The Search for Joseph Tully

by William H Hallahan

  Abby Withers nodded eagerly, her mouth partly open in rapt attention.

  “The old woman said nothing. But soon after, Mrs. Dimmity took to having hallucinations. She claimed that the old woman had become an incubus.”

  “Incubus?”

  “A spirit that sits on your chest when you sleep and kills you.”

  “Oh. Say it again.”

  “Incubus.”

  “Oh.”

  “Mrs. Dimmity took to having terrible nightmares. She feared for her life.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Yes. Well, Mr. Dimmity took a poor view of all this. He watched his wife visibly failing before his eyes. And of course the poor creature in her mental state kept him awake all night with her shrieks. Neither one of them could get any rest.”

  “Oh my heavens.”

  “Yes. Well. In the full of the moon in October, the Hunter's Moon, you know, Mr. Dimmity went over to the old woman’s house and he murdered her with an ax.”

  “Oh my God in heaven!”

  “Oh yes. Well, Mrs. Dimmity’s hallucinations disappeared immediately. She was completely cured.”

  “Oh I see. What happened to Mr. Dimmity?”

  “Oh yes. Well, he was put in jail and became very despondent and he committed suicide.”

  “Oh my God in heaven.”

  “And right about that time the lights appeared in the old woman’s house. Many people saw them—lights going from room to room, restless, never still. Skeptics slept in that empty old house, trying to see the ghost. No one would buy the place. It was finally pulled down to make way for the Belt Parkway system. It was quite a tale in its day. It used to be one of the first stories off people’s lips when they talked about witches casting spells.”

  “Has anyone looked out of the window lately?” called Ruth Abernathy. “It’s snowing.”

  They crowded about the two living room windows.

  “Put the lights out so we can see,” said Carol Carson.

  Pete Richardson went about the living room turning off the lights.

  “Oh, beautiful,” said Ruth Abernathy. “Snow in the city .” High over the apartment house, high over the city, a line of snow squalls passed, moving northeastward across Long Island and out to the turbulent, tumbling black North Atlantic, passing over the small group who watched from Richardson’s window. They stood in the darkness, absorbed by the furious, blowing snow that seemed as remote and harmless as a child’s snow scene shaken inside a crystal ball.

  9

  Mrs. Quist was the first to go. She shook hands with Richardson. “I have a cab waiting, so I’ll be short,” she said. “It was a delight to meet you. I’d like to see you again. You strike me as a young man—there’s something in your eyes that I see that I might help you with. Call me when you get settled. Come over with Albert.” She nodded her head at Clabber.

  Richardson took her small thin hand. It made him think of a mouse’s paw. “Nice of you to come, Mrs. Quist. Maybe what you see in my eyes is scotch.”

  She smiled palely at him. “No. Not scotch, young man. Not scotch.”

  “Sorry about the cards,” said Griselda Vandermeer. “Next time, okay?”

  “Thank God,” said Richardson, shaking her hand.

  “For what?”

  “There’s going to be a next time.”

  10

  The Carsons and the Abemathys left together, the men side-wise stepping, talking earnestly, the two women strolling behind, murmuring scandal-eyed. After them, left Abby Withers and Ozzie Goulart.

  In the quiet, crystals of snow tapped on the windowpane.

  Richardson hated to see the party end. He didn’t want to go to bed.

  He stood in his darkened living room watching the snow blow and swirl.

  Chapter The Third

  1

  Before first light, a bird cried.

  A small bird and a shrill cry. Outside his window, near, far, the bird screeled as it fluttered and fled in darkness, its cries failing, fainter, fainter.

  Richardson, wearily awake, turned back his blankets and walked into the living room to the window. He looked out at the still winter night. The winds were calm, the skies were clear, the cold had bitten deep. Spring was many miles away but death was near. He considered his own death: the searching blade of knife thrust upward past his blocking hands. A hand’s push in front of a subway car. A raised club behind a fence. Fingers closing around an enpurpled windpipe. In his bed. At the dark turning of a stair. A shadowed doorway. Where? When?

