Bottomland: Based on the Murder of Rosa Mary Dean in Franklin, Tennessee

by Trey Holt

  “I’ve already read this part,”I told her.

  “Well, I haven’t,”she countered.“To understand what you’re talking about, I need to read the whole thing.”

  “Mr. Preston states that he contributed his services to the City of Franklin far below the normal price of such a procedure.‘There really wasn’t much else we could do,’he told this reporter,‘besides just do the best we could. It’s kind of like life, you know? You just do the best you can with what you have to work with at the time.’Mr. Preston, a man in his early forties who has made the funeral business his own for the last fifteen years, stated that so many people filed through his establishment to view the body that he thinks irreparable damage was done to his carpet.”

  I let my eyes drift off the newspaper to the light beginning to flood the sky with its grayness. Spring, what we had promised each other, seemed as far away as the“otherside”Percy promised me was there. So did when we had met there on this morning. I squinted into the cloud-covered sunlight, to take my eyes off the paper once more, off her.

  “Mr. Preston stated,‘I did this as a personal favor to Dillard. He’s been so kind to me over the years. Franklin is indeed safer in his hands. I think that’s especially good to remember right now.’“

  “See—they said something nice about him.”

  “That’s sounds just like Jean. How‘George Preston had somethin’nice’to say about him,’”I tried to imitate her voice, whining.

  “Hush while I finish this,”she said.

  I nodded, like a good boy.

  “At eight-thirty, Police Chief Hall arrived at the funeral home, witnessed crawling over the side railing by this reporter. An odd entrance for a town official, he made it over the railing nonetheless, with a plate of food believed to be for his son, who had been at the funeral home since the inception of this strange search for identification. Almost making it in the door, he was questioned only after a slight collision with a towns-lady and subsequently dropping the plate of food in his hands. It was clear that Mr. Hall wanted to answer neither questions about the murder that for the last few days has paralyzed Franklin, the identity of the body nor his personal life.

  “‘Lucky’as he is called, the Police Chief in Franklin for the past four years, stated it was none of the reporters’business if he had been drinking earlier in the evening, when a reporter from the Nashville Banner inquired into the matter. He refused to answer any questions excepting to divulge some information that had been in the deceased young woman’s pocket.

  “As he made his way into the door of Franklin Memorial Chapel, with some of the food he had spilled on his shirt and hat and still somewhat out of breath from his climb onto the side of the porch, he did disclose the content of a note that had been found on or near the woman’s body. On a note, he says, is written,“Ike Beatty—219 Russell Street,”a lead that this reporter assumes he and his officers haven’t had time to follow. Nevertheless, it does seem that Police Chief Hall, the assistant until Oscar Garrett passed away four years ago of a sudden heart attack, has had time to tend to other matters.

  “Upon the discovery of the body between the Franklin High School Building and the gymnasium last Monday morning, Jackson Mosby, a janitor at Franklin High School was soon arrested and taken into custody. The following day, yesterday, his son, Arliss, was also arrested. They both await charges in the Franklin Jailhouse. When Police Chief Hall was asked why he had taken the negroes into custody, he responded by answering,‘The whole town thinks they did it.’And then he would answer no more questions, disappearing into the Franklin Memorial Chapel. It seems as though the Franklin Jail is being used for a holding place, so that some of its citizens will not harm others, an opinion of one of its citizens, who states he speaks for more than himself.

  “Sammy Samuels, who owns and runs Samuels’Auction House, located next door to the jailhouse, said when questioned about the situation outside his business establishment,‘It was always my impression that the jail was to protect the ones on the outside, not its interior.’“

  “I bet it took that son of a bitch twenty minutes and a good dictionary to come up with that sentence,”I could imagine Lucky saying when he read it.

  “Why are you laughing?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Just go ahead,”I told her.

