October, 2012
Tricia Michaels was happy to be able to drive with the top
down on her Mustang on her way home from a trip to Jackson. Opportunities to do
so became considerably fewer in October than they were between mid-May and
mid-September. She had time to kill, so she decided to take a trip over some of
the back roads in the southeastern portion of Fuller County so she could take
in the color painting the nearby hills.
She turned off the highway to head south on Possum Hollow
Road, hoping to explore Possum Hollow Cemetery at the head of the hollow. While
going up the road, she wished that her husband was with her. They enjoyed
exploring some of the old Fuller County cemeteries together, especially on warm
and sunshiny October days like this. On the other hand, if he was with her, he
would have known about the gift she had ordered for him to mark their
anniversary. She could have saved a trip and ordered the gift from the
internet, but she decided that on a day like this it would be a shame to waste
the day by not going somewhere.
The cemetery gate was open when she arrived. Tricia thought
it unusual, considering some of the problems other cemeteries in the area were
having with trespassers. She parked outside of the enclosure before slipping
inside the gate which she closed behind her.
After wandering several minutes, she discovered a woman
sitting on a bench facing a set of headstones with the family name Brown
written on the primary marker. The woman paid no attention to Tricia’s
approach.
She appeared to be in her mid to late sixties. The woman wore
a simple house dress over an old yellowed undershirt which seemed to comfort
her on those few occasions when the warming sun went behind a cloud.
The occasional light breeze made a rattling noise caused by
the brittle leaves of the nearby trees. Tricia deliberately made little noises
to attract the attention of the old woman so as not to startle her. Still, the
woman made no indication that she knew that she had company until Tricia was
just a few feet away.
“You got a cigarette?” the woman asked when she finally
acknowledged Tricia’s presence. “Left mine back at the house.”
She did a quick visual examination of Tricia before narrowing
her eyes and pursing her lips. “You don’t smoke, do you?”
“Sorry,” Tricia replied. “I never took up the habit.”
The woman smiled as best she could. The missing teeth and the
crows’ feet testified to the fact that her tobacco habit had aged her
prematurely.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Tricia observed, hoping to initiate a
conversation.
“I suppose it is,” the woman replied. “I never paid much
attention.”
The woman’s gaze went back to the stones. Tricia looked down
to see the inscriptions:
James
Alvord Brown – 9/25/36 – 10/5/67
Nadine
Alicia Brown – 10/17/37 – 10/5/67
“Relations?” Tricia quizzed.
“My Mam and my Pap,” she replied.
“Your parents?” Tricia sought to confirm. “Sorry to hear
that.”
Looking at the stones again, she realized that the woman was
marking the anniversary of her parents’ death.
The woman shook her head. “I was only thirteen when they
disappeared. They walked out the back door and was never seen again.”
Tricia did some mental calculations placing the old woman
about the same age as her husband.
“If it weren’t for them goin’ away and for David, I’d a been
married to Johnny Ross.”
Tricia looked at the stones again and made a note of a third
marker:
David
Brown – 11/1/52 – 11/21/67
She noted another, fresher yet unmarked grave inside the
bounds of the family plot. “Another member of the family?” Tricia asked.
“That’s Evan,” the woman replied. “He killed his-self back a
year and a half ago. The Deputy what found him said he tried it before. I
di’n’t knowed he was still alive until he come up dead.”
“Were there other siblings?”
The woman nodded. “They was Rose and Timmy – They was the
youngest. Jim Junior is said to be in jail and they was one other sister.
Cain’t remember her name. Just as well. She most likely dead like them other
whores they took away to work.”
“What do you mean?”
Tricia smelled a story going much deeper than that of a
lonely old woman sitting on a bench in a rural graveyard.
“I need a cigarette,” the woman announced while getting up as
best as she could.
Tricia noticed that the woman had the beginnings of a widow’s
hump, offset by a bulging midriff. Her steps were slow, giving the impression
that the very act of walking was a painful chore. She paid no attention to
Tricia, heading toward the cemetery gate as quickly as she could manage.
“Could I offer you a ride somewhere?” Tricia offered.
The woman continued to ignore her, walking right past the
Mustang and on out the gate without missing a beat. She headed toward a farm
house less than a hundred and fifty yards along Rattlesnake Ridge Road then
disappeared.
Tricia thought a minute about following the woman but decided
against it. “I must have hit a nerve,” she thought.
She went to her car to get her tote and her camera, returning
to take pictures of the Brown family plot for future reference. After taking
notes, she got in her car and headed back to Magnolia by way of Rattlesnake
Ridge Road, taking care to close the cemetery gate behind her.
When she drove past the farmhouse where the woman
disappeared, Tricia noticed that the house and the nearby barn appeared to have
been abandoned. “Maybe she was a ghost,” she thought, stopping the car to take
a few more pictures. Her idea was dismissed when she remembered how much the
woman reeked of tobacco smoke. After taking a few more notes she drove off
toward Magnolia – this time at a much faster pace.
-----
Tricia almost thought about bypassing Magnolia to head
directly home. Instead, she decided to stop at The Blue and the Gray to see
what, if anything, Lizzie Elston knew about the Brown family. She arrived to
find Lizzie out on a swing on the front porch of the bed and breakfast enjoying
the warmth of the October afternoon.
