Third Saturday Fiction

Chapter 10, The Culpeppers, from the novel The Return to Boystown

By Ed Rodgers

The view from the large plate glass window overlooked a valley of green rolling meadows. In the distance, the steeple of the First Baptist Church of Culpepper, Alabama rose out of the tree-lined hamlet. Here and there a stream of smoke rose in a lazy, curving motion, marking the coming of fall. In the sky, geese were already on the move South—sign of a cold winter ahead. The coal mines were closed and the jobs gone, but the Culpepper family held on. “Never quit and never say die.” The quote was on a brass plate below a portrait of Louis Culpepper that hung in the hall of the 4,000-square-foot lodge his son had built on the mountain side and called a gentlemen’s club.
    In 1830, Louis, his wife Jane, and 2-year-old son William stepped off a ship in Jamestown, Virginia. They had few possessions and only a little money, but they had a dream of rich, black farm land that had never been touched by the sharp bite of a plow—land that cried out for the strong hand of a man to pull the bounty from the depths of its black heart and reap the fortune. Louis knew he was that man. It was for that dream they paid the guide half of all the money they had in the world on March 15, 1830, and three wagons, two milk cows, an assortment of pigs, chickens, goats, and 12 families headed south down the muddy road toward Georgia. The Culpepper family carried everything they owned in packs on their backs. The lucky families in the wagons knew that at a turn of fate they too would be walking and any added weight would hasten that day. However, in an act of kindness, William was offered a seat in the wagons during each long climb up a hill—never Jane or Louis—and returned to his parents at the top.
    The days became weeks and then a month. Strong rain storms washed out the trail markers and forced them to abandon the safe, easy route and move into the hills. It was a costly decision, one not made lightly, but out of necessity. The travel was hard and time-consuming. One of the wagons broke an axel, and the family that had been using it packed their belonging on the backs of the two mules that had been pulling it and returned to Jamestown. The others, like Louis and his family, had no alternative. Their money was gone, so they pushed ahead. By the time they reached the rolling hills of Georgia, it was April, the earth was green and alive once more. If they were going to get seed in the ground and have food to survive the winter, the pace would have to be increased. Two hours were added to each day’s march and even then it would be close.
    The long hours of the trip were more than Jane’s body could tolerate. She woke one morning with a cough, and by evening she had a high fever and red spots on her neck and chest. The fear of smallpox had been spread by stories told by the sailors aboard ship—the horror of whole towns dying and ghost ships roaming the seas spreading the pox to those foolish enough to set foot upon them. The Culpeppers’ fellow settlers couldn’t take the chance; they built a small shelter, stacked fire wood, left what supplies they could spare, and rode off.
    Louis held William’s hand and watched a child from the back of the last wagon wave good-bye from the top of the hill. Then they were alone. It wasn’t smallpox, but the fever would not break, and the next night Jane passed away in Louis’s arms. She was buried somewhere along the Georgia-Alabama border—just one more unmarked grave beside a trail west.

Louis and William set off up the hill. The wagons had cut a deep line in the sod and it was easy to follow. Louis lightened his load by leaving Jane’s belongings beside her grave. He took only his mother’s ring, with which he had married Jane, a brooch she loved, and her Bible. Louis feared that if he didn’t catch up with the others, he and his son would die. He hoped that if he pushed hard he would catch them in three days. William would have to grow up fast. It would be all Louis could do just to keep them alive. William’s first lesson was to walk without complaining, but it would be only the first of many hard realities of life he would learn.
    By the second day, William’s little legs had given out. He fell and began to cry. Louis picked up his son and, with William’s head on his shoulder, plowed ahead. “Never quit and never say die. Keep moving, keep moving or die.” With each painful step Louis repeated it. If death claimed them, it wasn’t going to do so without a fight.

They never caught up with the party of settlers, but Louis found his valley. As William Culpepper the third, or Trey, as his friends called him, looked out over the valley, he tried to envision what it must have looked like on that fateful day he and his father had stood on the same spot and looked down into the untouched meadow. The grass would have been green, the hillsides alive with wild flowers, and the wide creek—now hidden by houses—would have been running free and fast from the melted snow. Far off in the distance they could have seen the Black Warrior River, as it raced toward the Gulf of Mexico. Now the tall cranes and coal cars along its banks blocked any view of the water.
    Trey sighed, and with cigar in hand, returned to the circle of seated gentlemen. There were six high-backed, overstuffed leather chairs facing each other in an open circle. Two were empty, the owners having gone to their reward. To the right of Trey sat Senator Tommy “Crawfish” Johnson, the longest serving Senator in the history of Alabama.
    Next to him sat Lee Armstead, who got his start with George Wallace. He knew every white hate group in the USA and had private phone contacts with a large number of like-minded people overseas.
    Then there was Luke “Papa” Doupre. Nothing illegal happened in the State of Alabama without Papa getting a cut of the action. He started with a whorehouse in Tuscaloosa and now controlled an empire. It was though the prostitution that he first met Senator Johnson and some years later was asked to join the club.
    The other two members were a retired general—of little importance—and Carlos Ruas, who represented the Morales Cartel.
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Copyright © 2013 by Ed Rogers

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