The Dead Hand of Sweeney County

by David L. Bradley

  “Will do,” I promised.

  “Well gentlemen, it was good to see you. Keep up the good work.”

  “Yes, boss,” Steve said. Dick took no notice of the sarcasm.

  “What a jerk,” I said as he drove away. “From what I've found out, Steve, if it weren't for Conley rents, there wouldn't be a bank for his wife to manage. The more I know that guy, the less I like him.”

  Steve shrugged. “He seems pretty usual for his type. They don't care what anybody thinks. They don't have to.”

  “That's what he thinks, anyway. Spark it up.”

  I spent the night having dinner and hanging out with the boys. I wanted to call Ellie, but I equally wanted to stay away from Mrs. Dr. Greg Hubbard. She said she'd call when she knew something about Willie Conley, so I thought I'd just wait to see what developed. More than once that evening I caught myself wondering what she was doing; more than once I thought of what I'd be doing if I'd just come home from weeks away from her. That was another good reason not to call. A couple of enthusiastic days as a married couple had probably pushed me out of her mind. I told myself that if it were meant to be, it would happen.

  I wasn't thinking about her when I saw the old black lady again. I was walking north down the western edge of the woods, talking to Steve on the radio, preparing to take our last shot of the day. On the edge of my peripheral vision, something red moved through the woods. I turned and stopped. The key to spotting something in such an environment is to set your eyes to the deepest possible focus. Suddenly you see only moving objects, but you see them with amazing clarity. You will see dozens of insects, for instance, that you hadn't seen a minute before. Try it. I did it then, just stood dead still and let myself see. Suddenly the red flash appeared in left field, moving away from me, then it disappeared again behind trees.

  It would be moronic, I knew, to try chasing her through the woods. I heard footsteps. Behind me, Steve had abandoned his instrument.

  “Did you see her?” I asked.

  “I saw her through the instrument for just a second,” he replied.

  :”Come on! Let's find out who she is!” I started jogging down the line of trees, scanning the woods as I ran. At the end of the trees we stopped running. He looked westward; I looked eastward, but there were only open fields ahead of us, the cemetery and woods behind us.

  “Come on,” I whispered. “Let's check out the cemetery.”

  In a minute we were at the cemetery wall. The gate was ajar. “Stay out here and keep your eyes open,” I whispered to Steve. He nodded a reply and backed up to where he could see down two sides. The hinges creaked as I pushed the gate open and stepped in.

  I tip-toed down the main walk, nodding at the Thorntons and Conleys left and right of me. I stood at the red oak in the center and looked around, sweeping slowly from right to left. In all the overgrowth, a person could be hiding anywhere, really. I took a step toward the vacant quadrant and heard someone behind me. I turned to see the woman in the red bandanna break from behind the headstone where she'd been hiding, making for the gate. By the time I wished I'd closed it behind me, she was already reaching for it.

  “Rowrowrowrowrow!” Steve barked like a madman, crouching and rolling his eyes. “Rowrowrowr!” She flung the gate shut in his face and jumped back five feet.

  “Excuse me--” I started. She swung around with fist clenched and nailed me in the jaw. “Ouch! DAMN it!” I backed up. “No need for that! I just want to ask you a couple of questions!” Outside the gate, Steve began laughing. “I'm Addison. I'm a surveyor. I'm working for the county--”

  “I know who you are, and I know who you work for. He was out here yesterday, wasn't he? Do you think I'm blind, young man?” The woman spoke in precise Oxford English.

  “Woah. You saw Polk out here yesterday?” At the name “Polk”, she spit.

  “I saw that grasping, conniving bastard.” She clenched both tiny hands into fists and raised them like a boxer. “If you work for him, you're a bastard too.”

  “Hey, wait a minute; stop a second. Hold on. And don't hit me again. We have something in common. I don't like him, either.”

  “Oh, you don't.” She kept her hands raised.

  “No, I don't. I think he's trying to get his hands on all the Conley properties. For my own reasons, I'd like to stop him if I can. I don't work for him. I work for a company over in Newnan. See?” Here.” I dug one of Mike's business cards out of my wallet and handed it to her. “That's my boss' card; that's his phone number down in Newnan. You can call him if you don't believe me. But really, I just met the guy a few weeks ago, and I can't stand him. You, on the other hand, can throw a punch, and I like that in a person. Wanna try hello again?”

  She regarded me for a moment, then slowly began to smile. “I'm Sarah Culpepper.” She dropped her fists and nodded toward Steve. “Is that your dog?”

  My turn to laugh, and Steve joined in. “Sorry,” he chuckled. “I was trying to scare you.”

  “Well you may be certain that for many of us, there is little more frightening than a crazy-ass white man.”

  “He's crazy but harmless, near as I can tell. So tell me, Sarah Culpepper, what are you doing out here in the Conley woods?”

  “I live here.”

  “In the woods?”

  She looked at me like I was defective. “No,” she said slowly, “I live in my grandmother's old house. It's a Trust house.”

  “Part of the Conley Land Trust?”

