Harvestman Lodge (47 page)

“I’ve seen the same manual in a junk shop,” Melinda said. “I wanted to borrow it or buy it but they wouldn’t allow it. I memorized parts of it myself right there in the store, so I could tell them to Eli.”

“I’m going to go see if I have better luck getting the copy she found,” Eli threw in. “I might even sneak it out long enough to copy it, then sneak it back in, if it comes to that.”

Feely shook his head. “No need for theft, however temporary, Eli. You can borrow mine. If you’ll take good care of it and get it back to me.”

“May I photocopy it?”

“Certainly, if you’ll be careful not to damage it. I’ll bring it by your office this week. I’ll even try to remember to take it to church with me tomorrow, in case you two really do show up there.”

“Thanks, Reverend.”

“Just Kyle, among friends.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, back to our history lesson, pupils. Our friend Mordecai Sadler put aside his interest in being a Mason and set about, with the help of friends who saw merit in his idea, to create a local fraternal organization free to develop its own goals, structure, rules of order. Some of the early notes and letters I’ve seen imply strongly that there was a hope the organization would thrive and grow, so that new branches of the Harvestmen organization could be set up elsewhere in the state. There seems to have been some faltering efforts toward that actually made in Erwin, Johnson City, and Hancock County, but nothing ever really took root.

“The Sadler family, upper branch at least, tends to stick together, so Sadler resources were abundantly behind the Harvestmen effort, and association with the Sadler name gave it clout. Hence this fine, big building, and the high public regard in which the Harvestmen were held early on. It was the ‘thing to do’ for a young farmer, or for that matter, the more energetic and social-minded older ones, to seek to be a Harvestman. Most of the early members were young, married men, starting families, farming old family lands or involved in some aspect of what today we’d call ‘agribusiness.’ Older men who became affiliated with the Harvestmen tended to be respected leader types: bankers, lawyers, merchants, men of good standing in the community and church. Several were Sadlers, of course, but there were plenty of other local family names represented on the earliest lodge rosters.”

“How important was the church aspect?” Melinda asked.

“In the early days, quite important,” Feely said. “As you are no doubt aware, there have been criticisms of the Freemasons over the years within the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, as well as from some of the more conservative voices in Protestantism, accusing the Masons of holding a view of divinity that conflicts with traditional Christian understanding. In saying this, I assure you, I’m not asserting the correctness nor the incorrectness of such criticisms, merely noting their existence and influence. Our friend from the camp meeting, Rev. Cadwaller, is an obvious example of vocal religious-based criticism of Freemasonry. Due largely to his influence on the man who founded the Harvestmen, every effort was made, initially, to ensure that nothing in the values, rules, and practices of the Fraternal Order of Tennessee Harvestmen would generate conflict with prevailing local Christian traditions. They tried hard to avoid what they perceived as the mistakes of the Freemasons in sometimes giving offense to the faithful. This led to a Harvestman tendency toward inclusiveness in membership, based on the idea that a group seeking to advance Christian actions in the world should emulate the church in being ready to embrace any who wish to share in the effort. It was also a reaction against the perception that becoming a Mason was challenging to achieve. The Harvestmen wanted a more welcoming image. Thus few prospective members were blackballed. The result may have been positive in terms of bringing together local men from different social, educational, and financial strata, men who normally might have little contact with one another … but it also had a diluting effect upon original organizational values.”

“What do you mean?” asked Eli.

“Well, some of those who became part of the Harvestmen did so because they sincerely shared those initial values. Others joined for the sake of being part of something new, popular, and growing. Still others, it eventually became clear, saw the Harvestmen merely as a potential haven for very low-brow culture, recreation, and entertainment. To put it in a more plain-spoken way, they wanted to turn the Harvestmen organization into a low-class men’s social club, a place for drinking and the pursuit of various vices, all hidden behind closed doors, drawn curtains, and the a veneer of professed Christian values and good citizenship. It was this latter contingent that, in the end, prevailed. No surprise there, really. Our faith teaches us that we are fallen beings, prone to turn away from the right and embrace the wrong.” Feely paused and looked around the room. His tone became more somber. “And if what I’ve been told by some sources is true, the wrong that was embraced here was of a particularly vile variety, just how vile being mostly unknown to those members who held to the initial high standards and values of the organization.”

“What are we talking about here?” Eli asked. “Gambling? Prostitution? Orgies? Some kind of hillbilly Hellfire Club? Because, frankly, knowing the prevailing values and culture of conservative East Tennessee, I can’t see how such a group would be allowed to survive.”

Melinda pointed out, “Well … if you’ll look around, Eli, you’ll be reminded that it hasn’t. Survived, I mean. The only Harvestmen in this place now are the kind that climb the walls and curtains on eight legs.”

As if cued by her words, a Daddy Longlegs crawled up her back and over her shoulder, perching there, unnoticed by Melinda, until Eli brushed it off.

“IT WAS A MATTER OF slow degradation of original impetus, not to mention changes in the times and surrounding culture,” Feely said. “At its start, Harvestman Lodge enjoyed the benefits of its newness, good intentions, and endorsement by the most respected men in the community. There even was serious talk of finding a sculptor to create a life-sized statue replicating the image of the plowman that was the symbol of the fraternal society. As time went by, and particularly as economic conditions crumbled in 1929 onward, the novelty and appeal of the Harvestmen eroded. People had far more pressing matters to concern themselves with than participation in some homegrown secret society completely lacking in deep-rooted heritage and tradition. And most had far too little money to spend on membership fees when they had families to feed and clothe. Membership levels began to fall, the original charitable spirit behind the group’s formation faded in light of the need of families simply to survive. For a time the Harvestmen appeared on the brink of dissolution … and in light of what came later, God only knows it would have been best if that dissolution had actually happened back in those earlier days.”

