy back under the bed to keep it safe, I joined Mrs. Allen in the kitchen.

  “I fixed you some Earl Grey this time. Figured you needed the bergamot to clear your mind a bit.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Allen. Earl Grey is my favorite.”

  “I know. I r
eckon Susan told me that. Leastwise, somebody did. Now, tell me. What do you make of Margaret Connell’s letter?”

  I sipped the lemony warm tea and mentally organized what I’d learned from the letter. I’m a list maker, so I visualized facts listed down the page. “I guess the first thing is: it seems the Reba Connell in the letter is my great grandmother McNeal, because I found a census reference stating her maiden name was Connell. The second thing is: the date of 1882 on the letter matches with about when she was born. So it would make sense that she could have come over here as a baby. Maybe that’s why I don’t find a birth record for her. Do I understand that relatives of your cousins, the Sorleys, raised Reba as their daughter?”

  “Yes, that’s the way I read it. Seems like they didn’t have children of their own so they took in a Connell cousin from over in Seneca, South Carolina. Little Reba.”

  “Does that make us related?”

  “Lordy, I guess it would make us distant relatives, though I’m not smart enough to figure just how. Course, you know what they say,” she said with a mischievous smile, “you start climbing back down that family tree and a whole lot of us are related that wouldn’t necessarily want to be.”

  The name Aiken Beauchamp came to mind. “True. From what Margaret Connell says, Reba’s father was less than one generation away from slavery, and that’s why Nola came south to have the baby. Apparently, she wanted to hide Reba’s heritage by raising her with South Carolina relatives.”

  “Well, I suspect that’s been done a lot of times over the last three hundred years.”

  “I’m sure you are right. I’ve read enough about slavery and American history to know that. Still, finding a relative who was a slave is a shock. Here I am, as fair and Caucasian looking as they come, and I have African genes swimming around in my pool. Of course we don’t know what percentage non-white Aiken Beauchamp was. His father could have been white, or perhaps another slave from Baltimore. The letter refers to his mother as mulatto. So, she would have been mixed race also. There were many Spanish, and French in the West Indies. Who knows? I wish we had pictures of them.

  “The letter only says Beauchamp was considered ‘a person of color’ in 1882, alluding to the fact that he would experience the same discriminations as any other black man, no matter his percentage of non-white genes. By his skin color, it sounds as though he could have moved easily into white society, had he been able to manufacture different birth records. Many people probably did that, or maybe moved to states that were more relaxed about proving family history. Can you believe society was ever like that?”

  Mrs. Allen attached a wayward strand of salt-and-pepper hair into the single braid reaching down her back, and answered. “Yes ma’am, I can believe it. I sure can. That’s just the way it was back then and for a long time afterwards. And I’ll tell you what. It wasn’t just freed Negro slaves who were treated that away. Chinese folks, American Indians, and my kin as well. Most couldn’t vote or own property.”

  She must have registered my puzzled look because she took a deep swallow of her tea and explained. “I believe I done told you I was a Mullins from East Tennessee. Guess you don’t know what that means.” I shook my head no. “All the Mullins, and Goins, and Breedloves from over there are Melungeon people. Sorleys were, too. Except, early on they moved over here where the wilderness treated everybody the same, and all you needed to buy up the land was cash money. They blended in with the white locals, and afore you knew it, nobody remembered, or cared.

  “Now when I was little, over in East Tennessee, they still cared. We Melungeon kept to ourselves. Had to. Lots of locals who hadn’t been in East Tennessee half as long as us treated us like dirt, or worse. Some’d move to the other side of the street if they saw us coming. Some wouldn’t even sell our women a piece of cloth from the general store.

  “And I can tell you this, when one of the Sorleys introduced me to Mr. Allen, my daddy didn’t like it one little bit. He thought Mr. Allen would treat me like hired help, or worse, on account of us being who we were. And because of the age difference, I reckon. By then Mr. Allen’s boys was mostly grown, and I wasn’t but a year or two older than them. But you see, it worked out fine all the days till he died, bless his soul. He was as good a man as there ever was. I didn’t want no children back then, just wanted to work my herb gardens and dream my dreams. That was all right by him. He didn’t care a fig I was Melungeon. Didn’t never even want to talk about it. He shut my daddy up by giving me my own bank account. My get-away-money he called it. Said iffen I wasn’t happy with him, I could always take my money and go on back to East Tennessee.”

  An unusual arrangement for the 1940s, especially when most women didn’t even have their names on a bank account back then, much less have one of their own. I wondered if the wisdom to leave a wife her independence had been passed down to my Daniel.

