by Chris Vaughn
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Special Dedication
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
A Note From Chris...
Special Thanks
About The Author
Books By Chris
The Chair Falls At Night
By
Chris Vaughn
Copyright © 2014
The Chair Falls At Night By Chris Vaughn
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission from the author, Chris Vaughn, or the Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Chris Vaughn (2014-09-15)
The Chair Falls At Night
Dedication
To my wife Lisa Renee, who has always encouraged me to chase my dreams, and to write those dreams down.
To SB, MA, and LC for giving life longevity and meaning.
To my Daddy and Mama. One gave me the strength of convictions, thanks Daddy; one gifted me with the ability to tell a story, thanks Mama.
Her name was Joan…
When I was a little boy, the neighbors always played at our house, and called her Joan. So much in fact that my younger brother by six years called her Joan too until he was probably five or six.
She was creative and inspiring, with a quick tongue and sharp wit. Money when we were little wasn’t in abundance, but she always figured out ways for us to have fun. One summer we either played at a local state park where we could swim when we had the gas and entry money to go, or and we went to the Yadkin River with a picnic. Often she would have us collect rocks to bring back home and paint, our imagination(s) our canvas, the free rocks our palate, and the memories eternal. Our other summer activity was finding enough money to pay for the car admittance at the King Drive-In! There are movies today that I’ve seen probably twenty-plus times due to the fact we would stay through all three movies. We usually took our own snacks, blankets, and chairs; as we were usually one of the early vehicles at the Drive-In so we could get on the first row. We’d get home late, she’d put us to bed, and we’d sleep late, and talk the next day of the movies we had watched. For some reason she loved stories: watching them, reading them, and especially telling them.
She grew up in South Georgia, the daughter of tobacco farmers with four brothers, who according to her, no one in the county would fight since when you fought one, you fought all of them; unless of course they were at home where they would fight each other. Her stories of her childhood were vivid, peppered with humor, and maybe with some exaggeration, but if there was one thing she was known for, it was being able to tell a story. When she spoke she could control the room, and usually did.
This book is fiction, and not based on any facts. Many of the stories in here are from her: The lard can and shoes, the house catching fire, her Father’s poker games, the house with the unknown steps, and even the stories about the chair I heard as a child, and as often as we could have her tell them. I hope she enjoys my re-telling of them.
So laced in this book are so many memories for me of being a little boy, and listening to her wind the tale until we gasped and she sent us to bed. The only problem is when a story is told well by a captivating storyteller and you were a child and sent to bed, you had to have a running start to jump from the door to the bed… you never knew what was under that bed!
She influenced me in the movies I still watch, the music I love, and the stories I still tell. I LOVE the television show ‘Columbo’ to this day. I’ve seen every one of them because of her, which is why I like to read mystery or suspense-type books and now write them. Oh, how she loved mysteries and suspense! I remember one summer where she avidly read Detective Stories and, forget about when Court TV came out, you could watch the entire trial and forensics!
Most of my life, I’ve made a living out of speaking publically. I’ve never been afraid to take a platform and speak whether prepared or not, and the idea that public speaking is one of the greatest fears for most people is to me unthinkable. I don’t get that one bit. That gift to speak extemporaneously, I know is given to me by God, but it was encouraged and nurtured by her.
A number of years ago, at the passing of one of my aunts, all of her immediate family were at the funeral services and many of my cousins. The small town in South Georgia was very accommodating to the family, their having been long time residents and the town being small. The local hotel had a small conference room they opened up to us to sit and be together since so much of the family was from out of town. I still remember it striking me funny that my cousins, most older than me, sat around the table and listened intently at the stories she could tell, even to the point of asking for ‘story requests’ of specific stories they remembered her telling from when they were little that I had heard so often. Even then, just a few years ago, she still had the ability to tell a story, and if need be, she could stretch it, because as a friend of mine says, ‘a good story is good - even if it isn’t all true.’
My Aunt Rosie in January 2013 said of her, “Son, she sure was a Cat Bird!” and that she was. Memories are a great gift from God, because we have the ability to call back the times when someone was in the prime of their life, active and vibrant, living in the moment. I often wish I could pull those memories out and share them with people, I wish they could have known her in the prime of ‘Cat Birdness’ that we lived through.
This book is flavored with her stories and the idea of it all hit me in bed six months ago late one night. I couldn’t type it out fast enough, nor finish what I was working on fast enough to get to this one.
I enjoyed every keyboard stroke as with each one, I could hear her voice in my head as so many times before as the story unfolded and I hope you enjoy it.
