Nancy Culpepper

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  The letters were tied with a selvedge, which was frayed and yellowing. Tucked beneath the string was a note handwritten on lined tablet paper: “Take care of these as we are saving every scratch of the pen.”

  Nancy cut the selvedge and the letters fanned out. They were addressed to Mrs. Nova Renfroe and Miss Artemisia Smith, Nancy’s great-aunts. She had heard her grandmother speak of her two sisters many times—in a tone of both melancholy and mystery. Nancy’s father, who was fond of his aunts, had once told her that Aunt Mezhie had epilepsy, but Nancy’s grandmother would never confirm that. Nancy hadn’t realized until now that Mezhie’s name was actually Artemisia. She had hoped to find personal letters in the box, but most of them were from the Syndicate of Edwards Heirs, with various return addresses. The first envelope yielded two receipts for donations of a dollar each, with a note of acknowledgment. As she read through more of the letters—mostly pleas for donations—she grew both reflective and excited. She recalled that her grandmother used to say, “We were supposed to heir a fortune, but we got cheated out of it.”

  She found another loose item in the box, a family history published in a booklet on thin paper. She began reading.

  My name is Alonzo Green. I will chronicle what is known of the family history to the best of my ability. It all commenced in 1642 when an Englishman called Thomas Hael, or Hall, purchased a large tract of wilderness in Nieuw Netherland. This is the land in question, which came down to our great-great-great grandfather Robert Edwards. We have the deed from the Dutch Colonial Government: “a certaine parcell of land in ye Island of Manhattan, stretching on the North River, betwixt Old John’s Land on the south and Jan Rotterdam’s Road north and about 1 thousand rodds wide from the river.” Thomas Hael explored his boundaries with a heavy heart, wondering at the wisdom of the acquisition. A year earlier, he had married loquacious, dumpling-shaped Anna Mitford of Bristol, England, and the pair sailed to the New World to seek connubial joy and religious adventure. Poor Anna! She contracted a virulent sea sickness and did not survive the journey. Not much is known about the status or pecuniary expectations that Hael may have brought with him to Nieuw Netherland or about how he provided for himself after his arrival. But by wintertime, the grieving widower paid a thousand Carolus Guilders for this unpromising stretch of dark forest and sand dunes below Old John’s Land and married a robust young Knickerbocker. Her name is not remembered. She gave him five daughters, who showed little appreciation for the lonely, fearsome landscape surrounding them. The nubile maidens hovered indoors in the fledgling village of Nieuw Amsterdam until one of our more jejune kinsmen, Thomas Edwards, an asthmatic seafarer, arrived, with a shine in his eye. He was captain of a broad-bottomed, wide-beamed three-master called the Society. After a brief but vigorous courtship filled with Morris dancing and demonstrations of nautical knots, he was forthwith betrothed to the oldest Hael daughter. Thomas Hael, or Hall, lacking a son, bequeathed to his oceangoing son-in-law his “wearing clothes” and a paper entitling Edwards and his heirs to Hael’s patch of ground—surveyed as seventy-seven acres, three rods and thirty-two perches. This is rightfully ours.

