The Dead Hand of Sweeney County

by David L. Bradley

  As soon as I walked out, I was sure I had made a mistake. I stood naked while a stranger studied me from all sides. He walked to a table and picked up a stack of drawings, examining each one then examining me again, until he found one he liked. He showed me a drawing of a statue called Aphrodite Kallypigos. Aphrodite, he told me, has just finished bathing in a lake. She appears to be looking over her shoulder at her reflection on the water. I was pleased when he pulled a long gossamer drape out of a trunk and began arranging it across my breasts and across my back, turning and tilting my head and posing me just so. With my knee raised slightly and my leg turned inward, along with the wrap, I felt I had maintained a modicum of modesty, but then I realized that he would be photographing me from almost a reverse angle, making my backside the focus of the photograph. I asked if he was certain this was best, and he assured me that my derriere was quite photograph-worthy, that women such as I drove some men to drink, to spend vast fortunes, and to commit murder and suicide, while inspiring other men to new heights of artistic expression. I felt a slight flush across my entire body. My heart quickened. I was excited, even thrilled. And then I understood that up to that moment, nakedness had meant the shame of Adam and Eve when they realized they were naked before God, but suddenly the shame was gone, replaced by something else. I felt free. Free of family, free of Sweeney County, free of all restraints and conditions, most of them imposed according to my sex. I was simply me, Elizabeth, a woman, and I felt beautiful, just as I am... and in that moment, I felt I was Aphrodite, that I was all women, and that we are all beautiful, just as we are

  I saw Albert that night after the show, but for some reason I did not tell him about the photograph. Once we were alone, we spent little time on needless talk or romantic formalities, and such raw honesty of desire excited me as never before, and I experienced new heights of pleasure. I did not tell him that, either.

  Of course Albert had to talk afterward, when I would have been content to sleep. He is to marry some woman in New York, a Russian Orthodox girlfriend from his youth. He explained that their parents are also friends, and the wedding is greatly anticipated by everyone in their social class. I told him I understood, and I do. He said he would never forget me, and I trust that he will not. I exercised him again the next morning, just to make sure.

  I picked up my photographs while awaiting my train back to Carswell. Only after the train had passed the Pullman barn on the outskirts of Atlanta did I realize that he had probably printed more than one copy of my photograph, that I was now part of his portfolio of work. I felt proud and warm all over again.

  I stopped. I took a deep breath and let it go. As soon as I could, I would find a picture of Aphrodite Kallypigos. I glanced at the photo albums, but there was little chance she would have glued that photo into a book where anyone could see it. Elizabeth Theodora Conley was not so simple. There was no telling what she'd done with it, no way to guess or predict her. I liked that.

  I picked up the photo album and took another look at the diary's author. Ultimately, I would need a copy of this photograph. Whether I found Aphrodite or not, I would need a copy of this. I could see mischief in her eyes and her Mona Lisa smile. She was like no Southern belle I had ever imagined. I thought of how she'd told Randall Polk to go to Hell and laughed again. Was I developing a thing for some old lady who died when I was five? Maybe.

  The clock informed me that it was eleven. I took off the glasses, rubbed my eyes and put down the photo album. I stood and stretched, then downed the half-beer that had gotten warm while I read. Steve snored on his bed. I took a hit from the pipe that had gone out next to my hand and did a shot of whiskey from the bottle I had ignored for hours. I pulled a beer from the cooler and walked outside to the breezeway. My room that week was at the northwest corner of the L-shaped building, closest to the by-pass carrying traffic around downtown Carswell. North of the motel, the by-pass connected to the highway leading to Reynoldston. To Conley land. To Elizabeth Theodora Conley Burroughs.

  Why was there a stand of trees in the middle of perfectly good farm land? Short answer: because an old lady wanted it that way. Whom did she expect to claim it? Why leave land to any descendent of Robert Conley if she knew there weren't any? She wouldn't. Or would she? Perhaps she expected no one to claim it, and the Conley Land Trust was just her way of transferring all that land to the families of those who had worked the soil. Why not just do it upon her death? Perhaps she wanted Ramon to have the income, but why not transfer the land upon Ramon's death? Why drag it out another three years?

  There had to be more. I returned to the room and shut off the television. Telling myself I would give it only one more hour, I put on the glasses, opened the diary, and returned to my reading.

  19. The End of Book Two

  The next day was devoted to closing in the GPS network. We hit a few more points, collecting data, then broke for a fast-food lunch in Reynoldston. As I was stuffing my mouth with fries fresh out of the deep-fryer, my phone rang. It was Tyler.

  “Kane here. This line is not secure.”

  “Kane, Tyler. Who do you know in Conyers, Georgia?”

  “Nobody. Why?”

  “What do you know about the place?”

  “It has a Waffle House on either side of the highway, if you're headed that way. It has a strip mall near the exit, a couple of gas stations, motels... downtown isn't too far off the interstate. Why do you ask?”