  “Yes, that's why they call it the Trust house. When I was a little girl, I used to come out from Atlanta and stay with Granny in the summertime. She was still taking care of Ms. Elizabeth then, and I had the run of the Burroughs house. Oh, it was a fine house, a beautiful Greek Revival with columns and pediments. It must have cost a fortune, but it was beautiful. Looks like you found the rose garden.”

  “That explains that,” Steve commented from the other side of the gate before swinging it wide and joining us. “So there was a rose garden, eh? Hi, I'm Steve,” he grinned.

  “Nice to meet you, Steve. Ms. Elizabeth had an award-winning rose garden. One of the big house and garden magazines came out to do a magazine spread. I remember because Ms. Elizabeth bought sharp, modern uniforms for Granny and Granpa Luke. She bought Granny three different outfits: a maid's uniform, a nurse's uniform, and a chef's uniform, including the toque. Granny loved them. She bought two outfits for Granpa Luke: a chauffeur's uniform, and a set of coveralls. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “Sounds very...”

  “Maternalistic? Yes, it was, for lack of a better name. But Granny loved that old lady, and she loved Granny. She worked for Ms. Burroughs forty-four years, from the day her baby was born until the minute Striffler's Funeral Home took Ms. Elizabeth away in 1968. She cleaned her, dressed her, and said goodbye.”

  “Wow.”

  “Now I, I was the favorite granddaughter, and I was completely spoiled when I came to visit. Sometimes Ms. Elizabeth would comb my hair and put it in pigtails for me. She'd send Granpa Luke to the store for something and tell me I had to go with him. When we got to the store, he'd tell me that I had to come to pick out some ice cream for myself. Yes, she was very maternalistic. But she put together the Land Trust, didn't she? That was a fine act of pure altruism, defying convention and trying to do the right thing.”

  “I hate to interrupt,” Steve said, “but we have to finish what we were doing. My instrument is still sitting out there with nobody watching it.”

  “Right you are, Steve. Can you come with me and keep talking to me? Do you live far from here?”

  “Far? I live right there.” She pointed out into the fields.

  “Where?”

  “There. Right there. Where the kudzu is.”

  “Where the kudzu... Wow, cool. Your house is invisible.”

  “It has advantages and disadvantages,” she said. “I would like to make improvements, as soon as finances will allow. But yes, let's get on. I need to make dinner s
oon.”

  We filed out the gate, Sarah stopping to shut it behind us. She pulled out precisely the skeleton key I'd imagined and locked the gate.

  “So you're the person locking and unlocking the gate?”

  “Yes.”

  “And cleaning up the walkways and the graves?”

  “A little here and there. I guess I don't have to hide from you anymore, so I can get more done.”

  “How'd you get the key?”

  “I told you. Granpa Luke did her yard work.”

  “Right. So you clean up Ms. Elizabeth's grave, and---”

  “And?”

  “Who else? Whose grave is that over against the wall in the southeast corner?” Suddenly the thought hit me. “Is that Willie Conley's grave?”

  “Willie? Who-- you mean Ms. Elizabeth's brother? No, he ran off to the circus. He was never heard from again.”

  Steve had jogged back to his instrument, and I stopped walking, realizing I was at a good spot for the next control point. “Please keep talking; Steve and I just have to stop and work a minute, that's all. Please carry on. Who's grave is it?”

  “Those are my great-great-grandparents' graves. I am named for my great-great grandmother. She and my great-great-grandfather are buried side by side there. If you go back there, you'll see I've cleaned off both their graves now. I left when I heard you two coming that first time. So what are you doing now?”

  “I'm setting a control point.” I depressed the talk button. “Steve, can you see my feet?”

  “Roger that,” he replied.

  “Best if he can see all the way down to the nail, for accuracy's sake,” I explained. “You can't always do it, but when you can, it helps.” I kicked out a flat spot on the ground, wrapped a twenty-penny gutter spike in orange flagging, and pushed it into the ground until it was flush with the surface. “He takes a shot, and we know the new coordinates of this spot,” I finished my survey lecture. I checked my rod to make sure it was still locked at five feet and centered its steel tip on the nail head. “Point control point,” I dictated through the radio. “Call it PCP006; five foot rod. Fire at will.” I plumbed the rod and stood absolutely still. “So you're named for your great-great-grandmother? That's interesting. I'm named for a soap opera doctor.”

  “Good!” Steve hollered, not bothering with the radio. I keyed mine and spoke. “Box it up and meet me at the truck,” I told him.

  “Dig it,” he came back. “Kindly ask Ms. Sarah if she partakes.”

  “If I what?”

  “He likes to smoke at the end of the day,” I shrugged. “He's being sociable and hospitable.”

  “That's what I thought,” she said. “You tell him yes. Since before Woodstock, baby. I was out here the summer this whole county got turned on by a Vietnam vet.”

  “Named Lonnie?”

  Sarah laughed. “Lonnie! You know Lonnie?”

  “Just met him. Hold a minute.” I keyed the mike. “Yo, Steve. Sarah says this is not her first rattlesnake roundup. Repeat: NOT her first rattlesnake roundup. Go on.”

