by R. A. Nelson
“You know anything about it?” I say. “Vanderloo, I mean. What is it?”
“Big pre-Civil War cotton plantation. Used to be thousands and thousands of acres close by to Pickwick Landing.”
“Is there something bad about the place?”
“How much she tell you?”
“Nothing, really. She was kind of mysterious about it. You ever been there?”
“Once. Long time ago. Didn’t never want to go back.”
“How come? You love all that history stuff.”
Certain Certain scratches at his chest through his shirt a long time. The truck tires make a thrumming sound.
“Put it this way, Lightning,” he says finally. “They bought and sold human beings at Vanderloo. Called ’em chattels, old-time word for property. Kept them penned in a shed where buyers could look at their teeth, pinch their arms. Make them bend over to check for ruptures, hidden wounds. But I’ve been to plenty of places even worse. Doesn’t get any worse than the slave market at Charleston, South Carolina.”
“So what’s so bad about Vanderloo in particular?”
Certain Certain looks out the window, the muscles of his jaw working.
“Can’t say, exactly. Just a reputation it has. Stories. Miss Wanda Joy needs to tell you about that. This is her plan, not mine.”
“But what’s up there?”
“Original plantation house burnt down. The new house is well over a hundred years old, what I recollect. As for the rest of it, it’s most all sunk now.”
“What do you mean, ‘sunk’?”
“You’ll see.”
We leave the county highway and pick up a curvy two-lane road, nothing but black woods on either side. I can barely see Miss Wanda Joy ahead of us, practically putting the motor home on two wheels.
“Woman going to get us wrapped around a tree or throwed in jail if she don’t slow down,” Certain Certain says.
He squints hard at the road. His eyes aren’t so good for night driving anymore. I’d help, but I don’t even have my permit yet. We never seem to set still long enough for me to take the test.
“’Sides, Lightning,” Certain Certain likes to say. “Takes a man to drive a big rig.”
I am a man.
We head down a long slope, and when we bottom out, the moon breaks through the clouds, showing reedy, flat land. Soon there’s open water glistening on one side of the road. I crank the window down and can hear bullfrogs plonking and smallmouths jumping. Certain Certain pushes back in his seat till his bones pop.
“Town of Vanderloo is out there,” he says, pointing off to the west.
“But there’s nothing but water,” I say.
“Told you. The old town was drowned dead as a mud turtle seventy-some years ago when the Tennessee Valley Authority built the dam. That’s what I meant by ‘sunk.’ Congress said bring power to the folks living out in the woods. Rural ’lectrification Act. So the town had to go when they dammed the river.”
“The plantation was sunk, too?”
“Man who owned it, the first Vanderloo, I s’pose, picked the highest spot of ground along this stretch of the river. The site of the plantation home was too high to be flooded. When the waters come flushing through, there it stood, clean as a church, its own little island. Now they call it Devil Hill.”
My throat catches a little. “Why’d they name it that?”
“They had their reasons. There’s an old trestle left over from when the railroad ran to the landing. I wouldn’t walk on it naked and barefoot. Only safe way to get to the island is by boat.”
Finally we turn off and follow Miss Wanda Joy up a jouncy dirt drive. Lightning bugs are burbling through the woods. I can see the moon through a tangle of branches on top of a low hill, and there is a house there. It’s a tall place built of stone and brick, with two chimbleys at either end and yellow squares of light marking the windows.
“This is the new house,” Certain Certain says. “The other one is across the water.”
“How’d the old house burn down?” I say.
“Some fool throwed a lit cigar on a pile of trash when they were renovating the third floor. Went up faster than a cotton bale soaked in grain alcohol.”
Across the pasture I can see little dark rectangles that must be cows. The motor home swings to a stop in front. We pull up alongside and get out. The house is even larger than I figured, with pieces of stone at the corners big as feed troughs. The windows are deep-sunk, some of them taller than a man, others small and crisscrossed with slats of wood in shapes like diamonds and crosses.
