The Dead Hand of Sweeney County

by David L. Bradley

  “Why only ten miles? Why didn't you just get all of them while you were there? Wouldn't that have been a better use of your time and the company's money?”

  “I might have, Mike, except that you told me not to bother getting all of them at once, to save myself some work for a rainy day,” I sighed. If Mike had a management principle, it was this: whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong, even if you're doing what he told you to do. He's a real people person. “Do you need all of them?” I asked.

  “I need another contact for the Robert Conley Land Trust. Have you run across any Robert Conleys in your paperwork?”

  “I turned all that paperwork in to you.”

  “Well, I need a real address for this Robert Conley guy. The address we have in Texas is a PO box. Track him down. Look in the phone book. Go to the courthouse. Ask the cops. Go to his house and get a phone number, if you can. Talk to his neighbors, if he's not home. Just get me in touch with him.”

  “Will do, Mike. Well hey, I need both hands to drive.”

  “Call me tomorrow.”

  “Will do,” I said, ending the call. “Dick.”

  “Why you suppose he's like that?” Steve sympathized.

  “Who knows? Why is the sun yellow?”

  “So Superman can fly. You sayin' it's the yellow sun that makes him a Superdick?”

  I laughed. “Could be, Steve, could be.”

  5. Research Begins

  When the courthouse opened at eight the next morning, Steve and I were waiting and caffeinated. If I could teach him how to do the necessary searching, it could greatly improve efficiency, as this story takes place before Sweeney County digitized any of its records. The details as to exactly how vary from county to county, but pulling property records usually follows a routine.

  First, you look at the big map of the county and decide what part of it interests you. The map is divided into rectangles, the number of which tells you what volume of maps to look in. Go pull that book, and on the first page will be that rectangle blown up in more detail. At this point, the system may break down into land lots, as it does here, or any other unit of measure. It doesn't matter. You just keep looking until the map shows individual properties, then you look those up to see if individual plats exist showing property corners. Some counties require you to make copies from huge aerial photographs. Along with getting maps of the properties, courthouse research involves getting names and contact information for every homeowner possibly affected by the project. In cities and suburbs, looking up and copying just a mile of property records can be a pain in the butt.

  Even though Steve caught on immediately (“Like lookin' up parts!”), and even though I had already collected ten miles' worth of records, it was a challenge. Sweeney County's land records were still recorded in books, and each property required making two copies of oversized book pages: one of the legal description on the deed, and one of the plat, if there was one. Procuring that information for the remaining fifteen miles of proposed highway through Sweeney County took us the better part of the morning.

  One reason why is that the land was really chopped up. You wouldn't notice it while driving down the road, looking out the window at five miles of unbroken forest, but a lot of that forest was made up of small parcels. Another impediment were the deeds themselves, many of them hand-written. Most were faded, yellowed, stained, or otherwise discolored after a hundred-plus years, and basic office copiers require tweaking the brightness and contrast of each individual copy to make them legible. We finally emerged into bright sunlight at almost eleven o'clock, so I called for an early lunch at Subway. After lunch, Steve drove while I flipped through deeds, looking for the Conley Land Trust.

  It wasn't hard. The name seemed to pop up about every other fencepost as owner of a property ranging in size between two and two hundred acres, some timber, some farm, some pasture. Larger properties might or might not boast improvements, but all of the two to ten-acre properties had homes, garages, and barns on them. That probably meant the large tracts were planted in something – timber, hay, something – and the small ones had people living on them.

  I'd run my skyplots on my laptop the night before, and sure enough, Mt. Zion was an ideal spot to collect data while I went over all the deeds. They were, as expected, pretty much identical, records of Elizabeth's having deeded the properties to the Robert Conley Land Trust on December 30th or 31st, 1965, the address of which was 64 Polk Street in Carswell. The two-digit address meant it was probably on the main square. Why did Mike say there was a PO box in Texas?

  A tan Toyota pulled into the church parking lot, and Brother McElroy got out. He waved and smiled as he approached the truck. Steve and I got out to meet him.

  “Good to see you again, sir,” I greeted him. “Lovely day, isn't it?”

  “It is indeed. Now, tell me again what it is you're doing?”

  “This is Steve, my assistant, and we're just using this hilltop location to establish a couple of reference points for the highway project. Just listening to satellites go 'beep!'.”

  “Is there any way any of this benefits the church?”

  I thought a moment. “Could be. Have you had the property surveyed lately?”

  “No, I haven't, but now that you mention it, at the last deacons' meeting we talked about making some improvements and the need to arrange for a survey.”

  “We'll take care of you,” I assured him.”I'll turn in a sketch of these GPS points without locating your two property pins out by the road as required. To punish me, Mike will make me come back and find every one of your property pins and shoot all your building corners, your driveway and parking lot, the cemetery, and every tree here. When he does, I'll print it out and get one of our registered land surveyors to stamp it.”

