As I drove, I considered the very curious situation we faced and tried to come up with a few plausible answers to some alarming questions. Why had no one in the family ever heard about an old gun and wedding document that revealed a mysterious wedding? And why had the gun and document surfaced now? Why was it on Granny Grace’s land? Did anybody else know the items were in the well?
I found it incredible that my grandmother had married a man nobody around Levi knew. Even in a small town like ours, somebody remembers past events, no matter how many years have flown past and no matter if said event had happened in a neighboring town. I hoped Mom would glean some information from the Jenkins ladies.
As the miles flew past, thoughts of that marriage document twisted in my mind. They made no sense at all. If Granny Grace had really married somebody named Markham Cauldfell on October 7, 1918, as the record indicated, then it was impossible that she was married shortly afterward on December 27 to George Daniels and lived with him for the rest of her life. If the first marriage had actually occurred, there barely would have been time for a divorce before the second marriage. A death might have made it possible and was the logical explanation. Maybe Cauldfell died along with thousands of other victims of the flu that plagued the nation in 1918. If Markham succumbed to the flu shortly after the wedding, Granny Grace could conceivably have gone ahead with a marriage to Grandpa George. My mom said she understood that her parents planned to be married as soon as Grandpa was released from the army. They had known each other all their lives and were best friends even before they were sweethearts. That was why it was not easy to believe that she had married anybody else but Grandpa. My grandmother was not a shallow person. From all accounts, she truly loved Grandpa George. For some reason, that marriage certificate must be false. It flew in the face of all I knew about my grandparents.
But what about the gun? Exactly what part had it played in the long ago scenario? Since it was found along with the marriage record, there had to be a connection.
I was suddenly blindsided by an idea that had been stewing in my mind ever since we unwrapped the sheepskin with its contents. Although the marriage record indicated the ceremony had been properly performed by the Reverend Monroe Hopkins, and signed by two witnesses, there was no recording information anywhere on the marriage certificate, or at least none that bled through onto the skin. If a legal document was not properly recorded in the clerk’s office of the county where the act was performed, it would not be considered legal, even a hundred years ago. So were they legally married or not? We might have to consult our attorney and Mom’s friend Jackson Conner about that situation.
I headed now for the newspaper office at Siloam. My task was not going to be easy. I knew from experience that digging through moldy old newspapers in storage bins that often hadn’t been opened for many years was unpleasant. However, reporters know there is a story behind every story that is published in any newspaper. Even if I couldn’t find anything about the first marriage, maybe there was something in all those ancient papers that would at least let us know who Markham Cauldfell really was.
The Tribune occupied an old house that was originally constructed for the vice president of one of the area’s first banks. Many years after the house was built, the tiny basement had been enlarged and shelves added for the thousands of file boxes that held a printed history of the town.
Today, the red-headed receptionist at the front desk smiled when I came through the door. “Nasty weather, isn’t it? But the weatherman says it’ll clear up by afternoon.”
“I certainly hope so since I’ve got to drive back to Levi before the roads freeze over.”
I explained my mission to her.
She shook her head thoughtfully. “You’re certainly welcome to go downstairs and dig through the files but I’ve got to warn you. We discovered a long time ago that the people who did the filing over the years sometimes seemed to pay no attention to date sequences. Although one box may be marked 1949, there could be back issues stuck in from a broad range of other years.”
Oh boy! That was just what I needed.
“And one other thing. I’m sure you’re aware that old newspapers are fragile and easily torn, especially if they’ve been damp at some time like ours have because we had a leak in the roof a few years back and rain ran down inside the walls to the basement.”
This was sounding more and more like a hopeless task, but I had to give it a shot.
“I’ll be careful,” I assured her.
She led me down unpainted stairs to two cavernous rooms that smelled moldy and damp. There was one improvement. I had been in The Tribune’s morgue once before and I recalled the large rooms being lit by four small overhead lights that made it necessary to use a portable light for most searches. Since then, someone at the newspaper had broken loose with enough money to install full-length overhead fluorescent lights that would certainly make any search easier.
Settling myself at the long, scarred table, I opened my laptop, took out my notebook, and pulled my reading glasses out of my purse.
First in line was a file carton marked “1910.” I soon discovered there were two, sometimes three, cartons for that entire year. According to the scribbled dates, there were four cartons for each year beginning in 1918. Evidently the war, the flu epidemic, and the failing economic situation provided more fodder for the weekly newspaper than had been available before those catastrophes struck.
By two o’clock, my eyes burned, my stomach growled, and my back hurt. The straight-back chair I sat in probably was as old as the stories I read. Undoubtedly made by hand, it was the sort of find antique dealers went wild about. I wondered if the receptionist upstairs knew that an authentic collectible languished in the basement among the long ago newspapers.
After reading until my sight blurred, I knew more about the heartbreak of the flu epidemic than I ever wanted to know and more about the fierce battles of WWI than seemed possible. I learned that the country had gone through a drought in 1917–1918 that made life doubly hard for many people, as though things weren’t hard enough already.
