A Thousand Generations

by Traci DePree

  Paul came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. She leaned into him and closed her eyes.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked into her hair.

  “Wondering if Skip found that man yet,” Kate admitted.

  Just then the deer bounded off into the woods. Kate craned to see what it was that had spooked them, but the growing dusk had plunged the distance into darkness.

  “Probably another animal,” Paul offered.

  Yet Kate wondered if it was something else. Someone else. A shiver traversed her spine, and she reached to lock the sliding-glass door.

  “Just in case,” she said.

  THAT NIGHT KATE couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of someone breaking into the house kept her awake. Finally at eleven thirty, she gave up the fight and put on her slippers and lightweight robe.

  “Where are you going?” Paul turned over and said in the darkness.

  “I’m just restless. Go back to sleep.” She patted his arm, and he snuggled into the covers.

  Pattering to the kitchen, Kate turned on the burner under the teakettle. She pulled down a container of hot cocoa and spooned some into a large mug. Soon the kettle whistled. Kate turned it off and poured the steaming water into her mug, the scent of rich hot chocolate feathering into the air.

  She gave it a stir as her mind shifted to Horace Hanlon. The image she’d gathered of a father who took his son fishing and worked hard to keep a business afloat in the midst of the Depression didn’t jibe with someone who hid stolen money in a secret room in his store, someone who would consort with gangsters and bank robbers.

  She took a long drink of the cocoa as she looked out the window.

  A full moon lit a path across the backyard. Although she didn’t see anything but the maple tree and her garden, the sense that she was being watched remained. She closed the blinds and moved into the living room.

  She thought of the chest Gladys had given them of old family letters. Maybe if she looked through it again, something new would stand out.

  Kate glanced at the clock. Eleven forty-five. At this rate, the night would never end.

  She pulled out the small chest and began to sift through its contents. She noticed the feminine-looking notebook that Marie had filled. She hadn’t read Marie’s journal since her time at Gladys’, so she picked that up first.

  Kate sat in her favorite rocking chair and began to read.

  The inside of the front cover was dated October 21, 1920. She began to read Marie’s first entry:

  We are finally here in Tennessee. I’m so glad to have left Wisconsin, the place that claimed the lives of my three girls. So many sad memories reside there.

  I must admit I am puzzled at God’s plan for us. Did he always intend to take our children so cruelly? If so, why bother to give them to us at all? I am grateful that I still have my sons. They are stronger for what they’ve endured. But how I miss my daughters!

  Copper Mill will be our new beginning, our fresh start, and so I am keeping this diary to commemorate the past and to remind me of the wondrous things God still has in store for us. Already we are making friends. The family who lives down the street have a boy, Joshua, who’s close in age to our Frank.

  Then she’d written a verse at the bottom of the page like a footnote:

  “For I am convinced that nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus...” I believe those words with all my heart. Not even the deaths of my dear, sweet girls can keep me from God’s love. That will sustain me in the days to come.

  Until tomorrow,

  Marie Hanlon

  Kate stared at the words on the page, her heart aching for a woman who had lived and died so long ago. The pain she endured before coming here! It was crushing. Kate reread the journal entry, pausing on the second to the last paragraph. Who was the family that lived down the street from them, who had befriended Paul’s dad? Joshua. Was it possible that she meant Joshua Parsons? She calculated how old her father-in-law would have been if he were still alive and realized he would have been about the same age as the elderly Faith Briar church member. She jotted a note to herself to talk to Joshua Parsons the next day to see if her hunch could be right.

  She turned the page, scanning and reading bits and pieces of the journal. There were occasionally long spans of time without an entry, and the rest of 1920 was summed up in two lines:

  We have purchased a clothing store in downtown Copper Mill. Praise be to God!