  “Praise God,” he replied. “So have you heard any more ghost stories?”

  “Ghost stories?” Steve asked.

  “Yeah, there's supposed to be a ghost out there at that property with the trees.”

  “Really? When were you gonna tell me that?”

  “It's irrelevant to what we found.”

  “Says you.”

  I laughed.

  “You two saw a ghost?” Brother McElroy raised an eyebrow.

  “Well... not exactly,” I said, “but we did find something strange out there. Want to hear about it?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Okay, I don't know if you know this or not, but there is an old family cemetery out there on the Conley property, where the trees are--”

  “Where Crazy Isaac lurks on moonlit nights,” he smiled.

  “Right. I had been there before I ever heard the Crazy Isaac story, and the cemetery gate was locked. Well sir, I took my partner Steve out there last night, and someone had unlocked the gate and groomed a couple of grave sites inside. What do you think of that?”

  “Well that is strange. Whose graves had been groomed, as you say?”

  “The most recent occupant, Elizabeth Conley Burroughs. Another plot had been cleared, but it didn't look used. Yet. Do you know of any family? Here or anywhere?”

  Brother McElroy paused; his brow wrinkled. “No,” he began, “I don't know of any... that is to say, I am not a man to gossip or spread rumors...”

  “But...?”

  “I... that is, most of the county – well, those who knew anything – understood that Miss Elizabeth had one son only, and that he, a... uh, a lifelong bachelor, never had any children. He has retired in Texas, the last I heard.”

  “Perhaps he's come to visit,” I said. “Came to visit Mom and couldn't stop himself from straightening the place up a bit.”

  “It would be interesting to know. The Conleys are one of the county's oldest families.”

  “So I gather,” I nodded. “Hey, last time I was here, you mentioned the family of Isaac Cooper. What family did he have?”

  “Isaac married twice. I can't remember his first wife's name, but as I understand it, they had three children together, b
ut then his wife and children died one night in a house fire while Isaac was out of town. Isaac mourned for a long time, but he finally married his wife Josephina, who was only eighteen, when he was thirty. She gave birth to six children over ten years, including a set of twins, and all but Moses, the baby, had already died before Isaac disappeared.”

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “After a few years Josephina remarried. He was a man named Marcus Robinson, a businessman and a widower with a rather large family already.”

  “And lived happily ever after?” I had to ask.

  “As happily as any of us, I suppose. Mr. Robinson adopted little Moses, and Mose Robinson married and had four children of his own. You'll find Mose and his wife over there, under the maple trees.” He pointed to the far side of the cemetery. “All of their children left the county when World War II came around. The sons joined up, and his daughters married and moved away. One stayed in the Army and died in Korea. His other son, Frederick came back after the war and became a successful businessman. He had a bunch of young 'uns and outlived a couple of them. He and his wife are here, too, under the maples.”

  “You know your cemetery,” I said.

  “The Robinsons were deacons of our church and valued members of our community for a long time, and when I finally understood that this alleged ghost was supposed to be Fred Robinson's grandfather, I did some investigation.”

  “The truth always beats legend, sir,” I said. Steve glanced at his cell phone, indicated the farthest GPS unit with his thumb, and began walking. “Well, I see Steve picking up one of the instruments, so it must be time to clear out. Hope to see you again sometime.”

  “Likewise. Perhaps someplace other than a cemetery.”

  While Steve drove from the church to the next site, I filled him in on the legend of Crazy Isaac and the history of Isaac Cooper. He drove and listened, nodding and taking it all in. When he spoke, it was in a thoughtful, reverent tone.

  “Who's seen 'im? Who says they've seen this Crazy Isaac?” he asked.

  “No idea,” I said. “Why? What difference does it make?”

  “Granny said all the difference in the world, that's all.”

  “Granny said?”

  “She damned sure did. Oh, sorry, Granny,” he said with a quick glace skyward. “When Granny was alive, she used to tell me stories. She knew every ghost story in Coweta County. Granny said not everyone sees a ghost. There's a reason why a ghost shows himself to somebody. See? Then they take other folks out there and they don't see nothin' and they think the one who does is lyin' or crazy or drunk. It ain't like that. And she said some folks just can't see 'em, no matter what. Ain't but half a ghost story, Addie boy. Who said they seen one in the first place, you know? That's what Granny'd want to know.”

  “She would, would she?” I wondered if he heard the amusement in my voice.

  “She damned sure would. Sorry, Granny.”

  “Granny sounds like quite the woman.”

  “She was hell on wheels.” He glanced upward again. “Sorry, Granny.”