  He leaned on the windowsill. To have come this far for nothing? Nothing? To have been born with the right genes, to have inherited the right brain, the right talents, to have gone to the right school, to have chosen the right career, to have such a prized chance to live a fabled life. In the whole race of man in his billions upon billions, to be among the pampered few who were elevated enough to live the ideal life. And just as he’s to nibble the cheese, the trap snaps. Farewell, destiny’s tot.

  Other lives—slow lives, dull lives, safe, timid, clinging lives —would grind on day after day to no purpose, with no joy, no direction, no meaning. Absurd.

  Maybe he was mad. Or under a spell. Or victimized by minuscule doses of LSD. A brain tumor. A message from the spirit world. What? Richardson looked out and down. Goulart’s light was on. Richardson put on his robe and slippers. He went down the dark stairs and tapped on Goulart’s door. There was no answer. Richardson stood in the darkness, frowning.

  2

  At eight, he knuckled Goulart’s door lightly. He listened and sensed the emptiness within. He knocked again. At last he turned and descended the stairs.

  The day surprised him on the front stoop. Clear, dry, bright, the light layer of snow already begrimed. Footsteps of others who had preceded him descended and turned to the right. All except one: one set of tracks turned left and led away across the quadrangle into the white emptiness.

  Richardson frowned at the solitary tracks. He buttoned his overcoat and walked to the right to the subway.

  With a squat pot of rubber cement, paper shears, a jar of pencils, a roll of cellophane tape, and a large unabridged dictionary, Bobby Pew plied the editor’s trade.

  His pencil tracked across lines of typewritten copy, leaving a trail of deletion marks, transposition symbols, excised words, added connectives, changes in verb tense and number, corrections in grammar.

  Pew paused and sipped his coffee. He dropped his pencil and looked at Richardson, who was reading his corrections.

  “The guy can write well enough,” said Pew, pointing at the page of copy. “But he’s kind of dee-yew-em and can’t ess-pee-ee-el so hot.”

  “It’s a good story,” said Richardson. “Let’s use him again.”

  “Okay. How about the profile on the German preacher from the concentration camp?”

  “Okay.”

  “Existential man was born in Dachau!’ said Pew. “You read any philosophy these days?”

  “No,” said Richardson.

  “Existential man is the first man in history to renounce the consolations of religion,” prated Pew. “He has to look at death as final, with no provable life beyond it. For that reason, existential man is inconsolable.”

  “So am I,” said Richardson disinterestedly.

  “You ever read Buber?”

  “No.”

  “Heidegger?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, you’ve got to. Here.” Pew peeled a sheet from a pad. “Get these books.” He picked up his pencil and wrote quickly. “Change your life.” He thrust the paper at Richardson.

  Richardson read the names. “Martin Buber, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus and Nietzsche. Nietzsche?”

  “Especially Nietzsche. He’s the apostle of madness!”

  “Great. Just what I need.” Richardson walked back to his office. “See if you can raise Goulart,” he said to the secretary.

  She nodded at him. “I’ve been trying all morning.” She reach
ed for the telephone.

  Richardson looked down on Court Street at the figures walking the street.

  He unfolded and brought out the terrible idea to look at once again, yet again, forever again: Someone was trying to kill him. It was true in spite of all the rational equipment in his head that denied it. It said: I am an absurd idea. Nonetheless, I am true. Someone is going to kill you.

  He looked at his secretary. She shook her head and put down the phone.

  Ominous. Goulart wasn’t home, and that, strangely, was ominous.

  Richardson crumpled up the list of names in his hand. “Read existential philosophy? I’m living it. Dying it.”

  Squeak. Squeak.

  3

  Mr. Ian McMurray of the Boston Society of Professional Genealogists wrote in precise square letters and numbers on the smooth expanse of white paper: 7 August 1832. Carefully, his squealing felt pen decorated the letter A with serifs. Squeak. Squeak.

  “Really,” he said in his broad accent, “I think you might have saved the trip up to Boston, Mr. Willow. The whole Henry Tully genealogy was published years ago by Mrs. Adora Hammett of New York City.” Mr. McMurray scuttled a tough dry old man’s hand across his bald skull.