“Where did you pick up all this information?” Eli asked. “You seem to know a good deal, and have a lot of confidence in what you’re saying.”

“I’m not free to name all my sources of information – as journalists both of you understand that situation, I’m certain – and if I seem to know a lot, it’s as I said before: it’s information in broad strokes, lacking in fine detail. When the Harvestmen organization breathed its last in the 1970s and disappeared, most of the old membership records disappeared with it. Even the oldest ones. Families who formerly were proud that dear old grandpa was one of the founding Harvestmen no longer wanted the fact known, and began to hide and deny their own family histories. Somebody did some major house-cleaning, records and documents being fed to the flames, literally. Probably in that big fireplace on the other side of this wall.”

Eli was frowning. “I’ve noticed when I was going through old newspapers, doing magazine research, that there are entire bound volumes missing … and the microfilmed copies have gaps, too. Whole reels gone, and in a couple of cases, scissored into pieces. I asked David about it and he said nobody knows what happened … apparently someone spirited a lot of old newspapers out at sometime past. Who and why, nobody knows.”

“I can take a good guess as to why,” Feely said. “As for who, I doubt we will ever know.”

“Dear Lord, what was done in this place?” Melinda asked. “It must have been very bad.”

Feely stared into a corner. “It was. If my suspicions are even close to right, it was bad indeed.”

“Tell us,” Melinda said.

And he did.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

THE REMAINDER OF THE exploration of Harvestman Lodge went forward largely in silence, Eli and Melinda made somber by what Feely had told them.

“Are you certain of all this?” Eli had asked when Feely had finished laying it all out. “Because if you are, then there should have been, and still should be, response from law enforcement and the courts.”

“I agree,” Feely said. “The problem is lack of a specific set of facts to attach my suspicions to, and of course lack of proof. I heard enough from various sources to come to my own conclusions and privately feel confident in them, but that’s a far cry from being able to prove a particular set of facts. Got any lawyers in your extended family, Eli?”

“I’ve got almost no extended family left … but there were some lawyers among the bunch, in the past.”

“Well, if they were courtroom lawyers, you can rest assured that they would have been able to tell you stories about persons charged with crimes that they had certainly done, but who then were exonerated because of gaps in the proof. Almost every courtroom lawyer I’ve personally known have had clients they knew to be guilty, but who got off for lack of the proverbial ‘smoking gun,’ to resort to a cliché. My point being that it is possible to be subjectively quite certain of something, while still being unable to prove it.

“That’s what we face here in Harvestman Lodge: something happened here, I know the basics of what it was, and now you do as well, but there is no single piece of key evidence to define precisely what, or who, was involved. Thus have arisen all the wild rumors and speculations, most of them drifting far from the truth.”

“No one who knows the actual story first-hand is willing to talk?” Eli asked.

Feely shook his head. “And those who
would
talk had not seen enough to close the circle. What is left when it is all laid out on the table is a jigsaw puzzle with the most crucial pieces missing. Pieces no one possesses, or is willing to admit to possessing.”

“Does Erlene Ledford know the details? Or is she just as nutty as she seems?” Melinda asked.

“I think Erlene is a little nutty, to speak candidly … but yes, she has a clearer picture than most of what happened. And after speaking to her, I came to suspect she might even know the identity of the individual hurt most by what happened here … ”

“Of the ‘Rising Angel,’ Melinda said.

“Yes.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Only that it was a child.”

They traveled on through the big, empty building, a place that now seemed haunted by more than an old mystery. There were souls lingering here, surely, hiding in the shadows with the harvestman spiders.

FEELY’S KEY TO THE entrance door of Harvestman Lodge also opened several interior doors, including those along the rear hallway into which Eli and Melinda had first entered. Empty spaces, most of them were, a few with stray cheap folding tables and chairs. There were a a handful of wall-mounted chalkboards and even a few early-model film laminate dry erase boards, none with so much as a complete word upon them, only scraps and tags from incomplete erasures done God only knew how many years before. They saw it all by the faint light of a pocket-sized flashlight that Feely had.

Near the end of the hallway was a door leading into what had once been a kitchen, now devoid of appliances beyond a bin-style ice machine, pointlessly still plugged into a wall socket. Cave crickets hopped on the floor.

Past the kitchen, another door, the only one they had yet encountered with a word plate still upon it: INDUCTIONS AND INVESTITURES. The lock hadn’t been opened in a very long time, and it took a good deal of key-jiggling and knob-shaking for Feely to make it turn.

Revealed was a chamber about the size of a typical corporate board room, paneled with fine polished wood rather than the cheaper material on the walls of the hallway, kitchen, and other secondary rooms. They could see it all dimly by light coming around the curtains of two east-facing exterior windows in the chamber. As Feely drew back the curtains to brighten the light, Eli realized there was something familiar about the room, and saw it was designed in apparent scaled-down imitation of the large main hall up front. There even was a fireplace on one end, far smaller than the big one up front, and on the opposite end, a small stage.

Most interestingly, on the stage was a very fine chair, the only item of furniture in the room. The chair was made of what looked like mahogany, excellently crafted and polished. It bore much ornamentation, including inlays of lighter-colored wood in swirling, ornate patterns. The chair looked very nearly like a royal throne, and was bolted to the floor, dead center on the small stage, across which two mice were just then scampering.

“So here is where they inducted new members and gave out honors and so on,” Eli said.

“That would be my guess,” Feely replied. “The manual I have makes reference to ceremonies involving an ‘induction chair’ in which inductees sat to take their pledges and so on. This is the chair, surely. I’m astounded it was allowed to simply remain in this empty building, given what a fine piece of work it is.”