“I'm not sure what I can tell you, but I can make some time for the memory of Mrs. Burroughs. She was a very gracious and very kind woman. A true lady in every sense of the word.”
“Thank you, sir. And yes, we're doing this for Mrs. Burroughs.”
We agreed to meet at noon, and he told me how to find his house. What I expected from Frankie I couldn't honestly say, but Steve's Granny said ghosts appear to specific people for a reason. In my dreams Isaac wanted me to help him because he said I could. What the hell did he want from Frankie in the summer of '69? Did it have anything to do with what he wanted from me?
Entering Louisville from the west, I began put all these thoughts from my mind. Isaac and Frankie: on hold awaiting more information. Ellie: no way to know what's waiting until I get there, so no need to form an opinion now. Take it easy. Breathe. Pretty soon, I'll know what comes next.
The Louisville Motor Lodge appeared on my right. I parked and entered the tiny office. My favorite room was waiting for me.
Room 121 is on the ground floor, on a corner next to the hallway containing the vending machines, so there are no neighbors on one side, and a chocolate bar is never too far away. The central location on the back side affords a view of the entire parking lot. I drove around, but I didn't see Ellie's Volvo. I parked in front of 121 and carried my bag into the room. It looked and smelled just as I remembered. I turned on the television, drank a shot of whiskey from the bottle, and waited.
Ten minutes later, lights shone briefly on the window, and I heard an engine shut off. A peek between the curtains confirmed that it was her, and she appeared to be alone.
As soon as I opened the door, she wrapped her arms around me. I wrapped mine around her, and it felt right. She looked up at me, I looked down at her, and we kissed. I can't speak for her experience, but at that instantly delirious, strings-up moment, the silly notion popped into my head that it always feels this perfect when you finally find the right lips to kiss, the right body to hold. And I'm a man of science. I broke off the kiss and pulled her inside.
She looked around. I motioned toward the empty chair at the table, and she sat down. I offered her a shot, and she had two in two minutes.
“I'm not sure about your choice of location,” she said. “It's right on the main road.”
“In a town where nobody would think to look for you. Have you ever been here before?”
“I've never even heard of this place. It's pronounced “Lewisville”, not “Looeyville”?
“Precisely. It was once the state capital, and when it was, one of the greatest land frauds in history was perpetrated here. It has a couple of great restaurants, and the theater downtown still shows first-run movies. Not a mile from here is a beautiful blackwater cypress swamp.”
“Let me guess. Someplace you surveyed?”
“No better way to get to know a town. So... you want to start?”
She didn't say anything, so I did. “Thursday morning. Greg was coming home, and you suddenly wanted me to disappear, forget we ever met. Let's start there.”
She nodded and helped herself to another shot before answering. “I was terrified. I woke up next to you, and at first all I could remember was the last hour or so before we hit the bed, and then the hour before we went to sleep, and it was all just warm and fuzzy. I don't know if you remember, but I was squeezing your arms, thinking how hard and manly they are. Suddenly I imagined Greg walking in early, and--” She snapped her fingers. “That was it, and no, I couldn't get you out of there fast enough. At first. Then you were going. Out the door. And... And then, as soon as you were gone... And you never even looked back. I couldn't believe you didn't look back.” She sighed. “I can't have an affair. Coming to your motel was so reckless and hot and everything I wanted it to be, and then, okay, the second time was just as special, and the third night... well, I'll never look at that dining room set the same way again... It was all just wonderful. And you're a great guy. You're so much more than I imagined when I first saw you. But I can't have an affair. Carswell isn't big enough.”
I let a good half minute pass in silence before I asked, “So what happened to make you call me?”
She didn't answer immediately. Her eyes reddened, and she cleared her throat.
“Greg called Thursday night. He got invited to some private golf club in Texas, and he went. He didn't call to see how I felt about it. He just called to tell me not to expect him until Sunday.”
“His loss, our gain,” I said. “Right?”
She smiled and looked up. “Sure.” She cleared her throat again and wiped her eyes. “So tell me. Why are you hunting down Frank Miller?”
“Ah yes, Frank Miller. He called me while I was driving up here. We're meeting him tomorrow at noon.”
“Why?”
“I need to ask him some things. About the Conley Land Trust and all.”
“Legal questions?”
“Just... stuff.” She eyed me sharply. I could tell she wasn't buying it. My brain wasn't working fast enough to make up a lie, and besides, I wanted Ellie's help. ”Okay,” I said, “here's the truth. I want to talk to him, because he's supposedly the only other person who's ever seen the ghost on the Conley property.”
“Only other... Addison? Have you seen a ghost?”
I laid out the facts for her, which is to say that I told her what I thought I saw and what I'd dreamed, which was really all I had. “So so far it sounds like an overactive imagination, eh?” I asked when I finished.
“I can't say. You only saw him that once?”
“Just once at the tree. The same place they say Frank Miller was when he saw a black man with an ax and ran screaming down the road. And here's a nice detail. They call it the lynching tree.”