  “Mr. Samuels continued,‘Lucky has always took care of the [negroes] in this town, almost before he took care of the white people. Hell, it was that way years ago. He threatened to beat me one time after that little [negro] he has in jail now tried to attack me and I defended myself.’“

  “Is that true?” she stopped to ask me.

  “No idea,”I told her.“All I knew about was the‘attack.’”

  As she searched for the place to begin the article again, I could feel the warmth of the two thin paths of tears rolling down my cheeks. I turned my eyes out the passenger side window. It wasalmost like the sky went on forever. Like it was impenetrable.

  “Arliss attacked Sammy Samuels?”

  “The way I remember it, it was the other way around,”I told her.“He was pissed off because Arliss hadn’t give him a good enough shine down at Frank’s.”

  “It’s just awful how we treat the colored people,”she said.

  I shrugged.“I guess.”

  Her eyes were back to the paper. For just a moment, she had focused on the gray morning, how the sky now looked like it might open itself and dump its contents all over us.

  “‘I guess, really, the town’s gone a little bit crazy. Maybe it’s the whole country, I don’t know,’Mr. Samuels continued.‘It’s two different things, I guess. The whole town seems to have lost its g__d__ marbles over this woman…kind’a the same way the whole country is losing its marbles over [negroes] in general. I just don’t know what to make of it. But I do know this....’“

  I assumed they had had to find somebody to talk because Lucky wouldn’t. Sammy Samuels, obviously, had been glad to.

  “‘I know that Lucky shot at me and a couple of other boys the other night for nothing. But I guess that ain’t that unusual, seeing what happened a few months ago. We wasn’t doing nothing but driving down the street and the s__ of a b____ fired a shot into the grill of my Ford. I couldn’t believe it…a pretty new car. I barely made it home before it quit.’

  “In the end, it seems, Mr. Samuels shares a couple of emotions with the rest of Franklin: disbelief over what has happened the last few days…and joy to make it back to their own houses.

  “As for me,”said Mr. Samuels as he made his way back toward the car missing a piece of its grill from the alleged bullet hole,“I just couldn’t bring myself to go see that woman. I got all the way to the front door, but then I just turned around and left. It just didn’t seem right.”

  As her voice trailed off into the silence that surrounded us at the Confederate Cemetery at this time of the morning, she laid her head into my chest again, rested her weight there.

  “You smell like cigarettes,”she said.“Your jacket.”

  “My whole family smells like cigarettes,”I told her.“Well, not Mama and goody-goody Jean. But Lucky and Percy.”

  “Do you miss him?” she asked me.

  “Humh?” I said.

  “You hardly ever say anything about him. But it’s funny, when you do, you talk about him in the present…like he’s still here.”

  “He told me he was,”I said.

  “When?” she said.

  I tapped a cigarette from my pack, trying to look like Montgomery Clift again.“All the time.”

  “See—you did it again. You said he told you, like it’s now.”

  I nodded. Drew in as deep a breath as I could and blew it out. I put my hand in her hair and pulled her face so close that I could feel the warmth of her cheek as it rested on my own.

  “Take me away,”she said.

  “Alabama, Georgia or Mississippi?”

  “Alabama,”she said.“They say even there, Mama has to go with us…to sign.”
>
  I lit the cigarette that had been perched on my lips. Ran my hand over my hair cut at Frank’s the Friday of the week before, before everything in Franklin had gone to hell in a handbasket.

  “You think she will?” I asked her.

  “She’ll go,”she said.“She said she would. We’ll just have to live somewhere close…so I can work and help take care of her and my little sister. What about your father?”

  “Fuck him,”I told her.“Let him stay here and deal with what he’s created. That’s his biggest idea, that we all have to, eventually.”

  We were silent now, smoke from the cigarette rising between us and the windshield that opened itself to the gray daylight completely overtaking the cemetery.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The only thing that makes in any way right what the son of a bitch did is that we don’t go out of existence. That still doesn’t make it right! But at least it doesn’t end there. With some things that happen, that’s our only hope! It’s really grace, I guess, that there’s more than…that things don’t end with Randomness or Human Frailty. No matter the tragedy, what has been invested in that person, who that person is, is not lost.

