Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera) (14 page)

The house was impeccably clean. There wasn’t a single stain on the carpet or walls. Everything smelled like bleach and it stung Taryn’s eyes a little bit. She mentioned this to
Matt and he went into a long speech about how bleach was often used by cleaning companies to help eliminate odors, especially after a family moved and the carpets needed deodorizing.  Taryn was impressed by his knowledge, especially since he was only eight.

Eventually, Taryn and
Matt got separated and he ended up going upstairs where there was an actual hot tub in the bedroom. She found a little door that led down to the basement. There, she discovered another small staircase that she thought would take her outside. Instead, it took her to a small room where she found another even smaller door. Curious, she tried to open it. When she did, she was startled to see a little girl lying on the floor. It was one of the little girls who lived there. She was wearing a flowered dress and her hair was covered in red paint. “Are you okay?” she asked. But the little girl’s eyes were closed. The room was almost black, except for a faint glow that hovered over the child’s face and body. She was motionless.

Taryn suddenly
had chills on her arms and legs. Her grandmother would say that a goose walked on her grave. Something wasn’t right. Why would the little girl be here when her family had moved? “Do you want me to call someone?”

As she watched in horror, the little girl seemed to actually sink down into the ground until all that was left was the floor. Even the glow disappeared. Tentatively, Taryn reached out and touched the floor and discovered that it was hard, packed dirt that was cool to the touch. With a little shriek, she ran out and up the stairs and flew out of the house.

When she got home, she told first her parents, who didn’t believe her, and later her grandmother, who did. They all chalked it up to a combination of food poisoning and bad dreams. Her parents talked to the other parents, however, and that put a stop to the exploring. The other children blackballed her from the neighborhood expeditions and from that day forward, she only played with Matt, which was really just fine and dandy with the two of them. She’d never gotten much out of playing with the rest of the lot, anyway.

Years later,
a developer bought most of that subdivision and tore down a great portion of those houses and built condominiums. They were awfully surprised to find the body of a two year old child buried under the house. Taryn, on the other hand, unfortunately, was not surprised. That incident taught her something, however. There were certain things one should just keep to one’s self. After that day she rarely shared anything with anyone but Matt. And most things she just preferred thinking were in her head. It was easier that way.

The call from the
Stokes County Historical Society was not a surprise. Frankly, she’d been expecting something a little sooner. An Edna Washington, with a thin, kind of warbled voice, apologized for her lateness and asked if she could come in this morning. Apparently, the Society only met on Saturdays. Taryn planned on going to Lexington and walking around the big bookstore she’d heard good things about, but resigned herself to spending the afternoon with the ladies of the Society. After all, it was their grant money that was paying her. And if she didn’t then, she was just going to have more of them wandering out to the job site, poking their noses into her painting.

She paid special attention to her attire. No short-shorts or wet hair. Makeup. Older women appreciated it when your clothes matched and you didn’t show too much skin. She didn’t normally dress raunchy
, but she always tried not to let her bra straps show or her underwear hang out when she was around them. She really wasn’t a jean shorts or sweatshirt kind of gal anyway, but she was likely to throw on whatever was handy and these days she hadn’t had the chance to get to the laundromat. 

The
Stokes County Historical Society was housed in a doublewide trailer at the end of Main Street. Two wheelbarrows on either side of it held violet pansies. Window boxes were full of flowers that Taryn couldn’t name, but they were certainly colorful.

She wasn’t sure whether she should knock or go on in
, but while she was deciding, a thin, reedy gray-headed woman opened the door for her and ushered her inside. An air conditioner was going full blast and she was met with a glaring fluorescent light and a plate full of chocolate chip cookies. “We’ve got lunch ready for you, too,” someone called from behind a partition as she was led to an overstuffed couch.

The room was large with a big conference table and there were about a dozen women, mostly elderly, seated around it like
they were the Knights of the Round Table. Each one had a photo album or scrapbook in front of them, studying it with serious expressions on their faces, many taking notes and muttering under their breaths. Some were even speaking into small tape recorders. One lone man was at a computer, staring at a long list of names.

The walls were adorned
with posters, photographs, historical maps, and charts. Other than the one partition that separated what she assumed was the kitchen from the rest of the room, the rest of the walls were removed so that the double wide was one big space. Glass display cases filled the area and she could see coins, tools, and other memorabilia from days gone by lining the walls. It was actually pretty interesting and she wouldn’t mind looking around, but before she could get up, a plate full of sandwiches, cookies, and something that resembled a casserole was placed in her lap by the same woman who showed her in. “Eat,” she demanded. “You need some meat on those bones.”

“Okay,” she whimpered. After all, she wasn’t one to turn down food.

“Girls, Leonard, she’s here.”

With that, all the women looked up, as if on cue.
The man slowly turned away from his computer gazing. The books all snapped shut and the tape recorders were turned off. Taryn closed her mouth around the sandwich and then stopped. Was she expected to give a speech now? She hadn’t prepared anything.

A
pleasant looking woman with snowy white hair smiled kindly at her. “Priscilla says your painting is beautiful. She’s sorry she can’t be here today, but she’s with Sally at the hospital. We’re all taking shifts. She says it’s just what we are looking for. We can’t wait to see it. We’ve wanted to know what the rest of that house would look like for years. We saw what you did with the governor’s mansion…just breathtaking.”

Taryn swallowed. “Thank you,” she replied, sincerely.

“I’m Shirley. Are you liking it here in Vidalia?” This came from a heavyset woman in a bright pink polka-dot dress and green sandals who was systematically making her way through a large glass of sweet tea. She vigorously nodded her head as she asked her question, as if she already knew the answer.

