The Wallace Plantation
The Deal
Abby Wallace
Abby Wallace would take two days to make the trip from Ozark, Alabama, to drive down to New Orleans, and onto Fayetteville, to see her brother’s grave. She slept the night in New Orleans, at Betty Hightower’s home, a friend, and Thursday morning headed onto the plantation house, the Wallace Plantation.
There was only a hundred-acres left of the land out of over four-hundred they originally had, the over four-hundred that Old Man Wallace had purchased way back in 1780, or thereabouts, they had sold—the two brothers had sold most of it, Wally and Frank that is, sold over three-hundred acres, giving her ten-percent, keeping the rest of the money for themselves, as they always did, she was never quite equal with them, but it was better to take ten-percent of something, than no percent of nothing because knowing them, they’d had sign her name one way or the other anyhow, and a war would have started, and by the time the fighting would have stopped, her ten-percent of something would have been long gone, spent on whatever.
This journey was really more for seeing Burgundy, than anything else, to see where everything stood between her and Burgundy, she told folks back in Ozark, it was to see her brother’s graves, and in passing mentioned Burgundy and the plantation, but said no more about it, save, she had to tell them something, and she didn’t want to look as a ogre towards the dead brothers, the ones who cared less about her, and more about that damn 1950-Chevy they constantly worked on just to work on and have something to do, so they could talk eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder.
When Burgundy and Abby met, neither one turning and walking away, both dissolving the other for a moment, as if in a spell, as if each had to find a common moment to exhale and find the right face to put on, thus, standing in a little square spot, each in a their own little cube as if it was marked, three feet from one another, both finding their comfort zone with each other, they looked into each other’s eyes, like a fox to a hound.
“Come in,” said Burgundy, Abby at the door, she was but half dressed, as if she was in the finishing process of dressing, and they somehow both ended up cross-legged sitting down on the sofa chairs in the living room.
“I was just in the middle of doing some of my voodoo dancing,” she told Abby with a smile; Abby in return, giving a flat “Oh,” to the statement. She had noticed, Abby had noticed, Burgundy had a lower body frame that gave an impression of being short, a long torso, and pale thin arms, like a snake, an odd kind of body she deliberated. Then her eyes and neck seemed to bob about the house, just a minute or so her eyes took a tour, around the house, finding wooden masks, voodoo masks, and disarray, a messy house to say the least.
“I cleaned your room for you, since this will be our home, unless we can come up with a pack or deal, and I’d like to talk to you about that shortly,” remarked Burgundy, going on, “after Wally died, Frank took it pretty hard, It was physically and mentally costly for him, his heart, his whole being collapsed I do believe, and remained for a long time in a convalescent state. Minnie Mae and I have been keeping the plantation afloat, well, Minnie Mae, more than I, I suppose. But now you are here and we can all work together.” (This was really not what Burgundy wanted to do or say, but it was what she had to say, and wait to see what response would come from Abby.)
“To be quite frank,” said Abby, “I am more interested in selling the place, than living in it, or listening to your proposition, that is why I came.”
“Yes,” remarked Burgundy, “I fully understand that, and I knew from the very moment I laid eyes on you, from the very beginning you and I’d git along well, I jes’ knew that, and look, here we are now seeing eye to eye, don’t that beat all.”
Amos came in, “Should I feed the hogs miss Burgundy?” he asked, and she nodded her head yes.
“Frank has some prize, country fair type hogs out yonder, as big as horses, one over 900-pounds, that one, the big one got a prize for eating more food in a meal, faster in one meal that is, than any other hog at the fair, and got a ribbon, blue ribbon for it, with its name on it, “Big Hog Wally,” Frank named it that, kids were riding her, so youall got to be careful, when she gets hungry back there in the pigpen, she can eat a whole lamb in a matter of minutes, and who knows what else.”
“Thanks for the warning, when I go by there I’ll keep my distance, or make sure they’re feed, especially Big Hog Wally!” They both laughed.
“Okay, Miss Abby Wallace, here is the deal (she pulls out a check from her purse, for the sum of $500,000-dollars written to Abby Wallace, hands it over to Abby) take this check, cash it, I sold all but four acres of the one-hundred acres left to Mr. Ritt, the Ritt Fayetteville Bank, once you cash it, the deal is sealed, and the plantation house is mine, and everything on this four-acres will belong to me, and the money to you, it is more fair than your brothers would have been to you.”
It was a fair deal, and she was right, her brothers would not have given her much if even ten-percent on the last one hundred acres left, although the land was sold a little under its value, and should they have waited to sell, it would have increased in value, an investment that appeared not to please either party, Abby or Burgundy, for neither were of the plantation breed, neither one wanted to grow corn or cotton, and Abby knew this, plus, she had never had such a sum before, and this kind of a deal was more than she had expected from this cleaver fox, and therefore accepted the check with a big smile, saying, “Yes, perhaps we see eye to eye, my brothers and I never did.”
