The Unquiet Grave

by Sharyn McCrumb

  The Handleys were a prominent family in Greenbrier County, one branch of which handled the local undertaking business, ensuring that Austin would be ushered out of the world by his own kinsmen. He had been a farmer, though, tending to the vast and fruitful acreage that had been valued back before the war, in his father’s time, at more than ten thousand dollars. He’d had a comfortable life, but there had been a dark side to that prosperity when the war came. No doubt that was why— But he didn’t want to dwell on the past, especially not when those memories inevitably led to William P. Rucker, whom he would face in court in a few weeks’ time. He would win the case, of course—there was no doubt about the defendant’s guilt—but that was little consolation. He would still be forced to endure that arrogant, self-righteous little man in court for the better part of a week. This funeral only served as a bitter reminder: one by one, they were all dying—all the brave men from the old days—while Rucker, who should never have survived the war, lived on and on.

  Well, it had been a long, full life for Austin Handley, very nearly the three score years and ten ascribed by the psalmist, and Handley had been vigorous to the last. Preston wondered if the minister would be able to resist the phrase He died in harness, for it was entirely appropriate. On the last day of April, the old man had been working on his farm, harrowing an already plowed field to provide a finer tilth for the sowing to come, when he had been stricken with a sudden and mercifully brief affliction of the heart. His farmhands had carried him back to the house, and a doctor was summoned, but he was gone before nightfall. Preston could not claim that his old friend had been taken before his time. Perhaps his quick, painless death was the sort that anyone should wish for, instead of a slow descent into senile infirmity. Still, for Preston’s own sake, he regretted the passing of Austin Handley as the severing of yet another link to the past, to his own youth. It was also a reminder to Preston that he himself had recently reached the half-century mark, and not many decades hence, he and all his memories would also be swept into oblivion. Just now, though, those memories were all too clear.

  It was hard to believe that the war had ended more than thirty years ago. A whole generation of adults had come of age since then—Lillie among them—with no memories of it at all, yet for those of his generation, the time spent in war was often clearer than the recent past. Perhaps that was because cold, and fear, and the constant presence of death had formed an acid that etched the war memories indelibly in the mind. It had taken a long time for everyday life to override the stories of past battles that had once dominated the conversation whenever his old friends gathered.

  He slipped into the church and took his place in the accustomed pew, noting with satisfaction that the coffin at the front of the church was laden with flowers. The funeral was well attended, a tribute to Austin Handley’s long life and his standing in the community. Preston’s thoughts drifted in and out as the obsequies went on; he knew his old friend’s achievements and virtues as well as anybody there. His eyes and his thoughts strayed to the rest of the congregation. The 14th Virginia Cavalry was well represented, although sadly older and grayer than he cared to remember them. He would see them in the churchyard, and for a few minutes, savoring memories with those who shared them, they could all be young again.

  After the chords of the last hymn trailed off into silence, the mourners followed the coffin out into the churchyard, where an open grave banked with flowers awaited the mortal remains of Austin Handley. John Alfred Preston stood beside the church door for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the bright May sunshine.

  “It’s a sad loss for the county, isn’t it, Preston?” said a voice behind him.

  He turned, recognizing the voice of Samuel Feamster, whom he still thought of as Lieutenant after all these years. They had both served in the 14th Virginia Cavalry—though Preston, who had only turned eighteen in ’65, a month before the war ended, had only managed to serve for two months, while Sam Feamster, the elder by a decade, had been in for most of the war. His lean hawk face with its long patrician nose had aged now into gauntness, and his hair was sparser now, but he still held himself with the erect bearing of a soldier, showing no signs of the infirmity of age.

  Preston smiled as he shook the hand of his old comrade. “How are you faring? And the family?”

  Sam Feamster smiled. “We’re all in the pink, thank you. Ann is expecting another baby. We have two boys and two girls, so I reckon this will tip the balance.”

  “You’ll outlive us all, Lieutenant.”

