“Can’t tell you. It is a secret club is it not? Can I come in, or are you going to make me stand here at the top of the stairs?”
Clancy peered down the staircase to be sure no one had followed his surprise visitor and nearly jumped out of his tightly stretched skin, when a stray cat knocked over a garbage can in the alley below.
“You know I can’t let you in up here without a membership,Jesse. Besides, you're a law abiding town leader and family man. You have to know there’s drinking and card playing and well…some of these lumberjacks bring in flappers. They aren't bad sorts, but some get three sheets in the wind and dance the Charleston on top of tables, for goodness sakes. For a gentleman like yourself, it just wouldn’t be fitting, that’s all. Why don’t we hike downstairs to the bookstore?”
Through the half open door, Jesse heard raucous laughter and breaking glass and decided Clancy was right. Besides, if Annie should find out , she would pull a wall-eyed fit.
“Downstairs might be quieter,” he said.
Clancy came out and relocked the door, and the men went down the back staircase, entered the book store from the front door, and seated themselves at a reading table. Clancy’s beady eyes darted around the shop and then out to the front where shoppers bustled back and forth.“You didn’t bring nobody with you, did you?”
“No, Clancy, of course not. I’m not trying to expose your operation, but y’all are breaking the law up there. Aren’t you a bit old to be drinking and carrying on?”
“You bet I am, and all the more reason to do so. Now what is it you want?”
“I want to know everything you know about the house on Diablo Road. To begin with, I want to know about the caretaker there. I have a score to settle with him.”
“His name is Elias Crow. He used to be a drifter who had his eye gouged out cheating at a card game, somewhere up North. He showed up here ten years ago, and Jonathan Bonney hired him when he got too old to tend to things, just before he died. There wasn't much for the man to do except maintenance, but some folks think he's there to keep out trespassers and will use any means necessary—if you know what I mean.”
“Who oversaw the workers after Jonathan died?”
“Most of them drifted away after the Emancipation. There wasn’t any work anyhow, since they stopped planting cotton after Cyrus McCann was gone. Didn't take Jonathan long to take over the place and move right in with Lucinda. He took advantage of her, since she had nowhere else to go. He told everyone she lived on one side of the house, and him on the other, before he married her. Nobody believed that. The old timers used to say he’d always been sweet on her—besides being covetous of the McCann house to the point of obsession. Some folks said it wasn't Lucinda but the house that had Jonathan under its spell.”
“So what did Jonathan do with all that land Cyrus accumulated?”
“Ran some cattle on part of it. Sold most of the back acreage when the railroad came through to service the timber business. He married Lucinda when a decent mourning period had gone by.”
“Who owns the place now?”
“Jonathan’s great-grandson Nathan inherited it, but the old man specified he had to wait until he turned thirty. Figured he'd take care of things better, after sowing his wild oats, I suppose. The old man was particularly fond of him when he was a little boy. Some said the boy was the apple of his eye in his last years. Everyone but Nathan got bypassed in the will.”
“What happened to Lucinda?”
“She was in her grave by the time she hit forty. She died right there in the house, from an overdose of rot-gut. So the story goes. The old timers said after she took up with Jonathan Bonney, she went downhill. Others believe she lost her will to live from never having children, even with Jonathan’s motherless brood to take care of. They say she grieved for the babies she never had, and she grieved for Cyrus. Only it was something more than grief, something hard to put a name to.”
“Didn’t she receive any treatment for depression?”
“Well, she always kept various so called 'tonics' around, since she was a young woman. Doc says he was never called out there, though. She died, and Jonathan buried her. End of story. We’re talking about old time ways, when country folks laid their loved ones to rest on their own property and sometimes without bothering with a death certificate, though some folks tried to get the information to do just that. He made it awful hard to even come on his land.”
“Was there a funeral?”
