The Ghosts of Varner Creek Read online

  The next morning I awoke to the sound of a strange silence in the house. I was used to either hearing Sarah's heavy breathing in her bed near mine or else her high pitched voice bouncing off the walls of the kitchen, but this morning there was neither. I went into the kitchen and Pap was there with a glass of whiskey in his hand. Normally he didn't drink before going to work, just a lot when he got home, and there was a very unusual expression on his face. I didn't know what kind of emotion it was that put that expression on his face, but I knew it was something I hadn't seen before. He hadn't even looked at me when I walked in the kitchen and looked around. There was no breakfast on the small table, no fire in the oven, no Mama telling me to sit down and eat, and no Sarah. There was just Pap with that new expression and glass of whiskey. Seconds passed and he still didn’t say anything or make any facial change, so I did the obvious and asked, "Where's Mama and Sarah?"

  He put the glass to his lips, swished around a mouthful of lightning like it was mouthwash before swallowing it down and then said, "Your Mama done left us, boy. She done took your sister and they’re gone."

  Chapter 4

  There was a lot of back history about my parents I never could have known in those days. When I got older, my uncle Marcus told me quite a bit, as did Aunt Emma and others, and eventually I was able to put together much of the past that ended up having such an impact on my future.

  Annie Stotley was one of four children born to Tom and Mary Stotley on April 4, 1881. They lived in a three-room house Mr. Stotley had built in the new town of Varner Creek. Like so many others in town, Tom Stotley was primarily a cotton farmer, or to be more accurate he worked as a farm hand for Mr. Wilkins, the actual land owner who had purchased hundreds of acres from Pritchard Varner's estate. There were some sharecroppers, too, who simply leased land from Mr. Wilkins for their own crop and then paid him from their individual profits, but others like Tom felt that wage earning was a more stable income. Mr. Wilkins had cattle and other crops that could offset the loss if the cotton harvest had a bad year, so Tom was content to stay in the service of his employer. Besides, Mr. Wilkins was a fair man. When he did well, so did his employees. And when things were tough he and his workers could rally around one another. Everyone pulled their belts a notch tighter, and in that way nobody was ever left to starve. It was the same with other land owners in the area and it made for a very close-knit community back in those days. It was Mr. Wilkins' son, in fact, who at the time was at the state medical school in Galveston, who later become the town‘s first doctor.

  Mrs. Stotley was a woman between two worlds. She had grown up a fire and brimstone Protestant, raised by Bible-thumper parents, named for the preachers who would pound upon their Bible as they rained down sermons of punishment and vengeance. She’d been taught that God is not a forgiving deity, but rather should be feared always and obeyed without question lest He punish those who stray. But when she married Tom and they moved away she found most everyone around her didn’t follow the fire and brimstone way of thinking, and she never seemed to quite know what to think of people who thought God was so forgiving.

  The Stotley's small home sat just a mile or so outside of town on land they made payments on to Mr. Wilkins. They had four children, their oldest being a boy and then three girls, my Mama being the second youngest child. When their son Marcus was old enough Tom and Mary had him join his father working in the fields. Like his father he was quiet and reserved, but a hard worker. And when harvest time came around the entire family would put on their work clothes, which was everything except their Sunday clothes, and labor out in the fickle Fall weather picking the tufts of cotton out of the dry and prickly plants. It was mostly during the harvest time that Mr. Wilkins would pick up extra farm hands to help bring in the cotton. It was in this way that Annie Stotley ended up meeting Abram Mayfield.

  He wasn't from Varner Creek. He was in his early twenties and walked into town one day with a couple of other buddies, Uncle Colby included, looking for work. It was the harvesting season of 1895 and there was work to be had so the boys were in luck. His boots were old and worn from walking and his clothes dirty and full of holes. His walking companions were just the same and they were a rowdy bunch from the start. Mr. Wilkins hired them none the less and offered them thirty-five cents a day with three meals regular and a work house that they could rent by having some of their pay withheld. It was basically a one room shack that had a wood burning stove next to a few other shacks that shared an outhouse. It was set up just like the old slave rows, but since there weren’t any slaves anymore, everyone just called it worker's row. As soon as they got their first pay the boys bought the cheap liquor called white lightning that was sold in town and stayed up late drinking, playing cards, and trying to find a tune with a harmonica and a fiddle that only had two strings left, not to mention a big chunk missing out of the back.

