The Dead Hand of Sweeney County

by David L. Bradley

  The Dead Hand of Sweeney County

  a novel by

  David L. Bradley

  copyright 2012

  published in Atlanta, Georgia

  all rights retained by author

  1 Eleanor

  It's not much of a motel, but behind it is a big empty field ending at a line of trees, above which is an unencumbered view of the sky and tonight's spectacular arrangement of color, cloud, and shadow. My curtains are open wide, as is my door onto the second floor breezeway. I'm sitting inside waiting for Bill to get cleaned up so we can go eat, passing the time drinking a cold Harp's and staring at the sky. There was a time– not too long ago – when sunset meant nothing more than ensuing darkness. Eastward rotation of the earth, sunlight filtered through dust, the onset of shadow: that sort of thing. It carried no romantic or mythological associations, which is to say I remember a time when things were a little less jumbled, a lot cleaner, infinitely more incomplete. There was no love; I didn't believe in it. I didn't believe in ghosts, either, or that a tree could be evil. But that was then.

  Returned from dinner at Zaxby's and did an hour on the weights before going back to the room and trying to watch some television. I tried it for a good fifteen minutes, but I felt restless, crowded. Out here by the pool it feels less confined, but I'm still crowded. Since sunset I've been seeing faces from eight years ago, a beautiful woman who ran away to keep from being smothered, and a man long buried who would not stay down.

  Ten years ago, in June of the year 2000, I needed a job again. I'm an ex-GI, a jack of all trades and master of a couple, to be modest, but I am not the contractor type, being by nature an honest man. I had a living arrangement under which I did property repairs and maintenance for my landlady in exchange for free rent. I had a great apartment, but I relied on random carpentry and repair jobs for cash, and I was getting tired of being broke. After an afternoon of calling around looking for work with no luck, I decided a trip to Rita's would distract my mind.

  Rita topped off my pint with a little foam art: a heart with an arrow through it. She slid it to me and winked. I paid her, and when she came back with my change she gave me a smile.

  “Hey fella, I forgot to card you.”

  “Hah. I've got scars old enough to drink. How's it going tonight?”

  “It was busier earlier; it'll get busy again later. You been working today, sweetie? You look tired.”

  “Not unless looking for work counts.”

  Suddenly the man on my right turned to me and said, “I'm looking for good help. My name's Mike.” He put out his hand. I took it.

  “I'm Addison,” I replied, and that's how I became a land surveyor.

  Yes, that's the short version. Mike was running a surveying office and needed smart, trainable help. He started me off as a helper, but I soon got a grip on what was going on, and before a year was out, I was running my own crew and assisting him with military-precision GPS control work. It was intellectually engaging and physically challenging, and I really took to it. The company we worked for did big civil engineering projects like highways, bridges, and water and sewer lines, so I spent a lot of time out in Georgia's rural districts, in little towns no one's ever heard of, staying at local motels four nights a week and returning to Atlanta on weekends. Now, any time I was out of town, the company paid my expenses, allowing me to save a lot of money. Plus, there was the autonomy factor. Staying out of town meant little to no supervision. It quickly became my preferred way to work.

  That's why I didn't go back to Atlanta that day it rained so damned hard. That's why I drove to the courthouse to do property research and copy some plats. I'm a pretty quick researcher, though, so I could only stay there so long. I was back in the truck and moving counter-clockwise around the courthouse square when I saw a historical marker for the White Horse Tavern and a frame building behind it. I'm a sucker for historical markers, and the rain had temporarily abated, so I pulled into an available spot.

  The house was the basic Georgia structure, a two-story plainstyle home with a door in the center. It sat on piers of rough-hewn granite. The marker laid out its history as a tavern and stage coach stop during the county's early days. The windows looked original, which would have made them two hundred years old. Not terribly old by some standards, but as Georgia didn't assume its present size and shape until 1835, the building in front of me qualified as a frontier structure and was therefore interesting to a history geek. Peering through the wavy glass panes in the front door, I didn't see anyone yet, but a sign on the other side said: ”OPEN”, so I did.

  There was no one at the counter. I was startled by the loveliest humming, and I looked to my right to see a professional woman in glasses pouring water into the top of a coffee maker. “Good morning and welcome to the Sweeney County Historical Society and Museum,” she said. “How can I help you?” And when she said it, she looked right into my soul.

  I cannot accurately describe the woman I saw except to say that she remains the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in the flesh. She was strikingly beautiful, and everything about her seemed to have been imported from another time. She had a face like Garbo, eyes like Bacall and a mouth like Bergman (Ingrid, not Ingmar). Her brunette hair was neatly cut just above her collar, and it was thick, with irrepressible, natural wave to it. Behind stylish bookkeeper's glasses blazed the brightest yet softest hazel eyes, between which her strong nose ran straight down, stopping just above perfect lips. Just left of the corner of her perfect lips and slightly up, she had a perfect little mole, a classic beauty mark. I will go into greater detail about her body at a more appropriate moment, but she was tall for a woman and of perfectly moderate proportions, with Katherine Hepburn's posture and poise.