  “This is a small town, isn't it? Did Lonnie say anything-- never mind. Yes, I'm named for Sarah, my great-great-grandmother. She didn't have a last name, just Sarah. She was a slave here, if you can believe that. She lived here until she died, and originally she was buried out back of the house I live in now with a few other slaves. But over time the land got split up and leased out to many different farmers. Then Georgia Power came in with that big transmission line in the Fifties... and my granny, Annie Pearl, went and asked Ms. Elizabeth what she could do about it, and Ms. Elizabeth let them dig up Sarah and Thomas and bury them in an unused corner of the cemetery. They were baptized Christians, after all. She knew it wouldn't sit right with many local folks, so she had Granpa Luke do it without telling anyone.

  “My grandmother knew Sarah. They were very close. My grandmother used to tell me stories her granny told her, stories going back to slave times. You can find several of them in her daughter Leah's slave narrative.”

  “You mean like the WPA--”

  “Yes, precisely. My great-grandmother was interviewed, and many of the stories my grandmother told me are recorded for posterity.”

  “I just can't imagine,” I said. “Nobody writes about my family. Nobody writes in my family.”

  We chatted while walking to the truck, and I learned that her house, which I had yet to see, had been converted and added onto, but was originally a slave cabin. When dividing their plantations between sharecroppers or tenant farmers, many former slave owners reused their old slave cabins, scattering them across the property, one on every twenty or forty acres. This one had been moved twice before her Granpa Luke, with Ms. Elizabeth's blessing, had supervised its permanent installation in its current location, adding three rooms including a kitchen and bathroom. Because Annie Pearl and Granpa Luke worked for her, they paid no rent, although they were official leaseholders. When Ms. Elizabeth died, it became a Land Trust property, according to Sarah, at the same rental amount: none.

  “And now that sneaky bastard is trying to take it away,” she said, emphasizing bastard and quickening her speech a little. “My mother moved to Atlanta, where I was born. I grew up there, went to college, came back to Atlanta and taught high school accounting, then went to work for the IRS. I got tired of it all. Got tired of the city, tired of the grind, tired of the competition and backbiting, and I got out. I came out here to plant a garden and live a decent life, and Granny's house was trashed. Nobody had lived here in a long time, and the last people to live in my granny's house were pigs. Pigs! Mr. Banker-- I can't say his name--”

  “Polk--”

  She spit. “Bastard says he's manager of the land trust, but I know he's not the trustee, and that's different. I remember Ms. Elizabeth herself telling me that Granny and Granpa Luke would always have that house out back, and I would always be welcome to come live in it, even after she was gone. She said it was all on paper. Well, I can't find it, and my mother couldn't find it, and the only people who might have a copy of it are the land trust managers at the bank, and--” she spit-- “I do not trust him. I simply do not trust him. He says he's going to take my house and all this land, and I say it's supposed to be leased to Annie Pearl, her heirs and assigns, until the Jubilee, and if I remember correctly-- and I do--, Granny assigned it to me, her heir and favorite granddaughter.”

  “The Jubilee?”

  “That was Granny's name for it. It's from the Bible.”

  “I knew that,” Steve said.

  “Every fifty years all bondmen were freed, mortgaged lands were restored to the original owners, and land was left fallow. It's in Leviticus. Granny always said that if Ramon, that's Ms. Elizabeth's son, didn't have any kids, then when he died, it would belong to us.” She sighed. “I guess when your Granny's granny lived and worked and had babies and died in a house, and your granny did the same with the hope and promise that one day it would belong to her family, something like 'who owns this land' attains a deeper significance.”

  “Did Granny tell you about the park?”

  “Ms. Elizabeth told me that one day it would be a park for everyone to enjoy. I'm supposed to inherit that house, that property is supposed to be a park, and Sarah and Thomas' bones are supposed to be safe inside a good white family's cemetery until Jesus returns. That's what's supposed to happen. What do you think will happen?”

  “I don't know, Sarah. That's the question.”

  We had arrived back at the truck, and Steve was ready for us. Steve handed it to Sarah to light. “Sorry about barking at you,” he said again.

  “We can let it go now.”

  “So you've been coming here since the Sixties..?”

  “Late Fifties,” she exhaled. “My real memories of it start about 1960, but it wasn't like this then. It was wide open between the trees, probably the coolest spot in the county on a hot summer day. She said that when white men first came to Georgia, a squirrel could run from Savannah to Chattano
oga without touching the ground. That's why the soil was so rich when the Thorntons and Conleys arrived here to plant tobacco.”

  “She was a good woman. She saved this county when the Depression hit. When the highway came through, she negotiated with the state and Federal governments on the purchase price and made sure that every one of her tenants got a share of the payment, and the first thing every one of them did was pay her the back rent they owed. Many of them started businesses on the new highway.”

  “The new highway,” I repeated. Thanks to Steve's weed, I was starting to get a serious buzz, but something else was clicking in my mind. Thirty seven miles of individual plats, one for each property, each bordered or intersected by a highway easement, swirled and sorted themselves in my mind.