The Dead Hand of Sweeney County

by David L. Bradley

“To the Fifth Ranger Battalion!” Tyler toasted, and we drank.

  I handed Veronica my shot glass. “I think I'll call Rita and see how she's doing,” I said.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “Not really, but for some reason I think it would be good for me to explain myself and make sure there are no... you know... unsaid things.”

  “Oh, but why take away-- “ She stopped. “Go talk to her, sport. Say all those unsaid things. I'll see you tomorrow.”

  “Sergeant Tyler?”

  “Good night, Kane. Good luck with whatever it is you two are talking about, especially if it means getting laid.” He winked broadly, and Veronica smacked him on his thigh. I'd never seen that from her before, either. I tossed back a shot, bade them goodnight, and walked out into the backyard.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi Rita. Addison here. I wanted to--”

  “Where's the girlfriend?”

  “Her place, I suppose.”

  “You making babies yet?”

  “No.”

  “But you're working at it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then you should probably limit the time you spend together in bed naked.”

  I should have expected that. “I know you were there. I saw you leaving. I know you must be upset, but I don't think we had anything exclusive. So I really didn't think I was doing anything wrong.”

  “So you don't think you were doing anything wrong.”

  “Not really.”

  “I see. What does her husband think? The woman I saw was wearing a wedding ring.”

  All I could do was try to explain. “It's not like that. She's lonely; she's completely neglected by this overachieving doctor husband. And she thinks he may be cheating on her, anyway.”

  “Oh, she thinks he may be cheating? Just how much are you paid to star in this soap opera?” Before I could answer, she said, “Never mind. Don't answer. Enjoy your part, and have a nice life.”

  Rita's reaction stung a hell of a lot more than I could explain. For a good hour of shots I marveled at one simple fact: after eighteen years of thinking about her, after two years of knowing and admiring her, after a year of enjoying her constant affection and pre-dawn attentions, my relationship with Rita was ended. Over. It didn't feel good, either.

  Most of the next day I spent trying to shake off that feeling. I awoke around noon and saw both Tyler and Veronica's vehicles were gone. I made coffee and spent the afternoon with Elizabeth Burroughs' diary. She recorded decorating the house for Christmas without ever feeling anything remotely like a Christmas spirit. For New Year's Eve they went to a party thrown by the Polk family. Of the night, she wrote,

  The party was grand and gay. The ballroom was emptied and decorated for the special occasion. The food was wonderful, and I was allowed a glass of delicious champagne punch. Another I drank without asking, and it was delicious, too!

  Dickie Polk must have been delirious from the stuff. He asked me to dance, and while we were dancing, he said he had made up his mind to marry me. Can you imagine the nerve? I asked him why he wanted to marry me, and he said he thought I would make him a good wife, and he intends to be a man of great wealth and influence. There was no mention of any love for me. I politely thanked him for the honor of being so highly thought of, but I said I was not yet prepared to make up my mind. The things I will say! In truth, I made up my mind years ago that I would not be his wife for all the tea in China. Still, Mama would not want me to hurt anyone's feelings, even Dickie's.

  I continued flipping carefully through the book, absorbing minor details of her life on the farm, since the Conley place no longer ran entirely like a plantation. The illusion of gentility was maintained at the price of a lot more hard work, and Elizabeth's life had more in common with her pioneering namesake's than with the two generations of pampered women who had followed. She arose before sunrise to stoke the wood stove, milk two cows, and make biscuits for everyone's breakfast, with Aunt Sally-- their name for their black maid-- preparing the bulk of the breakfast. Then she went to school at Putnam Crossroads (which I made a mental note to find) until two o'clock, when she walked home with brother Willie. Afternoons, she fed chickens, collected blueberries, huckleberries, and blackberries, and worked in the family vegetable garden until it was time to assist Aunt Sally with prep work for the evening meal. Willie helped out with the hogs and other, dirtier work in the barn and animal pens.

  I kept the photo album nearby, and I paused my reading from time to time to gaze at photographs. The Conley home appeared in bits and pieces, a two-story Greek Revival. Its columns were Ionic, its pediment simple, but its size was impressive. It sat just where I'd seen it on the printout, right at the peak of the arc of the curved driveway.

  My eye drifted across the pile of books, and suddenly a floral pattern caught my attention. I reached for a scrapbook that had been decoupaged with cutout paper roses. The first page caught my breath. There was a hand-drawn plan for a rose garden, and the hand that drew it I already knew well. Across the top was written,

  “Plan for a Formal Rose Garden

  by Elizabeth T. Conley

  submitted for review October 10th, 1900.”

  On the next page I read, “This rose is Seven Sisters. It is named for its varying shades of color, from pink to white, that occur within each cluster of blooms. It is a Rambler also called (Rosa Platypylla) It is a prolific midsummer bloomer. The only bad thing about this rose, is the fact that it only blooms once!! But what a show when it blooms!”

  The pages were of a pattern: a watercolored drawing depicting a variety of rose, and next to it, a paragraph in Elizabeth's hand explaining her choices. The illustrations were less than perfect, which increased their charm.