  Thomas Edwards, out on the high seas raiding Spanish galleons for Queen Anne, was too busy to settle down, and he left this land to his grandson Robert Edwards. But Robert, who was also a seafarer, had no use for the New York property, which was burdened by rising taxes and gargantuan boulders, so he leased it for ninety-nine years to the notorious Cruger brothers for a thousand pounds and one peppercorn per year. In the agreement, his descendants were to take possession of the estate when the lease expired, in 1877. But Robert Edwards, without issue, was killed in a freak shipwreck off the coast of New Zealand, and the ninety-nine-year lease tied up the property until it was almost forgotten. Robert’s heirs were some brothers—William, Joshua, Jacob, John, Leonard, and Thomas—and a sister, Martha (called “Mackie”), but by the time the lease expired they were all dead and their offspring flung along the Great Wagon Road and out to the Territories. It is true that the ninety-nine-year lease itself was so severely damaged in the 1860 basement leak at the Bouwerie Hall of Records that not a legible cipher remains, but an affidavit from one Mr. Murphy, a lugubrious liveryman, attests to his memory of the wording of the lease. Although the actual facts may be hard to pluck from the folds and twists of time, descendants far and wide have over the years painstakingly assembled the evidence of our inheritance. Anyone descended from the brothers of Robert or the obscure sister, “Mackie,” is in line to be an heir. Some years ago in New York, Edwards descendants were especially aroused by the famous troubadour Valentine Edwards, who mumbled an obscure-sounding shipwreck ballad, ending with the refrain “Ninety-nine years and the land is ours, / Ninety-nine years is all . . .” The song, “The Wreck of the Mangel-Wurtzel,” became a national sensation after Valentine Edwards performed it before Theodore Roosevelt at the Music Box on Twenty-third Street in 1908. The Edwards family lore—the stories handed down about the privateer and the Dutch deed and the lease—was stirred afresh by kinsman Valentine Edwards’ shipwreck ballad into a surfacing, as if memory itself were a form of wreckage strewn along the floor of a distant sea.

  The Edwards claim is a tribute to memory, to continuity, to the supremacy of kinship!

  And so, from the end of the last century, and through the Roosevelt years, and on up to the present Harding years, the Edwards claim has gained ground and amassed authority. Edwards families have held conventions, reunions, and church picnics celebrating the illustrious history of our clan. There were some doubting Thomases until 1919, when a document discovered in an old hair trunk in a colonial-era attic in Orange County, North Carolina, verified the buccaneer’s ninety-nine-year lease to the Cruger brothers, who had sublet to the Trinity Church. Therein lies our proof.

  As an earnest petitioner and family historian, on behalf of the Edwards family of America I submit claim of ownership of the land described. The estimate of wealth has enlarged beyond our capacity to account. Old John’s Land bordered Greenwich Village. Jan Rotterdam’s Road is now arrayed with mighty structures climbing skyward. The vast Edwards holdings, a lopsided rectangle on the bottom of the island, includes the Woolworth Building, the Federal Building, the New York Stock Exchange, and the whole of Broad-way. Respectfully submitted,

  —Alonzo S. Green, Kokomo, Indiana, Sept. 10, 1921

  Nancy leafed through a printed document from the Board of the Syndicate of Edwards Heirs, describing the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Edwards petition. The property delineated in the document seemed to be most of lower Manhattan, from Christopher Street, Greenwich Village, on down to the tip of the island. Nancy was eager to tell Jack about this. How amazed he would be to learn of the expectations of her modest family! When they first met, Jack had pictured her rural Southern upbringing as a scene from the distant past—like the Depression world of her great-aunts. She laughed aloud. She could have told him her family owned the World Trade Center.

  Nancy knew with certainty that in 1932 she would have sent her money in, too. If she had been a farm wife in the Depression—or perhaps her spinster sister, in a diaphanous dress on a summer Sunday, awaiting a gentleman caller (a crude youth with no prospects except setting out some tobacco in a corner of his father’s land)—she would have built up the dream of the inheritance to such a frenzy she would have had to be locked in her room. She knew she would have answered ads in the back of magazines, entered contests, conspired with cousins on ways to escape a country woman’s lot. Her yearnings frothing over, Nancy would have waited impatiently for the mail to bring some deliverance. With the promise of the Edwards fortune, she would have hitchhiked to New York to claim the city. But she recognized her tendency to exaggerate, to blow up some detail the way Jack used to enlarge a segment of a photograph in his darkroom before he went digital.

  An envelope spilled out two receipts for membership in the syndicate—twenty-five dollars each. Nancy was astounded. She knew that farm people didn’t have ca
sh during the Depression. She wasn’t sure, but twenty-five dollars might have been like two hundred and fifty dollars now. How could they have made such sacrifices? She pictured her great-aunts, worn into submission by the steady routine of farm work, their thin cotton dresses clinging to their heavy, biscuit-fed bodies. She thought of the tyranny of men—their expectations of meat and pie on the table and clean, starched shirts.