When she was young she was Ms. Lord, then Mrs. Vaughn, and eventually Mrs. Keaton. Some called her Joan, others Aunt Joan.
I called her Mama... and Mama, thanks for the stories that keep speaking to me…
Chapter 1
Everyone in Chestnut, Georgia had heard the stories of the chair and the table in Old Man Snyder's house. Some said you could hear the sound of a chair falling at night, and others said it was probably a rat or rodent. No one had been brave enough to spend the night not even just for fun, and few ever went into the upstairs attic room where the table and chair were left. Joy Hand would be the first to see if the myth was true, and when a child is ten, you are either scared or bold. Joy had the greatest of weapons: innocence.
Joy was thankful to lay down after a day of moving and more thankful to have her own room, even if it was in the attic without a working light bulb. Some houses stay empty because of location and some beca
use of cost, but some stay empty for the fact that there is story that people don't want to embrace or even tell. Joy's family didn't have the luxury of a choice in housing and hadn't been in that place for a couple of years to have the choice that comes with an abundance of money. The Hand family was thankful they had a place to go that was nice, secure, and would allow Daddy to continue with his farm. When your parents are a sharecroppers raising tobacco on a slim margin, your options aren't many when your pockets aren't deep.
Chestnut, Georgia in 1952 was your typical South Georgia town in both the good and bad. Small and quaint with the dividing lines of economy and race like every other rural town in the South. The rules of the South were never written in stone but were written in the culture and understood by everyone. Landowners ruled, sharecroppers worked the land and a town was as divided by the economy of the rich and poor as well as divided by race into white and black sections; as with everything, even those lines overlapped in some areas. Of course the lines of propriety got blurred from time to time, but in the course of daily living it was best to keep your place in the structure of the south.
Tobacco farmers had to start working before the sun came up, and usually didn't get home from the fields until after the sun went down. Summers were busy times for Joy's family with an occasional slow day when it rained which wasn't often enough for Joy and her best friend. South Georgia during the summer was a busy time. Farmers and field hands worked long days for the cash crop of tobacco as their year could start as early as February and go as late as October and with a good crop, sometimes into November. Not only did a farmer raise tobacco but also usually raised a large garden of other items for their family. If they had a great crop of corn or tomatoes, those could be sold too or bartered, to make a living and provide for the family.
For Joy, this night lying down in bed was the best part of this day. It had been a long day full of excitement for her, but her muscles were sore from all the work she said she had done, or at least tried to do to help in moving. The whole month had been tumultuous and catastrophic since the fire that took their old shotgun sharecropper house. Sharecropper homes, even like this newer one were never maintained as well as should be, though those homes always created an atmosphere where the roof that provided your home could also be the place of your hurt or death. Joy's parents, Mama and Daddy to her, never knew exactly what caused the fire. There had been discussions as to whether Daddy was smoking in bed which he had been known to do, or Mama had left some grease on the stove, but the wiring in the house was never something Old Man Snyder bragged about or even maintained. He was at least good in that he tried to take care of the families that rented his land to farm, and also rented their homes from him. He did have one home that Joy and her family could rent, but no had wanted to rent it for some time; the Hand family weren't beggars or choosy but very thankful, even though their choice was limited to what was available and what they could afford.
The whole family was thankful to be alive, and to have the some of their belongings. Some things couldn't be replaced, but the things that mattered were here: Mama, Daddy, and Joy mostly followed by the family pictures and the blankets that Mama's family had made; those were heirlooms for the Hands. That might not seem like much to some in life, but the love and work that went into the making of them was more costly to Joy's Mama than gold. Joy's mama and daddy were thankful to have a place to move to, even though it had been empty for many years and needed some work to make it livable. A house could be a home with a little tender love and care, and Joy noticed that Mama said it needed even more prayer. This house needed the prayer more than the care, and everyone in Chestnut, Georgia knew why. The Hands had said those prayers, and Mama said them out loud before they moved in and Mama reminded Joy to say her prayers before she went to bed.
The moon shone through the window and lit up the whole room that first night she slept in her bedroom. In the spring of '52, the moon was all the light Joy had in her room. She did have a lonely bulb hanging from the rafters over the table in the room, but it didn't work and hadn't for several years. The attic bedroom was cozy and small with the barest of furniture for a young girl. Joy's room had a bed, a dresser, a makeshift closet rod to hang her few hangers of clothes, and a table with chair; the table and chair came with the house when the Hands moved in. Houses that hadn't been lived in for several years always had issues to be worked out and Joy's daddy was making the best of a bad situation. A family recovering from a fire wasn't easy and finding a home quickly in Chestnut was even harder in those days. The only home he could find had a past, but her daddy always said, "Everyone has a past, Joy, that what gives them character. Never let your past shape your future." She, like most little girls, believed the words of her daddy and to her thinking, those were good words too. This home shouldn't be judged by its past or her bedroom and even so, it didn't have to shape the future of those who lived in it, or would live in it.
