by Ronald Kelly
"I love you, Pappy," she whispered, then left the darkened room.
Sam and Richard noticed the redness of her eyes and the drawn look of her face when she entered the kitchen. "Hey, you fellas want to see my patrol car?" Sam asked in his easygoing way. He began to usher the two boys out the back door. Graciously, knowing that mother and daughter had things to discuss, Richard tagged along.
"I'll even let you flash the lights," added Sam. "But we can't turn on the siren because —"
"Yeah, I know," grumbled Rick in disappointment. "'Cause Grandpa is resting."
"You show some respect, young man," his mother scolded. Then they were out the back door and heading for the black and white Plymouth parked beside the ramshackle smokehouse.
"Boys will be boys," Maudie reminded her from where she stood over the assortment of simmering pots and pans on the gas stove. She checked the turkey, then poured a couple of mugs of rich black coffee. She brought one over to Cindy, who sat silently at the kitchen table. Fresh cream and sugar was exchanged without comment.
They sat there alone for a long time, saying nothing. Each woman grappled with her own troubled thoughts; Cindy rehashing the last few moments of psychic intimacy with her father, Maudie dealing with the dreadful expectation of losing a man she had loved for most of her lifetime.
"When will he be leaving us, Cindy?" Maudie asked abruptly. Her gaze was not on her daughter, but directed at the coffee cup in her liver-spotted hands.
"It's hard to say," Cindy told her. "I believe sometime after Christmas."
Maudie nodded solemnly, accepting what her daughter told her, but secretly knowing that Cindy did know. In her heart, Maudie Biggs knew that Cynthia Ann knew exactly when her father would die; the day, the hour, perhaps even the moment. But she did not press the matter. Actually, she was grateful for Cindy's restraint. There would be less of a sense of painful expectation if death came quickly and without advance warning.
Early evening was drawing into dusk when the Garrison family started home. As the two-toned Chevy headed down the main highway for Nashville, the car turned off on a desolate stretch of abandoned dirt road. Heavy thicket grew rampant on each side, nearly obscuring the boarded farmhouse and the larger building that stood a hundred yards away.
"I won't be long," Cindy told her husband when the car had been braked to a halt.
"Are you sure you don't want me to come along?"
"No." She smiled. "This is something I need to do alone."
Richard kissed his wife and let her go. He knew about this place. When they had first married, Cindy had told him of that horrible time back in '36. He had been compassionate and understanding, even if he could not fully comprehend exactly what had taken place there.
"Be careful now. That old barn looks like it's ready to give up the ghost."
Cindy walked down the rutted pathway, her hands crammed into the pockets of her woolen coat. Her spouse's remark rang ironically in her ears. If any place in Bedloe County possessed ghosts, it was surely the old tobacco barn. Men had died there horribly in the wake of gruesome circumstances. Greed, murder, and even vengeance had played a part in their violent deaths.
She approached the ancient structure, marveling at the changes that had taken place during a span of two decades. The barn itself was a ghost. A section of the great pitched roof had caved in beneath weakened rafters. Large sheets of rusted tin lay across the earthen floor. The weathered boards of the walls had given way to years of termites and rot. The deterioration gave the barn an eerie skeletal appearance in the gray light of the chilly November evening.
Carefully, Cindy entered the belly of the sagging hull. She walked its length, passing the old plow, stepping over scattered boards and the last lingering traces of black charcoal. She reached her destination—the tool chest. A support beam had fallen sometime over the years, caving in the lid, and the rusty collection of tools were gone, taken by kids in search of souvenirs. Strangely enough, the oblong box appeared much smaller than it had at the time of her childhood.
Cindy stood there where she had not been since the winter of 1936, and although the feelings were faint, they still lingered. Maybe, she thought, the old horror would always be there, like a permanent stain that could never be scrubbed clean. Perhaps too much blood had soaked into the dank earth, too much death had rattled the roughly hewn walls that it could never be eradicated by driving rain or howling wind. Yes, it was still there, faded and colorless like an old photograph, but still reminiscent of the same disturbing course of events.
