CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

         In 1900, in The Northern Woods Territories, farming was rough for all. That year agriculture was still feeling the effects of the drought of 1899 that swept the Territories from March through October. Even winter had arrived late in 1899; the first snowfall was on October 21st, an unprecedented latecomer. Those farm families which survived 1900's subsequent shortages were those who had been both wise planners and possessed of sufficient stores to pack away for the Wintertime.



         Some other farmers survived only because of the largesse of The Testament Logging Corporation, the region's largest employer (and for those close to The Big Forest, the only employer. (The exception to farming and logging occupations in The Big Forest region was the Village of Knox General Store, operated as an ongoing family business, by the Grishams. Joshua Grisham had inherited an itinerant peddler business from his grandfather Walter. (Joshua's father Grigory had not wanted any part of that; he had tried his hand at both logging and farming, succeeding at neither-one of the few Grishams who was not inordinately successful-such wouldn't occur again until Grigory's great-grandson Carl. Grigory had died rather young, age twenty-seven, when the wheel on his mule-pulled single-wheel plow collapsed into an unseen rut, and Grigory's chest and abdomen collided with the plow handle.) The Grishams had long been tinkers in the Old World, and when they emigrated to The Northern Woods Territories shortly after the emigration of the Cloverdales, Knutsons, and Calhouns, the business naturally became part of their life in the New World. Once the family established itself, and farming and logging had become significant occupations in The Big Forest Region, with its accompaniment of buyers in need, the Grisham tribe constructed and opened for business a General Store, which later became the Village of Knox General Store, once a settlement grew up around it, near to the edge of The Big Forest.



         One of the farmers provided for by The Testament Logging Corporation in the drought months of 1899 and the subsequent painful months of 1900 was Callwood Jenks, the grandson of imported Africans brought over for slavery in the Carolinas, who had escaped on the Underground Railroad and found safety, and land available, in TheB Big Forest region. Callwood's grandpappy Rolland worked first for the Jennell Farm, a vast acreage stretching on the North up to The Big Forest, South to the town of Rennald, and East to-even the Jennells didn't know the limits. On the West Jennell land was bounded by Calhoun land: the Calhouns, Knutsons, and Cloverdales were the other big landowners in the Region, and were pretty much intertwined by marriage and descendants. The Jennells tended to keep to themselves for the most part, marrying outsiders (out-of-towners, out-of-staters), although a few, including Alexander Jennell, who employed Rolland Jenks, married a Cloverdale heiress, Lucinda.



         Rolland had been a field slave on a vast plantation in the Carolinas and was of course no stranger to work, before dawn till after night fall. His wife Loreta had been a house slave. Alexander Jennell witnessed the diligent efforts both gave on his behalf, and carved out a narrow wedge-shaped piece of land which he gave to them for settlement. He liked to joke that “he had carved out a piece of the pie for them hard-working darkies,” and the farm plot he gave them really did resemble a slice of pie, if the cook had carved wide at the crust, where the farm met The Big Forest, then narrowed down along both sides headed to the end, at the dirt road that ran out of The Big Forest on the East, past the Village of Knox and its General Store, past the wedge-shaped Jenks place, almost dead-ended at the Jennell property but instead turned South and went to Rennald.



         Rolland and Lorita Jenks prospered, as much as any tenant farmer-sharecroppers of color with a very small, very oddly-shaped farm, could prosper, but when it came to offspring, they were not as sufficiently blessed. Lorita bore one son, William, who in turn bore one son, Callwood. Callwood married a girl from beyond Rennald way, and they bore one son, Willis. Unlike Rolland, Lorita, William, Callwood, William's wife Loisa, and Callwood's wife Merelda, Willis was NOT a hard worker. He was a ne'er-do-well who would as soon slack off as look at you, and every single time Callwood would set him to a task-plowing behind their old mule Bessie, walking the harrow, planting seeds-just as soon as ever Callwood had gone back to the barn to get a tool or an implement, or strode over to another section of the farm to work, Willis would drop whatever he had acted like he was working at, and run off. Most times he'd take the mule with him, especially after he met up with a girl from past the Jennell Farm, real close to The Big Forest to the North and East, who worked for Lucius Cloverdale's wife Lolee Bee.

Willis met that girl-Clytie-when she accompanied Miz Lolee Bee on a trip to a seamstress at Rennald, and then came up to the Jennell Farm to visit with Farmer Jennell's wife, Marilynda, who was some sort of distant cousin to the Cloverdales.



         Theodore Jennell had set Callwood and Willis to work on the Jennell Farm that day, albeit some distance yet from the farm house, but work had never yet managed to distract Willis, and about one PM he decided he wanted a drink of water, and took off for the pump back of the farm house. Before he even got there, he saw someone had the idea even before him: a lovely, slender, tall, dark-skinned honey who immediately captured Willis' eye. For once he put on a burst of speed, ran up to the pump, and gallantly offered to fix her a cup of water, to which she smilingly replied that she already had one, but sho would appreciate jest one more. From that point on, Willis and Clytie were just as inseparable as two lovers in their respective positions could master, and before long, also, Clytie blessed Willis with a little bit of news. Unlike some in his situation, Willis didn't disappear when he learned of the impending offspring; instead, he left his Pappy's farm, moved Clytie to Rennald, got a job cleaning up and bussing tables at Mazie's Diner. Clytie cooked there, too, as long as she could, right into her eight month, and she and Willis had a happy and steady life together until their son, Clyde, was born.



