Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing (5 page)

I must have looked confused because she went on to explain. “She hauls that stuffed thing everywhere she goes, even to the bathtub.”

I nodded and chose a peach flavored tea bag from the squirrel’s ceramic belly. Mrs. Allen sifted through three or four packs and finally settled on orange spice. “Susan told me you have company. I think she said a grand niece from over in Tennessee?”

“Well, I do have company. Pretty little thing. Missy. Don’t talk much, but she purely does love playing around in the woods and down by the creek.”

I smiled, dunked my tea bag a few times, and waited for more information on her visitor. Maybe there was a niece. Maybe I could report back to Susan that dementia was not an issue. Then I remembered the burned chair. What logical reason could Mrs. Allen have for setting a chair on fire?

“I suspect she’ll come back directly. She probably just got spooked when she seen you knocking at the back door.”

Before I could ask the little girl’s name, Mrs. Allen changed the subject. “Well now, you said on the phone you wanted to ask me about something. What would that be? I’m all ears. Wait a minute. Don’t tell me yet. I got to get that pound cake for us.” After cutting us generous slices, she sat back down. “Okay, I’m ready now. Eat your sweet treat and ask away.”

The first bite was sweet and light; the second saturated my senses with a buttery taste. “Wow. This is delicious. What’s your secret to making it so airy?”

“It’s the confectionary sugar and room temperature eggs that do it. It ain’t no secret. Is that what you come about? My pound cake recipe?”

“No ma’am. I’d love your recipe, but that isn’t it. It’s something I found at the library when I was researching a McNeal family living in this area. I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about them”

She tilted her head to one side and cleaned her wire-rimmed glasses with a napkin lying folded on the table. “Is that why you come to move up here from Atlanta, to search for your long ago kin?”

“Oh, no ma’am. I didn’t even know I had ancestors who had lived here. I just came to visit, and then saw the creek and the house…and….” I stopped, loosing the thread of my explanation. My hasty decision to exchange my city life and secure counseling practice for the uncertainty of the mountains was a mystery even to me. I don’t know why I did it. True, I felt burned out in Atlanta, needed a fresh start, needed…
hell, I don’t know what I needed. I probably needed therapy, that’s what I needed. But I opted to sell my Atlanta house and move. I loved my new home, loved Susan, and yes, loved Daniel, but after three years something still felt unsettled, transitory.

Thank goodness, Mrs. Allen interrupted the dialogue I was having with myself. “These McNeals. When was they living in Perry County?”

“Maybe around 1900. I found a January McNeal, his wife Reba, and a child listed on the census for that year. Fletcher Enloe seems to think this January McNeal was my great grandfather.”

“Is that a fact? I wish I knew something to tell you; but it ain’t likely I’m going to be much help. I didn’t move over here from Tennessee until 1947. That’s when I married Mr. Allen. I don’t rightly recall any McNeals.”

She warmed up our tea and I fished around in my purse for the scrap of paper containing notes about January McNeal. “Here it is. The census says January McNeal, a farmer, lived on rented land belonging to Joab Sorley. When I checked the location of that parcel of land, it seems it is located just north of my property on what is now called Fire Mountain. Then I found a deed from Sorley to McNeal dated two years later for the same piece of land. It seems the land Sorley sold was cut from a larger tract. You and I are sitting on what remains of that larger tract.”

My information seemed an astounding revelation to me, and I was excited to share it with Mrs. Allen. I waited, and watched her face for surprise. The look was about the same as if I’d told her it was daylight outside.

She washed down her cake with a swallow of tea. “Well, that don’t seem out of the ordinary. This here has been Sorley land since the late 1700s. That’s when the whites begin to steal it outright from the Cherokee.”

She shifted in the hard oak chair and seemed to be considering where to begin her story. “I didn’t know no McNeals. But I can sure tell you how come we’re sitting and sipping tea on Sorley land. You see, I was a Mullins; my daddy was Big Jack Mullins from East Tennessee. The Sorleys were cousins. That’s how I come to meet Mr. Allen. It was a Sorley cousin who introduced us at a camp meeting. When Mr. Allen died about five years after we married, I didn’t feel right keeping the Allen land. Mac’s daddy bought me out. At that same time, he bought out Daniel’s daddy’s share too, on account of he already had bought him a place over yonder where Daniel and Susan live now. Mac, Sheriff Mac Allen, got the Allen family land when his daddy died. I reckon you’ve met Mac?”

I nodded.

“Well, I can see you ain’t smiling, so maybe you don’t think much of Mac. But give him a little due. He’s honest enough and tries to do the right thing. It’s just that when a creek don’t run very deep, you wonder if much can settle to the bottom. You know what I mean?” I smiled. I did indeed know what she meant.

“Anyway, the same year I sold my share of the Allen land, cousin Jeffrey Sorley died. He didn’t have no children and willed what was left of the Sorley land, and this old house, to me. It’s about twenty-six acres betwixt the paved road, Fire Mountain, Fletcher Enloe, and your property. Fact is I think Jeffrey Sorley sold
your piece to Fletcher Enloe years ago, and Fletcher sold to the Goddard twins when his wife was sick with the cancer and they had so many doctor bills. Ain’t the twins the ones who sold you your land?”