“This is the Barlow estate,” Miss Wanda Joy says, coming over with Sugar Tom. “Tee and Faye Barlow have owned it for the past twenty years or so. Tee Barlow is a very important admirer of Little Texas. Get your bags. This is where we will be sleeping for the next several nights.”
“I haven’t slept in a real house in a coon’s age,” Certain Certain says, nudging me. “And I’ve sure never slept in a real mansion.”
Miss Wanda Joy leads the way up to the plank front porch. A man is already standing there in a skinny piece of light spilling out the open front door. He looks to be maybe in his late fifties. Pretty old, anyhow. He has wavy gray hair with a bald spot, a big chest, and a frost-colored beard.
“Welcome, Church of the Hand! Little Texas, welcome,” the man says, nearly wringing my arm loose when we shake. “Tee Barlow. We are so happy to have you here. Bless you in the name of the Lord.”
“Psalm one twenty-nine, verse eight,” Sugar Tom says.
“Praise His name,” Tee Barlow says, winking at me. “It’s a great honor for me and my wife to be able to share our home with you, Mr. Texas. We’ve been following your ministry a good while now. The miracles of healing you have performed, the souls brought to everlasting redemption. I can’t tell you how much this means to us—especially my wife….” He puts his fat hand next to his mouth, calling through the door, “Faye! Faye, honey. Come on out here and meet Little Texas.”
“You can call me Ronald Earl,” I say. “It’s nice to meet—”
“We don’t see a whole lot of folks up this way,” Tee Barlow cuts in. “Faye had some last-minute things to take care of to make sure everything is perfect—you know how you women are.” He nudges Miss Wanda Joy, who tries to smile. “A place for everything, and everything in its place.”
We follow him into the first room.
“This is the entry hall.”
There’s a great big wooden wheel hanging from chains in the ceiling, all full of candles. But the only things lit are bulbs in little brass holders on the wall. Big frame timbers run across the ceiling, and a wide, curvy staircase loaded with spindles leads upstairs, just like something out of a movie. A big carved piece of scrollwork hangs above the staircase: LORD, BLESS THIS HOME. The room is cold.
“That a gen-u-ine Confederate battle flag?” Certain Certain says, squinting at a moldy-looking Stars and Bars in a glass frame on the wall.
“Yes, sir,” Tee Barlow says, poking his chest out. “Battle of Chickamauga. The River of Blood. September twentieth, eighteen hundred and sixty-three. General Bushrod Johnson. That’s from his personal standard, which they carried across Reed’s Bridge.”
“How’d you come by it?” Certain Certain says. “Your great-granddaddy fight in that battle?”
“Bought it on eBay,” Tee Barlow says. “I have a ninety-nine-percent approval rating!”
He hauls us into the living room next, where Miss Faye—I reckon it’s her—is sitting by the fireplace. Which, believe it or not, is burning in the late end of June. Somehow the room still doesn’t feel too all over warm.
Miss Faye bounces up to greet us. I’m surprised how much younger she looks than Tee Barlow, maybe only in her thirties.
“Old goat must’ve robbed him a cradle,” Certain Certain whispers to me.
Faye Barlow is little and pretty, with a large bosom, bouncy brown hair, and a space between her two front teeth.
&nbs
p; “I call her my gap-ed toothed woman” Tee Barlow says. “Straight out of Chaucer. You know how saucy they are, praise the Lord.” He gives her a little swat on the tailbone.
Missus Barlow—Faye—smiles up at him, but I can tell she’s embarrassed. She takes my hand. Her fingers are cold and small and soft.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she says. She hugs me around the middle and puts her small mouth up close to my ear, whispering:
“Don’t believe one word this man tells you.”
We look at each other a second or two, then Miss Faye lets me go, scurrying off to what I figure must be the kitchen. We can hear her in there slinging plates around.
“Isn’t she great?” Tee Barlow says. “Let’s eat.”
We pile into the dining room, which has a table so long I figure you need a cell phone to ask somebody to pass the okra.
My eyes jump back and forth between the Barlows. Watching Miss Faye on the sly, I can’t tell anything from her face. What could she have meant?