  I was speechless, not because I couldn't think of anything to say to her, but because there were far too many thoughts wanting out all at once.

  “Coffee will be ready in a couple of minutes, nice and fresh, if you'd like a cup.” When she said that, she turned two coffee cups upright, which made me look at her hands. Of course they were beautiful, and of course her left ring finger was beautifully adorned in diamonds and gold.

  I was thirty-nine years old, and I had never been so disappointed to find out a woman was married, and I had certainly never, ever felt such an immediate high and low upon meeting any woman. Most of the more idiotic things I might have said before were now blessedly moot, but I realized I still hadn't said a word since entering the building. “Coffee would be great,” was the first thought out of my mouth. She smiled. What a smile. Speak, Addie. “And you can tell me when this tavern stopped serving liquor,” I said. She smiled again. And that's how I fell in love with Eleanor Allison Smithfield Hubbard.

  Yep, that's the short version. I stayed and talked Sweeney County history until sometime after one o'clock, when she remarked that she normally ate at noon. I felt stupid and embarrassed, and I offered to buy her lunch, which she politely declined with another smile. A very sincere smile, I thought, a smile that said something more than thanks but no thanks. So even though I knew she was married, I thought she was trying to tell me something, too. Later she would tell me that I was only seeing what I wanted to see, but by that point I think she was just saying what she wanted to believe. Either way, I know when I left the White Horse Tavern after two hours I was fully, completely in love, but just 'tween us and this bottle opener here, I think it happened in that first moment.

  Regarding ghosts, I still find it difficult to say I saw one, let alone two. I don't know what to think about any of it except this: Man's greatest gift is free will. When exercised so as to create misery and suffering, man wills evil into this world in familiar shapes: the tyrant,
the bully, and the swindler. It's a rude intrusion, like a splinter in a finger, and the Universe responds just the same, marshaling forces to increase pressure as the evil festers until it pops, and healing can begin. In just such an instance I, a humble surveyor, played my part. All I did was ask questions and look for answers, accidentally uncovering both unspeakable evils and the deepest humanity. As a result, one family was ruined and another restored. My life was forever changed, and it all started when I saw a ghost.

  At work.

  2 Geek-Droolery, a Graveyard, and a Ghost Story

  The big-picture project was to add two lanes of state highway to the existing two lanes over thirty-seven rural miles between the seats of two Georgia counties. As usual, I would be the only employee involved in every phase. Crews would be rotated in and out to minimize the burnout factor and maximize production. The job would require a system of major control points established by GPS, followed by a topographic survey of the proposed route. The latter would involve ten creek crossings, one river crossing, and one floodplain boundary stakeout, along with the usual requirement to plot on paper every stop sign, utility pole, drainage ditch, and property corner between points A and B.

  “And a tree survey,” Mike added. We were rolling north on Highway 19, Mike at the wheel while I balanced in my lap aerial photos, a USGS topo map, and printouts from the office.

  “You're shitting me. Thirty-seven miles? Counting every tree?”

  Mike laughed. “Not all thirty-seven miles,” he said. “I'll show you. I have a feeling you're going to love this.”

  Reaching the top of a ridge, Mike slowed and turned right. We climbed a long slow hill. On either side lay open fields, with pasture to the left and plowed fields to the right, but up a slight rise ahead on the left was a huge stand of mature hardwoods.

  “Tree farm?” I asked.

  Mike grinned. “You tell me.”

  Coming abreast of the wooded property, remnants of an old driveway could be seen, with a steel cable across the entry as a token effort to discourage trespassers. Mike pulled into the opening and parked. Stepping out, he reached under the seat and pulled out an official stenciled placard reading, “SURVEYING FOR D.O.T.” and placed it on the dashboard.

  Surveyors live by an interesting set of rules. We park where we want and stop traffic when we feel like it. In the performance of our duties, most trespassing laws do not apply to us. When we're surveying for the state Department of Transportation, our backup are the Georgia State Patrol. It's a hilarious incongruity and perfectly fits with another of my discoveries about surveyors, which is that many of the best surveyors I met were chronic weed heads with good friends in law enforcement. Any honest surveyor will admit this legal-limbo weirdness is part of the job's appeal. Certainly, Mike would. Locking the door, he raised the cover on the back of the truck, and we quickly donned our machete belts. Mike checked his cell phone for messages; I checked my canteen then dropped the tailgate to fill up from the Igloo cooler while Mike studied paperwork.

  “Six hundred feet of frontage; six hundred feet deep. You have to start by finding all corners of this lot and any information you can get. All we have on it now says it belongs to a land trust run by some guy in Texas. Now, here's the thing. There isn't a chance in hell the highway will come anywhere near this stand of trees, but there's a new County Arborist, and he's insisting that all these trees here be counted and located. Offset the shot to the center of the tree; give me species and breast height diameter.”