  “The judge canceled our meeting this afternoon. He got a letter this morning from a William Conley in Conyers. He says he's descended from Robert Conley, and he's requested a hearing at ten o'clock Friday morning. The judge agreed and asked us to bring our paperwork.”

  “That ought to be interesting,” I said. “Tell him I'll see y'all Friday morning. But look, what do you know about this guy? Is he Willie's descendent, or what?”

  “Don't know. The letter didn't say. The judge essentially just rescheduled our appointment for ten o'clock Friday morning, and now he's calling it an official hearing.”

  “Well, let's just see what happens Friday morning. My regards to Lawyer Frank.” We said our goodbyes and hung up. “It appears an heir has emerged to claim the properties,” I said to Steve.

  “What, now? Just now?”

  “It would appear.”

  “Dude advertises for heirs for thirty years, his executor for three years, and nobody shows up until the absolute last minute?”

  I grinned. “Yeah, it's just a little dramatic, isn't it? But hey, it doesn't seem to bother anyone else, including the judge. Fine by me. It gives me more time to read.”

  “You're gonna go ahead and finish these diaries?”

  “Oh, hell yeah. If I quit now, it'd be like sitting through an hour and a half of a movie and walking out before the end. Besides, I still haven't gotten to the part where she plants all those trees. I told you I'd find out, right?”

  “That you did, Sarge.”

  “It's specialist. I wasn't in long enough to make sergeant.”

  “Specialist in what?”

  “Army stuff. You know, marching... saluting... the Airborne shuffle... I did it all, man.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon filling gaps in the GPS network. On the company laptop, points out of the acceptable range of tolerance were indicated by a yellow exclamation point. As we set up and collected data, I imported that data into the job, and one by one, exclamation points disappeared from the screen. By day's end, we were back in Sweeney County, alongside Highway 19, collecting data on a pair of points two miles south of the Flat River. Clouds had been building all afternoon, and as Steve and I shut down the units and I dumped the data, a cool wind blew across the darkening fields.

  “'Bout to storm,” Steve remarked. In the same casual tone he announced, “You've got company.”

  There was something about the way he said I had company. I looked up from the laptop to see Polk's Navigator pull over on the grassy shoulder in front of us and stop. I checked the side mirror,
and sure enough, the green Suburban rolled to a stop behind us. Steve looked over at me. I shrugged and pulled some paperwork from a folder. I had a large zippered bag I had been using to hold our maps; this I emptied so I could reuse the bag. Widely scattered drops of rain hit the windshield and streamed downward as we sat.

  “He's trying to decide how to play this,” I told Steve. “I'm just gonna sit here and do my paperwork and wait. No, here he comes. Game on.”

  Polk walked into the wind, his hair blowing wildly. As he came close, he recognized that Steve was driving, and he motioned me with his hand to join him outside. I grabbed my plastic bag of documents. “Let me see what he wants.”

  He stood between our vehicles, hands stuffed into the pockets of an Eddie Bauer windbreaker zipped to his neck. I took a position between him and Steve, so that the wind blew in his face as he spoke, because I could tell it annoyed him.

  “Mr. Polk! Good to see you again.” I held out my hand, but he did not take it.

  “What do you know about a William Conley in Conyers, Georgia?” he asked, raindrops exploding on his face.

  “Is there a William Conley in Conyers, Georgia?” I replied.

  “There are three of them, and none of them has ever heard of Sweeney County,” he said as a raindrop slammed into his forehead, and he wiped it away.

  “That says a lot about our schools, don't you think? Who is William Conley?”

  “Are you playing stupid with me?” Polk narrowed his eyes. The wind gusted, and the rain picked up.

  “No sir. I think I know what you want, and I think I have the information you need, but I don't know any William Conley in Conyers, or anywhere, for that matter.”

  “What information are you talking about?”

  “Your tree count, sir. Here it is.” I handed him the papers in the plastic bag. He took it and looked at it. “Keep it dry, sir. Now if you don't mind--”

  “You know John Tyler, don't you?” He wiped his eyes.

  “Tenth president of the United States? Oh wait, you mean the guy from Texas--”

  “And a lawyer named Frank Miller?”

  I paused. “Doesn't he write graphic novels?”

  “Do you have in your possession the papers of Elizabeth Conley Burroughs?”

  “The papers..?” I repeated. “Like some diaries, a couple of photo albums, and two scrapbooks?”

  “Do you have them?”

  I smiled. “No sir, but I know who does.”

  “Who?”

  “Those items have been donated to the Georgia State library. That's what the guy from Texas said. They have a collection dedicated to Southern Women's Studies, and right now, I imagine some librarian is making a list of what's in each of those albums and scrapbooks. They may even scan the pages; who knows? It will probably all end up on the internet, if you want to see it.” The rain fell harder.

  “The Georgia State--”

  “Library, yes sir. He said they won't be available for public viewing until after they're processed and cataloged, you know, but that shouldn't take more than a few months.” I spend a lot of time outdoors. I can stand perfectly still while slowly getting wet from head to toe, especially with my back to the wind. Not everyone can. The wetter Dick Polk got, the more agitated he seemed, shaking rain out of his hair like a dog and stamping his feet like a horse. “Was there something else, sir?”