“Yes, I am, although I haven’t been able to see much of the town. I’ve been working a lot,” Taryn said with regret. “It’s very pretty, though.”

“What do you think of the house? Aren’t the stones beautiful?” The question was from a little woman who really looked to be no more than a child. She was thin and her features small, like a bird. Her face peered over from the top of the table and the horn-rimmed glasses that perched on the edge of her nose made her looked as though she was playing dress up. Taryn couldn’t help but smile.

“Well, it’s interesting….”

“Ha, she’s talking about the ghosts,” Shirley snorted.

“Now, Shirley,” the bird admonished.

“Don’t you ‘now Shirley’ me,” Shirley chastised. “We all know it is.”

“Do you really think
it is?” Taryn asked with feigned innocence.

“Oh, honey,”
the ancient gentleman with deep blue veins running through his hands and liver spots on his arms spoke softly to her. “There’s no need to be like that with us. We all know it is. We’d be shocked if you hadn’t seen or heard something. It’s probably that son of a bitch himself doing it. There are so many tragedies in this town, the whole damn place is haunted.”

Everyone laughed good
-naturedly and for a while the mood was relaxed and the matter was forgotten. Taryn got caught up with stories about Vidalia and the time during the Depression and later during the baby boom. They were also interested in her stories as well and she found herself telling them about places she had painted in the past. There were rarely audiences as captivated as those who belonged to a historical society and with these folks she felt amongst kindred spirits. After all, they shared a love of old homes and buildings and didn’t want to see anything torn down any more than she did. She might not have enjoyed genealogy like they did, she wasn’t even sure who her great grandparents were (to this group’s horror) but they could all agree that there ought to be an organization like PETA for the ethical treatment of old homes and structures.

She wanted to ask them
Matt’s theory about Robert being murdered but it just never felt appropriate to bring it up. Perhaps if she could get one of them on their own, but in front of the whole group…

She was talking to Shirley and in the middle of eating her fourth cucumber sandwich when she heard someone mumble,
“And, of course, let’s not forget about what happened to little Donald Adkins…”

“Wait, what happened to Donald? Who’s Donald?” Taryn interrupted. She realized she let herself daydream and
was lost in thought. She’d eaten far too much and enjoyed herself a lot more than she’d thought she would. The room really was full of a cast of characters and she’d been craving human companionship more than she’d realized.

“Donald,” the older gentlemen whose name was
Leonard continued. “Was a young fellow who lived not too far from Windwood Farm. The next farm over, actually. He disappeared in, oh, I think about 1921, I’d say. Just a few years before I was born. I was born in 1939. My pappy remembered it and used to tell me about it. Was a big story back then, of course, because people didn’t just up and disappear a lot. Went out to tend to the horses and never come home. There were some drifters around and some folks say they got ‘im and kilt ‘im. I don’t know about that but they never found his body. Never knew what happened to ‘im. ‘Course, he could’ve runned off. His folks never thought so, though. He was a good boy, bound for college in a year and that was a big deal back then. They grieved themselves to death, first his mama and then his daddy, just a year apart.”

“Oh,” Taryn said. “That’s really sad.
Was that at the same time Clara from Windwood Farm died, too?”

“Yes it is,” Shirley agreed. “
Same year. A sad year for young folks. Tuberculosis got many young folks, and old folks, that year as well. Lots of deaths. Then the stock market crashed a few years later and that took care of a lot of folks around here, too. That was the start of the decline of Vidalia, though, the early 1920s.”

Seeing a window of opportunity, Taryn pounced. “Do you really believe that TB is what killed
Clara?”

A penetrable silence filled the room and it wasn’t hard to notice that several of the older folks visibly squirmed.  “Well, of course, it was the official cause of death,” someone volunteered.

“And it was what her mother died of,” someone else answered. “And I know that for a fact. My own grandmother saw to her care and saw her waste away. No doubt about that. You know, that was before the antibiotics was around. Not a lot of treatment for TB. There were them sanatoriums, but the treatments usually weren’t much but sunshine and fresh air.”

“Took out a lung when they could,” Shirley offered.

“True,” Leonard agreed. “But Mrs. Bowen, she stayed right here. Didn’t leave home. Some folks didn’t. It was risky and, of course, nobody wanted to go near ‘em for fear of getting it themselves but a lot of ‘em wanted to stay home if they could.”

“Why wouldn’t she and Clara have gone away?” Taryn asked.

“No money,” Shirley answered. “Or else nobody knew they were sick. Sometimes it came up on them so fast they were nearly dead before anybody knew they had it. That happened sometimes. Not often, but tuberculosis sometimes acted like other things. Folks get scared, hide it, pretend like nothing was wrong. Be faint and weak and sick until they couldn’t hide it any longer and then there wasn’t nothing to do but die.”

They all sat in silence, each one of them lost in their thoughts. Taryn wasn’t so sure she didn’t blame them. She’d heard about some of the sanatoriums, especially the big one in Louisville, and how nice they actually were. But nothing beat being at home. She liked to think that if it was her time to go she could have the choice and control about where it would be.

Still, that particular part of the conversation seemed to be over. When she saw she wasn’t going to get any more than that, she pressed a different angle. “Well, what about Robert? Is it possible maybe he didn’t die of a heart attack? That maybe it was something else?”

“Like what, dear?” Shirley asked gently.

Now it was Taryn’s time to squirm. “Like murder, maybe?”

Everyone laughed. “Ha ha, everyone’s thought that!”
Leonard guffawed. “You think someone didn’t want to kill him? They was all standing in line! He owed money to everyone! Even the coroner! But no, dear, it was a heart attack, plain and simple. Even took a picture of the dead body. We’ve got it somewhere here if you’d like to see it. They did that back then you know…”