  Abram noticed Annie Stotley his first week working. She was a pretty, petite girl of only fourteen with bright hazel eyes and long black hair that was as dark as midnight. Everyone was picking the cotton and she was hauling the water bucket around one day offering people a drink. When she got to him he gave her a charming smile and tried to strike up a conversation. "Hey, how’re you?"

  "I'm all right. Hot out here today, though," she responded. The weather had gone from a cool morning to a cooking afternoon again, as Texas weather has a nasty tendency to do.

  "Damn sure is." He dipped the communal ladle, took a deep drink, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He was a tall young man, about six foot, with brown hair and brown eyes. He had a somewhat nice smile but his lips were thin and his teeth were yellowed from too much chaw. Annie hadn't had a grown man smile at her like he was just now. She wasn't sure what was different about it but it made her feel a bit awkward and she felt flush on top of the heat. "Don't go too far, now," he told her, "I might want yah to come back pretty soon." He gave her a flirty wink, "Might want some more water, too."

  She smiled back at him, more out of habit than anything else, "Um, okay. Bye."

  As she went off to the others working in the field Abram whispered to one of his housemates standing next to him, "She’s a bit of a stick, but I bet she’d be a good roll in the hay, don’t yah think?" His friend Colby glanced up briefly at the girl Abram pointed at and went back to work without saying anything.

  And so it went on like that during the rest of the harvest. He'd find her in the fields and manage his way close by while they both walked down the rows stuffing their bags full, or sometimes her father would ask her to go fetch the bucket and get everyone some water, and Abram would always make her wait those few extra seconds so he could flirt a little and look her over. Finally he worked up the nerve to let her know what was on his mind. "You sure are pretty. What's your name?"

  She pushed her hair back over her ear and looked around like he had just said something that might cause an uproar. "Annie.” She looked around a bit more and seemed content nobody was paying them much mind. “Annie Stotley. What's yours?"

  "I'm Abram." He watched her gaze dart around. "How come you look so scared all of a sudden? I just ask your name."

  She kept her voice low, "I don't think my Mama would approve of us talkin'. She awfully strict about things like that," she said nervously.

  "And how’re we talking that's so bad?" he asked. "Nothing but telling our names and me just making a polite compliment. That's nothin' to get worked up over, now is it?"

  She watched her shoe and kicked around a dirt clod. "I reckon not, but like I said, she’s awfully strict."

  While they had been talking, Mrs. Stotley noticed her daughter taking far too long with one of the workmen some ways off. She didn't much like the looks of their conversation, either. She yelled out to her, "Annie! Go on and finish up and then come help me with this row."

  Abram was still giving her his most charming of smiles. "I gotta go," she said. "That's my Mama."

  "All right, then." She turned to go and he said
quickly, "Maybe we could meet up some time and talk some more."

  She paused. "I don't think I'd be allowed." She walked off but turned around again before she was too far away to be heard, and in a hushed voice called out, "Harvest festival’s coming up, though. We could talk then." She wasn't sure quite why she said it. He was obviously too old for her parents to approve of, but maybe that in itself had something to do with it. She didn't wait for a response because she could feel her mother's glare, so she walked away with a brisk skip in her step.

