The Dead Hand of Sweeney County

by David L. Bradley

  “Count on me, Veronica. I'll do whatever you ask.”

  She looked into my eyes a moment before responding. “Thank you, Addison,” she said at last. “This is a huge load off my mind. The next time Ellen comes by, I have some documents for you to sign and her to witness.”

  “Glad to help, ma'am. Got another cup of that Irish coffee?”

  We hung out in the kitchen and chatted while a storm moved through. We talked about everything in the world and nothing in particular. We laughed maniacally at points, although I can't tell you what ludicrous suggestion or ridiculous pun triggered it. During a portion of it, she asked dozens of questions about Elizabeth Burroughs, and I answered as many as I could. To her, the whole story was Elizabeth's, the story of another woman who managed her own affairs and took steps to see her property cared for after she was gone. I told Veronica about all of my Isaac Cooper dreams, and she pondered with me the meaning of “help the boy,” but she had no new suggestions except to agree that if the answer were to be found anywhere, Elizabeth's diaries and scrapbooks would be a great place to look..

  After awhile she ran me off so she could get naked and paint. No sooner had I sat down in my love seat than I got a call from Steve. He and Tyler were outside Jackson, Mississippi, a little more than halfway to Atlanta, and they had been on the road seven hours already. I gave Tyler directions to my house, and we hung up.

  The morning's storm had abated to an afternoon drizzle, a steady pleasant white noise in the leaves outside my half-open windows upstairs. I picked up the Twain collection, but my mind kept wandering from the text. I wondered what Ellie did on rainy weekends. I looked at Veronica's house and wondered how Ellie and I would spend rainy days here together. I remembered a childhood during which rainy days were often spent reading: comic books, mysteries, National Geographic, Mad magazine, and my mother's mail-order book-club collection of American fiction, classics like “Last of the Mohicans” and “Ben Hur.” I wondered if my kids would associate rainy days with literature. I wondered if it was raining in Carswell.

  Rain and Carswell made me think of Dick Polk. That made me think of his band of tattooed merry men, and I wondered which of them made the trips to Texas first to burglarize, then to burn, Tyler's house. In my head I saw Polk's dead blue eyes, and for the first time it occurred to me that if he came to think of me as a threat, he might burn down Veronica's house, thinking I was in it.

  I actually stood up. This would not do. It was one thing to think that I had possibly endangered myself by picking a fight with Polk; the thought of someone hurting Veronica was simply intolerable. I began to pace at the foot of my bed.

  The key word was if. If he came to think of me as a threat. So far he knew I had met the executor. That was pretty much it. Whatever document he'd sought to own or destroy, he had every reason to believe he'd destroyed it. So far, time was on his side, and he had to know that. However many decades his family had waited to rid themselves and their county of the Conleys, their time had come.

  I couldn't stand that thought, nor did I like the thought of openly opposing Dick Polk, the Turd, on his own turf. This would require a very good bluff, indeed.

  I spent the afternoon with the Wilkes County documents Ellie put together. I read, thought, and took notes for four solid hours until my eyes hurt. I took a break to go get gyros with Veronica, then worked another couple of hours until Sergeant-Major Tyler arrived.

  I was upstairs reading when I heard a car pull up in the driveway. I looked and saw the nose of a red Mercedes-Benz behind the Mighty Ford. I heard a door open, then close. When I got downstairs, Tyler was at my door.

  “You do live in a garage,” he said. “Nice.”

  He had arrived in a 1976 Mercedes-Benz 450SEL, a solid four-door sedan with a rocket engine. Behind him was something I had not seen since my childhood, and only then in the pages of a Popular Mechanix magazine: a teardrop trailer.

  It's a post-World War II invention: the bottom end, in size and expense, of the travel trailer boom. It's only four feet high, five feet wide, and just slightly longer than a queen-sized bed. You enter through either of two doors, one on each side. The teardrop refers to its profile when viewed from the side, wider and higher on the leading edge, then tapering away toward the back. At the back, a panel lifts up on hinges, exposing the kitchen area with a sink, a propane stove, and cabinets, including one sized to hold a cooler. The last time I saw one was in an article describing how any properly equipped and fairly handy all-American could build one under a carport in a few simple steps as illustrated in four pages of half-toned black & white photographs.

  This was no home-built trailer. This one had been professionally crafted and finished in aircraft aluminum, with sleek lines and fine, tight seams. It and the car pulling it perfectly complemented one another.. Veronica and I drove out to let him back the trailer as far in as he could. When all moving and parking was finished, Tyler called me over to the trailer's door.

  “In here,” he said. He handed me a plastic milk crate filled with scrapbooks and such. He pulled a second one out of the trailer and asked, “Where do you want it?” We carried the crates upstairs to the reading area and deposited them on the floor.

  “That's a lot of reading, soldier.”

  “Yeah. I probably need better light. I tried reading something a couple of weeks ago, and I could barely focus on the letters.”

  Tyler chuckled. “How old are you, son?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “It's not the light. It's your eyes. Go to the drugstore and get some reading glasses.”