  Sam Feamster shrugged. “I don’t know that I’d care to. The world is changing at a dizzying pace, some of it good but not all. More and more I find myself in a world full of strangers. Seeing Austin Handley off to his eternal reward today sure does bring back memories, though. Sometimes I wonder how any of us managed to survive that infernal war. I reckon Handley was lucky to get another thirty-two years past the end of it. I thought he was done for when the Federals took him hostage back in ’62.”

  “He thought so, too, as I recall. You know my father-in-law—the first one, Samuel Price—was another one of the men they took to guarantee Rucker’s safety after he was captured in Summersville. Of course, Lieutenant-Governor Price wasn’t my father-in-law at the time—I was only fifteen then—but in later years, after I married Sallie, I used to hear him speak about it.” He glanced past Feamster toward another part of the churchyard, where Sallie Price Preston had rested in peace for the past fifteen years—three times longer than the span of their marriage. It wasn’t as if he’d forgotten. He could see her sometimes in the faces of their two sons, and of course he attended church every Sunday there at the Old Stone Church, so he passed within sight of her grave often, but time had closed the wound, and he had been married to Lillie now for a decade, so he seldom paused to think of Sallie, except at times—like now—when the past clouded his thoughts.

  “I hear that Dr. Rucker is defending that scoundrel who murdered his wife over at Livesay’s Mill, so I reckon you’ll be squaring off against him in court come June.”

  Preston nodded. “So it seems.”

  “He didn’t come to the funeral, did he?” Feamster looked around the churchyard, tense and scowling.

  “Dr. Rucker? I don’t believe so. I didn’t see him.”

  “One murderer defending another. That’s ironic, that is. They ought to take turns defending one another.”

  “Well, the law decrees that even the lowliest wretch is entitled to a defense.”

  “I suppose the fellow could claim that his lawyer is a bigger villain than he is, though I don’t suppose that would get him off on the murder charge.”

  Preston permitted himself a tight smile. “I must admit I don’t envy Dr. Rucker this particular case. He has little enough straw from which to fashion the bricks of a defense.” Preston was still looking over the churchyard, at the scattered knots of mourners talking quietly now among themselves. “I believe that’s Dr. William McClung over there, isn’t it?”

  Feamster squinted into the sunshine. “So it is. Another old comrade from the 14th. He’s looking well, isn’t he? Perhaps a fair few of us will live to see the new century. I wonder how many of those hostages Dr. Rucker will outlive? There was poor old Handley there, and Senator Price, your late father-in-law, but I disremember the others.”

  “Colonel Crook must have been partial to Samuels. Besides my father-in-law Samuel Price, he made hostages of Samuel Tuckwiller and Samuel McClung—but don’t ask me how the latter is kin to Dr. McClung over there, because you can’t throw a rock in this county without hitting a McClung.”

  Sam Feamster smiled. “You must ask my wife to sort it out for you sometime. She was a McClung afore I married her.”

  “I had forgotten. She has been Mrs. Feamster for a good long while, hasn’t she?”

  “She has. Our oldest girl, Pattie, will turn twenty next year.”

  “And that hostage business was more than thirty years ago, too, so perhaps we ought not
to dwell on it, especially as regards Dr. Rucker. It matters less every day.” He nodded toward the open grave of Austin Handley. “Little by little the past is fading away. Let’s go and say our good-byes to another piece of it.”

  seventeen

  LAKIN, WEST VIRGINIA

  1931

  “HOW ARE YOU FEELING these days?”

  Mr. Gardner squinted into the bright afternoon sunshine, and made out the form of his doctor standing on the dirt path near the bench. The winter had been bitterly cold and the asylum’s heating system proved unequal to the task of combating the chill. Patients and staff alike had crept along the corridors dressed in all the clothes they could fit on, some of them swaddled in blankets as well. Finally, though, in early March the weather broke—at least for a while—and the thankful residents of West Virginia’s Asylum for the Colored Insane ventured outside to bask in the sun or wander around the grounds under the watchful eyes of attendants. Some of them were tending the flower beds, in hopes of finding more tangible evidence of the fine weather to come.