  Abram in the meantime had sex on his brain. He gave himself a little rub in his nether regions as he watched her trot away. His eyes followed the way her dress moved over her tiny frame and the way her pretty dark hair curled a bit at the ends despite the sweat. Mama was always pretty and it’s a fact that wasn't lost on Abram Mayfield that day as he watched her. His heart beat fast at the idea of lying down with Annie Stotley. He had heard of other men who'd get so wound up they'd sneak out and do their business with animals, sheep, calves, and what not. There was an old story on Worker’s row about a man who had been found moaning and bleeding in bed with a rear-end full of buckshot. The story goes he had been trying to put his pecker where God never intended it to go at a farm down the road during the night. The farmer had woken up thinking someone was trying to steal his animals and let go a volley of shotgun fire on the culprit when he saw him running bare assed from a pen by the barn where some calves were being kept for branding. The unfortunate recipient had managed to run off into the night and limp home to worker's row, but it didn't take long for everyone to figure out the bleeding miserable in the bed was the same animal fornicator from the barn. Or so the story went. Mr. Wilkins seemed to think it funny and never would confirm or deny its validity. No doubt Abram Mayfield was thinking that he’d never stoop to sneaking around barns with a swollen pecker. He made up his mind then and there he was going to lay with Annie Stotley.

  When all the cotton from all the area farms had been gathered, ginned, weighed, and sold, the small town prepared for the Harvest festival. It was three nights of dancing, eating, and general merry-making. At the end of harvest, the big tin building where the cotton had been weighed and stored before it was shipped, was cleaned out and converted into a big dance hall. A small stage was erected and long tables were brought in and put on one side. The festivities began on Friday night with barbecue and dancing. It flowed over into Saturday night with much the same, and it wrapped up Sunday with morning church and an auction that sold everything from arts and crafts to tools and livestock. Harvest Festival was the biggest social event in Varner Creek.

  During the day Friday, Annie and her sisters were busy fixing each other's hair and arguing over who got to wear the pretty floral pattern dress. Annie had one younger sister named Candace who was ten, and one older sister named Emma who was sixteen. All the Stotley women shared the same black hair and hazel colored eyes, but Annie was certainly prettier than her older sister, Emma. Annie had inherited her mother's petite figure and had very pretty, girlish features. Emma, on the other hand, was a large girl with a big chin and a somewhat masculine look about her. And seeing how the floral dress was a hand-me-down from their mother, Mrs. Stotley knew it wouldn't fit Emma.

  "Why don't you wear that yellow dress, Emma?" encouraged Mrs. Stotley, "It looks so pretty on you."

  "Mama, I wore that dress to last year's festival, not to mention last Sunday at Church," she complained., "I can't wear it again tonight. People will think I got nothing else to wear."

  "I'll tell you what, Emma," her mother said. "You wear the maroon dress you got for tonight and tomorrow you and I will take one of my other flower dresses and we'll see what we can do with it. Now how'd that be?"

  Emma was a little embarrassed that she couldn’t fit in her mother's dress, but she knew she couldn't fight the truth of things. She quit arguing with Annie with an air of resignation, "Okay, Mama."

  Even though Annie's younger sister had also played at arguing for the dress she knew just as well as everybody else that nobody was going to let her wear it. Besides being too small for it she'd be running and playing outside with the other children as soon as they reached the dance hall and getting dirt all over herself. She was put into one of Annie’s old feed-sack made dresses, just like she’d worn out in the fields.

  Mr. Stotley threw on a plain button-up blue shirt and didn't look much different than any other day, except that he was cleaner. It didn't take him more than two seconds to decide what to wear and he couldn't understand all the fuss the girls were making about who wears what and who had this on last week and that mess. He stepped outside away from the chaos, lit his pipe, and thought to himself, what I wouldn't give for some peace and quiet around here.

  Marcus, on the other, had been pestering his mother all day for his best shirt to be ironed for the second time. "I can't understand what your worry is about this shirt, Marcus," she told him, "it looks fine."

  "He wants to look nice because he likes a girl," teased Emma.

  "Really?" Mrs. Stotley couldn't hide her pleasure. She had secretly worried about Marcus and his finding a good girl to settle down with. He was already eighteen and hadn't shown much interest in anyone. He just kept to himself and wouldn't hardly talk to nobody. "Who do you have your eyes on?" she asked him with a curious smile.

  Marcus' cheeks went red and he tensed his eyes, "Nobody."

  "That ain't true," offered Emma, "He likes Mary Jo Greenley. They been talking for weeks now. I seen them holdin’ hands the other day."