“So you’ve been up to Possum Hollow Cemetery,” Lizzie
remarked after Tricia told her about her encounter. “This being the fifth of
October, the woman you encountered was Sally Brown. Sally very seldom leaves
her house on Possum Hollow Road – but every year on the fifth of October, she
goes up to the cemetery to sit and stare at her parents’ graves.
“Mind you, the graves are empty. Jim and Nadine Brown simply
disappeared back in nineteen sixty-seven before their kids woke up that
morning. They disappeared without a trace, never to be seen again, leaving
behind seven children; three girls and four boys. There was an extensive search
covering a three county area with no clue at all about where they went.
“David, the oldest of the children, took the family car to
search on his own and wrecked it on the highway just north of Portsmouth. He
died in the wreck. Johnny Ross and Lou Gilbert felt sorry for the family and
paid for the plot and the markers up at the cemetery at the top of Possum
Hollow.
“Johnny Ross was the Sheriff, you see,” Lizzie continued.
“When the Silver Bridge collapsed over by Point Pleasant, Johnny claimed that
the Browns were somehow on that bridge and were trapped in the wreckage.
Problem was that nobody believed Johnny Ross. They figured that he was a bigger
liar than the Granger boy – Fred, I believe is his name. The whole incident
cost Johnny Ross the election, the following spring. Most folks think that
somehow Johnny crossed Lou Gilbert by putting some of the blame on Quinton
Russell. It’s said that Lou rigged the primaries and Johnny Ross went up to his
house to retire.
“When the parents disappeared, there were rumors going every
which way. There was some speculation that they just walked out because they
couldn’t support all of their kids. There was also talk going around that Johnny
Ross and Lou Gilbert were somehow responsible.”
“Sally said something about her being taken away to be
married to Johnny Ross,” Tricia pointed out.
“It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if that was the truth,”
Lizzie smiled. “Johnny and Lou ran some of the shadiest deals ever seen in this
county for nearly twenty years. There’s talk that some of their business
dealings are still going on today.”
“I noticed another grave
up at what I assume was part of the Brown family plot,” Tricia remarked. “It
was unmarked. Sally told me that it belonged to a brother named Evan.”
“Evan was one of the Brown children, yes,” Lizzie told her.
“He died unexpectedly about eighteen months ago.”
“Sally told me that he was a suicide.”
“I figured as much. Death notices and obituaries seldom
mention suicide as a cause of death. It can tear some families apart if they
know.”
“What do you know about the other children?” Tricia asked.
“As I said, there were
seven of them in all,” Lizzie answered. “Aside from David, Sally and Evan,
there were Rose, Francis, Jim Junior and Tim. Sally still lives at the family
house with her common-law husband, Earl. The others scattered like the wind.
One of them is in prison, I think.”
Tricia sat for a while deep in thought for a while. Lizzie
continued to swing.
“What do you think about Sheriff Roy finding the Wherry girl
this morning?” Lizzie asked, breaking the silence.
“This morning? I hadn’t heard. I went over to Jackson just
after Glenn got off of the air to get him an anniversary present,” Tricia
stated. “Betty Wherry’s been missing for over a year, hasn’t she?”
“She disappeared just after school let out in Prentiss a year
ago in June,” Lizzie confirmed. “She was only fifteen. The family was said to
have been broke and struggling at the time.
“When they disappeared, Jim and Nadine Brown were said to
have been broke and struggling at the time.
“One story behind the Browns’ disappearance was that they ran
away to avoid their obligations, much like some parents did at the dawn of the
twentieth century. Maybe the Wherry family was having trouble paying their
bills as well… at least until recently. There may be nothing to it.”
Tricia smiled. It appeared that Lizzie was giving her a hint.
Perhaps the disappearance of Betty Wherry wasn’t quite the accident people
thought it might be.
Lizzie kept pumping back and forth on her porch swing in a
steady rhythm.
“Back in the day, a girl in the hills would fetch a pretty
fair price for someone wanting to marry,” she finally told Tricia. “Girls as
young as eleven or twelve would find themselves as brides to much older men who
wanted to produce offspring to continue their line. Ask your husband. That’s
what happened to the Smith girl he was so interested in at one time. She was
sold to that preacher – just like her sister was sold just before Hannah Smith
died.”
“Hannah Smith had a sister?” Tricia asked. “I can’t say that
I knew that.”
“There was good reason. She ran just after Hannah’s funeral.
The fuss her mother made about Hannah and Glenn and the woman’s subsequent
death eclipsed the sister’s disappearance.
“There are answers out there, Tricia Michaels. Some people
may not be happy if those answers were ever uncovered, but there are answers
out there.”
Lizzie Elston dragged her feet to stop the porch swing.
“Sally Brown, the Smith girls and this Betty Wherry. They
were all the same victims of the same sort of crimes committed in the name of
tradition. Maybe you need to go out and find out some more about what’s been
going on and write about it, young lady!”
Lizzie got up from the swing to head to the front door of the
bed and breakfast. She paused a moment and chuckled.
“I gave up teaching – now here I am,” she told Tricia,
“giving out a homework assignment.”
She walked back into the Blue and the Gray without another
word while Tricia sat and wondered how good a grade she might get from the
former teacher.
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