  Kate read on. Marie wrote much about the children and the store, the many customers who came in, and the needs they shared with her. From what Kate discovered, Marie was a rock of faith who prayed diligently for her community and maintained her own spiritual life like a precious gift. She spoke often of Horace and her love for him. In one entry she wrote,

  It is our anniversary today—twenty-five blessed years! Where has the time gone? It seems just yesterday that Horace was walking me to school on the moors of Ireland, and now here we are in America, an old married couple. Though he still is so thoughtful! He called me to the store with some tale of an incorrect shipment that I needed to fix after closing time. I was fuming mad! Here it was our anniversary, and he was going to make me work the evening.

  Yet when I came in the front doors with steam rolling out of my ears, I knew something was amiss. There was a table in candlelight at the center of the store, set for two and adorned with a white cloth, and violinists were playing Mozart in the corner! Horace sat there with a monstrous grin on his face. I knew I’d been had! My argument melted away. I was dumbstruck. Horace rose, looking quite dapper in a dark suit and bowtie, and swept me into a waltz.

  It was as romantic as any evening we had in our younger days, perhaps more so.

  For the past twenty-five years, God has given me a man to love, cherish, honor, and respect. I only pray we’ll have another twenty-five years together.

  Marie also wrote of Black Monday in 1929, and its ripple effect across the nation—soup lines around the corner, so many people out of work and desperate for the basics of life. She and Horace brought the homeless in, fed them, and put them to work at the store, though in truth there was little work for them to do. But they cleaned, and helped customers, if there were any, and if not, they worked in the large garden in back of the Copper Mill house. At least they could raise their own food, Marie said. She put up hundreds of jars of produce and raised her own laying chickens and rabbits. She bemoaned not having a real farm where they could raise beef or pork, but they knew how to survive on their wits. That was enough.

  In the evenings, Horace and Marie talked to the men and women about their faith, pointing out that God was watching out for them, caring for them in the little things. Many grew closer to God through the ordeal. Marie had written that she could see how God was taking the Great Depression and using it to build a nation of believers.

  “Devastation has a way of doing that,” she’d written. “Taking what men see as hardship and evil and using it for good. It’s called redemption.”

  Kate leaned back in her rocking chair and took a deep breath. This was the Hanlon family Kate knew and loved—Paul’s heritage. The legacy he’d been given. They were a family of substance, with a faith whose roots went deep, not pushed about by selfish desires like greed or jealousy. That was why, she realized, it was so...wrong to think the patriarch of the Hanlon family could have been anything other than honorable.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Joshua Parsons, better known around town as Old Man Parsons, was ninety-three years old. He’d lived through much of the history of the Copper Mill area and, if asked, could describe in great detail exactly what took place there during the stock market crash in 1929, when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, or when Manhattan’s Twin Towers collapsed in 2001.

  Kate offered to deliver Old Man Parsons’ Faith Freezer meal on Monday since she planned to make the trip out there anyway to talk to him about Horace Hanlon.

  When Kate knocked on his front door, s
he could hear someone holler “I’m coming,” then feet shuffling inside. Finally the door opened on creaky hinges.

  “Well, look who’s here,” Parsons said in his reedy voice as a smile grew on his lips.

  “I thought you’d like a little lunch about now, Joshua,” Kate said.

  He quirked a bushy white eyebrow. “It’s about time. I’m starvin’!”

  Kate laughed as she handed the ninety-three-year-old two Styrofoam containers that held his lunch. “Would you mind a little company?” she asked.

  “Why? You sellin’ something?” he asked, clearly teasing.

  “No sir,” Kate said, holding up empty hands, though her handbag and a canvas tote swung from her elbow.

  Parsons grinned and held the door open for her. “Good thing,” he said over his shoulder. “’Cause I’m not buyin’.”

  Old Man Parsons’ home was typical for a single man of his age—more than a little messy, with a faint musty smell mixed with smoked fish and wood smoke. Piles of old newspapers grew like stalagmites from the floor. The elderly man moved slowly toward the dining room on the other side of the kitchen.

  He took a seat, and Kate pulled out a chair alongside him.