I nodded yes, not wanting to go into the details of how much I loved my house and land, but not the memory of the Goddard twins scalping me on the other half of the deal—Granny’s Store—a non-earning asset if there ever was one.

“I reckon my point is, Sorleys have bought and sold land in Perry County near about forever. Course it wasn’t Perry County back then. It was still part of Buncombe County, I think, or maybe it was Haywood. I don’t rightly remember. Anyway, the tale is a Sorley bought about the original government land parcel sale. Paid two pounds, ten shillings for the first hundred acres, so the story is told, and got the rest for one shilling per acre. And you can rest assured the Cherokee didn’t get a dime, or a shilling. But, that’s another story all together. Fact is Sorleys certainly could have sold your great grand-daddy a piece of Fire Mountain. I do seem to recall hearing a story about that little mountain being named so because of a terrible timber fire that pretty near cleared it off. The old folks said you could see smoke from that fire clear down to the Georgia line.”

My dream of January McNeal watching the fire and screaming a warning to run for the cave came back to me. A shudder skidded up my neck. “Have you ever come across a burned out cabin on the mountain? A woman at the library told me she remembers hiking
Fire Mountain as a kid, and seeing the charred ruins of a house. She says it was near a waterfall.”

Mrs. Allen looked away, over my shoulder. Something, a change in the temperature, or the far away look in her eyes, made me turn my head to follow her gaze to a high row of windows in a tiny room off the kitchen. There, the arms of a coat hanger wire mobile, decorated with deep blue, glitter strewn construction paper moons and stars, moved to a breeze I could not feel. As if to join in the play, the spoon chimes outside over the kitchen door, chattered a furious, fast tune, and then stopped.

“Did you hear that?” She cocked her head, listening.

“The wind chimes?”

“No, not that,” she said, shaking her head, “It’s that little song she sings:
Ring around the roses, pocket full of posies, upstairs downstairs, we all fall down.”

“You mean your visitor? Your niece? No, I didn’t hear her singing.”

She leaned across the table and covered my hand with hers. “Mercy-me. Not Missy. Another little girl. The singing’s been coming on for years. Susan says you got the sight, so I thought maybe you could hear it, too.”

I felt the need to speak softly. “Oh no, Mrs. Allen. I’m sorry. I don’t have the sight, just intuition, like a lot of people.” She held my gaze, then closed her boney fingers on mine, waiting. “I really didn’t hear the singing, but…” I paused. Did I want to tell Mrs. Allen?

“But…but what?”

“Sometimes, bits and pieces of other peoples lives find their way into my dreams. It’s like a movie of their
sorrows, or unfinished business. It’s nothing I can control. The dreams just happen.”

“That’s the way of having the sight. It ain’t like having a telephone number you can call up. Can’t nobody control it. Least ways nobody I know. No ma’am, the sight just comes and goes, as it will. And you been having dreams lately?”

“Well, yes. I’ve had bad dreams about January McNeal. In the last dream he was watching a fire from a barred window, a jail window. I think my great grandmother, and a baby, were trapped in the path of the fire.”

She nodded slowly. “So, that’s it. Well, I reckon I understand now why you’re hunting stories about McNeals.” She closed her eyes. Her hand, warm and wrinkled from a life of canning and gardening, stayed on mine. Was she listening for the song again? Finally she came back to the kitchen and spoke. “What did you say was her name?”

“Reba. My great grandmother’s name was Reba. I found the marriage record saying her maiden name was Reba Connell, born in 1882. I also found a death record for her. She died in 1905 when she was twenty-three. The record says she died of “fever” and was buried in the Methodist cemetery. My grandfather, William McNeal, was only four when she died. I haven’t found birth or death records for January McNeal. Not yet.”

“Reba, that’s what I thought you said. Seems to me that name does mean something to me. Mercy-me, it’s purely sad she left a little one behind. Must have broken her man’s heart clean in two.”

Suddenly she bolted for the kitchen door, threw it open, and called out,

“Missy, you come on in here. It’s getting too cold to play outside. Come on. Right now. Miz Promise ain’t gonna mind you none.”

I joined Mrs. Allen at the open door. The yard looked empty, unless you counted the towels hanging from the clothesline, snapping in the wind.

“Do I need to leave so she’ll come out from her hiding place?”

“No. It’s all right. She’ll come in directly. I done remembered where I heard the name Reba Connell. Come on in here and help me dig for it.”

5

I followed Mrs. Allen into the tiny, sun filled room adjacent to the kitchen. Together we dragged a large, faded blue, plastic, suitcase. It must have weighed fifty pounds. How did anyone in the 1950’s schlep these Samsonite monsters around? We sat on a narrow quilt covered bed under the windows and she began to rifle through the contents.

“This here was left by one of my Sorley cousins. Stuffed mostly with papers, old photographs, and I don’t know what all. Just get yourself comfortable, Miz. Promise. Little Missy don’t mind iffen we sit on her bed.”

Instinctively, I looked to the kitchen door, half expecting a curious little girl to come through and ask us what we were doing. If a little girl really existed, outside Mrs. Allen’s imagination. The phantom breeze that had stirred the moon and stars mobile breathed across my cheeks and brought with it the scent of rosemary.

“I ain’t thought much about the suitcase for years. Excepting of course when the twins come around a year or two ago asking if they could read through the papers.”