  We assembled at Veronica's for drinks. After I made introductions, I mentioned it to Veronica.

  “I think I need reading glasses.”

  “Aww, they grow into middle-age so fast,” Veronica smiled. She opened a drawer in her coffee table. “Let's see... you're probably not too bad yet... Here, try these.”

  The glasses were the half-lens type you see in movies. “They're librarian glasses,” I said.

  “English professor. Try them.”

  I put them on and picked up an art supply catalog. I looked over the glasses at the text. I looked through the lenses and was astounded by the difference.

  “May I borrow these?” I asked.

  “Please, feel free.”

  “I called that lawyer, that Miller guy. He seems like a good man. We're meeting tomorrow,” Tyler said.

  “Good idea,” I said. “He can brief you better than anyone. Let him know you already know the history, and he'll just describe the land trust, what you have to do, what Polk has to do, all that. Damn good news. To Lawyer Frank!” We toasted our absent ally.

  “So now what?” Veronica asked. “Right now you control millions of dollars of Georgia real estate, but what about a week from now? Do you go back to Texas from here, or... where do you live now?”

  “Well, since the fire, I live in the trailer.”

  “Oh,” said Veronica.

  “And how do you like it?” I asked.

  “Beats living in the car.” He sipped the beer before him and continued. “I'm an old soldier with no permanent duty station, no home base.”

  “Do you have family?” Veronica asked.

  “Two children,” he answered as she shot me a look. “A boy and a girl. A man and a woman now, of course, both living their lives. One's in Colorado, and one's in Florida.”

  “Are you thinking about living with or near either of them?”

  “Bite your tongue, missy! I am no grumpy Grampy, but please understand that as a career military man, I was a poor enough father. I don't have the training for it. Now, the son, Erik, he's not so bad. But Sonja in Colorado? She's been trying to mother me since the day her mother died. Eat this; don't eat that; you need to get out; you shouldn't overexert yourself, and the worst--”

  “I could find you a really nice place with people to take care of you, and we would come see you all the time and bring the kids?” Veronica finished. “Something alon
g those lines?”

  Tyler nodded. “And good Lord, I'm not even old,” he said.

  “May I ask?”

  “I just turned fifty-nine.”

  “Really?” Veronica asked in a tone I had never before heard from her. “That is young.”

  “And then there are the kids. I love my grandchildren, but again, I lack the necessary training. In my experience, grandchildren are for holidays, beach vacations, that sort of thing. Not to put up with on a daily basis.”

  Veronica poured shots for us all. She picked up two and handed Tyler one. “Addison told me you were handsome, but he didn't tell me how charming you are.”

  “How could he know?” he smiled.

  I couldn't believe what was happening before my eyes, but there was no denying that I was suddenly unnecessary, and we all knew it. I excused myself to go read an old lady's diaries with my new English professor reading glasses.

  The oldest book was the thickest. Its yellowed pages were the most brittle, too. I flipped past the cover page and read,

  July 7th, 1898

  Hello Diary,

  I begin today, my thirteenth birthday, on the first page of a new diary I got from Aunt Carolynn, who is my mother's oldest sister and who came all the way from Atlanta to “see me into womanhood”, as she put it. I thanked her, and I did not tell her how I had discovered my womanhood quite by accident one morning last year. I am nonetheless grateful to her for her visit, and perhaps if I write it down now, I will remember to send a thank-you card to-morrow. She will be stopping in Covington on her way home to visit with more of her family, for that is where the Jenkins reside, and I should like it very much if my card were waiting for her when she returns home.

  She seemed to sense something wrong with Papa, for she asked me about him. I could only tell her what anyone could see, that he still grieves for our lost mother, taken from him almost three years ago. He grieves because he still loves her, and because he still loves her, he cannot bring himself to look for another wife. The loneliness has crushed his spirit, and I believe it has upset his mind. He tells me I look more like her every day, and I know he thought she was beautiful. She was a strawberry blonde, they tell me, and for that, I must look just like her, indeed. The way Papa looks at me sometimes makes me feel odd at times, but it must be very hard for him to see the woman he loved so much every time he looks at me.

  Young Elizabeth was not a daily diarist. She wrote when the mood struck her, or when something important happened-- important to a teenaged girl, that is. She wrote about a friend's cousin she met at a birthday party. He was tall and fair, with curly blonde hair, and he was a Ragsdale, a fact she thought certain to please her Papa. She never wrote of him again, though: the very definition of a girl's passing fancy, here permanently recorded in elegant loops and curlicues. In September she wrote about the new school year and listed all her classmates. Among the names was one I recognized. She wrote, “Dick Polk thinks much of himself, which is good, for someone should, I think.” That cracked me up. His grandson had inherited the trait.