  “Have you been made aware of any new documents pertaining to the Conley properties?”

  “Like birth certificates, or mortgages, or deeds--”

  “Or wills?”

  “No sir.”

  Thunder boomed in the distance. “Why do I think you're lying to me?” Polk asked in a menacing tone.

  “About what?”

  “Why do I think you're involved in all this?”

  “Involved in what, sir?”

  “You don't come into Sweeney County and fuck with me, son.” He squinted into the wind and wiped his face with both hands. “Do you understand what I'm telling you?”

  “Mr. Polk, I'm just a surveyor, working for the DOT. I'm just surveying a road from this county to the next.”

  “MY county! You are surveying a road in MY county! Finish your work, and get the hell out!” He turned to walk away, then stopped and turned back to me. “And don't let me think you're trying to fuck with me. You will regret it.”

  When I got back in the truck, Steve had already covered the passenger's seat with the towel I carry for lunchtime hand washing. As soon as I shut the door, he started the engine and pulled onto the highway.

  About a half mile down the road, he spoke. “Whatever you said to that fella, I thought his head was gonna explode! All I could see was his face, and damn, you pissed him off! I thought he was gonna hit you!”

  “I don't think he does a lot of hitting. That's what his little friends are for.”

  “Yeah, I saw them, too. They're still behind us now. What do you want to do?”

  “Do? Just drive the speed limit back to the motel. If they were gonna start anything, they'd have done it back there. I mean, hell, he knows which motel we stay in. We can't hide from him in this town.”

  Steve shook his head. “This shit makes me wish I had brought my Glock.”

  I looked at Steve, and he glanced over at me. He wasn't angry or scared, just dead serious, like a dog with its tail flat out.

  “Not me,” I said. “Every time I deal with someone like him, I'm glad I'm not holding a gun. Makes you think more... Speaking of which, I have to move the diaries out of the room tonight. He asked if I'd been made aware of any new documents pertaining to the Conley properties--”

  “Like a will,” Steve inserted.

  “Precisely a will, my friend. He mentioned it specifically. I told him Tyler donated all that stuff to a library. It just popped into my head. You can bet a paycheck that he or his men will be in our room tomorrow just as soon as we leave it, so I need to get all that stuff out tonight when I go to Ellie's. When he doesn't find anything tomorrow, he should calm down.”

  “So what do you say, Sherlock? You found any legal documents? Anything unusual? Anything at all? Secret family biscuit recipes?”

  “Nope,” I said, “nothing as useful as that, and no legal documents, either. Unusual? Unusual doesn't begin to describe Elizabeth Conley. She's one in a million. In her time, in any time. Yeah, let's go to the motel, and let me get her stuff out of there.”

  Two hours later, I was still talking about her, this time to Ellie over a glass of wine and a bowl of French onion soup as we lounged naked on her sofa. “She just loved Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin's “A Vindication--”

  “--of the Rights of Woman?” Ellie finished. “I loved that, too. Did she read the 'Memoirs'?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “And?” Ellie raised an eyebrow. “What did she think?”

  “It's safe to say those two books changed her life. She wrote a lot about them and what they meant to her.”

  “For instance?”

  “First, she's very candid about her enjoyment of sex and her desire to see if it's more pleasurable with a man.”

  “She wrote that?”

  “She did. She met a violinist with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra on a trip to New York, and four months later she arranged a trip to Atlanta to hook up with him for the purpose of losing her virginity.”

  “My goodness! And?”

  “She loved it, but she still had this thing for Joseph, now a married man in France, and Albert the violinist is okay but missing something. Her grandparents were concerned when things cooled off, but she was determined to marry whom she wanted and when she wanted, and that's that. In 1909 she went to Atlanta to see him one last time, and while she was in town, she had a couple of portraits done at a photography studio. One of them was a nude.”

  “Oh my god! Have you found it?”

  “Not yet, but I'm looking. Okay, so the summer after that, in 1910, a second cousin came to stay for a few months. Her name was Alice
Jenkins, a cousin on Elizabeth's mom's side. They met when Alice attended a tea party in the rose garden. She had come from a women's college up North, where she studied geology and a relatively new science, paleontology. She was very outdoorsy, just full of natural wonders, science facts, and uh... adventure.”

  “I think I know where this is going,” Ellie interrupted, “and I think I approve.”

  “Alice stayed the summer, and eventually they had sex they both liked, so they did it more than once, but at summer's end it was obvious to Elizabeth that she was not the lesbian Alice apparently was, and she specifically wrote that while she had a keen new understanding of and sympathy for 'spinsters' and 'old maids', she did not want to grow old in a same-sex relationship. She still wanted to have a child, and not just any child, but preferably married Joseph's child. She will run off to Europe if she must. She's quite hardheaded about it.” I concentrated on my soup. “This is great.”