The tomato soup is good. The barbecue shrimp with sharp cheese and bacon, even better. The soup helps cut the cold of this room. Why is it so drafty in here? You would figure a hurricane couldn’t get through those stones.
After supper Miss Faye clears away the key lime pie, and we talk about SEC football awhile. Miss Wanda Joy gives Tee Barlow a little nod.
“Is it time? Should we tell him?” he says.
“Past time,” Miss Wanda Joy says.
“All right.”
Tee Barlow gets up and disappears into the back of the house. He comes back a minute later and plops a roll of paper down in the middle of the table. Everybody helps uncurl it, setting coffee cups on the corners.
VANDERLOO PLANTATION, the paper reads. It’s some kind of map, crinkled and yellowy around the edges, and the ink is very faded. I lean over and study it close—there are little hills in green, and then I can see the blue of the river.
“This is a topographical map,” Tee Barlow says. “It shows the contours of the land. We are here.” He puts a finger smudge on a tiny square at one side of the map, then trails his finger down from there till I can see he’s leading us right to the water’s edge. He stops on a skinny, dark stripe connecting one shore to the other.
“That’s the trestle,” he says, looking around at all of us. “We aren’t allowed to use it anymore. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but it’s been declared unsafe because we haven’t kept the permit up. Too expensive. It’s controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers.”
Certain Certain gives me a look.
“Tell them about the plan,” Miss Wanda Joy says, leaning forward, impatient.
Tee Barlow pulls at his beard. “Here’s what I’ve been thinking. How about we ferry the folks over from the old landing?” He thumps a spot on the map. “My Chris-Craft will hold sixteen if they don’t mind standing. How many do you expect in all?”
“I think we should anticipate a large response,” Miss Wanda Joy says. “It’s better to plan for too many rather than too—”
“Let’s say four hundred, hypothetically,” Tee Barlow says.
Sugar Tom lets out a low whistle. “Is there seating enough for that many?”
“Under the stars, plenty,” Tee says. “Under cover? I don’t know. But we can work that out.”
“I would imagine we will have at least that many, considering the historical significance,” Miss Wanda Joy says, black eyes lighting up. “The fact that we are doing it at all…” She glances at me. “It’s a priceless opportunity to reinvigorate our ministry.”
“Getting back to the boat,” Tee Barlow says. “Let’s say twenty-five trips, so probably two hours to ferry them all.”
“That long? We’ll need to get an early start,” Sugar Tom says. He touches the curves on the map, craggy hand shaking. “What is the terrain like? Is it steep?”
“We can go over there tomorrow, and I’ll show you the site,” Tee Barlow says.
“We also need to get busy with the posters, radio shows, talk to the news organizations,” Miss Wanda Joy adds. She looks at Tee Barlow, face blazing. “But don’t you have one more thing to show us?”
Tee Barlow’s watery eyes rove around the table, lighting on Certain Certain, Sugar Tom, then finally me. He pulls the map off to the side and slaps an old newspaper clipping down in its place where I can read the headline:
DEVIL COMES TO ALABAMA?
DEVIL COMES TO ALABAMA?
Bizarre Phenomenon Witnessed
at Vanderloo Plantation
Multitudes Flee Terrifying Apparition
MAY 16, 1934. VANDERLOO, ALABAMA.
A most extraordinary phenomenon made its appearance Tuesday evening, witnessed by hundreds of shocked onlookers attending the Calgary Holiness Church With Signs Following camp meeting. Witnesses say a frightening apparition made its arrival on the fourth day of the meeting, apparently accosting one of the clergymen in attendance as he was ministering to his flock.
The service was taking place near the remains of the Jacob James Vanderloo Plantation, an antebellum ruin and landing station on the Tennessee River, once infamous as the hub for the thriving slave trade in northwest Alabama. The plantation is now the gathering site for the church’s annual Pilgrimage for Christ.
Accounts by eyewitnesses vary as to the exact nature of the phenomenon, though it was generally agreed by onlookers to be of a “diabolical origin.”