It took her daddy a long time to get Joy's mama to accept this house as their new place to live and make it their home. Both her mama and daddy had grown up hard and endured the Great Depression and knew what hunger was. Daddy even knew what homelessness was and would quickly remind Joy whenever she didn't seem content with their lot in life. Joy laid in bed remembering the heated discussion they had several days before.
"Mama, we've got to take it, there's no other place to move to." Daddy said.
"I don't care, that house has spirits in it or something. It's not peaceful."
"Goodness, Mama, you don't believe all that gibber jabber. Just a bunch of old wives’ tales."
Mama wasn't taking any of Daddy's arguments, "Then you tell me why this house has sat for so long. I'll tell you why, people know that this house ain't right and there is something in it."
"Well, I don't give a dog about what people say, and in a couple of days we are going to be in it you understand. You ought to know that by now? Anyway, I'm thankful! This house is thirty-five dollars cheaper a month, and that's gravy to me. Wish I'd acted on it sooner." Daddy rolled himself a cigarette as his adamant tone became very known to anyone within listening distance.
Mama wanted to try once more, "Well I just don't like it. I...."
"Mama, this is ended. We have nowhere else to go that will allow me to keep working my farm within good distance. This house sits next to my leased land. It's thirty-five dollars cheaper; it's a nice home too. Yeah, it's been empty, but it’s been taken care of some, and it has a history, but there's one more thing, Mama, and it’s the most important for us... We have nowhere else to go!" Her daddy's tone was firm and he paused before he finished his argument, "That alone settles it." Joy's daddy walked outside and lit his cigarette. Mama knew from enough years that this discussion was over. Joy wouldn't say a word even if her life depended on it. She knew her daddy; in this mood, the wrong word could mean the end of her life.
All these thoughts ran through Joy's mind as she looked around and remembered the stories of the house, the table, and the chair. She was thankful for having a room that was all hers; no more sleeping on the couch or a pallet by her mama's bed. She didn't know if it would be warm in the winter or even cool in the summer because something her daddy said about no insulation. This house didn't have air conditioning either, but what home of a sharecropper in '52 had air conditioning? In Chestnut, no one's house had air conditioning except people of the likes of the Snyder's. Joy laid there and listened to the far away sounds of the train off in the distance, the owls, and the stray dogs and the animal noises that haunted farms out in these parts at night. She thought again about the stories she'd heard about this house, or more correctly overheard about the house as her dad had moved furniture into the home.
The 'Snyder House' was on a long road that made it seem lonelier than the fact it had been empty for some time. It also had the dubious distinction to the better off families as being on the border to the poorer section of town. Some families wouldn't consider the house for that fact, but the Han
d family couldn't afford to care about that. When you're living hand to mouth, you are thankful for everything and that includes those things that others despise. Those things didn't matter to the Buddy and Mary Hand, but surviving did to Buddy Hand as well as the bringing in, curing, and auctioning of a tobacco crop along with doing whatever was necessary to provide for your family.
Joy stared at the window and thought how happy she was that she'd be close to her best friend Jackie. She'd heard her daddy say they were living on the tracks now in between here and there, but to a small girl that didn't mean anything. Joy's mind didn't know where that exactly was but just being closer to Jackie made it worth this new house and even this room. She didn't care and when you are ten you don't have the things on your mind that adults concern themselves with such as position and prejudice. Before she fell asleep, she wanted to take the time to say her prayers. She climbed back out of bed, knelt down, put her hands together, and closed her eyes as she said, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep and if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. God bless Mama, Daddy, and Jackie, Mr. & Mrs. Fryar. And thank you for this house. Keep me safe in here, and I don't care about those stories, God, I know you will take care of me. Amen."
Joy climbed back into the bed, and looked around with the light from the moon as its glow flowed through the window. She'd overheard her daddy and his friends talking about how this room had a story, and she wondered if they would tell her all of it. She sat up and looked around as if the story might pop out from somewhere.
I'll find someone to tell me what happened up here. As she wondered what happened, her mind slowly began to drift away and she laid back down with the sandman coming to take her to the land of dreams.
