The Dead Hand of Sweeney County

by David L. Bradley

  “Might not be too serious,” I told her. “I'll take a look at your gutters.” When the gutters clog, the water backs up under the roof decking and drips down inside the wall. Most likely, I could clean the gutters and fix the problem, and I told her so. “Don't give it a thought, landlady. Even if there's a little roof rot, Addie is here looking out for you.”

  She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “You're a good kid, Addison. Why the hell aren't you a contractor?”

  “It's boring. Besides, woman, I'm not after your money. You know what I want.”

  “Another shot of Jamesons?”

  “Please.”

  She poured my shot, then sat back and looked around. “What do you say, Addison? Would you like to own an old house full of antiques one day?”

  “You have kids--” I began my standard reply.

  “Who hate Atlanta and who will only sell her off and split the money.”

  “That's what kids do.”

  “Well, fuck what kids do. That's not what I want. Don't worry about the kids; I've taken care of them in my will. I've taken care of you, too—”

  “Veronica--”

  “Let me finish. I love this old place. This house, that garage-- especially now--, those azaleas, those roses, that oak tree that keeps any grass from growing out back... Why shouldn't I want to provide for the place that provided me with shelter and a thousand memories? This isn't just a pile of stuff to be divided or recycled, Addison. It's a dwelling, a home... a place to do homework, make dinner, make love, make babies, and sit on the porch in the summer. And this neighborhood has been through some changes, but one thing these annoying damned Yuppies did was take over the local PTA. There are great schools around here.” She smiled. “The old lady's a little outdated, maybe, but she has a hundred Christmases left in her.”

  At that moment I had The Thought. In my mind I saw a Christmas tree sparkling in a dim room and a young girl in robe and pajamas scurrying down the stairs, her younger brother close behind. Lights come on and wrapping paper flies. The joy on their faces is outshone only by the joy on Eleanor's face as she watches them from her favorite chair. She turns to me and smiles, and I am the happiest, luckiest guy on earth. This entire montage passed in a silent instant. I sighed deeply.

  “It's a lovely house, Veronica. I might love it almost as much as you do. It's sure been good to me. But if I can't fill it with kids, someone else should. And someone will, believe me.”

  “But if you can, you will, is that what you're saying?”

  “I'll try, Veronica. Deal?”

  Veronica smiled. “Deal,” she said.

  “I can't believe you're pressuring me for grandchildren,” I whined.

  I took an armload of clean towels over to my place and distributed them, some for the kitchen, some for the bath, and one to go back into my bag. Upstairs, I snapped fresh sheets over the bed and tucked them in tightly, sharp hospital corners on the foot end. When finished I laid a fresh cover on top and stood back for the full effect. For some reason, I though of calling Rita.

  I stretched out on the love seat with the cell phone and punched in her number. I called her cell and left her a voicemail.

  “Hi there. How's your Saturday going? Just killing time at home. Call me, if you get a chance.” I don't like to sound pushy.

  My desire for clean sheets and clothes had turned into a cleaning binge. By the end of the day, the garage sparkled as it hadn't in a long time. I took a shower, got really stoned, and popped into Veronica's for a tasty dinner. By eight o'clock we both with our feet up, sipping martinis while watching “Antiques Roadshow”. After we oohed and ahhed over a nineteenth-century roll-top desk, marveling at its secrets and its auction value, a guest showed off his leather-bound 1868 collection of Poe.

  It seemed like the perfect moment, so I said, “I love Poe. You?”

  “Oh yeah, especially when I was a young girl.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Not exactly. I'm getting to where more of my friends are on the other side than this side, if there is such a thing, and let me tell you, none of them ever drop by. And if there is an afterlife, who the hell wants to be a ghost? Who wants to spend eternity hanging around some old bed and breakfast, terrorizing tourists from May through September. Not me. And you?”

  “Well, no... but I saw something this week that I just can't explain. If I saw it at all.”

  “Do tell, sport.”

  So I did. I told her all I knew: the story of Crazy Isaac I'd heard in the liquor store, the history of Isaac Cooper I'd gotten from Brother John McElroy, and exactly what I thought I'd seen two nights before. When I finished, she sat looking into her martini.

  “That was it, eh? Just there and gone?”

  “Yep. Like this martini.”

  “Just long enough to make you wonder if you saw anything at all.” She looked up from her glass, looked back down, and sighed. “I have a story about the day my dad died, if you'd like to hear it.”

  I nodded.

  “My dad didn't just sell insurance; he helped set up new sales territories. He was known throughout the Southeast as a great trainer of insurance salesmen. He went out of town pretty often, and he would call a cab to take him to the train station. A hundred times, I'll bet, I saw him walking down the driveway to meet the driver, suitcase in his hand.

