“I’m sorry,” Sara told me. “The 1890 Census was destroyed in a fire in 1921, and only a few fragments survived.
I sighed. “Dead end, I guess. I’m sorry I took up so much of your time.”
“That’s what I’m here for. You could try 1880, though, and look for parents. There’s a partial Soundex for households with children aged ten and under. If the woman was born in the 1870s like you think.…”
I shook my head. “No. I know she was born a Murray, but I don’t know her father’s name.” Checking each and every M600 for a young child named Mae was not an appealing task. I might only be killing time; but I had no intention of bludgeoning it to death. I’d have a better chance hunting Holloways, because Green’s name was so out of the ordinary. But I’d have to go frame-by-frame there, too, since I didn’t know his parents’ names, either. That sort of painstaking research was the reason why God invented professionals.
Sara pointed to a row of shelves near the carrels. “There is one other option. There are printed indices of Heads of Households for 1870 and earlier.”
I shook my head. “The grandparents? I don’t know their names, either.”
“Did she have a brother?”
“Zach,” I said. “Just the two of them, as far as I know. At least, she’s never mentioned any other siblings.”
“Children sometimes were given their grandparents’ names. Maybe her father’s parents were Zach and Mae Murray. It’s a shot in the dark, but what do you have to lose? If you don’t look, you’ll never find anything.”
“OK, thanks.” I wandered over to the row of index volumes and studied them. I was blowing off the time now and I knew it. Still, I could always strike it lucky.
The indices for Tennessee ran from 1820 through 1860. Thick, bound volumes on heavy paper. No Soundex here. I’d have to remember to check alternate spellings. I pulled out the volume for 1860 and flipped through the pages until I found Murray. Murrays were “thick as ticks on a hound dog’s hide,” but none of them were named Zach. However, when I checked H, I did find a “Green Holloway” in District 2, Greenback, Tennessee. Mister’s grandfather? How many Green Holloways could there be? I copied the information and put in a request for the spool; then, just for luck, I checked 1850, as well.
The 1850 Census listed a “Greenberry Hollaway,” also in District 2, Greenback P.O. I chuckled. Greenberry? Imagine sending a kid to school with a name like Greenberry!
Green appeared in the 1840 and 1830 indexes, too. And 1830 listed a “Josh Murry” in the same census district as Green. Mae’s great-grandfather? Worth a look, anyway.
The trail ended there. The Blount County returns for 1820 were lost, and all the earlier censuses had been destroyed when the British burned Washington in 1814.
I put the volumes back on the shelf. There was a thick atlas on a reading stand next to the indices and, out of curiosity, I turned it open to Tennessee. It took me a while to find Greenback. When I finally did, I saw that it lay in Loudon County, not Blount.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I muttered.
“What doesn’t?” A shriveled, dried up old man with wire frame glasses was standing by my elbow waiting to use the atlas.
“The indices all say Blount County, but the town is in Loudon.” I didn’t bother to explain. It wasn’t any of his business. There could be any number of reasons for the discrepancy. The Greenback post office could have serviced parts of Blount County.
The man adjusted his glasses and peered at the map. I stepped aside. “It’s all yours,” I said.
“Now, hold on, sonny.” He opened his satchel, something halfway between a purse and a briefcase, and pulled out a dog-eared, soft-bound red book. He licked his forefinger and rubbed pages aside. He hummed and nodded as he read. “Here’s your answer,” he said, jabbing a finger at a table. “Loudon County was erected in 1870 from parts of Blount and neighboring counties. Greenback was in the part that became Loudon County. See?” He closed the book one-handed with a snap. “It’s simple.”
I guess if hanging around musty old records is your whole life, it’s easy to sound like an expert. He looked like something the Archives would have in storage anyway. “Thanks,” I said.
The whole afternoon had been a waste of time. I had been searching in the wrong county. Blast the forgetfulness of age! Mae had said she had been born in Blount County, so I had looked in Blount County. And all the while, the records were tucked safely away under Loudon.