"Excuse me, ma'am?"
Cindy jumped at the sudden voice, the short hairs at the nape of her slender neck tingling. She stared at a gaping hole in the barn wall where loose boards hung like jagged teeth around the opening. Someone stood there, the form obscured into silhouette.
It was a lanky young man with a shotgun slung over one shoulder and a droopy hat snuggled above oversized ears. As he stepped closer into view, the shadows slipped away. He was younger than she had first thought —thirteen or fourteen — and awkward as most boys were at that age. A slack-skinned redbone hound accompanied him. Cindy's sudden startlement evaporated, and she smiled at the young man. At first, the similarity had spooked her, it had been so uncanny.
"Ma'am," the boy said once again. "You oughtn't be walking around in there. This old barn's a real death trap. Been falling apart ever since I can remember. Wouldn't surprise me none if it took a notion to cave in any day now."
"I'll be careful," Cindy assured him.
The boy remained for a moment longer, staring into the shadowy interior with apparent unease. "My pa, he's told me stories about this place. Said some awful bad things happened here . . . back a long time before I was born."
"Your pa was right," she said. "Some awful bad things."
The boy shrugged. "Just figured I oughta warn you, ma'am."
The youthful hunter and his hound disappeared from the dark frame of the opening. She saw him pick his way through the thicket, searching for small game for that night's supper table.
Cindy was turning to leave the barn herself, when something metallic drew her attention. She knelt beside the tool box, catching the object between her fingernails. It was a tarnished silver dime with the year 1936 stamped at the bottom edge. The memento brought back unpleasant thoughts, but she kept it anyway, dropping it into the side pocket of her winter coat.
She was rising when a small sound came from the ruptured barn wall. Someone stood there, staring at her.
"I told you before, I'll be all right," she began, but suddenly her breath caught in her throat.
The silhouette that stood there was different now. She had thought it was the boy at first, but it wasn't. The person who now filled the aperture was heavier in frame and older, perhaps eighteen years of age. Something brought a welling of fear from Cindy's soul—or, rather, it was two things. Both were characteristics she had not known since that long-ago summer. One was the young man's hat, a crisp fedora perched at a cocky angle on his head. The other was the distinctive hourglass shape of a flat-top guitar held firmly in one hand.
The barking of the coonhound drew her attention to the opposite wall of the barn. Through the missing boards, she could see the young hunter crashing through the bramble behind his dog, his shotgun ready for an airborne covey of quail.
Cindy's heart pounded. There are ghosts here, echoed her thoughts. She was afraid, but even more, she was anxious. Anxious to look upon her brother's smiling face once again.
"Johnny ..." she whispered.
But when she turned around, there was no one there.
Potter's Field
Author's Note
I love writing about Cindy Ann Biggs because, in a comforting way, it brings my mother back to life.
To both me and the members of my family – particularly those on my mother's side – there is no doubt whatsoever that Cynthia Ann is, in reality, Earline "Nean" Kelly, who succumbed to lung cancer in 1989. After all, the c
haracter is based on her life as a child in Depression-era Tennessee. She holds the same bright red hair, hazel eyes, and sprinkling of freckles as my mother did at that age, as well as similar physical and emotional characteristics. From the many stories she told me of her childhood exploits and her disturbing bouts of "psychic revelation", I'm 99.9% sure that the shy, fever-frail youngster that lives in the pages of Hindsight was the same one who grew up on the rural outskirts of White Bluff, Tennessee, riddled with hardship, but surviving in the face of adversity and extremely poor odds.
Following the writing of Hindsight in 1986 and its eventual publication in 1990 (two scant months following Mama's passing), I would often wonder how Cindy Ann turned out following those awful months that spanned 1936. Did she live in dread for the remainder of her life – as my mother did – wondering what disaster, or whose death, would be revealed at any given moment? Or did she learn to accept her "gift" and view it as something to be cherished and put to good use, instead of something to be feared and reviled?