  “This happened when Daddy was at Georgia Baptist Hospital, slowly shutting down from liver cancer. He'd been there a week already. I was here at the house, washing dishes in the kitchen, looking out the back window. Suddenly I got this feeling that someone had walked behind me, and I turned to see this blur or maybe a shadow passing by the kitchen door. And I just knew it was Daddy. I stepped into the front room and sure enough, I saw him walk down the driveway and stop at the end, waiting for his taxi. Right then the phone rang and I went and answered it. A nurse on the other end told me my father had taken a turn for the worse, and he didn't have long. She said I should come right away if I wanted a last word with him. When I looked out the window again, I guess his cab had come. I drove to the hospital, but I didn't run any traffic lights. I knew he was long gone. How'd you like that story?”

  “That gave me chills. And that was it? That was the only time you saw him?”

  “That was the only time I saw anything like that. And I still think I saw him, know what I mean? I don't think I imagined it in my head; I really think I saw it with my eyes.”

  “Well, I know I had my eyes open,” I said. “But I still don't know how I feel about what I saw, if I saw anything. I mean, your story makes sense. It's your dad. I, on the other hand, had never heard of Isaac Cooper a couple of weeks ago, had never heard of Carswell until about a month ago.”

  “Then maybe you just imagined it. You've known the story for a couple of weeks, it's dark, it's creepy, shadows dance around in the twilight, and your head starts filling in the spaces with a big scary black man.”

  “Sure... But that's another thing. The way he carried the ax, it looked like he was going to work with it, not trying to kill anybody. There was no blood anywhere. And to tell you the truth, he wasn't all that scary-looking. So if I did make him up, I could have done better, I think.”

  That night I read some more Twain, but I made sure to fall asleep on my bed. I'd forgotten how pleasant it is to sleep on fresh clean sheets. I went to sleep immediately.

  I spent the next day taking care of Veronica's roof problem. We'd bought a few frames of used scaffolding ten years before, so setting up scaffolding and checking out the problem was phase one, after breakfast but before break. After taking a break, I took down a portion of gutter and got a really good look at the damage, which was minimal. No more than six inches of the roof was rotten, and only about twelve feet of roofing and fascia board was affected at all. It was almost rote by now: remove some shingles, pop a line, cut out the damaged parts, and replace. I cut new rafter ends to match and nailed them into place alongside the old rafters, cut a new p
iece of fascia board, and nailed it up. Including painting, another short break, and scaffold removal, I was done by six, and a grateful landlady made me dinner, too. A productive Sunday.

  All that productive Sunday, I imagined that Eleanor waited downstairs instead of Veronica. While setting up scaffolding, it hit me that one day this house would my home, if I had a family. Veronica seemed set on the idea. I had a lot of thoughts that day. I thought of updating Veronica's kitchen, especially her enameled sink. I thought of turning her studio into a library with sumptuous wooden bookshelves of my own design and construction. I thought of which way I'd go if I expanded the downstairs bathroom. Each of these thoughts ended with Eleanor: Eleanor picking out a new sink with me, Eleanor buying me a new old book for my new bookshelves, Eleanor naked in a garden tub with room for one more... They were all just extensions of The Thought I'd had the night before in which Eleanor watched our children unwrapping Christmas presents. This thought and all its variations played out over and over in my head all day, and the more I saw Eleanor as my wife, the more I decided that I liked the idea. Before the day was up, I had decided that I wanted to marry Eleanor.

  I tell Veronica a lot, but I didn't tell her that. I ate dinner, enjoyed some more whiskey, packed my bag for another week out of town, read a little more, and put myself to bed at ten for a very early wake-up.

  In my dream, I was sitting at the base of that giant red oak, marveling at its gnarled roots, when a shadow fell across my view. I looked up to see Isaac standing there with his ax. He asked, “Are you going to help, or are you going to move on?” I still hadn't done the tree count, so I said, “I can't move on, so I guess I have to help.” He lifted his ax high overhead and brought it down hard on one of the roots.

  “Help the boy,” he said, and disappeared.

  I woke up then, alone in my dark room, covered in clean-smelling sheets. Help what boy?

  8. The Conleys and the Polks – The History Lady and the Disappearing Woman

  The following day, Steve and I drove back out to Carswell and got our room. We unloaded our bags, then I had Steve drive northward. Mike had spent his weekend processing the data I'd brought in and adding it to the existing network, so the first thing I had to do was fill in some holes.

  As you add points to the network, sometimes old points are kicked out of acceptable tolerances. The culprit can be any one of a half-dozen, from atmospheric conditions to employee error, and sometimes it's the result of outliers, points of collected data that are for some crazy reason far outside the averages. In such cases, going through the data and deleting those outliers makes the little exclamation point go away, to put it in technical terms. Sometimes there's no apparent explanation, and you just have to run new sessions at those points and hope the new data plays nicely with the existing mesh of data points. I call it filling in holes.

  Much more interesting to me that week was that Steve and I both saw a woman who disappeared, and of course, my developing relationship with Eleanor.

  That Monday ended with us setting a pair of points on Highway Nineteen, within sight of Thornton's Ferry Road. It was after six when we picked up our equipment and loaded it into the truck.