I checked the clock on the wall. Four-thirty? Too late to start over. Time to pack it in and catch the train.
When I returned to my carrel, however, I found the spool for 1860 Blount County had already been delivered. I considered sending it back, but decided to give it a fast read before leaving. I mounted the spool and spun the fast forward, slowing when I reached District 2. About a third of the way through, I stopped.
Hah! There it was. Success—of sorts—at last! This Green Holloway must have been the same one whose Civil War records I had gotten. Green and Mabel Holloway begat Zach Holloway, who must have begat Green “Mister” Holloway. Jesus. If those ages were correct, Mabel was only fifteen when she did her begatting. Who said babies having babies was a modern thing? But, kids grew up faster back then. They took on a lot of adult responsibilities at fifteen or sixteen. Today, they behave like juveniles into their late twenties.
Now that I knew what I was looking for and where it was, it didn’t take me very long to check the 1850 Census, as well.
Those names … the eerie coincidence gave me a queer feeling. And Mabel should have been twenty-seven, not thirty-two. (Or else she should have been forty-two in 1860.) But then I remembered Sara’s cautions. How easy it was for enumerators to get names and ages wrong; and how the same names were used generation after generation.
Just one more spool, I promised myself. Then I head home.
Uncle Sugar had been less nosy in 1840. The Census listed only heads of households. Everyone else was tallied by age bracket.
The “white female” was surely Mabel, and she was in her twenties. So her age in 1860 had been wrong. She must have been forty-two, not thirty-seven. Twenty-two, thirty-two, forty-two. That made sense. I folded the sheet with the information and stuffed it in my briefcase. Sara had been right about cross-checking the documentation. The census takers had not always gotten the straight skinny. Mabel had probably looked younger than her years in 1860 and a neighbor, asked for the data, had guessed low.
“She looks younger than her years.” The phrase wriggled through my mind and I thought fleetingly of Dee-dee looking older than her years. For every yin there is a yang, and if the Universe did balance … if for some reason Mabel herself never spoke to the enumerator and a neighbor in the next holler guessed her age instead, the guess would be low. So, twenty-seven, thirty-two, thirty-seven made a weird kind of sense, too. And it actually agreed better with the written documents!
And what if she kept it up! I laughed to myself. Now there was a crazy thought! Aging five years to the decade, by 1870 she would have seemed … mmm, forty-two. And today? Add another sixty-odd years, and Mabel would appear to be.… A hundred and five or thereabouts. About as old as Mae seemed to be.
I paused with one arm in my jacket.
About as old as Mae seemed to be? I stared at the spool boxes stacked in the carrel, ready for pick-up.
Greenberry and Mabel. Green and Mae? No, it was absurd. A wild coincidence of names. The census records are not that reliable. And it’s only that Dee-dee is aging too fast that you even thought about someone aging too slow. I took a few steps toward the door.
And the 1830 Census? I hadn’t bothered checking it. What if it listed a Green Holloway aged twenty to twenty-nine and a “white female” still aged twenty to twenty-nine?
I turned and looked back at the reading room and my heart began to pound in my ears, and all of a sudden I knew why Dr. Bench had figured Mae for eighty-five three decades ago, and why Mae had feared for her san
ity all her life.
So early in the month of May,
As the green buds were a-swelling.
A young man on his death-bed lay,
For the love of Barbry Ellen.
It was pitch-black out when I finally arrived home. There was a light on in the kitchen, none above stairs. I parked in the driveway and got out and walked around the end of the garage through the gate into the back yard. The crickets were chirruping like a swing with a squeaky hinge. Lightning bugs drifted lazily through the air. I walked all the way to the back of the yard, to the edge of the woods and leaned against a bent gum tree. The ground around me was littered with last year’s prickly balls. I listened to the night sounds.