  “Maiden's Blush. An alba, meaning a white rose, but it's actually a very light pink. Spring blooming, and the fragrance is heavenly perfume!”

  Tea, Hybrid Tea, Bourbon, African, Cherokee, Noisette, and so on. The woman loved her roses. This was an outline of her vision, a blueprint, if she'd been a man. There were pages of notes on soil, sun and shade, and she had made notes to plant the hardiest sun lovers to the south to shade the more delicate varieties. Next were pages of notes on various varieties of stones and stone patterns, including their cost per square foot. Looking closer at her drawing, I saw her plan included paving stones arranged in a simple American adaptation of a par-terre: a square outer path crisscrossed by paths along the diagonals with a birdbath in the center. It was simple but elegant, and it was beautifully drawn. The pages smelled of roses, as if she had pressed roses in this book. Perhaps at one time there were samples of flowers for each of these drawings. I held it gently and took a good deep sniff. I wondered if Elizabeth Conley smelled like roses.

  I returned to my reading.

  March 3

  Dear Diary,

  Papa makes me want to scream. He has been in a rage since receiving a letter from Grandpa last week. He says Grandpa wants to take away his inheritance because he is so mean to our Negroes. He says Grandpa has “gone soft on niggers”, as he puts it, and he says he knows why. Then he smirks at me as if to say that he knows something important that I do not. Miss Hanford, our teacher at the Putnam's Crossroads school, graduated from a new college in Decatur that is strictly for women of good families, and she told Papa that she thinks I should enroll there, too. He only makes fun of the idea, and he makes fun of me for wanting to enroll. He says no man wants to marry women like Miss Hanford. Then he calls me his pet and tries to hug me, but it is not the same as when I was little and Mama was still alive. If I were not quite certain that he has been unbalanced by losing her, I would not know what to think. As it is, I cannot think of what to do.

  Last night, I had gotten into my nightgown and said my prayers when Papa came to my room. He was drunk, as far as I could see, and he was smiling in a way that did not make me feel at ease. He sat down on the edge of my bed and told me to bring him a hairbrush and sit on his lap.
I did as he asked, and he began brushing my hair and telling me how pretty I am. Just like Mama, of course. He brushed my hair with one hand while the other held on to my waist. The hand at my waist began petting and stroking me along my side, and more than once his hand brushed against my bosom. We were sitting on the edge of my bed with the door open, and Willie walked by. He gave us both the oddest look and ran off to his room. I told Papa I needed to go to sleep then, and I asked him to join me in saying prayers, even though I had already said mine. He got up then and shuffled off, mumbling to himself.

  Before he was gone, I got back down on my knees to ask forgiveness for telling a lie like that, and also to ask God to send Papa a new wife in time for a June wedding.

  March was a rainy month, and several entries described storm damage around the county. Another described an Easter dress for sale in Carswell. I turned a page and reached an entry for April 3rd, 1899.

  Dear Diary,

  Today Willie and I were nearly drowned in the flood, and only quick action by Isaac saved us from certain death!

  Isaac? I sat upright and kept reading.

  We were coming back from the big tent revival in Gladden's Hill, on the other side of the river in Reynolds County. We were guests of our preacher's sister for three nights, and the preaching and the singing were beyond compare! Many lives were given over to Him, and many a tongue blessed His Name. Perhaps our devotion explains our salvation.

  It began raining last night, and it continued raining this morning. The preacher's sister's husband rode us in his buggy down to the ferry, although it was no more than a couple of miles from their house. Isaac was waiting on the other side with his mule Mary and his wagon, and Joe, the ferryman, told us he had been sent by Aunt Sally to bring us home.

  The river was wide and high, and I was very nervous as we came across. It was running faster than I had ever seen it, all manner of debris floating by. We arrived at the end of the line on our side, but the water was still deep and running fast, and Joe the ferrymaster was unable to dog her off as usual for some reason, so he stepped off with the dog line to try to hitch it somewhere and when he did, a whole tree drifting down the river at high speed snagged the ferry line and snapped it. It jerked me and Willie away from the bank and sent us out into the river alone. Willie started to cry for help, and I looked around for a paddle, an oar, any way to steer the thing.

  The tree floated ahead of us until it hit something underwater, an older snag, perhaps, and stopped. When it caught, it stopped moving forward but continued spinning until it lay perpendicular to the river's flow, which meant we were now on a course to smash into its roots. Willie held me tightly, and I held onto the rail. When we hit the tree, the ferry tore apart, with part of it being flung past the rootball and down the river. That is the fragment we were on. We held onto the wreckage, both of us screaming for help in the driving rain.

  Suddenly Isaac was there. He had a rope, and he tied a loop around Willie. Then he tied another loop around me, roping us together about ten feet apart. The other end he tied to himself. He yelled, “Y'all just do what I do,” and jumped into the river. We jumped in after him, and he began swimming toward the shore. I know how to swim, so I began paddling, and together we all three made the bank in about five minutes. When we got back to land, we were three-quarters of a mile downstream from where we started. He carried Willie up the river road on his back until we got to where Mary waited with the wagon. He gave us a ride up the hill to the house, then came inside and told Aunt Sally what had happened to us. She dried us off and made us get into bed, and her mama, Old Sarah, brought us hot tea with fresh peppermint from her garden. She told us once that Sally and Isaac are brother and sister, which surprised me, because they do not look much alike.