  "Why don't you mind your own business!?" fumed Marcus.

  Candace started up a song, "Marcus and Mary Jo, sittin' in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G . . ."

  "Shut up, Candace," Marcus said. He didn't yell it, though. Marcus never yelled. He just tensed up his eyebrows and shot her a warning look.

  Candace giggled but stopped singing. Marcus could produce a most intimidating look when provoked. He had intense blue eyes unlike his sisters, and they could be both beautiful when he was in a soft mood, or downright menacing if he wasn't.

  Eventually, everyone was dressed, ready, and they started walking down towards the dance hall. They had a mule but didn't own a wagon of their own, so the family walked together. They hadn't gone more than a quarter of the mile to town, though, before Mr. Wilkins came by. "Y’all want to climb in back and hitch a ride?"

  Mr. Wilkins favored all the Stotleys. He knew them to be hard working and trustworthy people. He had already talked to Marcus about learning the blacksmithing trade from the man in town so that Mr. Wilkins could hire him later on to do all his metal working.

  "That's mighty nice of you, sir," responded Mr. Stotley. "You don't think it would burden your horses too much pulling all of us?"

  "Oh, not a bit Tom. They're young and strong, just like your kids there. And a little bit of exercise is good for ‘em. Y’all climb on up."

  Mrs. Wilkins gave them a nod in her bonnet with her gray hair poking out, "How do?" she asked.

  "Fine, Mrs. Wilkins. Just fine. Sure is a lovely dress you have on this evening," answered Mrs. Stotley. And they all made their way into town.

  They pulled up to the dance hall and Candace leaped out of the wagon before it even stopped. She saw some of her friends playing tag outside and went to join in. "Don't get dirt all over yourself, girl!" yelled her mother.

  "I won't!" she hollered back, running straight in to the cloud of kicked up dirt with the other children.

  "I swear, that girl sometimes," mumbled Mrs. Stotley.

  Annie and Emma got out and started walking around saying hello to everyone they knew. Emma looked downright scathingly at all the pretty dresses the other girls were wearing. Neither hers nor Annie’s were much different than the other dresses, but somehow Emma felt Annie fit right in and she didn’t. As they rounded the corner to one side of the building a big burly fellow poked his head from behind the building to see who was coming. He seemed oddly happy to see them and called out, "He
y, Emma!"

  Her eyes lit up, "Colby! What are you doing back here?" Emma immediately went around back to talk to him and Annie was obliged to follow. Apparently, Emma and Colby had sown the seeds of a secret romance.

  Behind the building, a number of men, mostly the out-of-towners but also some of the bachelor locals, were drinking, smoking, and swapping tall tales. Abram was among them, of course. He was puffing on a rolled cigarette and, noticing Annie, he walked over smiling, "Hey, girl, what’re you doing back here with us no goods?"

  Annie just looked towards Emma and said, "My sister."

  Abram glanced over to where her and Colby were chatting things up, "Oh, yeah. She’s got a thing for my friend, I think."

  Annie looked over and it seemed to be true. Both Emma and Colby were wearing grins. Emma was talking away and Colby just seemed to be contently listening. Annie just shrugged her shoulders and said, “Guess so.”

  There was an awkward pause as neither could think of something to carry the conversation forward. Abram held out the little cigarette for her, "You want to try this?"

  She made a facial look like he was offering her a booger from right out of his nose. "Naw, I don't want none," she said.

  "Go on," he said. “This here’s good tobacco, come all the way from New Orleans. We done planted some seeds around our place and as soon as we get some land of our own we’re going to get rich with it. It's a might better than anything they got around here."

  She stared at the smoking paper in his fingers, "I don't like the smoke. My daddy’s got a pipe, and it smells okay, but that stuff don’t smell too nice."

  He laughed a little bit, "No, I reckon you’re too young nohow." And he started smoking on it himself.

  She frowned a bit, "Am not, just don't like to is all. Besides, if my Mama smelled that on me she'd tan me."