  To say we don’t go out of existence is a perfunctory way to put it. It’s more that we are always in existence…as is God. Time is a human construct, by which we try to exert some kind of measure and control over our domain. So it is that faith is some kind of letting go. Allowing ourselves to fall into the invisible arms that support this universe. Resting in them until we know no time and become unacquainted with the space we have inhabited.

  It is my belief that death does not tear us apart but draws us closer together. It is only that you cannot realize it. We often mistake our perception of reality for reality itself. The things that seem as though travesties or tragedies here, are but a mere drop of rain in heaven…. or whatever you want to call the place our energy remains. I would prefer to call it here…just not now. Or now…just not here. There are so many limitations our mind cannot overcome, through which we cannot see for the dense cloud cover of our high opinion of ourselves. Although you will not know it…or perhaps will only know it in your most alive moments, I am here…will be here with you. Simply on another plain…one far removed from human understanding. Perhaps it is more complicated than I ever let on. Human frailty, Randomness and A Planned Nature of Things do embrace almost every event. But there’s more. More than that. More than grace. More than all the things I spoke of when I spoke. It’s easy to believe that what we think has somehow encompassed most things. But eventually we know our own thoughts are as incomplete as our persons…our selves. And it is then that we realize reality is much simpler and much more complicated that we ever conceived. Simpler only in its function, which cannot be described justly by words and ideas; more complicated by our attempts to explain it, to control it, to fold down the lid of the box in which we’ve placed it and fasten the top shut.

  How do I know these things? I am not sure, Henry boy. I am only certain that I do. Some people call it faith…some, other things like intuition. I only know that I know…and do not know how I know. Confusing to you? Imagine being in my brain. It is one thing I have always asked to be relieved of. To be able to shut my head off like a car engine.

  In my clearer moments I know there is a God as certain as I know that Walter was a projection of my diseased brain. Then there are times that I believe maybe my brain, with all its afflictions, had an extra eye so to speak, or better vision in some way. Perhaps at my best, I could see the Walters in the world , both our friends and our enemies, more clearly. Not everything is to be fixed…some things are simply to be experienced, ridden out like a blizzard. Like the time Jean was struck in the head with the snow shovel and Dr. Guppy sat with her all night to see if she lived or died. Your father, I believe, almost never recovered from that. As with most things, I am certain he perceived that as his own responsibility. He is often a man who believes he has to control most everything around himself…at his worst, what others even think.

  + + +

  If you don’t believe Walter was there at the Battle of Franklin, then just examine the evidence, my friend. He was there as sure as they fried my goddam brain four out of the last five days. Do you know what starts tomorrow? Two a days, they call it.

  Walter convinces people that their ideas are more important than anybody else’s. That theirs and theirs alone are worth people dyin’for. Walter convinces people that the way they see the world is more accurate than the way anybody else sees it. That their way and their way alone is right. Once he’s convinced you of that, he’s got you in his grasps. Right between those ugly, yellow, discolored tusks, if you will.

  You know, one day I might surprise a lot of people. I might just wake up and do something different besides the craziness that’s been goin’on for years. I might just straighten up, get me a steady payin’job…somethin’. Take a wife. Yeah, find me a woman. Do things like that.

  Anyway, he was there. He was with them in Spring Hill when the federal troops went by. He was with them when they bedded down right outside of Franklin, Hood in the Harrison House, as comfortable as he could be…and his troops outside on the cold ground. We create hierarchy to hold away Randomnessas much as we can. Makes us feel like we’re part of the plan. But it’s a world of difference from the plan. Hierarchy really grows out of Human Frailty.