She gasped. I had forgotten she was from Vermont. “You are kidding me. The big tree we stood under? That's the one, isn't it? Oh my god, Addison. So Isaac Cooper was lynched?”
“They said he ran down to the river and jumped in...” I stopped. That story suddenly sounded completely ridiculous. “I mean, now that you say that, it seems logical. Why else appear under the tree? But what the hell. If he was lynched, why not just say so? He was supposed to have assaulted a white girl. If you ever needed a reason to lynch a black man down here, that would pretty much satisfy all your legal requirements. I've been thinking that he ran to the river to avoid a lynching, so maybe he did. Maybe he didn't get there quickly enough.” I got up and went to my backpack, pulling out the weed. “Help the boy. Help whom? Ramon? Help him with what? Whatever it is Isaac is on about, it has something to do with the boy.” I filled my glass bowl and lit it, then handed it to her
“To the South and all her untold stories,” I toasted.
“May Addison be the one to tell them,” she added. We smoked as Ellie continued. “As an outsider, all I can say is, wow. You've got a highway going through a bunch of property and an evil banker waiting to get his hands on it. You're being harassed by the ghost of a lynched black man who wants you to do something for him. And you're having an affair with a prominent local married woman. You're having quite a time in Sweeney County, aren't you?”
I took a swig of whiskey and handed her the bottle. “To Sweeney County,” I said. “How do you like the smoke?”
“It's not bad, from what I remember,” she smiled. She looked down at the pipe. “I haven't smoked any in a very long time. Not since college. I think the last time I tasted something like this I wound up kissing a girl.”
“Don't tease me, History Lady. Here, have some more,” I said. She took it with a grin, hit it, and passed it back. “So tell me, Ellie. How did you become the History Lady?”
“I have a Master's in History. European, to be precise, but History. When I came down and met Greg's mother, she said, 'Naturally, you'll join the Historical Society.' Well, naturally, when we got married, and Greg and I moved to Carswell, I did. At the very next meeting, one of the agenda items was needing someone to hand out brochures at the tavern, and
my mother in-law moved that I be considered for the job. One of her friends seconded. A vote was taken, and it was unanimous. Never even asked me if I wanted it.”
“Did you?”
“Did I want to sit around making coffee and handing out brochures to lost tourists and history geeks like you? Not particularly. I admit it was nice to get out of the house, and I got to oversee the repainting, and that was fun, but then it became routine, my own private purgatory, and I began resenting it. A couple of years ago I realized that's not a very healthy attitude, so now I use my time there to read. I keep up with other people's work in the field. A guy I went to college with just published his third book on the Revolution. My salary isn't much, but I save it. It's turning into a nice little pile. Sometimes I think I'll go blow it all on a PhD. What would you think of that?”
“And do what, teach college?”
“Sure, why not? Would you go to college then, if I were teaching?”
“I'd think about it a little longer.”
Suddenly I had an idea. “Be right back,” I grinned. In a flash, I was out to the truck and back with the Y2K box. Produced in anticipation of civilization's demise due to Y2K, it is a marvel of technology. One end is a large flashlight; the other is a strobing halogen light that can be seen by aircraft, and in the middle is an AM/FM/ shortwave radio, the whole thing being powered by a huge wind-up handle built into the back. At $249, they were a top-selling item during Christmas of 1999, and on January 2nd of 2000, Mike bought one for each of the trucks, at twenty bucks apiece.
I gave the handle a dozen or so good cranks. I found swing music on a public radio station and turned it up.
“Care to dance, Dr. Hubbard?”
“I'd love to.”
We awoke fairly early, so we could take our time getting out of bed. I had her follow me to some deer property I surveyed on the edge of the swamp. The combination hadn't changed, and I held the gate as she drove in. We drove around the first curve and parked her car out of the way in a wide spot. I left a note on the dashboard for the property's owner that I, Addison the Surveyor, was in town, and that this was my girlfriend's car.
“Who's the owner?” Ellie asked. “How do you know him?”
“I settled a property dispute between him and his neighbor over this very road. I found an old deed in which the seller promised a road easement in perpetuity to whoever bought the swamp land. It was nothing huge, really, but it made the old dude happy. He told me I can camp here anytime I like. Wanna sleep out tonight? Here in the swamp?”
“Let me think about it.”
We stopped at a roadside place outside Augusta for biscuits and coffee. Ellie didn't want to go in, so we ate in the truck. Augusta was Greg's territory, and she didn't want to be seen by anyone who might recognize her and report back to Greg.
She had dressed for that effect, too; she wore jeans and a plain gray T-shirt under my camo hoodie with most of her her hair tucked under a Braves cap. Oversized sunglasses completed her disguise. As I told her when we climbed into the truck that morning, “Nobody would guess you're Eleanor Hubbard, but you're a dead ringer for every bank robber I've ever seen.” I laughed. The History Lady from Vermont looked aghast, then indignant, and I laughed even more.