         Clyde was a hefty, solemn, and mostly silent newborn. Almost too large for the thin Clytie, his birth came about only after nearly eighteen hours of labor. Amazingly again, Willis hung in through the whole endeavour, not even leaving to tend to his job at Mazie's. Trouble didn't begin till a week after his birth. Willis had returned to work as soon as he was certain that Clytie and the babe were well, and he was gone from before dawn, when the baking began at Mazie's, to after dusk. He told Clytie that he was even considering taking up a second job, working on the loading dock at the new feed store that had just opened up in Rennald. Clytie and now this baby Clyde had made a whole new man of the formerly shiftless Willis.



         Everything changed when Clyde was just six days old. Willis as always had gone to the diner about four AM, just after Clyde's final night feeding, kissed Clytie goodbye and kissed the baby on the top of his little head, smiling to see him cuddled close in his sleepy Mamma's arms. When Willis came home that night about eight o clock, long after dark since this was November, and walked in the kitchen door eager to see Clytie and their son, He was amazed that neither lantern was lit, and supper wasn't waiting on the wood stove. He hurried into the narrow bedroom and found their bed empty, and Clyde laying quietly in his crib, staring up at the ceiling, moving his eyes only when his father walked up next to him. The tiny house only had two rooms, and one closet, so within five minutes or less Willis had searched it all. Then he checked to made sure Clyde was dry (he was), lit the lantern, and went out in the small back yard to search. There was a shed left from the previous owners, but it was intended as a garden tool shed and not anything sizeable, barely high enough to stand straight in. No one was in the shed nor the yard, no one in the house except Clyde in his crib, still quietly watching the ceiling water stains. When Willis walked back into the kitchen, he finally noticed on the floor, about midway between the two-person round scratched table and the back door, an oval blood spot, dried, not even as big as his thumb. Now he laid to searching with a redoubled vengeance, looking on walls, in the sink and under it, and across the wood stove's top, inside the stove, under the table, in the closet, under the bed. The house had but the one door, in the back, from the kitchen, not even a door between the kitchen and bedroom, which was the front room, just an open doorway. There literally was nowhere Clytie could be hiding. She only possessed three dresses and one pair of shoes. All three dresses and the shoes, remained in the closet. When Willis had left at four AM she had been in bed in her nightgown, sleepily cuddling Clyde after his feeding. Now Clyde lay in his crib, in a fresh nightshirt, dry, still not crying.



         Distraught Willis couldn't think, couldn't act, could only feel. He considered getting to the Sheriff, but had no way to get to the Junction, and he didn't know if the Sheriff would even concern himself in this case, Willis and Clytie being “darkies.” So he did the only other thing he could think of: he bundled up Clyde and his few baby clothes and nappies, and started walking, going home to his daddy Callwood, widowed himself now these several years. It was a very long walk for the two, some five miles just to reach the dirt road that would later be renamed New Knox Road. From that point Willis had to follow that dirt road a ways east, a mile or so, and then another half-mile Northeast on a winding narrow rutted driveway to his Daddy's farmhouse. So it was that Willis and Clyde finally reached the farm about three AM, and Willis fell against the door, just too exhausted to even knock. But some intuition triggered old Callwood awake, and he opened the door within minutes, catching his son and grandson as Willis nearly fell in the door. He sent Willis to bed in his old room and tucked Clyde up in his own bed, then put on a pot of coffee, fixed his breakfast and started his day early.



         It was about noon and Callwood was in the rear forty, near The Big Forest, plowing furrows, when Willis showed up carrying Clyde.







         Willis followed instructions, tucking the infant up against a pine bore so he couldn't accidentally row, and went back to his Pappy. Amazingly, he took the plow himself and let Callwood walk beside him as he explained, telling how he had come home at eight o'clock after his work ended, and found no supper, no lantern lit, the woodstove unlit as well, and the baby in the crib, dry, in a fresh nightshirt, just staring up at the ceiling. Until he said that last, Callwood had simply walked alongside the plow, on the opposite side from his boy, grateful that Willis had shown initiative and diligence still, as he had since he had met Clytie. But when the young man told of Clyde lying in his crib watching the ceiling stains, Callwood startled and turned toward his son.



          “Tell me that again, son, the part 'bout the babe.”



“He was in the crib, just like she had laid him there after a feedin', Pappy. His nappy was dry, and you know, it don't take long for lil' babies to wet! And his shirt, it were fresh too, just like he'd just had him a bath. And he were just a-layin' and a-starin' up to the ceilin, like.”



         Callwood nodded, but he didn't look his son in the eye again. He knew now exactly what had happened, and why. Callwood had served The Testament Logging Corporation since he was a boy of fourteen, sacrificing to the Testament Core, and the evil entity buried deep in the heart of The Big Forest, on the night before his fourteenth birthday, the night of dark of the moon. Callwood knew-he knew that Testament service was part of his lineage since that night, far more so than tenant farming for the Jennells. He knew that the call to service would be passed on down the Jenks line. Earlier he had expected Willis to heed it, but by the time the boy was eleven, harin' off to fish or chase butterflies or just laze around down by the river, Callwood knew it would not be Willis who succeeded him. He knew at this moment exactly why Willis had met Clytie, and why Clytie had disappeared, and who caused her disappearance. He didn't know yet where she went, or how, but he knew who caused it, and that cause lay gurgling in an old but clean white blanket under the pine bore. Callwood knew too that Willis would never see his beloved Clytie again; but he was not about to tell his son that. Not just yet, anyway.

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