  “I brought you some fudge pie,” she said as she reached into the canvas tote she’d brought along and lifted out a white box.

  “Uh-oh. You’re up to something!” He took a sip of steaming black coffee that had been sitting on the table. A napkin, silverware, and a glass of water were already in place as well.

  “You caught me.” Kate grinned and handed him the package, which he set on the table.

  Parsons chuckled. “Let me say grace,” he said, “then you can try to wrangle whatever it is you want out of me.”

  Kate smiled as he bowed his head in prayer. His faded lips moved ever so slightly, and his eyes shifted behind their lids. Kate waited patiently for him to finish. Finally he tucked his napkin into the neck of his plaid flannel shirt.

  “So...” He reached to open the large Styrofoam container that held spaghetti with homemade meatballs. “Mmm, that looks good!” His eyes lit up.

  He opened the second container, revealing a small salad with a piece of garlic toast, still warm from the oven. Old Man Parsons lifted the toast and took a bite.

  “Nothin’ like fresh-made food!” He grinned at Kate and sighed contentedly. Then he met her eyes. “What’s the fudge pie all about? And don’t tell me you were missing me!”

  “I was looking through some old family journals,” she began. “The journal of Paul’s grandmother Marie Hanlon, actually. I noticed that she mentioned some neighbors...a boy named Joshua who was friends with Paul’s dad, Frank.”

  “Oh sure,” he said, biting off another mouthful of garlic toast and chewing, then following with a swig of coffee. “That was probably me. We lived just down the block from Paul’s grandparents. I was in my early teens. I knew Frank Hanlon vaguely, though he was younger than me by a year or two.”

  Kate smiled, glad to hear Marie Hanlon’s words confirmed.

  “He and I were friends only for a short time before we moved into town. Marie moved about an hour away after the store closed and Horace died, I think, when she lived with Paul’s folks.”

  “Do you remember Hanlon’s Boutique?”

  Just then, a cuckoo clock behind Old Man Parsons’ head sounded a single cuckoo before the little mechanical bird disappeared behind its door. Parsons paused and took another bite of his meal.

  “Oh sure,” he said with a nod. “Bought my first Sunday suit at Hanlon’s. Everyone in town used to shop there. That was before malls took over the country, when folks spent their money local.” He scratched his chin. “I think I have a picture of Horace around here somewhere.”

  He got up and shuffled into the next room. Kate could hear him rummaging through piles of clutter as he murmured to himself. After a good fifteen minutes, he reemerged with a photograph in hand and a look of triumph in his eyes.

  “Told you I could find it.” He held the yellowed photo out to Kate, then turned it over so she could see the writing on the back. He added, “That’s Horace in front of the others.”

  Kate reached for the picture. On the back the date 1930 was written in faded ink.

  Kate turned the photo back over to examine the image. The photo was grainy and slightly out of focus, but there was no doubt it was taken outside of Copper Mill because the town as well as the steeple of the Presbyterian church were visible in the background. There was something about the location, high above Copper Mill, that gave Kate pause. Where had the photo been taken from? And what was the man in the back doing? He held something in his hands that Kate couldn’t quite make out.

  She recognized Horace immediately from the shots Gladys had shown her. In the foreground, Paul’s grandpa stood holding some sort of black object in his hand. She recognized Roy Simmonds, too, from the picture she’d seen at Connie Rae’s. He was in the back next to a man Kate didn’t recognize, who was seated, leaning against a stump. But the most shocking detail about the photo was that the fourth man was Jack Leonetti.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  This is pretty amazing,” Kate finally said, still stunned at the picture before her. “That’s Jack Leonetti.” She pointed to the man in the front.

  “Indeed it is,” he said. Parsons’ eyes narrowed indicating that he clearly didn’t comprehend how stunned she was by the visible connection between Horace and Jack Leonetti. “He was an interesting fellow, spent some time with Horace Hanlon from what my dad told me.”