  The son of a bitch was there, though. As sure as I’m sitting here talking to you. He was there when Hood ordered the first charge at three-thirty in the afternoon. Stewart’s corps had moved north along Columbia Pike to Henpeck Lane, just below the Harrison House. Cheatham’s men were deployed to the left of Columbia Pike. Part of Chalmer’s cavalry division and Stonewall Jackson’s Cavalry division dismounted and got ready for what they knew was to come. The remainder of the cavalry crossed the river to the right of Stewart and got ready to take on Wilson’s men, head-on. As for the Federals, Cox and Ruger and Kimball’s division provided defense. Wood’s division was guarding the river crossing north of town.

  In the Harrision House, as I’ve told you a million times, Hood held his last conference. It was there that he issued his order of attack to his chief subordinates. And it was there that General Nathan Bedford Forrest looked him square in the eye and told him he lacked good sense.

  The first charge came a little before four o’clock in the afternoon. Eighteen damned brigades moving forward in the line of battle across the broad rolling plain that leads north into town, toward the five Union brigades dug in behind their works just into town. As the boys moved through the field, many of them, I imagine, knowing that this was in fact their last charge, rabbits came out of their burrows in front of them, quail scurried where flushed from their coverts in coveys. Federal soldiers, mostly behind cover and cocked guns, even would say later that they were impressed by the grand array of the charge, battle flags waving in the late afternoon sun.

  The brigades of Colonel Joseph Conrad and John Q. Lane were hit first. The day before, this division—Wagner’s—had held off half the confederate army at Spring Hill, and its commander almost instantaneously decided they could do it again. Wagner, ordered to retreat before engagement, did not follow the orders, and his two brigades remained in line to fire into the charging divisions, Cleburne and Brown. But before they arrived, they checked up for a few moments, just enough time to allow Stewart and Bate to reach the main federal defense line. Randomness. Human Frailty.

  Now Cleburne and Brown came on harder. At their flanks, Wagner’s men could see long lines of Confederates hurrying by. Then, without orders—and I might add, too late—the Federals turned and ran. Now it was simply a foot race to the main line of the Federal’s. The old soldiers in Wagner’s brigade got away, but the new recruits were captured because they were afraid to run under enemy fire. The veterans, though, ran straight down Columbia Pike, through the main line at the Carter house and on into Franklin, where they finally stopped at the river bank. I tell you this—at s
ome point or another, life makes cowards of us all!

  Concerning this behavior, Wagner was furious! As mad as your father can get sometimes. He tried hard to rally them, but he was swept backward by a mass of men as they fled the Rebel gunfire.

  The supporting Federal troops had been unable to fire at the charging Confederates without hitting Wagner’s fleeing men. The same was true of Reilly’s and Strickland’s brigades toward Columbia Pike. Because of all this, the Federals held their fire until the pursuing troops were almost on top of them.“It seemed to me,”a charging confederate wrote after the battle,“that hell itself exploded in our faces.”

  To make matters worse, some of the men in Reilly’s and Strickland’s brigades became caught up in the confusion that had befallen Wagner’s men. Misunderstanding the orders that were shouted in the heat of the Rebel charge, they, too, joined the rush to the rear and Cleburne’s and Brown’s men poured through the gap near the Carter House. They were able to take the guns just to the left of the road, but as luck would have it, could find no primers. The guns stayed silent.

  It was at this point that the crucial point of the battle was at hand. The Confederates were fifty yards inside the Federal works. For a brief few minutes, it appeared that they were on the brink of victory.

  But the break in the line didn’t spread. Instead, it was plugged by the third brigade of Wagner’s division, the men commanded by Colonel Emerson Updike. They had been held in reserve some two hundred yards behind the main line, north of the Carter House. Needing no orders, they charged into the break and fought hand-to-hand with the beleaguered Confederates. In just a few minutes, the Confederates inside the lines had been killed or captured, the Federal lines had been restored., but the foundation for the rest of the battle had been sadly laid.