  She could imagine the remade dresses, the wool coats of a generation’s wear cut into strips and woven into rugs, the fresh beans simmered with hog jaws for an entire day. She remembered such images from her grandmother. How tantalizing the letters about the inheritance would have been! The aunts’ imagination would have stirred the kings, queens, and jacks on the playing cards to life. The aunts would have dreamed of the bustle of the city, with the opera and fine millinery shops. But Nancy thought perhaps they did not even know what to dream of. Did they have sexual fantasies? She tried to imagine their sex lives—dutiful, simple gropings in the dark.

  There was one more letter—an envelope from the U.S. Postal Service addressed to Bealus Renfroe. Nancy thought he was Nova’s husband, but she wasn’t certain. And to her surprise, Nancy discovered three photographs in an envelope in the bottom of the box. She held one up to the light—a large group of men and women and children fashionably dressed, the women in dresses with hems rising toward the knees. The twenties? She had sought details of her family history for years, but they were not a family of storytellers, and the Culpeppers had few old photographs. She held the second picture close to the dim lamp. A man in overalls was standing on a stump. What was pleasing about this picture was how good-looking the man was. He stood erect, his thumbs in his pockets, and faced the camera with confidence. He had a farmer’s hands, but his face was smooth, with strong features and dark, straight hair spilling from under a striped cap. He stood like a prized specimen on display, an excellent, prized ram at the fair.

  The third picture was two attractive women in sailor middy blouses and hats with upturned brims. Their faces were plump ovals. They stood arm in arm in front of a rough-hewn picket fence, and the shadow of the photographer fell on the grass beside them. It was winter—the grass stunted, the trees leafless. There was a barn in the background, with a tree shaped like a Y nearby. The women stared into the face of the camera with the intensity of predators. The woman on the left had her mouth open in a smile—even, pretty teeth. The other one smiled without opening her mouth. Nancy located the two women and the handsome man in the group photo; he was flanked by the middy-bloused women, and his arms embraced their shoulders.

  Jack could enlarge these pictures for her, and she would study them for clues, like the guy in Blow-Up, a movie that had seemed so sophisticated and profound when she was young. She was aware that in her work as a historian, her habit was to re-create the past by dwelling on a pink button loose in a box, an old washed-out photograph of an unidentified man posing on a stump. Her mind leaped around, as if it were a magic wand and she could make these images come to life.

  2

  In the spring of 1929, two women, sisters, were toiling in a tobacco patch in western Kentucky. They were suckering dark-leaf tobacco— pinching off the sticky buds, smearing the gum on their aprons. Bealus Renfroe had sent them out to work after breakfast in the still, blazing air. Nova, his gangly, high-spirited wife, kept a careful eye on her sister Artemisia, who had a habit of banging her head on a fence post when she began to grow agitated. Nova had learned to say soothing things to calm her sister, even though Nova herself was full of fire much of the time. But her sister’s horizons were restricted. Artemisia didn’t go to the store or visit anyone except family.

  At midmorning, the mailman, Early Otto Kilgore, arrived, his Model T stirring a cloud of dust for half a mile. Early was his true name, not a nickname, and he was often true to his name—early with the mail, which was most often only some tradesman’s plea. His horn blared, and the sisters heard him holler, like a farmer summoning field hands. They ran down the tobacco rows and jumped over a stile, their hems dragging, to see what surprise Early Otto had brought. He handed Nova a thick envelope from a cousin, Joe, who had moved to Calloway County. She ripped it open, while Early Otto remained, his engine bleating, to learn what news he had brought. Joe’s letter was brief, but his voice leapt off the tablet page like that of a revival preacher ranting of glory. Nova read the letter aloud. “ ‘Look at this, girls. Read the enclosed pamphlet careful. Pay attention to what Mr. Alonzo Green says, for he has researched it. He says our fortune is coming. If we can prove we are Edwards. That’s easy, for you know that our great-grandmother was a Edwards. That makes us legible to get in line to heir a fortune. I figure a million dollars!’ ” Along with the printed pamphlet, Joe had sent two application blanks for membership in the Syndicate of Edwards Heirs.

  “Don’t neither one of y’all tell this to Bealus,” Nova said, after glancing through the pamphlet, fancy-printed in tiny type. “We’ll study on this and surprise him. He would never let us join up. It says here it costs a dollar for more information.”