  Old Man Parsons picked up his fork and took a large bite of his spaghetti. Kate waited for him to go on as he wiped his chin with his napkin.

  “Horace wasn’t much for business, always giving things away. Don’t know how he managed to keep that shop open nine years after the crash, though my father had his theories.”

  “What kind of theories?”

  Old Man Parsons took another bite and said with a full mouth, “Oh, you don’t want to talk about that. That’s ancient history.”

  “I do,” Kate said earnestly. “Please tell me what you know, Joshua.”

  He looked at Kate soberly, then said, “This isn’t exactly pleasant, Kate.”

  “I need to know,” she insisted.

  He breathed out through his nose, then said, “Well, if you must...Horace used to take in all sorts of riffraff into his house—drunks and thieves—and he occasioned less than reputable places.”

  “What kind of places?” Kate had an idea of where Parsons was going, but she needed to be sure.

  “Speakeasies, Kate.”

  “Okay...,” Kate said, considering the new piece of information. “But I was a teenager,” he added quickly. “What do I know?” He shook his head as his words trailed off.

  “So, tell me about this man.” Kate pointed to the one in the back. “Who is he?”

  “Beats me.” Joshua scratched his head. “I think he worked for Horace. Seems to me he was arrested for something not long after that...”

  “Arrested?” Kate said. “For what?”

  Parsons scratched his head. “Had something to do with some scam...”

  The statement struck a chord with Kate, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. She studied the image of the short man with the pinched face as he squinted into the sunlight.

  Of course! Horace mentioned someone running the store for him the week he took Leonetti fishing.

  AS SOON AS KATE GOT HOME, she pulled out the journal that had detailed the fishing story with Leonetti. She scanned the page until the name popped out at her: Chris Nelson.

  Here was a man who had full access to Hanlon’s Boutique and, considering the photograph, was at least an acquaintance of Jack Leonetti and Roy Simmonds. His presence didn’t release Horace from the possibility of guilt, she knew, but it did open a door.

  Kate needed to do more research to try to put the puzzle pieces together, so she headed to the library as soon as it opened on Tuesday mornin
g. She needed to learn more about this Chris Nelson fellow and his connection to Horace Hanlon.

  After chatting for a few minutes with Livvy and then settling into a chair in the computer lab upstairs, Kate typed in the name and waited while the search engine brought up articles on the many Chris Nelsons of the world. She narrowed the search down to Chattanooga, since Horace’s diary had mentioned him coming from there. Finally, on the fourth page, an article appeared.

  FEBRUARY 8, 1929

  STOCK BROKER BROKERED MORE THAN STOCKS

  Chris Nelson, a local broker with the Smythe Company of Chattanooga, lost his job today after charges of fraud were filed in county court. Nelson faces trial on the allegations next month.

  Horace’s assistant had been charged with fraud before coming to Copper Mill? Kate’s eyes scanned more quickly as she realized she was onto something significant.

  The article went on to detail the supposed scam that bilked hundreds of dollars from innocent investors, and after the stock market crash, it claimed, the man had heartlessly leveraged even more cash from desperate clients.

  Kate typed in the name of the firm, searching the same site for further articles on the case.

  The title of the next article said it all: “Nelson Found Guilty, but Judge Lets Him Off.” The jury, it read, convicted Chris Nelson the following month, but due to an overabundance of criminals in the county’s jails at the time and the nonviolent nature of the offense, the judge gave him a mere four-month sentence, including time served. Which left him free to move to Copper Mill and repeat his offenses.

  Finally another story surfaced. It was dated November 12, 1930.

  NELSON FOUND GUILTY OF BOOTLEGGING

  While suspicion surrounding Chris Nelson’s many “enterprises” remain, one thing is certain. The former stock broker from Chattanooga won’t be conning the citizens of Copper Mill anymore. Nelson, who spent his days working at Hanlon’s Boutique, was found guilty of bootlegging in Harrington County Court today and will be spending the next five years in jail.