  There was no last name given. It had to be Isaac Cooper.

  “He loved her like she was his own child,” I said aloud.

  I flipped forward, looking for June 1900, and there it was.

  June 1, 1900

  Our Father in Heaven,

  What a horrible, horrible day! Please have mercy on all our souls!

  That was it. Not a word more. There was not another entry for a week. That, apparently, is how long it took Fin Conley and his wife Chrissy to make arrangements for their interests and property in New York City and return to the house on the hill overlooking the Flat River valley.

  June 8th, 1900

  Dear Diary,

  Today Grandpa arrived from New York with Grandma. I confess that I did not recognize them when they arrived with their luggage, but I threw my arms around them and pretended I did. The wedding photograph we have is so terribly old, and in it they are so handsome and young! Grandpa is sixty-two now. The young man in the picture has dark brown, almost black hair; the man who stepped out of the hired coach had silver temples. He smelled like cherry pipe tobacco and hair tonic when I hugged him. He seemed to recognize me upon sight, and me hugged me long and hard.

  Grandma is much more graceful and beautiful than I expected. I do not know exactly why I expected someone ugly and stern, but she is a kind woman with soft features and a gentle voice. And oh! She is so very smart and well dressed! I want to be just like her.

  Willie may be gone, but he will never be forgotten. Papa decided after two days that he had run off to join the circus, but he didn't know where they were, and the circus never comes through Georgia in the summertime. Sometimes Papa makes no sense. I have not told him about the tree, but he will find out soon enough, I expect. I paid two men two dollars to cut off everyone's favorite limb and two other limbs, removing all within twenty feet of the ground. The tree ran sap for hours from each wound, and the men said I should have waited until January to prune; however, I am satisfied with the result. It has been spared for now. I fully expect it to die and fall over one day, but not until after I have already done so.

  Dr. Wilborn is now certain that Papa will never walk again. I feel badly for him, but the Lord moves in mysterious ways, so the Good Book tells us. I am afraid that he had lost all his reason and shame, and I shudder to think what ill he may have wrought both at home and during his weekends away, had the Lord not arranged things just so. Papa will live, and Dr. Wilborn says that he will still be able to curl his toes and control his bowels, but he will not be able to walk, and other parts below his waist will not work at all, and I do thank God for that.

  The entries after that described the changes wrought by Grandpa and Grandma's taking over the house. New wallpaper went up, the kitchen was remodeled and updated, and bathrooms were added, one upstairs and one downstairs. This meant the erection of a windmill to pump water from the well and a redwood water tank to hold it and provide steady pressure, and Elizabeth took great pains to explain how all of it, including the new flush toilets, worked. She described the work of each trade and craft, from the plumbers to the tile-setters.

  Then I read this entry:

  September 3rd, 1900

  Dear Diary,

  Today Grandma said the vegetable garden is too close to the back of the house, and she would like to see something else there. She was ready to instruct James to find hands to help him dig it all up, but suddenly I had an idea, and I proposed to Grandma that she let me plant a rose garden, instead. She agreed to think about it, but she wants me to create and submit a proposal for my idea, complete with drawings and descriptions. I am so excited! I have seen so many pretty gardens in paintings and drawings, and already I have firm ideas of how I want it to look and which varieties I wish to include.

  Tonight after supper, Grandpa sat me down for what he called my first lesson in the cotton business. He tells me that all the Conley assets are mine, and what is not mine now will become mine when he and my father die, which is inevitable. He says that he is old, and since Papa is crippled like he is, I should begin to learn to manage my assets.

  The first lesson was that I should get out of the cotton business as soon as possible. He said he has been telling Papa this for years, but Pa
pa and Great-Grandpa kept believing that somehow the old, pre-War days would return, and they would build another fortune from cotton. When the price of cotton went down, they, like the Polks and everyone else I know, planted more cotton. Grandpa says that during the War, England found cheaper cotton in India and Egypt, and the additional production of those locations has further depressed cotton's value. Right now, cotton sells for five cents a pound, and Grandpa tells me that in going over our books, he finds it costs us seven cents a pound to grow. I hardly wish to pay for the privilege of growing cotton or anything else!

  It went on and on. Her diary entries recorded how she first drew up and watercolored her plans for the rose garden, then bound them into a book and presented it to Grandma. With Grandpa she rode by buggy to every Conley-owned property, meeting with the tenants, inspecting each house and checking to see that each was in decent shape with a good water supply. She was surprised to discover the community that had developed among her family's former slaves. She listened as her Grandpa encouraged diversification among their tenants, and she recalled how vigorously and thoroughly he discussed their situation with her and how he insisted that they be given every opportunity to live in peace and dignity. Grandma accepted her plans for the rose garden, and Elizabeth undertook its supervision, beginning by clearing out the old vegetable garden alone. She next supervised as the Simpson brothers, two stone masons from the Mt. Zion congregation, laid out her walkways, and the plumber returned from Augusta to run a pipe out to a fountain in the garden's center. She planted her roses and waited.