Rubbing my back, I stood and stretched. A bowl of chili and some fresh air were just what I needed. After eating, I planned to head for home. Nothing had turned up anything helpful to our problem but I had known when I came that it would be a long shot.
Closing my laptop, I shrugged into my coat. Then, as though Fate had planned the whole thing, my glance fell onto a tab sticking out of a carton on an upper shelf. On the box someone had scrawled 1911 but on the tab was another faded date: 1918. On tiptoe, I stretched upward and carefully pulled out the misplaced issue. It was only four pages. I spread it out under the fluorescent light and searched through much of what I already knew. At the bottom of the front page I hit pay dirt. Above a small article was a blunt headline: SON OF LOCAL CITIZEN DISAPPEARS. The newspaper was dated November 4, 1918.
This newspaper has been informed that Markham Cauldfell, son of Elmer and Edna Cauldfell disappeared from his home near Levi, Oklahoma, on Tuesday of last week. His wife, Grace, reported the disappearance to local authorities on Tuesday night. Mrs. Cauldfell related that her husband had gone hunting early in the morning and had never returned. A search was instituted but to no avail. Cauldfell recently returned from the army. Elmer and Edna Cauldfell’s extensive farm is located approximately five miles north of town. Markham Cauldfell attended Siloam Springs High School and graduated in 1913. The elder Cauldfells own Cauldfell’s Mercantile in downtown Siloam Springs.
Chili and fresh air forgotten, I dropped back into my chair. Although this wasn’t the sort of information I’d been looking for, it was certainly far more than I knew before coming to Siloam. Markham had returned to Siloam to be married because his home and his parents were there. I made a note to check into local history if we didn’t turn up anything else about the man.
Then I had another revelation. I had been reviewing the back issues of the paper sequentially, year to year, and stumbled onto thi
s 1918 issue that had been stuck in a 1911 carton. If there were other such misfilings, and based on what the receptionist told me, I was pretty sure there were, then common sense dictated that I should make a quick survey of the tops of all the cartons to see if there might be other years misfiled and sticking up where they would be noticeable.
There were. In the next hour, a quick scan along the endless rows of file cartons revealed more than a dozen back issues stuck into the wrong carton, as though somebody long ago had wanted to get them out of sight.
I made another find with a tab sticking out of a 1924 file that contained part of an issue from January, 1918. There were only two yellowed, ragged pages. I spread them out carefully under the brightest part of the new fluorescent lighting. It looked as though a rat had chewed on both pages and part of the article was gone. But there was enough of the faded newsprint to tell me much of what I needed to know.
Markham Cauldfell had been arrested because he had attacked another man on a downtown street. Also, he had been charged with assault and theft in a prior incident when he tried to take a horse that didn’t belong to him. It was impossible to get more details from the ragged front page.
I was still struggling to understand what I had read when the receptionist opened the door at the top of the stairs. “I’m sorry, but it’s closing time for us. I hope you found what you were looking for.”
Thirty minutes later, with photocopies of the old news stories in my briefcase, I climbed into my Ford Escape and drove out of the parking lot and west onto highway 412. The dark sky peppered sleet alternately with snow but I was too engrossed in thinking about those clippings from crumbling newspapers to worry about the weather. Now, however, many more questions than answers swirled in my thoughts. Circling round and round like a whirlpool was the recurring question: According to the newspaper, Markham Cauldfell was a resident of Siloam Springs Arkansas and served in the army in 1918. That same year, he returned from the War, married Grace Wolfe, lived in Levi, Oklahoma and disappeared. None of this would have mattered or been important to me except that neither Mom nor I had known of the marriage. Why had my grandmother married him when it was well-known that she was engaged to George Daniels, my grandfather. And why, after the brief newspaper article, was nothing more said about Markham’s sudden disappearance?
Chapter 7
I carried a couple of cups of coffee into the living room and handed one to my mother. “You look like the picture of comfort,” I said.
She smiled. “The fire sure feels good.” Dancing flames in the fireplace cast a glow over her small person as she sat in the old recliner, Jethro on her lap.
I settled down on the sofa across from her, kicked off my shoes and stretched my cold toes toward the blaze. “One thing we must be sure of in the new house is a fireplace. I’m glad we had this one repaired after the earthquake damaged it.”
Mom yawned. “I agree. And on a night like this, there’s no better place. You got back from Siloam just in time.”
The weatherman’s forecast had been wrong. This morning’s sleet had turned completely to snow shortly after I arrived home. Driving up Deertrack Hill between Levi and Siloam would not have been fun, had I waited any longer to leave the newspaper office.
Earlier, as we ate supper, I had recounted what I learned from the clipping about Markham Cauldfell’s disappearance. The photocopies still lay spread out on the dining table. Now it was Mom’s turn to share her gleanings from the Jenkins sisters.
A shower of sparks flew up the chimney as a log fell behind the dog irons. Since childhood, I liked to imagine pictures in those dancing flames. In my imagination, I could see future walls and roof taking shape. Yes, the new house definitely must have at least one fireplace.
Mom shifted in her chair. “I don’t know the exact age of those Jenkins twins but they’re getting up in years.”