  “Mrs. Adora Hammett?” Willow asked in his low voice. “Hammett. Hammett. Don’t you know her?”

  “No.”

  “Ummm. Mr. Willow, you have a lot of homework to do.” The light caught the old man’s hand, caught red hair on the fingers and wrist, thick like bits of rusted wire, on a crinkled terrain of freckles and liver spots. “Mrs. Adora Hammett is the most fervent genealogist in the world, and the richest. She also happens to be a lineal descendant of Joseph Tully. She’s a leading light of the Federalist Dames of Colonial America and she published the genealogy of the Henry Tully branch of the family exactly as she presented it to the Federalist Dames as credentials for admission.” He scratched his head again. “You just don’t get any more genealogical than Mrs. Hammett”

  “I see. Who did the genealogy?”

  Mr. McMurray drew another 7 August 1832. Then he raised his eyes to Matthew Willow. “I did.”

  “Oh.” Willow watched him write the date a third time. “Do you have a chart of all the descendants?”

  “Descendants? There are descendants, Mr. Willow, from here to hell and back again. Hundreds of them.”

  “And the most vocal one is Mrs.—er—Hammett.”

  “Yes. Are you English, Mr. Willow?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Well, if you’re doing a study on the American branch of the Tullys, you’ve got a big job ahead of you. There were four brothers who came over prior to the American Revolution.”

  “Yes. That much I know. Four sons of Joseph Tully. A London wine merchant, Henry, came first on the British sailing vessel Bristol Home. Arrived in Boston February 19,1745."

  “Ah, you know that. All right. Then you’ve got one of the few pieces of hard information that exists about Henry Tully. We know he married a Hannah Gorges, but we don’t know when. We know they had three children. We know he renounced allegiance to his king, his country and his own father back in London. We know he was at Concord and fired on British troops. We know from the muster rolls that he served in the American army, and after the war he settled in New Haven, Connecticut, where his wife had moved during the Revolution. He and his wife apparently died there and left an army of descendants. Tullys all over the place. In fact, Mrs. Hammett has them organized into some kind of a family association. I understand now there are descendants of Henry Tully all over the world.”

  “Apparently died, you said.”

  “Yes. No will. No grave.”

  “No will? Very interesting.”

  “Yes. That bothers a lot of people. No will. No probate records.”

  “Did Mrs. Hammett have you do a genealogy on Hannah Gorges Tully?”

  “No record. Not one reference prior to her marriage. She’s a mystery woman who dropped out of the sky.”

  “Hmmmmm. Weren’t there any death records in their church? A gravesite?”

  “The Church of New Haven burned to the ground in 1850 or so. Burned all the church records with it. They’re in that graveyard, both Henry and Hannah. I’m sure of it, but the tombstones are hopelessly weathered. You’ll never identify the grave-sites. Frankly, all Mrs. Hammett wanted was proof of lineage. When she got it, she stopped me from further research. She’s very tight with money, you know.”

  Matthew Willow watched the precise hand of Mr. McMur-ray block-letter the date again, 7 August 1832.

  Mr. McMurray raised his eyes. “Well,” he said thoughtfully. “Mr. Willow, I was paid by Mrs. Hammett to turn up an unequivocal Ahnetafel Chart connecting her to Henry Tully. I did. There’s more work that can be done on that Tully genealogy, I suppose, but the essential facts and proofs have been turned up. If you’d like to search the probate records for yourself, they’re kept in Hartford. The land records, deeds, lis pendens and other records are in the town clerk’s office in New Haven. I’d suggest that you go to New Haven or see Mrs. Hammett for a current list of living descendants of Tully.”

  Willow studied the blunt stiff neck and tufts of red nape hair. Lean old fox, he’d scrambled through many an overgrown cemetery on a Vermont mountainside or a Berkshire meadow to scrape away the sod and lichens on a table-slab tombstone.

  Hepzibah, wife of Jedediah Winsloe Died 3 May 1803. Mother of 14

  Ah, here you are, Mrs. Winsloe. Your great-great-grandson has been hunting all over New England for you.