“No one knows. If there was, no one was invited to the service. There were bad feelings between Lucinda and Cyrus’ friends over their dislike of Jonathan. They felt like he took advantage of Lucinda’s predicament, since she had no one to take her in, and he had virtually stolen the plantation for the back taxes. The rest of her family was gone when her cousin died. Charlotte was her name I think.”
“Yes, she was Buck Hennessy’s wife.”
The bell on the shop door jingled, as a trickling of customers entered, some smiling and nodding in their direction. One man stared at the oddly matched friends with unabashed curiosity. There was the calm and self-contained Jesse, tall with a head full of blond wavy hair mixed with gray and eyes of bright blue ice. Across from him sat the short paunchy Clancy, with small button eyes and the jitters of a caged hamster.
Jesse waited until the customers selected their books and moved on before he continued: “It’s a shame a woman like her locked herself away from the world. Katie found her picture in an old newspaper at the library and said she was very much the elegant lady. Hard to believe no one cared enough to come to see about her.”
“It’s no wonder to me. Have you ever been all the way down that path? That house is isolated. Cyrus built it there for privacy, but he was no hermit. Now Jonathan ended up a recluse out there. He and Lucinda stopped coming into town and even sent a hired hand out for their groceries.”
“So no one saw Bonney in his last years?”
“Someone on an adjoining farm caught a glimpse of him one time and said he’d let his hair grow to his shoulders and had a ragged beard. And to think he was once such a meticulously groomed man. Used to come in the shop every day for a shave and every other Saturday for a haircut.”
“I don’t suppose he’s still alive.”
“Oh no. He’s buried out there in that private cemetery behind the main house, next to Lucinda and members of the McCann family. Of course, it was a McCann’s cemetery to begin with. All the more strange for him to lie there, since he hated Cyrus with a passion. Cyrus was a Unionist and a deserter, if only in his eyes. Then too, there was always rivalry over Lucinda between them.”
“Something seems amiss, but I don’t know what it is,” said Jesse.
Clancy placed his hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “You can’t right an imaginary wrong perpetrated by a hot head like Buck Hennessy. I don’t believe it was Jonathan and the Night Riders who hanged Cyrus. Like most folks, I believe it was Louis Monet and his friends. They were either after something, or they were part of a slave uprising. All sorts of stories circulated at the time.”
Jesse shook his head. “Buck says all of Cyrus’ field hands were free men. Apparently, my uncle didn’t condone slavery, so that story doesn't hold water. In fact, he treated them all as equals.”
Jesse paused, glanced around the bookstore and leaned in to speak in a low and urgent tone: “Everything connected to that house and the Bonney family is affecting my children, the youngest and the oldest. First off, I intend to set things straight with Crow for threatening my son. Beyond that, I need to know what kind of family Nathan comes from, before my daughter marries him. You know very well the Night Riders stay in the group generation after generation, and they keep their secrets. I don’t want that kind of people around my family.“
Upon overhearing that remark, a matronly woman peered over the top of a newly released F. Scott Fitzgerald and stared at curiously at both men.
Clancy's eyes widened, and a tiny twitch played about his jawline:
“That’s where we draw the line. We don’t talk about the Night Riders.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a secret cult. They never shared their secrets, and if a man knew something, he kept his mouth shut.”
“I heard the Night Riders reactivated to keep down people that don’t fit their mold, and I’ve no respect for that kind of self-righteous mob mentality. Isn’t it likely they were responsible for my uncle’s death? There are Civil War records reporting their rampage during that very month, hanging men they claimed were deserters. Sometimes they killed not out of retribution but just because someone had a grudge. Don’t say you don’t know anything. The perfect place for them to meet is upstairs behind the locked doors of that speakeasy.”
“Why do you want to relive something that happened nearly six decades ago? “
“Maybe I’d rather not, but it’s no secret that Buck believes Jonathan Bonney was the ring leader-for his own self-serving reasons.”
“Let it go, Jesse. You never even got a chance to meet your uncle. He was killed before you were even born.”
“Then do you believe it was Monet and the field hands who killed Cyrus?”