I had checked 1830 and found … I didn’t know what I found. Nothing. Everything. A few tantalizing hints. Greenberry, Mabel and Zachary. Mister, Mae and … Zach? Not a younger brother, but a son? And another entry: Wm. Biddle, Jr., a free man of color. Mae had spoken of “Will Biddle who farmed two hollers over from us when I was a child.…” But in 1830? In 1830?
There was a logical part of my mind that rejected those hints. Each had an alternative explanation. Coincidence of names. Clerical errors. Senile memory.
Sometimes we remember things only because we have been told them so often. I remember that I stepped in a birthday cake when I was two years old. It had been placed on the floor in the back of the family car and I had climbed over the seat and.… But do I remember it? Or do I remember my parents telling me the story—and showing me the snapshot—so many times over the years that it has become real to me. Mae could be remembering family tales she had heard, tales scrambled and made hers by a slowly short-circuiting brain.
But there was another part of me that embraced those hints; that wanted to believe that Mae had known Margaret Sanger, had voted for Teddy Roosevelt, had danced on the White House lawn in a Sanitary Commission uniform, because if they were true.…
I stepped away from the tree and a rabbit shot suddenly left to right in front of me. I watched it bound away … And spied figures moving about in the Carters’s backyard. Henry and Barbara. I watched them for a while, wondering idly what they were up to. Then I recalled Henry’s nickname for his wife—and a song that Mae had known.
I took the same route the rabbit had taken. Last year’s dead leaves crackled and dry twigs snapped beneath my feet. I saw one of the Carters—Henry, I thought—come suddenly erect and look my way. I hoped he wouldn’t call the police. Then I thought, Christ, they’re newlyweds. What sort of backyard shenanigans was I about to walk in on?
I stopped and waved a hand. “That you, Henry? Barbara? It’s Paul Wilkes.”
A second shadow stood erect by the first. “What’s wrong?” It was Barbara’s voice.
“I—I saw you moving around back there and thought it might be prowlers. Is everything all right?”
“Sure,” said Henry. “Come on out. You’ll get tick-bitten if you stay in there.”
“Why don’t you have your yard light on?” I asked as I stepped from the woods. Stupid question. I could think of a couple of reasons. Brenda and I had once gone skinny dipping in our pool at three in the morning. Stifled laughter and urgent play, and the water glistening like pearls on her skin. That had been years ago, of course; but sometimes it was good to remember that there had once been times like that.
“It would spoil the viewing,” Henry said.
Now that I was close enough, I saw that they had a telescope set up on a tripod. It was a big one. “Oh. Are you an astronomer?”
Henry shook his head. “I’m a genetic engineer, or I will be when I finish my dissertation. Barbry’s going to be a biochemist. Astronomy is our hobby.”
“I see.” I felt uncomfortable, an intruder; but I had come there with a purpose. I made as if to turn away and then turned back. “Say, as long as I’m here, there is a question you might be able to answer for me.”
“Sure.” They were an obliging couple. The Moon was half-full, the air was spring evening cool, they did not really want me there interrupting whatever it was that the sky-gazing would have led to.
“I’ve heard Henry call you Barbry,” I said to Barbara. “And … do you know a song called ‘Barbry Ellen’?”
She laughed. “You mean ‘Barbara Allen.’ Sure. That’s where Henry came up with the nickname. He’s into folk singing. ‘Barbry Ellen’ is an older version.”
“Well, someone told me it was the ‘old president’s favorite song,’ and I wondered if you knew—”
“Which old president? That’s easy. George Washington. You see, he had this secret crush on his best friend’s wife, and—”
“George Washington? Are you sure?”
“Well, there might have been other presidents who liked it. But Washington’s partiality is on the record, and the song has been out of vogue a long, long time.”
“Was that all you wanted to know?” asked Henry. There was something in his voice that sounded a lot like “good bye.” He wasn’t happy, I could tell. I had spoiled the mood for him.
“Yes, certainly,” I said. “I thought you might have been prowlers.” I backed away into the woods, then turned and walked quickly home.
I learned me that ‘un when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Pa told me it was the President’s favorite song. The old President, from when his Pappy fought in the War.