  At the end of the day I drove past the motel, looking for 64 Polk Street. It was, as I thought, one of four streets making up the one-way, counterclockwise town square, along with Cobb, Toombs, and Calhoun. Entering the square headed north on Toombs, the courthouse took up the entire block facing the square; a mandatory left on Cobb took you past half a block of brick storefronts before opening up into grass surrounding the White Horse Tavern; driving past Eleanor's Volvo and making another left put you on Polk, headed south. The first half of that block was comprised of more brick storefronts, but at that point it was split by an alley, on the other side of which stood the Sweeney County Farmers and Merchants Bank, a two-story Richardsonian Romanesque structure with granite massed at its foundation and elaborate brick arches over the doors and windows. Its street address was carved in granite: 60. I pulled into the angled parking on the left.

  “Let's take a look,” I said to myself, because Steve was already out of the truck.

  It was closed, of course. Down the block, just across the alley, Steve already stood reading the address of the next closest business. “Fifty-six,” he called out.

  It must be across Calhoun, I surmised, and crossed that street to look. After the corner drugstore, the address of which was on Calhoun, the next building's address was 70 Polk Street. I turned around, shrugged, and started walking back. Steve stood at the alley, pointing down the side of the bank building. I walked back to where he stood and, following his finger, saw a door I hadn't noticed before, at the end of a row of windows.

  Together we walked down the alley to investigate. At the end of the aforementioned windows was a small arched entryway, just as elaborate as the arch over the front door but only three feet wide. The door itself was half glass with a brass mail slot in its wooden bottom. Into that brass mail slot was engraved the number 64, and next to the door, at eye level, was a brass plaque into which was engraved, “Muskogee Timber Company.” A look inside revealed a small foyer with an old-fashioned coat tree and an umbrella stand to the right and a set of stairs leading up to the left, toward the front of the building.

  I looked at Steve, who shrugged. “Well, you found it,” he said.

  “I found the address, but Mike wants a phone number.” We walked back to the street and to the truck Across the square to my left, Eleanor's green Volvo was still parked outside the tavern.

  “Beer time,” Steve announced.

  “It is at that,” I agreed. I handed him my truck keys. “Why don't you run down and pick some up? I'm going to go into that historical center there and ask questions. Let me have the deeds and plats.” He got behind the wheel and handed me the bulging manila folder. “Come back and pick me up, an don't crack a beer 'til you do.”

  “Ten-four, Addireeno.”

  He drove away, and I started across the square. I felt a sudden flash of nervousness which I quickly dismissed by reminding myself of how she blew me off in the grocery store. This was all business. I needed information, and she specialized in it. I put my hand on the doorknob and stepped in.

  “Well, look who it is!” Eleanor called cheerfully from her desk in the corner. She stood up with a big smile on her face. “That's perfect timing; I was just about to turn the sign around and lock the door.”

  “Should I lock it for you?”

  “Goodness, no. And have someone come up and find me all alone with a handsome man and a lock on the door? What would they think?” She flashed a mischievous grin. “I know what I would think. It wouldn't do for these local ladies to see me chatting with said handsome man by the wine rack, either. So, I'd like to apologize for that.”

  “Oh, no problem,” I lied.

  “Comes with the job, I guess. And what can we do for you today? Is this strictly a social call? What's under your arm?”

  “It's a little surveying mystery I'm trying to solve. I was wondering if you'd like to help.”

  “I love a mystery! Sure, sit down and tell me what you've got.”

  I sat in a chair opposite her and put the folder on my lap.

  “I've got a family cemetery and dozens of properties with the name Conley on them. The address on the deeds is 64 Polk Street, upstairs at the bank building on the corner. Now, my boss says the guy I'm looking for is in Dallas, Texas, and today a black preacher named Brother McElroy told me that Mrs. Burroughs had a son who lives out in Texas, so that probably explains that, but look, do you know, or can you find out anything about the Conley Land Trust or the Conleys?”

  “Wait, stop. Who is Mrs. Burroughs? Who did you say, the Conleys? I've heard that name, but I'm not sure exactly who she was.”

  “Right. The family name is Conley. They must have been pretty important at one time. They had a place sitting atop a big hill just south of the Flat River. Apparently an old lady named Elizabeth Conley Burroughs was the last person to live on the main property. I've got a good three dozen or more properties I need to surve
y owned by the Conley Land Trust. Now, about the cemetery,” I continued. “It's pretty cool. If you like old cemeteries--”

  “And I do.” she interjected.

  “Then you should come out and see this one. It sits at the back of this wooded property, overlooking the river valley. But here's the thing. The first time I saw it, the wrought iron gate was locked. Last night I saw it, and it was unlocked, and someone had been clearing some of the weeds out of it. They cleaned the grave of Ms. Elizabeth Burroughs, and they cleaned an empty place that doesn't have a grave in it yet.”

  “Yet?” She arched an eyebrow.

  “The area cleared was the same size as a grave, but it's in an undeveloped part of the cemetery.”