  On October 27th, she wrote on the third anniversary of her mother's death,

  Mama died three years ago today of a brain fever. Willie still prays for her every night, as do I. He was broken-hearted when she left us, and he has been a sad little fellow ever since. He still gets frightened sometimes at night, and he will come to my room and cry and tell me how much he misses Mama. I fear Papa is suffering the most. A month after her funeral, he made his first weekend business trip to Augusta, coming home ill and ill-tempered. He has made several trips there since then, and our housemaid Ruth says it is rumored that he spends his time there drinking and gambling, and losing. I cannot say for sure what he does in Augusta, but I believe he is beginning to suffer the most dreadful melancholies. Last night he came to my room and sat on my bed. I awoke when he sat down, but I pretended to be asleep. He smelled like moonshine and tobacco, and he was not speaking clearly. All I could understand was that I am beautiful, like my mother. He put his hand on my hip as I was lying on my side and began slowly stroking my side. Suddenly he stopped stroking me. I next felt the bedclothes being lifted. I did not turn or move at all. I could still smell moonshine. I knew he was looking at me. I lay as still as possible. Soon the bedclothes were lowered again, and I thought he would leave, but first he leaned in close and kissed my neck. I did not move. He said, “Just like your mother” and left the room.

  I pray my mother rests in peace, awaiting the Great Resurrection when we can all be together again. And I pray God see fit to send a new wife for Papa and a mother for Willie, and it be His will, let her come soon.

  I marked my place with a sheet of copy paper and closed the diary. Poor Elizabeth was thirteen and already keeping the darkest of family secrets: a drunk and horny Papa.

  I pulled out two scrapbooks and two photo albums. Of the latter, I chose the oldest one and opened it. Just as I had hoped, the Conleys were photographed.

  There was a formal portrait of Robert and Bessie Conley taken in 1875, and I recognized it as being the same pose I'd seen in my dream. There were pictures of Col. Robert and his son, Captain Findlay Conley, in their Confederate officers' uniforms, armed with pistols and swords. There were wedding pictures of Fin and Christine, and there was a baby portrait of Thornton. There were pictures of adult Thornton and his wife, Rebecca, and she was indeed a beautiful strawberry blonde with soft curls and bright eyes that I decided would have been green. I don't know why I decided that. They could have been a light blue, but an odd light green would better suit the personality recorded in the pictures I saw.

  In Elizabeth, all the good genes came together; all the gods smiled on that adorable baby girl. She was photographed as an infant, as a toddler in a family portrait, and again at five years, and she was already a remarkably beautiful child before adolescence transformed her into a remarkably beautiful young lady. More remarkable than her physical beauty was the development of her spirit, as captured in the photographs. Her baby picture is all innocence and wonder; the five year-old sparkles with mischief and outright brass. A picture of her and her mother bears the penciled inscription on its back: Elizabeth – 9 yrs. It features the two of them in identical outfits, their collars high on stiff, erect necks, and Elizabeth is a perfect copy of her mother but on a smaller scale. If anything, Rebecca looks less serious than her daughter. In a family photo from her twelfth Christmas, Elizabeth is dressed in black, mourning the mother she lost just weeks before. A photo dated June of 1901 presents her as a grown woman almost sixteen years old, eyes haunted by a touch of sorrow. A page later was a photo of her taken in 1909. This was the woman I saw in the casket, except that the woman in the photo was very much alive. She looked sure of herself, ready and able to talk you down or punch you out with equal precision. She looked like a woman determined to succeed in a man's world. And oh my God, was she beautiful.

  There were pictures of Willie, too, the missing son, and I gave those a separate perusal. Willie's chubby cheeks and toothless grin morphed into a round, tan, and freckled boy's face with sandy hair and a winning grin. His eyes were light, like his sister's. He seems like a happy kid until his mother died; in the Christmas photo with his sister and father after his mother's death, Willie seems the most divorced from it all: Christmas, the photo session, his family, all of it. In two subsequent photos he appeared either angry or frightened; it was hard to say which, but he was clearly unhappy. I stared at the pictures, letting my mind drift, trying to imagine what he might have done with the circus. Acrobat... equestrian... ringmaster... clown... I remembered reading that there was a registry somewhere of clown faces painted on goose eggs and the actors who laid claim to this or that particular clown face. And I knew that... why? For some reason, I wanted to credit the Red Skelton Show.

  My mind was wandering. I needed air. I closed the photo album and went downstairs to Veronica's place. Inside I found Veronica and Tyler in deep discussion of when the Fifties turned into the Si
xties.

  “It's hard to explain how Kennedy's election scared so many people, especially down here,” Veronica said. “And it wasn't just him. There was Brown versus the Board of Education, you know, and the civil rights movement was getting started, and the whole world was changing. Then they elected some Yankee Catholic to the White House, and oh, my God, you'd have thought that they'd re-elected Abe Lincoln.”

  “That's so crazy. Where I'm from, Haverhill, it was a celebration. Hell, JFK is the reason I joined the Army. I believe in America, and JFK did, too. He was a vet. Service to the country was an honorable thing then, and the dream was what we could make of this place if we all pitched in. Some people served in the Peace Corps. I decided to serve in the military, like my Dad and all my uncles. Those guys who landed on D-Day were my heroes.”

  “Mine, too,” Veronica said with a slight welling in her voice. “Let's drink to them. Addison! Have a drink to the Normandy Invasion?”

  “Sure, why not?” Veronica handed me a glass.