  “I read an article in the Our State magazine about the Melungeon heritage being traced by DNA evidence to the Portuguese. Right?”

  “That’s right. Us Melungeon always told we came from the Portuguese who settled here before the English. The English, they didn’t believe us. Or didn’t want to believe us, cause that meant we got here first. Though only Lord knows why that would even matter. But you know those old-time English—always had to hold themselves better than somebody. They put us in with the mixed blood of Cherokee, or Creek, and Africans for a long time. Then they said we was gypsies, and that wasn’t any better. Even in the 1920s, our men couldn’t vote. It’s only been in the last ten or so years that the truth of us being Portuguese was proved. I reckon that’s one reason that letter has stayed in my heart over the years. I felt sorry for little Reba and for Mr. Aiken Beauchamp. Course, seems like little Reba was raised as a daughter by the Sorleys. And that’s okay, too. I say family is who loves you and takes care of you, no matter what the blood is, or isn’t. Wouldn’t you say so, Miz Promise?”

  A bell jingled behind me and I turned to see a red, yellow and brown painted bird pop out from his house on the wall. “Coo-Coo, Coo-Coo, Coo-Coo,” he announced. Three o’clock. “Good heavens. I had no idea I’d stayed so long.” I rose from the table and took my cup to the sink. “I hope I haven’t kept you too long from your chores. And,” I added, “I hope little Missy will come out from her hiding place when she sees me leave. She must be getting cold playing outside for so long.”

  Mrs. Allen walked me to the door. “Mercy me, that little thing would run these hills till she froze if I didn’t talk her inside. You take that letter on with you. I expect it belongs with you.”

  As I backed my Subaru around and inched down the steep drive, I may have seen someone in my rear view mirror running from Mrs. Allen’s well house to the porch; or, it may have been only the slanted late afternoon sunlight. Turning right toward home, I realized I’d forgotten to ask Mrs. Allen about Lewis and Adeline Redmond. It seemed that I’d heard the Redmond name, though I couldn’t place where.

  6

  A tall person wearing a black leather jacket—an image of the Roadrunner stitched in yellow and white on the back—leaned against my pasture fence. I say person because, from the back, the thick, wavy blond hair cascading onto the shoulders could have belonged to either Marilyn Monroe or a member of the flashy world of prime-time wrestling. I could hear Alfie barking from the house as I pulled my Subaru next to the kitchen porch and got out.

  “Can I help you?” I called, and unlocked the door to let Alfie out. The hound jumped up and planted large slobbery kisses on my cheek, before he ran for the person standing on “his” turf. I wasn’t sure if Alfie would greet the stranger with kisses or take a hunk out of his butt. My visitor turned toward me and braced himself against the fence for Alfie’s tackle. He was a guy, a skinny guy, whose narrow chest seemed lost inside his oversized bombardier’s jacket.

  “Sorry, he’s just excited. He won’t bite. At least I don’t think so.” I covered the space between us and grasped Alfie’s new red collar. “Down Alfie. Be ni
ce and sit. Sit boy.” Wonder of wonders, the dog sat.

  My visitor retreated a foot or so, and brushed Alfie’s paw prints from his clean jeans. His attempt at a smile was too tight to be friendly. “I’m Shane Long. Susan told me to come by about the burned barn,” he explained in a flat North Carolina twang. Both hands went up to push the blond waves behind his ears, exposing a long, tanned face, pocked with acne scars. The sparse goatee did nothing to fill out his almost nonexistent chin. I was struck by how unfair Mother Nature had been to this young man— to give him hair some women would kill for, and then pair it with a face more homely than handsome.

  “Ah, yes. The contractor. Right? I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

  “I was heading out this way already, so I took a chance you’d be home.”

  “Well then. Glad I got back when I did.” I realized there was no truck in the drive. Surely he didn’t walk. “How did you get out here?”

  He motioned with a hitchhiker’s thumb to the back of the house. “I rode my new Harley. Had to park it around back on the concrete apron to the rear porch, on account of the kickstand wasn’t holding here in the dirt and gravel. I could pour you a cement walk up to the kitchen steps on this side of the house while I’m here fixing the barn, if you want.”

  I nodded my approval of his idea, and we walked around the house to the rear yard with Alfie trotting along side, drooling and smiling as he followed. Yes, there was, indeed, a large, incredibly shiny black motorcycle parked close to my rear porch steps. The behemoth spoke power, arrogance, and a don’t-mess-with-me attitude. I would bet, as it traveled the twisting mountain roads, the dazzling silver exhaust pipes screamed like the baritone voices of hell. No wonder Alfie was barking his head off when I drove into the drive. The dog was probably scared half to death by the noise.