  Early Otto seemed to know something. He nodded, with a silly smile, and said, “You can count on me, gals. I won’t breathe ne’er a word.”

  “Mezhie, don’t you tell Bealus!” Nova said.

  “I won’t tell nobody,” said Artemisia, who thought of herself as Artemisia, even though she would deign to answer to Mezhie.

  As they made their way back to the tobacco patch, Artemisia said, “We ought to been rich ladies.” She smoothed her gummy apron. The tobacco made a stain like a thousand squashed roach bugs.

  “Life used to be better in the old days, I’ve heard tell,” Nova said. “They always told how Mammy married beneath her, even though everybody liked Pappy.”

  “She used to have fine things—a peacock and a silver brush.” Their mother, long dead, had china dishes and a Hoosier pantry and a shelf filled with books—stolen by a bachelor cousin who had an abnormal interest in Latin and physiognomy.

  They studied the document later, the next chance they had of being alone in the crowded household. That night, Nova crept up to Artemisia’s room, a sweltering nook in the attic. Nova was always afraid her sister would have one of her spells and fall down the stairs, but Artemisia stubbornly retreated to her little garret, where she hoarded her few possessions (especially prizing her tooth cup and hair combs). Artemisia had read the fine print in the pamphlet.

  “Look, Nova, they’ve quoted Ezekiel,” she said. She read aloud, “ ‘Thus saith the Lord God: Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: This shall not be the same, exalt him that is low and abase him that is high.

  “ ‘I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is, and I will give it him. Ezekiel 21: 26–27.’ ”

  “It’s only right,” said Nova. Then she whispered hoarsely, “Just think, how we’ll surprise everybody.”

  “ ‘Dear Miss Artemisia and Mrs. Nova,’ ” Artemisia said, as if she were reciting a monologue or acting in a play. “ ‘It is our pleasure to inform you that you have heired a million dollars; enclosed is our check.’ Do you reckon it’ll be more than that?”

  A period of watching and waiting began. Within a month, the sisters completed two application blanks and mailed them in with a dollar apiece, saving postage by placing everything in one envelope. They had to filch the dollars from the egg money, but they compensated by denying themselves a second egg at breakfast. No one noticed their sacrifice. The household was large—with Nova’s three children, a couple of Renfroes and their wives and several other children, as well as a hired hand who slept on a pallet on the back porch. The human swarm made some secrets easier, but Artemisia’s attentiveness to the arrival of the mail was inescapable. Bealus teasingly accused her of waiting for love letters. “She’s slipping around, hoping for some bowlegged, lovesick goof to carry her off,” he declared with a wink. He kept up his teasing, and the sisters let his suspicion stand
as a convenient cover. Early Otto was in on their secret, revealing that he was an Edwards heir himself. His great-grandmother was a cousin to their great-grandmother.

  A letter arrived. A Mrs. March wrote to Nova and Artemisia personally, on stationery from a hotel in Nashville, explaining that the organization subsisted on donations, a dollar or two a month. And for their claims to be represented in the courts, they each had to send a twenty-five-dollar membership fee. “I can also work up your family tree, which you will need in order to be represented,” Mrs. March wrote. “But we don’t need to worry about that yet.” She wrote informally, in a zestful, cheery tone, on a typewriter. The sisters’ disappointment was palpable, and for days they drifted on a cloud of gloom. They yearned to join, but fifty dollars was out of reach. The tobacco crop might not bring that much, and the cash would go for the necessary store goods. But a seed had been planted in their minds. For weeks afterwards, while ironing or canning peaches or hoeing, or even while ensconced in the two-seater meditation shack behind the house—whenever they could snatch private moments—Nova and Artemisia entertained themselves by imagining Mrs. March in a hotel, writing letters on her typewriter and researching people’s family trees. They created a picture of a widow in silk, who moved in society but was down-to-earth and chatty, having once been penniless. Artemisia said, “Mrs. March loves March flowers, and a hired hand totes flowers up to her room every day. And she plays the piano in the grand hotel lobby.”