In the following novella, Potter's Field, you will find that Cindy – now sixteen years of age – has taken the latter path. She has taken control of her wondrous talent (rather than allowing it to take control of her) and decided to use it in a beneficial manner. And, as Restless Shadows, the upcoming sequel to Hindsight reveals, Cindy has turned her unique gift of second sight and her need to help those in need of closure into a peculiar – yet helpful – career of sorts.
But sometimes doing the right thing has its share of pitfalls; pitfalls so dark and treacherous, that it is possible that one might lose their way amid the journey and find themselves totally and utterly lost.
Thus is the tale of Potter's Field and the dangers that lay in plain sight above level ground… as well as those concealed deep beneath it.
RK
This story is for my aunt and surrogate mother, Dorothy Williams, who grew up with and loved the little red-headed girl, and witnessed the wonders and horrors of her disturbing gift firsthand.
It was a muggy Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1943 when the black sedan appeared at the far end of Old Newsome Road. From where they sat on the front porch, they could see it heading their way, leaving a billowing cloud of red clay dust in its wake.
"Think they're lost?" Clayburn Biggs asked his wife, Maudie. His eyes studied the approaching automobile while he absently constructed one of his one-handed cigarettes.
"I don't know," the woman said with a shrug. She fanned herself with a funeral home fan with a painting of Jesus holding a lamb printed on one side of the cardboard. "We rarely see a nice car like that way out here."
"They're not lost," said the girl who sat, reading, on the hanging swing at the far end of the porch. "It's us they're coming to see."
Clay and Maudie looked at one another. If their daughter said that it was so, there was no point in denying the matter.
Soon, the car pulled to the side of the road in front of the Biggs' farmhouse. The engine idled for a long moment and then grew silent. Two men climbed out and stretched in the blazing August sun. One was tall and lanky with sandy blond hair, while the other was big and burly and dark-haired, almost bear-like. They wore dark suit pants, long-sleeved starched white shirts, and thin black ties, while their jackets had been discarded and left in the sedan. At first Maudie thought they might be Jehovah's Witnesses, but their clothing was not Sunday-go-to-preaching attire, but apparently what they wore on the job every day of the week.
Leisurely, the two started across the front yard toward the porch. "Hello," the tall one called out with a boyish smile. He held a stack of manila folders in his right hand.
"Howdy," replied Clay with a nod. "What can we do for you, fellas?"
"We're hoping that we've finally found the Biggs residence. We've gotten lost several times, driving up and down these back roads looking for it."
"Well, you found it." Clay eyed them both with suspicion. "The question is, why would you want to?"
The big fellow took a black wallet from his pants pocket and flipped it open, displaying a badge and a card with an official stamp across its face. "We're federal agents, Mr. Biggs."
Sammy Biggs sat up straight from where he had previously lain slumped in a chair next to his mother. The ten-year-old's eyes widened with sudden interest. "The FBI? Honest to goodness?"
The tall agent chuckled and mopped at the nape of his neck with a handkerchief. "That's right, son. Believe it or not, we are. I'm agent Robert Upchurch and this is my partner, Nathan Moore."
The big fellow nodded curtly. He didn't seem nearly as friendly as the other man was.
"You boys look hot enough to fry eggs on the toes of those shiny black shoes of yours," Maudie told them. She got up out of her rocking chair and started for the front door. "Ya'll get on up here in the shade and I'll fetch you some cold iced tea."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Upchurch gratefully. "That would sure hit the spot."
After Maudie had gone inside and the men had sat down in a couple of straight-backed chairs on the porch, Sammy hopped up and studied the two men without a hint of shyness. "So you really are G-men? Sent down here to Coleman by Mr. Hoover himself? Do you have handcuffs and guns and all that?"