The old President, from when his Pappy fought in the War.
Lost my partner, what’ll I do?
Lost my partner, what’ll I do?
Lost my partner, what’ll I do?
Skip to my love, my darling.
Brenda drank tea. She always allowed the bag to steep for a precise five minutes (read the package) and always squeezed it dry with her tea spoon. She always disposed of the bag in the trash before drinking from the cup. When she drank, she held the saucer in her left hand and the cup in her right and hugged her elbows close to her body. She stood near the French doors in the family room, gazing out toward the back yard and the woods beyond. I had no idea if she had heard me.
“I said, I think I’ll go over to Sunny Dale today and look in on Mrs. Holloway.”
Brenda held herself so still she was nearly rigid. Not because she was reacting to what I had said. She always stood that way. She spent her life at attention.
“You didn’t have any plans, did you?”
A small, precise shake of the head. “No. No plans. We never have any plans.” A sip of tea that might have been measured in minims. “Maybe I’ll go into the office, too. There are always cases to work on.”
I hesitated a moment longer before leaving. When I reached the front door, I heard her call.
“Paul?”
“Yes?” Down the length of the hall I could see her framed by the glass doors at the far end. She had turned around and was facing me. “What?”
“Why do you have to go in today? It’s a Saturday.”
“It’s … nothing I can talk about yet. A wild notion. It might be nothing more than a senile woman’s ravings, but it might be the most important discovery of the century. Brenda, if I’m right, it could change our lives.”
Even from where I stood I could see the faint smile that trembled on her lips. “Yes, it could, at that.” She turned around and faced the glass again. “You do what you have to do, Paul. So will I.”
It was odd, but I suddenly remembered how much we had once done together. Silly things, simple things. Football games, Scrabble, Broadway shows. Moments public and private. The party had asked Brenda to run for the state legislature one time, and I had urged her to accept, but the baby had been due and.… Somehow, now we stood at opposite ends of the house. I thought for a moment of asking her to come with me to the Home, but thought better of it. Brenda would find those old, grey creatures more distressing than I did. “Look,” I said, “this should only take a couple of hours. I’ll call you and we’ll do something together this afternoon. Take in a movie, maybe.”
She nodded in her dist
racted way. I saw that she had spilled tea into her saucer.
* * *
Once at the Home, I sought out Mae in her garden retreat, hoping that she was in a better mood than yesterday. I had a thousand questions to ask her. A dozen puzzles and one hope. But when she saw me coming, her face retreated into a set of tight lines: eyes, narrowed; mouth and lips, thin and disapproving.
“Go away,” said Mae Holloway.
“I only wanted to ask a few—”
“I said, go away! Why are you always pestering me?”
“Don’t mind her,” said a voice by my elbow. “She’s been that way since yesterday.” I turned and saw Jimmy Kovacs, the retired printer. “Headache. Maybe you should give her something.”
“You don’t need a doctor to take aspirin.”
He shook his head. “Aspirin didn’t work. She needs something stronger. Might be a migraine. I had an allergy once. To hot dog meat. Every time I had a frank, my head felt like fireworks going off inside. So, my doc, he tells me—”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. Old folks chatter about little else than their ailments. They compare them the way young boys compare … well, you know what I mean. “Mine is bigger than yours.” They have contests, oldsters do, to see who has the biggest illness. The winner gets to die.
I sat on the stone bench beside Mae. “Jimmy tells me you have a headache,” I said.
“Jimmy should mind his own affairs.”
“Where does it hurt?”
“In my haid, jackass. That’s what makes it a headache.”
“No, I mean is it all over or in one spot? Is it a dull ache or sharp points. Is it continual, or does it come in bursts? Do you see or hear anything along with the headache?”
She gave me a look. “How do you make a headache into such a contraption?”
I shrugged. “There are many things that can cause a headache. When did it start?” If I could relieve her pain, she might be willing to answer the questions I had about her family history.
The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994 Page 35