Clancy wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and tucked it back in his pocket before answering. “There were several theories about it. Talk back then was about a fortune in gold coins missing from the house. Cyrus knew Louis Monet was the only worker who had access to his home. So he went over to the Monet cabin to question him. One of the field hands claimed he saw Cyrus go there. They think an argument ensued, and Louis settled it then and there. He may have had help in doing it, but he dragged Cyrus out to the dogwood tree and strung him up to make it look like the work of the riders.”
“What a wild presumption. Don't you think that's a far reach?”
“Come on now, Jesse. Innocent men don’t run away and hide for the rest of their lives.”
“They might, if they feel the deck’s stacked against them. Are you telling me no one has seen the couple in the last fifty-seven years?”
“Pretty much. Phoebe Monet came into town one time, twenty years ago. I saw her strolling down the boardwalk past the barber shop like she was Queen Esther. I watched the sheriff escort her out by following her wagon on horseback. Not a doubt in my mind he told her to take him to where Louis was holed up. I figured she most likely led him on a wild goose chase out into the thicket. Phoebe Monet was no halfwit.”
“People seem to either vanish or go into hiding out there in the sticks—another one of those things nobody talks about?”
Clancy ignored the question. “Guess we’ll see what happens when Nathan Bonney takes control of that house. He's turned thirty now, and he's ready to settle down.”
Jesse recalled Katie’s glowing face the night Nate brought her home from the library. “That might be quicker than you think,” he said.
Clancy shook his head. “Lord protect the bride who comes to live in that house. Every servant who went to work there, even in later years has been scared off.”
“By what or by whom?”
“No one wants to say exactly—afraid of being ridiculed or jinxed, I guess. Folks have their own peculiar superstitions, mixed with fear of being ostracized. Crow knows and will tell you in a heartbeat. He’s not scared of the Devil himself.”
Jesse nodded, but his mind was still on the man his daughter was in love with and the house where they would live as man and wife. He was torn between his own sense of logic and half-baked stories.
“Would Nathan want to actually live in that place?”
“Oh yeah...if he has a wife to help him with it. He's always wanted it. He’s foolhardy like his great grandpa. I’m telling you Jesse, there’s something unnatural about the pull of that house. If you don’t believe me, ask Granny Minna. She used to go there as midwife when the workers' babies came and even stayed overnight in the main house. You know those old full-bloods are tuned in to the spirit world.”
“I don’t know if Granny will ever be able to say. The stroke took away her ability to communicate to a large degree.”
Jesse felt something akin to electric current in the tips of his fingers and his toes. His mind shifted to his family in that instant. Both of his biological children possessed a fair amount of Annie and Minna’s Caddoan blood. Were they also tuned into dark forces and what would protect them? He felt a sudden impulse to get home. He thanked Clancy, shook hands and rushed through the front of the bookstore. The bell jangled wildly as a sharp wind blew the door shut. Startled by the noise, Clancy raced into the alley and trudged up the back staircase, glancing over his shoulder as he climbed. With worrisome thoughts rattling around in his skull, he rejoined the revelry in that room that no one talked about—where secrets were made and secrets were kept.
“I feel a storm brewing on the horizon,” he muttered, and then he realized no one was listening. Illegal elixirs had taken control.
7: Founders' Day
The Morgans Bluff Founders Day parade kicked off right on time. The mayor rode in a old fashioned horse and buggy while tipping a worse for wear top hat. Behind him, pulled by a team of mules, rolled a antiquated pulp wood wagon, upon whose sides were painted the words Morgan-McCann Mills. Next came the band from the temperance marches of years gone by, most of whose members had been replaced by youth from Morgan’s Bluff High School. Behind them, waving from a float festooned with flowers, was “Miss Founders Day”—rosy cheeked and bright-eyed and cut with the same Americana cookie cutter as her predecessors .