  James Gardner had borrowed a magazine from one of the nurses—a frivolous offering whose subject matter he disdained, but it was better than idleness. Wearing his black overcoat and a white silk scarf, he had planted himself on a wooden bench in full sunshine. He was squinting at the fine print of an article on the film star Dolores Del Rio and her colorful collection of shawls when Dr. Boozer hailed him from the path.

  Abandoning the magazine without regret, Mr. Gardner patted the bench and nodded for the doctor to join him.

  “How am I feeling, Doctor? Still cold. It takes warmer weather than this to heat up my old bones.”

  James Boozer, wearing his white physician’s coat over a tweed jacket, smiled indulgently. “Being raised in New York helps a lot. I wouldn’t notice the cold until you could walk across that river over there.”

  “I wish I could see the river. I’ve been here for months, and I’ve never caught a glimpse of it.” A gust of wind hit Mr. Gardner full on, making him shiver and rattling the pages of the magazine. He frowned, stuffing the offending paper into his overcoat pocket. “The Ohio hasn’t frozen around here for twenty years, Doctor, but my blood may freeze at any minute out here, and you couldn’t light a cigarette in this wind. I’m going to the parlor. If you can acquire a pot of coffee, you’re welcome to join me in a warmer venue.”

  Boozer helped the old man to his feet. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “How was your trip to New York?”

  “Mighty fine. I saw Green Pastures twice. Enjoyed it so much that I ended up taking my parents to a Saturday matinee. How about you? Any news from Mercer County?”

  “I had a letter from my fellow attorney in Bluefield. He has agreed to handle any of the legal paperwork necessary to effect my release. They don’t report much progress yet.”

  Dr. Boozer considered it. “Well, you don’t want to be too hasty. I want to be satisfied that you are well and no longer a danger to yourself before I see you go. Just who are these influential friends of yours anyhow?”

  Mr. Gardner hesitated for a moment, but finally he said, “They’re my fellow Masons, Doctor. And somewhere up the hospital chain of command there’s bound to be another one.”

  They headed up the steps and into the main building. Dr. Boozer told his patient to wait in the first-floor parlor while he went in search of coffee, but when Mr. Gardner started to enter the room, he found that one of the staff nurses was holding a sing-along with some of the older patients there. When Boozer, with coffeepot and white china mugs in hand, emerged from the kitchen, he found Mr. Gardner still waiting in the hallway outside. He was standing beside the closed door, with his finger to his lips, grimacing at the strains of “Down by the Old Mill Stream” played on the tinkly upright piano, accompanied by wobbly off-key voices. Without breaking stride, Boozer jerked his head toward the main staircase, indicating that Gardner should follow him upstairs, where the staff had a private lounge of their own.

  “We’ll probably have the place to ourselves,” Boozer called out as he trotted up the stairs. “Everybody else is either on duty or out enjoying the sunshine.”

  The staff lounge was not conspicuously grander than the downstairs parlor for the mildly disturbed patients. Its red velvet upholstery was worn and shiny, and the carpet, while reasonably new, was a nondescript shade of brown that added nothing to the character of the room. A coal fire was burning merrily in the marble fireplace. Its mantel bore a display of Edwardian ruby glass vases and tarnished silver-plated candlesticks—breakable objects and potential weapons, and thus forbidden in the patients’ area, but not an aesthetic improvement over the spare décor downstairs. The room’s best feature was a glass-fronted bookcase of carved walnut, containing a selection of novels, cast-off biographies and textbooks, and tattered copies of National Geographic.

  Mr. Gardner wandered over to the window. “You can’t see the river from here, either.”

  “No, sorry. It faces the wrong direction. Have a seat. You’ve been telling me about the adventures of the infamous Dr. Rucker. As I recall, you said that there was a coda to the tale, some twenty years after the war?”

  Mr. Gardner strolled over to the bookcase and stooped down to examine the titles behind the glass. “Wish I could borrow some of these.”

  Boozer shook his head. “I’m not a big enough dog around here to let you. Maybe I could take one, though, and quietly lend it to you. Let me think about it.”

