PLACES; Eight Place Stories

PLACES

Eight Place Stories

by Ralph Bowden

Copyright 2013 Ralph Bowden

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Table of Contents

The Bohannon Cemetery

Pete’s Place

The Keller Range Plant

McCutcheon Meadows

Cinderella Tank

St. Cecelia’s Beach

Nelson Furniture Manufacturing Company

The Corinth

Author Notes

The Bohannon Cemetery

Here comes somebody, old Emmett Bohannon (bornd Dec. 29 1839, Gone frm this wrld July 8, 1902) muttered. As patriarch of the place, it was his duty to keep watch.

I knew as soon as them cows was gone, somebody would happen along, Versey (Versey Smith Bohannon, Lvng wife of Emmet, Frm the Ld. 1840, To the Ld. 1899.) said.

The hiker, equipped with staff and small backpack, ambled slowly up across the gently sloping pasture to the old Bohannon cemetery. He stopped and looked at the gate for a minute. The Grantham boy, nephew of Emmett's great grandson, when he mowed the field back in May, had wired the gate shut to keep new cattle out. Not that cows came in much anymore anyway. Inside the fence, the place had grown up thick with sumac saplings and periwinkle, which cows didn’t like. Years ago, they used to wander in and leave cowpies everywhere, even on the sunken places.

Wired shut or not, the ancient gate, weathered to a collection of rough sticks, was no real deterrent to a determined inscription-rubber like the visitor that had come along three or four years ago. But lush poison ivy cascading off the huge cedar tree that served as a gatepost made entrance treacherous.

He's not comin’ in, Versey said. I can tell. He's just up here for the view.

Aunt Gertie (Miss Gertrudy Smith, July 4th, 1837, July 8th 1890) came out now too. She had lain quiet for weeks – actually since the mowing, the last excitement. Being still wasn't like her. When alive, she always had to be going on at somebody, too busy correcting, instructing, nagging, bossing, ever to listen to them, or to notice the effect of her words – or to catch a husband. The only time she spoke up these days was when somebody new, from outside, arrived. A visitor, then? she croaked – she had worn her voice out in middle age, and couldn't expect it to heal now, even with prolonged rest.

Nobody we know, Emmett said.

It was as Versey said. The visitor looked in at the three stones for a few minutes. Then he started to turn toward the western view, but stopped halfway.

Look there, Gertie said. He doesn't care about us. He's come up for that Rogers man, she snorted.

Hush, Gert, Versey whispered. Just because he doesn't speak with us doesn't mean he's away.

The visitor walked a few paces to the side along the rusty barbed wire fence, mostly exposed now because the Grantham boy had used Roundup on the Virginia creeper and blackberries – for no good reason except that his mother insisted a burdened fence showed a lack of care and respect. Where the old fence turned down the side of the Bohannon plot, a new, galvanized, chain link fence joined it to enclose another plot, almost as big, though only one stone resided: Hershel Rogers: Husband, Father, Businessman. An Honorable Life Without Enemies, June 12, 1933 – April 19, 2004. The weeds around it were thigh high, obscuring the heaps of faded plastic flowers covering the massive stone base. Hershel's stone stood high and proud – or arrogant, depending on your point of view – above the weeds.

Well, if Hershel Rogers is too good to speak to us, I don't care what he hears, Gertie went on, and I'll speak my mind.

We know you always do, Gert, Emmett grumbled, but there's no point rilin' up the neighbors, where-ere you're at.

The hiker peered in at the stone, new, sharp, and shiny, except for bird poop. A setting sun design on the west side faced the real thing. He turned and looked to the west to enjoy the view for a few minutes. It was magnificent, especially now with the sun sinking and redding through a few sky wisps, on for miles over rolling hills, still mostly green but with a first touch of autumn.

Then he shuffled along the chain link around to the back of the Rogers plot.

All right, what do you think of that, now? Gertie fussed. Having your picture cut on your stone by some new-fangled contraption, she said. If that's not sinful pride . . . .

Now Gert, we know how you feel about it, Versey chided. Of course, I'm inclined to agree for the most part, 'specially since he had such an unpleasant look about him.

Y'all hush, now, Emmett said. A man can't help how he looks.

The visitor smirked briefly at Hershel's high-tech lithograph, with its string tie and pretentious oversized hat, and the permanent, beetle-browed scowl. Then he turned around and looked east, to see what Hershel saw. A mound or knob rose above the pasture, scrubby rock land, eroded, stripped of its timber decades back and now supporting only cedars, stunted oaks and boulder outcrops, certainly no view to spend eternity contemplating.

That's right! Gertie crowed. See? That's what his seed thought of him. Turned him around, they did. Served him right that he should look at what he left her.

Now that's gossip, Gert, her sister said. You can't trust what boys like that say. Gravediggers is liable to talk outlandish stuff when they work. Remember what they said about you?

That Jakes fellow always was spiteful to me! Of course he'd say things like that after I tried to set him right with his maker that time when he . . . . But them boys that put Hershel down, why, they knew about him! I'm sure they did.

I don't know that, Emmett answered. Didn't make sense to me. Give that woman a worthless knob in the middle of his property? Naw. Ain't no use to her or nobody, surrounded like that.

The visitor turned again to glance over at the Bohannon plot, as if pondering the relation between the new stone – expensive, substantial, and well-protected but obviously neglected – and the three fallen-over stones in the adjoining plot, covered with moss, the edges softened and the inscriptions blurred by a century of seasons.

I think he's a Rogers, Gertie pronounced. Something about the eyes.

No, surely not. He didn't bring no flowers, Versey observed.

Who brings flowers anyway, I ask you? Gertie said. When does anybody bring us flowers?

Our people are gone. Like us, but somewhere else, Versey said. But Hershel Rogers has only been down, what, year and a half now? You heard it: they said his children are still here and own all this land – except the knob, of course.

But have they ever been here to care for his place? She brought all them fake flowers right after. Carried on, made quite a show. But she hasn't been back since, you know. Once they read the will, she probably got a sight less weepy.

Now Gert, we got no business talkin' about the dead that way. Disrespectful, it is. Emmett said.

The hiker walked on a few steps to where the Rogers chainlink joined the Bohannon barbed, stopped a minute, looked around, leaned his staff against the fence, unzipped and watered the fencepost.

Well! Gertie huffed. Talk about disrespectful! He must be a Rogers. None of our kin would act like that. At least I surely hope times ain't come to such a pass.

Well, I don't know, Versey mused, men being what they are. But what I wonder about is why she should have been so affected if what they said was true. You know, about her doing him in like that for what she'd get in the will.

Those fellas was talkin' through their hats, Emmett grumbled. No woman's going to get her man to act up over her in bed just so's he'll have a heart attack and die. Now that just don't make sense either.

Em! What a thing to say! Versey complained. And in front of Gert, too!

The hiker was now making his way back down across the pasture.

Well look at that now, Emmett said. Goin' back the way he came. I should have thought he meant to climb the knob and just stopped by here to relieve hisself. Maybe he did come up to see Hershel or us.

Gertie sniffed a few times and started to fade, now that the excitement was retreating.

Emmett continued: What I really can't figure is why Hershel Rogers should want to rest up here, next to us. Just because he bought the place ten years back from Vergie doesn't make it his home. You'd think he'd want to be downtown somewhere – whatever's there now – near where his children live, in his own churchyard.

Gertie came back at that, in tighter focus again. 'Churchyard?' You think that man had a church? I doubt very much that Hershel Rogers ever set foot into the Lord's presence. Didn't they say he was living in sin with her?

They just said he and her weren't married, Gert,