Every local dignitary and organization was represented; when it ended, everyone rode down to the Neches River for a picnic. There they spread their patchwork quilts in front of the bandstand and listened to local bluegrass musicians. The women compared recipes for pickles, and the men threw horseshoes and told tales grown taller every year.
Dapper in white linen slacks, blue and white striped jacket, and straw boater, Nathan Bonney strode up to the bandstand podium. He looked as if he had just stepped down from a 1920s Arrow shirt billboard. When he began to speak, all chatter stopped, and the townsfolk looked up to him with rapt attention—especially Katie.
Nate’s accent held little of the local backwoods brogue but more the soft lilt of the old southern gentry: “Fellow citizens, we've come today to honor those fearless leaders who trekked from Tennessee to the great Texas forest country, behind their brave leader Davy Crockett. They came to carve homesteads out of the wilderness and build a booming timber empire. A giant among these men was Reese Morgan, grandfather of our own Annie Morgan McCann. We also honor the railroad men who opened up the state, and along side them, my great grandfather who brought his own heritage of cattle ranching to the eastern side of Texas. I am proud to say Jonathan Bonney was instrumental in bringing economic stability to the county, and…”
Before Nate could finish, Buck emitted a loud “Humph” and pushed himself up with his cane: “You forgot one person, Nathan Bonney. You forgot a man who brought cotton to this county, helped poor folks in need, took in mistreated slaves, freed them and gave them paid jobs and dignity. That man was Cyrus McCann, uncle to Jesse here and once a respected member of this community.”
At Buck’s declaration, Nate temporarily lost his composure as well as his place in his scripted speech. From the back of the crowd, a man in overalls shouted “Sit down, Hennessy! I heard Cyrus McCann was a deserter! We owe him no honor!”
Buck turned to face the heckler: “Mind your tongue Archie McMurray, or I’ll mind it for you!”
Jesse took a firm grip on the old logger’s arm and sat him down. “Let it be, Buck. Lets see how Nathan handles it.”
True to form, the young man quickly retrieved his control. “You were right to speak up, Mr. Hennessy. We should not leave out a humanitarian who contributed much to this county. I apologize to the McCann family. Let bygones be bygones, and let the celebration continue.” With that, he tossed the last page of his script in a nearby trash can.
The Victrola wa
s brought out, and “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me” played three times in a row, while women coaxed the men to take a fox trot around the makeshift dance floor in front of the bandstand. After the last dance, Nathan took Katie’s hand and pulled her from the crowd to share his place front and center:
“Attention all!” he began. “Most of you know Katie, and many of you know we’ve been keeping company for several months now. During that time I’ve come to see my future with her.”
Then as Katie stood speechless and red faced, Nathan got on one knee and held out a diamond ring to her. “Kathryn Hannah McCann, will you do me the honor of becoming Mrs. Nathan Bonney?”
Above them flew a little propeller crop duster that trailed a banner that read Nathan loves Kathryn. The crowd began to cheer, even before she could answer. Finally, she managed an almost inaudible “yes”.
Granny Minna almost came out of her wheelchair. She understood what had transpired between her great granddaughter and Bonney and shook her head vigorously and made sounds that no one understood.
“Yes, I know, Granny!” said Annie, who apparently had lost her compass of shrewd observation. “You’re excited that our Katie has finally chosen a husband...a newspaper editor and one of means at that.” Had Annie not been so taken with her daughter’s new fiance, she would have interpreted the look in her grandmother’s eyes as dread mixed with fear.
Someone finally changed the Victrola to “Happy Days Are Here Again” and dedicated it to the newly engaged couple. They two waved politely and slipped away to a nearby peach orchard, where he drew her close to him and tilted her chin to search for any doubt that may have hidden in her eyes. “It’s all going to be different very soon,” he told her. “I imagine you sitting on the veranda, bouncing a baby who just happens to have your gray eyes and upturned nose and wild curls.”
House on Diablo Road: Resurrection Day (The McCann Family Saga Book 3) Page 5