  “Don’t get in trouble on my account, Doctor. I know what it is to be a young man in a new profession, trying not to make waves. Will they mind your letting me in here?”

  Boozer grinned. “I’ll tell them it’s part of your therapy. Normalization.”

  Mr. Gardner moved a Queen Anne chair nearer the fire and sat down, stretching out his legs to receive the warmth of the blaze. Boozer set the coffeepot on the marble-topped coffee table, and filled the two mugs. He handed one to his patient.

  “I break the rules when I think there’s a good reason for it,” he said, “but as a new staff doctor, I try not to be too much of a nuisance to my elders.”

  “I suppose it’s natural for the young bulls to test the strength of the fences.”

  “Perhaps—provided that you can do it without hurting your career. Do you think we grow out of it as we age and become the authorities ourselves? Had your boss calmed down any by the time he took you on?”

  “Well, the fact that the war was long over when I knew him meant there were fewer opportunities to make mischief.”

  “Bridge burning would be frowned upon.”

  “But I suppose he still delighted in doing what was least expected of him. Taking me on, for example, despite my race and the objections of some members of the bar. In fact, I wonder if those objections were part of the appeal for him. I was smart, I worked well and cheaply, and my position as his assistant was one in the eye for his colleagues. He liked to shock people, I think. That may be why he agreed to defend Kenos Douglas. That trial is the postscript to Dr. Rucker’s war escapades that I alluded to, although really the wonder is not that he took the case, but that he was offered it in the first place.”

  “Kenos Douglas? You haven’t mentioned him. What was he in trouble for?”

  “It was a murder trial. Nothing particularly exciting—just a drunken brawl that ended in tragedy, as such incidents are wont to do—but still the fellow’s life was at stake, which meant that every effort had to be made to give him the best possible defense.”

  “And you’re surprised that Rucker was offered the case because he wasn’t a particularly able lawyer—just did it as sort of a hobby?”

  “That, incidentally, but that isn’t the main thing. Remember Nancy Hart, the Confederate spy who got Dr. Rucker captured along with Colonel Starr at Summersville in ’62? Well, Kenos Douglas was her son.”

  “The son of the spy who sent him to prison?” James Boozer shook his head. “Is everybody in West Virginia crazy?” />
  Gardner chuckled. “That would be your call, Doctor. I’d say some more than others.”

  “Nancy Hart gets the man arrested and jailed for more than a year during wartime, in peril of being executed for treason, and then, a few decades later, when her son is on trial for his life, that’s who she hires to defend him?”

  James Gardner nodded. “That’s about the size of it, but I wonder if either of them thought about it in those terms. After all, when she retained Rucker’s services as a lawyer, more than thirty years had gone by since the raid that had led to his capture. Perhaps by then she thought of him as just another Greenbrier lawyer, maybe even the only one they could afford. And, of course, he was in the business of defending people, and hardly in a position to turn a client away on account of his pedigree. I don’t know. That was before I joined his practice.”

  “And the son killed someone in a drunken brawl? Didn’t you say that his mother shot a soldier in the face while she was escaping from detention in Summersville? I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.”

  “I’m not sure there was any malice intended in either case, though. Do you want the particulars?”

  “Yes, indeed. I remember your saying that Nancy Hart was a plain woman with lank hair and gooseberry eyes, but apparently, despite these deficiencies, she managed to find a husband.”

  “Yes, but if beauty were required for matrimony, Doctor, there would be considerably fewer of us on earth.”

  “Touché, but so many men died in that war that thousands of women stayed spinsters. You’d think that the surviving soldiers could have afforded to be choosy.”

  “Well, perhaps Josh Douglas was. Take it from an old man: Beauty isn’t everything in the long haul. Nancy Hart took care of Mr. Douglas when he was a wounded soldier—a Confederate soldier, of course—during the war, and after the end of the hostilities, he hunted her up and married her. They settled on a farm in Greenbrier County, and in true mountain fashion they mostly kept to themselves thereafter.”