"Stop pestering the fire out of these gentlemen, Sammy," Clay said, giving his son a warning look. After the boy had returned to his seat, the former tobacco farmer studied the two government men cautiously. "What I wanna know is why boys like you would have cause to come all the way down here to see me."
The two men glanced at one another and then looked toward the far end of the porch. "Uh, we didn't come to see you, Mr. Biggs," Agent Upchurch replied. "To tell the truth, we came to see her."
Clay lit his homemade cigarette with a sulfur match and took a long drag. "Who? Cindy Ann?"
Before they could answer, the girl on the swing looked up from the copy of Little Women she had been reading. "They want me to help them, Pappy."
Clayburn Biggs turned and regarded his daughter. It was hard to believe that the tall, willowy sixteen-year-old with the long red hair and lightly freckled complexion was the same little girl who had once played with paper dollies while he did mechanic work amid the shade of the persimmon grove. She possessed none of the painful shyness and flighty behavior she had back then. Now she was quiet and patiently calm, possessing a maturity beyond that of a normal teenager. Clay figured – considering all the trouble she had been involved in seven years ago – Cindy had been forced to grow up a bit faster than was customary.
"What in tarnation do you need her to help you with?" Clay asked them point-blank.
Agent Upchurch took a folder off the top of the stack he had brought with him. "According to our file on Miss Cynthia Ann…"
Maudie reappeared with two tall glasses of sweet tea in her pudgy hands. "The Federal Bureau of Investigation actually has a file on our Cindy Ann? Pardon me for saying so, Mr. Upchurch, but that's downright disturbing!"
The tall man smiled gently. "No need to be alarmed, ma'am. Mr. Hoover keeps open files on all manner of U.S. citizens… some who might be threats to our nation's security and some who might be beneficial to the Bureau and its various investigations. Miss Cynthia Ann is one of the latter."
Agent Moore took a long swig of the iced tea and regarded the barefoot girl in the swing with an undisguised smirk on his broad, clean-shaven face. "According to our sources, your daughter allegedly possesses the power of second sight."
Clay cracked an amused smile. "I take it you don't cotton to such things, Agent Moore."
"No," the man told him truthfully. "I can't say that I do. It just seems like a bunch of hoo-doo and fancy parlor tricks to me." A sly expression gleamed in his small eyes that could have been mistaken for pure meanness. He took the pile of folders from his partner and shucked one from off the bottom.
"Nate, I don't believe that is necessary…" Upchurch began to protest.
"Well, I do!" He walked over and thrust the file, almost a little to
o forcefully, into the face of the red-headed girl. "Here. Let's see if you can give us a reading on this file. Or do you need to break out the tea leaves and tarot cards?"
Cindy Ann ignored the man's sarcasm and, laying her book aside, took the file that was handed to her. She opened the folder. Inside, were several sheets of paper bearing a few paragraphs of information. Attached at the upper left-hand corner of the first page with a paper clip was a black and white photograph of a girl around Cindy's age. She had curly blonde hair and a defiant expression on her pretty face.
The teenager stared at the photo for a long moment and then shrugged her narrow shoulders. "Sorry."
Moore huffed impatiently and shook his huge head. "So you can't tell us a single helpful thing about this missing girl, can you?"
Cindy's eyes were steady as she looked in him full in the face. "No, I can't tell you anything about the girl in this photograph. But I can tell you about the woman who typed this report. That she is in her mid-thirties, has a nervous habit of biting her fingernails, and has miscarried two times."
A nerve beneath Nathan Moore's left eye twitched. He jerked the folder, almost angrily, from her grasp. "So what does it take for you to put on your fortune teller act, little sister?" he asked, his voice harsh and demanding in its tone.
"Usually she has to touch something that they touched," Maudie said, not at all pleased with how the bigger FBI agent was acting toward her daughter. "Or touch the person themselves."