Finding Frank Miller wasn't too hard. We arrived right at noon. He lived in a condo on a cul-de-sac, which is French for a dead-end street. We were met at the door by a tall, balding man with glasses, wearing a T-shirt he received for volunteering during a public television pledge drive.
“Frank Miller? I'm Addison Kane, and this is my ah...ssociate, Ms.--”
“Eleanor Smithfield,” she said, putting out her hand.
“It's a pleasure to meet you both,” he said, “Won't you come inside?”
He showed us to his office, one of six or so bedrooms, and after the traditional offering of sweet tea was made and accepted, we turned to the matter at hand.
“The dead hand of the Flat River valley,” Lawyer Frank called it. “The Conley Land Trust. It's still in effect? Still in Conley hands?”
“I'm trying to figure that out, sir. I'm a surveyor, working on a highway project. I'm trying to find out who owns the property.”
“Have you contacted Ramon Burroughs in Dallas, I believe it is?”
“Pelican Bay, outside Ft. Worth. He died in 1999, sir. I've seen his obituary online. I'm trying to track a friend of his, but so far I've had no luck.”
“Who's his executor?”
“I don't know, sir. Why?”
“This is very strange. Unless he died intestate, his executor obtains temporary control of the properties and other assets. Of course, if he died without a will, the manager would have assumed control...” he looked up and furrowed his brow.
“Other assets?” I asked.
“Let me begin at the beginning. My father designed the land trust for Elizabeth Burroughs between 1964 and 1966 or so.” He took a deep breath. “Basically, the idea of the trust is to keep Conley land in Conley hands as long as possible and to give the trustee, her son Ramon, time to find other Conley descendents. At the same time, the trust grants certain autonomy to the lessees, almost all of whom have leases that run until the end of the period granted to the executor of the trustee's estate, three years after the trustee's death. You say Ramon died in 1999? Do you know when?”
“May of 1999. Say, three years ago, two weeks from now.”
“Why that date?”
“Because Richard Polk, the Third, told me that in two weeks, he'll be answering all questions regarding the trust. What happens after three years?”
“If no descendents of Robert Conley have been found, then the trust is dissolved, and the bank that has been collecting rents since 1968 is to convey each property to its lessee along with any accrued rents in excess of the land's fair market value as assessed in 1968.”
“I'm sorry?”
“Let's start over. Back before the Civil War, Robert Conley ran a ferry on the Flat River, and he bought land on both sides, in both counties, for planting cotton. He picked up bits here and there from yeoman farmers who couldn't compete with the big boys, and old Colonel Conley would let them stay on the land and oversee cotton production, if they wanted to. Of course, most of them moved west, where land was free and hadn't been worked to death with tobacco and cotton already, but some stayed around.
“Robert had a son named Findlay, a man of above-average intelligence. A modern man in every sense of the word. He was much more interested in the trading of cotton than he was the growing of it, and he had some very progressive, even populist ideas that started showing themselves after the War. He and his daddy were two of the first to get back on their feet, and it was Fin Conley's doing. He went around to all the blacks, former slaves from the county, you know, and he offered them the chance to be their own bosses through tenant farming. He took those same pieces his daddy had acquired and leased them out to farmers who grew cotton on most of the land, and he and his buyers got first pick of their crop, and the tenants would pay him a set price every year for the land.”
“That let the men grow gardens for their families,” I interrupted, wanting in part to show Ellie and the attorney both that I was not entirely ignorant.
“It sure did,” Frank nodded, “and it helped stabilize Conley lands immediately. The farmers who worked their properties reaped profits at the end of the year, and they could grow food for their families, as you pointed out, even keep some animals. Pretty soon, the Flat River valley had a black middle class of farmers, craftsmen, and artisans. Of course, not everyone saw that as a good thing. There was a strong anti-Populist backlash, you could say. Very strong.”
“Cut to 1900. Fin was living in New York when his son was crippled at home. Fin came back to take care of family business, and it was obvious by then that he had developed these very liberal ideas. Instead of leases being constantly renewed every year or two, he let families sign five, ten, even twenty year leases. When one old boy asked if he could have
one of them 99-year leases, like we had on the Panama Canal, old Fin laughed and drew it up. Word got around, and Elizabeth Burroughs continued her grandfather's practice of signing long leases. Most of the people on the properties in question are fourth generation, if not fifth.”
I should come up with something more intelligent to say than, “Wow!”, but it just slips out. I followed it with, “And in two weeks, Dick Polk takes over?”
“Dick Polk, the Turd. That's his full name,” Frank informed us. “He's been that way his entire life. His family and the Conleys are the two biggest landowners in the valley. His family owns the bank that handles Land Trust business. They've been collecting rents for thirty-three years. That money is now the bulk of the bank's deposits, that and Muskogee Timber Company deposits. But even then, Muskogee now leases a lot of that Conley land, too.”
The Dead Hand of Sweeney County Page 15