  “Smoke one?” Steve asked.

  “Off the clock,” I answered.

  I took Thornton's Ferry Road up to the Conley woods and parked there. We locked up the truck and strolled into the woods. I didn't tell Steve my destination; I just slowly walked through the woods toward the big oak, and he followed. Pretty soon we were at the big oak. To my satisfaction and relief, we were alone.

  We stood in the clearing under the canopy and smoked, talking about why so many Ford hot rods have Chevy engines, both of us regularly glancing around for security's sake. Steve was looking to his left when he suddenly stopped talking. I looked to my right, and I saw a middle-aged black lady wearing a white shirt with a red bandanna around her hair. She was about a hundred feet away, it seemed, standing just outside the trees. I looked back at Steve, looking at me. We both looked back where we'd seen the woman, but she was gone. We started in her direction, I taking the lead. We were outside the trees in no time, but there was no woman to be seen. We kept moving. When I got to where she'd been standing, I stopped and looked around. Fifty to a hundred feet away was the cemetery. We walked down to take a look. The gate was locked; the cemetery was empty. Beyond the woods lay acres of green hay. A few hundred feet away, a power line easement ran through the hay, but the easement was empty except for a couple of lonely pines on a small rise. Kudzu covered them to a height of twenty feet and stretched between, a squat green circus tent in the middle of nowhere. It was all picturesque as hell, but it was empty.

  “White shirt, red bandanna?” I asked.

  “Ten-four, Addie boy.”

  “What the hell.”

  “Probably just someone's Granny who lives out here in the country,” Steve said as we both looked searched the landscape for a sign of anything human. “Somewhere.”

  We walked back to the cemetery and stood there while we finished the joint. We then walked back to the truck, past the tree, without seeing anyone else.

  My cell phone lay on the seat, and I saw I had missed a call from a number I didn't recognize. I checked for a message.

  “Hi Addison. This is Eleanor Hubbard calling to tell you I have your information. Call me back.”

  I hit the keys to call her back and felt giddy. I actually cleared my throat. The phone rang four times before going to her voicemail.

  “Hello, you've reached Eleanor Hubbard's cell phone. Please leave a message, and I will return your call. Thanks.”

  “Hi Ms. Hubbard. Thanks for looking into that for me. Uh... tag, you're it!” I hung up wondering how corny I sounded. I looked over at Steve, rolling his eyes with a grin.

  “Is that your History Lady?”

  “Sho' 'nuff.”

  “Y'all gonna get together and do history?”

  “Something like that. With any luck.”

  She returned my call while I was in the shower, thinking of her, as it turns out. I opened a beer and called back, fully expecting to leave a message.

  “Hello. 'Bout time you called back. I have your research into the Conleys and the Thorntons.”

  “Excellent! Should I swing by the White Horse Tavern and pick it up?”

  “Mmmm... a lot of it needs explaining. I'd rather deliver it.”

  I had no problem with that. “Want to bring it over now?”

  She laughed. “Not likely,” she said. “I can deliver it anytime after noon on Wednesday.”

  “Okay. How about Wednesday night? Where do you want to meet?”

  “How about showing me that cemetery?”

  “I'd be happy to.” I told her how to get there, and we agreed to meet at seven.

  I arrived about ten minutes early. I got out, dropped the tailgate, and got comfortable. Eleanor drove up precisely at seven, backed her green Volvo into the driveway next to me, and got out.

  This was Eleanor: jeans, a red and white-checked blouse, red scarf around her neck. Her boots were immaculate, and the overall impression was that of an LL Bean catalog model. From her car she pulled a leather portfolio with a long strap that she threw over her shoulder. She looked up and flipped hair out of her face, then smiled and approached with a jaunty stride.

  “Howdy, mister! Where's this cemetery you've been bragging on?”

  “I'll show you if you'll answer me a question first. Where are you from?”

  “Vermont, why?”

  “Just curious. Right this way madam. We're developing something of a path here. May I call you Eleanor?” We started through the woods.

  “I would rather you called me Ellie.”

  “Okay, Ellie. What's in the portfolio?” I asked.

  “A lesson in basic research, mostly. I did some Census Bureau searches, copied some birth, death, and wedding announcements from the local papers, and got you a copy of a WPA history.”

  “What's that?�
�

  “A primary source of sorts,” she replied. “Roosevelt put writers to work going around the country recording county histories, slave narratives...”

  “There were still--”

  “Oh yes. Most of them had been children during the war, of course. And caveat emptor here... The writers wrote what county historians and other folks told them. They didn't research; they didn't look for evidence either to support or debunk.”

  “How is that history?”

  “What, uncertainty?” She laughed. “You just have to remember that sometimes the uncertainty is manufactured. I asked a professor one time how she came up with her brilliant research ideas, and she told me a good start is to question the official story. Because people always lie about what they're doing and what they did, there is always truth out there just waiting to be found. Always.”