  How many hundred hours had he spent at the courthouse, searching, searching? Find an uncle whose middle name was Claustrick. Locate all the heirs of... Probably known to every lawyer in town, a detective, a genealogical detective, plucking ancestors from wills and Bibles and antique lawsuits, from church records and diaries and ships’ passenger lists, yellow’ed newspaper obituaries, name-change petitions.

  The life of the genealogist: a fresh trail ever}' day and a new puzzle to solve.

  And something to haunt him all his days: 7 August 1832. Squeak. Squeak.

  Matthew Willow stood up. “Which way is New Haven?”

  “South.”

  Squeak. Squeak.

  The two moving men carried the couch onto the moving van, set it down, positioned it and lashed it.

  “She said there were some boxes in the cellar.' said the tall man.

  The other nodded and finished knotting the line. “Let’s go,” he said.

  They entered the main hall of Brevoort House and paused, looking for the cellar stairs. Somewhere a telephone was ringing, faintly.

  Their heavy work shoes crackled on the brick cellar steps and they walked along a length of corridor partly lit by angled sunlight. “Carson. Goulart. Here—Abernathy.”

  They paused at the door to the bin and opened it. They paused, looking down the corridor at the cat.

  Goulart’s cat stood there, frozen, staring at them, poised.

  “Black cat,” said the tall man. “Wild-looking, ain’t he?”

  “Ah. Just a cat. Let’s get this stuff.”

  They carried up the trunks and suitcases, the boxes and bundles, and trussed them in the van. Then they shut the van doors, then returned to the main hallway.

  As they closed the doors of the building, the steam pipes banged loudly to overcome the chill.

  Up in Goulart’s apartment, the telephone rang and rang.

  It was two-thirty.

  4

  Down Route 91, at the estuary of the Connecticut River, New Haven lay like a blighted junk yard sprinkled with dirty snow under a cauldron of filthy clouds. New Haven: a dreary February landscape, with sewer-stained Long Island Sound at the shoreline.

  Matthew Willow felt weary. Hundreds of descendants. Each to be examined singly. He remembered McMurray’s sympathetic handshake. A genealogist’s nightmare come true: hundreds. So be it. The game had begun.

  The young woman in the New Haven town clerk’s office w
as helpful. She showed him the index to the Register of Deeds. “These,” she said, “are the Grantor’s Indexes and these are the Grantee’s. Buyer and seller. The indexes are for a span of years. This one covers the years 1780-1799. See? And within each, there’s a chart in front for alphabetizing each name to the third letter. See? Here’s the T and the U and the L. Turn to the page indicated in the chart, and there— If Mr. Tully bought land or a house in New Haven between 1780 and 1799, he’ll be in these pages. And if he sold real estate it’ll be in those Grantor’s Indexes. Okay?”

  Willow leaned both elbows on the counter and started down the list of names written in flowing script. He found the Tully names with ease. Henry and Hannah Tully. Deed recorded 21 September 1785. He noted the liber and page number and continued. Another Tully. Edwin and Susannah Tully purchased from Henry and Hannah Tully. Same property. Date: 3 July 1795. Willow noted the liber number and page. He continued. Nothing else.

  Out of curiosity, he obtained the Grantor’s Index. And there he found cross-referenced the sale Henry and Hannah Tully, grantors, to Edwin and Susannah Tully, grantees. Date: 3 July 1795. And then, curiously, 17 February 1798, Edwin, the son, and his wife sold the property. Why?

  Why had Henry and Hannah sold the property to their son and daughter-in-law? There was no record of their having bought themselves another home. Where did they go? And why a few years later had Edwin sold it? Willow decided to examine the deeds. He noted the liber and page shown in the index and went into the archives.

  The first deed identified the property that Henry et ux., Hannah, had purchased. “All that certain lot of prime meadow situate lying and being in said town limits bounded and described as follows to w7it: Beginning at the northwesterly corner of T. Timmon’s land in the line of the land of J. W. Rankin and runs north 46° west eight chains and forty7 links south 710 west four chains south 82° west five chains fifty-three links south 45y2° east eleven chains seventy-five links north 57^° east eight chains to the place of beginning containing seven and 116/160 acres of land to be the same more or less.” Price paid: $1100.