  “Gotcha. Want me to establish two points out here on the main road, traverse the perimeter, and close in on my initial points? Locate any water sources?” I asked, testing my own knowledge of procedures.

  “You've been paying attention,” Mike said. He was tall, just over six feet, and lanky, a slender one-eighty. Along with his machete, he carried a cell phone, camera, water bottle, and little orange surveyor's field book, each in its individual nylon case, all attached to his belt. He checked each to ensure it was snugly secured and apparently liked what he saw. “Ready?” I nodded, and he closed and locked the SilverShield cover. “Let's go see what's in there.”

  We stepped over the cable, and after walking some fifty yards straight ahead, we met a wall of young pines. Most of them were dead or dying and no thicker than your wrist, starved of light by the fewer, more successful trees. We stepped to the right until we were out of them for easier walking. In the movies, having a machete always requires a person to hack and slash for every foot of forward motion, but nobody in his or her right mind does that if it can be avoided. We headed up a wide, gentle rise. The pine thicket continued to our left, but over the rest of the property, as far as I could see, the trees were more widely interspersed. I remember remarking to Mike that it didn't seem too tough, but it would take awhile, when I heard him say, “Damn, Addison. Look at that.”

  All by itself stood a large white oak, easily three feet across at chest height and Lord knows how big across its gnarled base. Above, its canopy spread out a hundred feet from side to side. You couldn't accurately judge how high it was without setting up an instrument, but it stood several feet above the rest. Nothing grew in its shadow.

  “Looks like we've found the old man of the property,” Mike said. “Looking good for your age, Grandpa. What do you guess? A hundred?”

  “Easy. Two hundred.” Close enough now to touch it, I saw a scarred and battered survivor. Nubs remained where branch after branch had been sawn off until none remained within thirty feet of the ground. Mostly within reach of the ground, I noticed, were a wide variety of nails: some of the modern cut wire variety, some hammered by a blacksmith. I began to notice additional injuries here and there that I realized were bullet wounds of various sizes, from deer slugs to .22's and one or two apparent sprays of bird shot. Suddenly I imagined a crowd armed to the teeth with shotguns, rifles, and pistols of various calibers, all taking aim at me.

  I shivered.“Damn. Does it feel colder to you here?” I asked.

  Mike looked around. “Little bit. Probably because there's no sun. Come on; there's more to see.”

  We continued onward, skirting the crest of the hill to our left and walking toward sunshine. We found the rear of the property and emerged from the trees. We turned left to head westward, trees on our left and pasture on our right.

  “So you were a Boy Scout, eh?” Mike passed me his map. “What does a cross on a map mean to you?”

  “A Boy Scout,” I grinned. “Yeah sure, I was a Boy Scout. A church.”

  “A dotted cross?”

  “A graveyard.”

  “You're good,” he said.

  I looked down at Mike's special map, a topo/ land feature overlay of his own design. Years before Google stole his thunder, Mike used his company computer to combine topographical maps with aerial photos and engineers' plans. As the job progressed and more data became available, he entered it-- individual property lines, water supplies, drainage patterns, utilities, even the curb height where there was one--, each category of data into its own layer of the same drawing, producing an unbeatable compendium of information easily shared and reproduced. The map in my hand clearly showed the delineation between trees and pasture, and at the back line of the wooded area was a dotted cross. I quickened my pace.

  I don't know how to explain my attraction to graveyards. It has little or nothing to do with the dead bodies within; that part creeps me out like all normal people, but like all normal boys, I have a healthy appreciation for the macabre, too. I guess the main attraction has always been the history they contain. People do all kinds of great things and raise all kinds of hell on this planet, then we all die, and some people have these monuments that tell about them. I love reading the years people were born and died, seeing who mothered whom and who married whom, imagining the times in which they lived. Veterans are always marked as such, and a favorite childhood game was to gauge a cemetery by how many wars back its oldest vet could be dated, top score going to the American Revolution
or before. I love funerary artwork and poetry, too. And I guess there's just something traditional in me satisfied by seeing families get together. I hoped this graveyard would have something cool about it.

  Jackpot. It was old, overgrown, and very creepy. I quickly stepped off the length of a wall. Imagine a four-foot brick and plaster wall built in a square fifty feet on each side, topped with two feet of ornamental iron railing and entered through a wrought iron gate six feet high. Inside, a variety of headstones and tomb carvings lay covered and crowded by weeds of every sort. Near the exact center, a red oak had taken root decades ago and now joined in the unbroken canopy. I tried the gate, but the handle would not turn. The keyhole was like you'd see in a cartoon, made to fit an old-fashioned skeleton key.

  Mike pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “How do you like it?”

  “Love it. Let's see who all's home.” I grabbed the rails and began climbing.

  “Hey, hey, get down from there. Where do you think you're going?” Mike asked.

  “Just wanted to go in and look around. You know, say hi. See what they have to say.”