“I was sitting there with my family, attending the service, when a sudden noise came up in the woods,” stated one shaken onlooker, a Mr. Everett A. Simms of Minor Hill, Tennessee. “It sounded something like the noise a washboard makes, hard and raspy.” The sound was followed by a tremendous cry, “almost like a scream,” Simms went on. “But an unearthly scream, not like anything I have ever heard before.”
Mr. Johnson R. McCready of Coalwater was near where the noise originated. “I was not fifty yards away from a stand of cottonwoods, where the noise seemed to be coming from,” McCready declared. “I’m not ashamed to say, I was badly frightened. It was an awful mewling sound—some might call it a bobcat, which has been known to scream like the scream of a woman. But this was no earthly bobcat. Not as loud as the screaming was and the way it was shaking the trees.”
Indeed, the trees were reported to have bent and shaken quite violently in the vicinity from whence the ghastly sound was emanating. Whole trees, pines and cottonwoods and even a sturdy oak or two, were “twitching with a fury that I hope never to witness again,” stated McCready. “Trunks as big around as a man’s leg, whipping and tossing, just like some monstrous giant had got hold of them, rattling them just as if they were nothing but turnips.”
It was reported that a general panic ensued as the phenomenon or apparition appeared to approach the camp meeting. Terrified worshippers leapt to their feet and dashed about in an unruly melee, uncertain as to where to flee the approaching menace. Though witnesses were in complete accord as to the danger of the situation, they were uniformly unable to make a coherent description of what was actually seen.
“It all happened so fast,” Miss Dodie Myrick of Leighton was heard to say. “Everyone began screaming and running. We did not know what to do. I never saw it. However, I could tell it was coming closer and closer. We all could. It had to be the work of Satan.”
“It was the devil,” McCready agreed. “Let there be no doubt about that. I won’t ever go back to that place again. I feel it is accursed.”
What exactly occurred next in the midst of the disordered chaos is sketchy, although all witnesses testified to the disappearance of the unfortunate pastor, Reverend O. T. Hallmark.
“It took Pastor Hallmark with it,” Simms stated. “I saw him one moment, trying to comfort his flock, gather us together again. And then he was gone, quick as a whistle.”
The helpless pastor was alleged to have been “dragged off into the underbrush,” McCready declared. “I cannot say that I saw it with my own eyes, but that is the only th
ing that could have happened. We all saw him there, and then he was immediately gone. Some of us wanted to search, but there was such a panic.”
No contact has been received from Pastor Hallmark, who remains missing. Witnesses state that there was a general retreat from the site of the meeting, with the apparition following close behind.
“Wooden chairs were flung about like toys, children were crying, folks screaming,” Myrick stated. “There was a great sound of devastation behind us. We ran without looking back, in a complete terror.”
“The meeting place, the whole camp, was smashed to bits,” McCready affirmed.
His assessment was corroborated by an unrecorded number of additional campgoers, one of whom asked to remain anonymous. “It’s the most God-fearful monstrosity I’ve ever experienced,” declared the anonymous onlooker.
Other witnesses refused to be deposed regarding the incident, only stating they were still too frightened to speak with coherency.
“It’s a day of judgment for us all,” one man warned. “You knew just from the sound what it was. It didn’t speak any words; I don’t know if it rightly could. But that sound has me shook plumb to my core.”
It is also unknown whether the site will ever again be utilized in the same fashion for future church functions.
An investigation was made by the Lauderdale County sheriff, William T. Pembrake, without much revealing the ultimate cause of the disturbance.
“My men and I crisscrossed the island and couldn’t find a thing,” Sheriff Pembrake asserted. “All efforts will be made to recover the missing man and determine just what went on out there.”
As the investigation progresses, the Tri-Cities Daily will continue to report on the details of the search, as well as any further details as to the nature of the “terrifying” phenomenon.
“Mercy,” Certain Certain says. “Now you know why they call the property Devil Hill, Lightning.”
Tee Barlow glares at him a little. Miss Wanda Joy settles back in her chair.