“How strange that neither of them ever married. I wonder if they had any beaux a long time ago?”
“Well, I have heard stories through the years, gossip actually, about a young man who came courting one of them but he just up and disappeared one day.”
“Stories?”
“Yes, well, Darcy, you know rumors start about anybody who is a little different. Remember Old String?”
Oh, yes, the old man who went about picking up every little bit of string he found along the roadside. When he died, his house was so stacked full of junk that it took two weeks to remove it.
“You’ll have to admit, Old String was a little odd, Mom.”
“That’s neither here nor there, Darcy. Those two dear ladies, Carolina and Georgia . . . .”
“Were they actually named for states?”
“Their folks were from the South. They are of Cherokee ancestry and proud of it. They live way on the other side of town in that old Victorian house their daddy left them. They keep it as spruce and neat as the day it was built. Never knew them to work anywhere, but they attend that little Methodist church a couple of blocks from where they live. Haven’t missed a Sunday in 50 years, they said.”
My eyelids were starting to close in spite of the hot coffee. I set my mug down beside my chair. “They must have had money coming in from somewhere.”
“From their daddy, I imagine. He left them well off. Could be they never married because they never found a man to measure up to him.”
“How did you steer the conversation around to Granny Grace and Markham Cauldfell?”
“It wasn’t hard.” Mom chuckled. “We were sitting on what were probably expensive antique chairs, sipping hot tea, when Carolina, she’s the no-nonsense type, Darcy, Carolina looked at me with those piercing black eyes and said, ‘So, Flora Tucker, what brings you out this way? I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times you’ve come to visit.’”
“Georgia smiled and shook her head. ‘Now sister, you know it’s not polite to ask,’ she said.”
“I was grateful for the opening so I just came out with it, ‘You two probably know more about Levi’s past than most people and I’ve got a puzzle of my own I’d like to ask you, about something that happened during World War I.’”
“Carolina set her cup back into the saucer so hard I thought it would break. Her voice fairly crackled when she said, ‘We may be old, Miss, but we’re not that old.’”
“Georgia ignored her sister. ‘We heard stories about that time from Mama and Papa.’”
“‘You knew my mother,’” I said.”
“‘Of course. Miss Grace Wolfe. A real lady, not given to asking impertinent questions,’” Carolina told me. And then, as if to make up for her brusqueness, she asked if I wanted more tea.”
“I told her what I’d really like to know was whether she had heard anything about my mother in connection with a man named Markham Cauldfell.”
“The room got so quiet that I could hear the sleet bouncing off their front porch. Georgia paused with her teacup halfway to her mouth and Carolina just stared at me. Then Carolina said, ‘That was a long time ago, Flora.’”
“And Georgia said, in her soft, trembling voice, ‘There are some things about the past that should stay there.’”
“And, you know, Darcy, for the life of me, I couldn’t guide the conversation any further. Carolina kept talking about the Methodist Ladies’ Aid Society and what a good work it was doing. Georgia remarked that they’d better phone the grocery store and be sure they had enough food if we were going to have a blizzard. And so, I thanked them for their time and tea and left.”
“More coffee?” I asked, getting up to empty my own coffee which had grown cold. “That is amazing, Mom. The Jenkins sisters and Burke have both warned us about digging up the past. That means they must know something that we don’t. And what is it? What is so bad that nobody wants to talk about it? They are far too secretive.”
“And they intend to keep their secrets.”
“And I intend to find out what they are.” I handed her the refilled cup. “You said that t
he boyfriend of one of the Jenkins sisters disappeared. Don’t you find that strange? Markham Cauldfell disappeared too.”
“There couldn’t be a connection, Darcy. Mr. Cauldfell vanished about the time the Jenkins sisters were born.”
“Right. I’m just saying that it’s strange, Mom.”
A knock at the door stopped me before I could sit down. “Who would be out on such a snowy night?” I muttered.
Mom was right behind me as I went down the hall and swung open the door. Burke Hopkins stood on the porch.
“Mr. Hopkins, come in and get warm.” I stood aside for him to enter.
“I brought your eggs, Flora,” he said, holding out a wire basket.
“Surely you didn’t come out in this weather just to deliver these eggs. Come on in and have a cup of coffee. Warm up some,” Mom said.
“I don’t mind the snow. My old truck has good tires and can get through many a bad road. I won’t track all over your rug, Flora. Just wanted to bring the eggs since you mentioned the other day that you needed some. I’ve been thinking about our visit at Dilly’s and what ol’ Bruce said about wanting to know what you dug up. Just let it alone. People are curious enough already and who knows? There could be someone in town who might be afraid of whatever was in that box.”
I opened my mouth to say the gossip was wrong and there was no box.
He held up his hand. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. My father told me a few things about the old days and I understand that they were pretty rough. Just stay safe, the both of you.”
He waved, and left, the snow swirling around him as he stepped off the porch. Mom and I stared at each other. “He didn’t come just to bring those eggs,” Mom whispered. “He was worried about us, Darcy. He’s afraid for our safety.”
The Darcy & Flora Boxed Set Page 38