It was but a few days later when Abby left to go back to Ozark, Alabama, she was happy as a stuffed hog, and Burgundy was happy, as the saying goes: there were two winners.
The Sacrifice
The Child, Otis Pity Wallace
It has been said, and there is much truth to it I believe, what Christ has done on earth, Satan has tried to duplicated. Burgundy was around her plantation house doing her voodoo stuff with more of a dedication than she ever had, she put more vitality into it, perhaps because who could interfere now. The Child Otis Pity Wallace Washington was about eighteen-months old now.
The house was quiet, not many visitors came about anymore, since Frank and Wally had passed on now, dead and buried and quickly forgotten, and Abby in Ozark, Alabama, Old Josh, and Amos came around now and then, but besides them, not many other folks. Minnie Mae was still working on the farm, and Burgundy had money in the bank, around $40,000-dollars, Frank and Wally leaving each half of that sum to her personally, in their personal accounts at the Ritt Bank.
She worshipped, chanted, danced and prayed to Satan, and was said to do likewise to his demonic following, this was not new, it just become more noticeable, and actually a little old, it was on Halloween she got what she called a vision, an awakening, a messenger came to her in her bedroom, sat on her bed, told her the following (which she would repeat in court in times yet to come), “The Ten-Winged Master, wants you to make a sacrifice to him, your child, like Abram, so long ago did for God, this will prove your loyalty, and there will be a resurrection, if you follow this example.” The messenger was a henchman from hell, so she claimed.
About this time, the Abernathy family, and the Stanley family, the two families who owned the other two plantations, along the same side of the road the Wallace Plantation was on, now Burgundy’s plantation, was ostracized from their gatherings, the weekend get-togethers, where they’d play checkers or cards or chess with Wally and Frank, and even the Stanley’s came over. They could hear the yelping and screaming and voodoo drums at all hours of the night now. It was becoming vexing.
This sacrifice was all planned for October 31, 1962, midnight, she put the child on the living room table, Minnie Mae was in the kitchen, closed her eyes, wanted to stop her but there was no way, she was scared, and so she ran out of the house—perhaps thinking: out of sight, out of mind, cried, slipped, hit her head on a rock, fell to sleep, more like knocked herself out. And so the sacrifice proceeded as scheduled, nobody noticed. No kids came for candy, none were allowed to go near the plantation lest they get disciplined by their parents, and rightly so, and there really were no kids about in the countryside there anyhow. With no haggling, she lifted up a heavy double edged axe, and when she lowered it, the child was split into two pieces, and she danced, and danced, and tore her cloths to shreds—as if waiting for the resurrection. And of course there was no resurrection, what she had to learn the hard way, and she never did learn it, Satan is a liar, as well as a deceiver—that is what she learned. But if she got anything out of this, it was his blessings.
The Trial
Of Burgundy Washington
(1962-63)
There was a boiling trial, and we all thought, all us from the vicinity and countryside where the Wallace’s had lived, we thought she, Burgundy Washington was either insane or possessed, and therefore sent to River Mount Hospital, in Prescott, Wisconsin, under the care of Dr. Whitman. Her lawyer was none other than the famous Henry Thompson, who did murder trials, he himself once was up for murder, but it was dismissed for the lack of information, he acted as his own lawyer in his own case, they had said he killed his wife and dropped her off in a junkyard, in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Minnie Mae had left the Wallace Plantation, we all knew she would, it was just too, way too much for her to endure that night, it still haunts her folks say; when she awoke from her fall, the night Burgundy killed her son, she ran to the Stanley plantation, that was how the police was notified, and in the morning found the dead child, and her passed out on the floor, and she testified that she saw, what she saw, which was up to the prior moment of the slaying of the child—but did not see that actual happening, the murder itself, she had run out of the house. But Burgundy was not denying the killing anyhow, so she was guilty by her own mouth.
Us folks at the trial, none of us ever had to consider such a mishap, I mean, she was guilty, but there was insanity involved. We kind of thought, any kind of murder would be a form of insanity, but I guess not. So there were technicalities involved.
The Hospital was quite expensive, and Thompson suggested she stay there, and in three to four years, she’d be out, actually after her money run out, she’d be out, but she needed to sell the plantation to pay the hospital bills, and lawyer bills, the hospital was costly, and Abby was there each day of the trial, and made a deal with the lawyer, to have Burgundy sign the deed of the plantation over to her for $150,000-dollars, and thus, she’d have $190,000 with the money in the bank, enough for at least two to three years expenses, hopefully for the hospital bills and lawyer bills. Hoping it was not much more. A private hospital, and not a burden on the state, and in time, folks might forget her, and so, it was the way Thompson wanted her to go and she did just that.
Burgundy signed it without a peep, and grabbed the Bible, and did as Thompson told her, started reading it from page one to the end of the last page of the whole New and Old Testaments, and would go to church on Sundays, to become un-possessed, and if she couldn’t, at least pretend to be.
It was now 1963. Abby did leave $2000 dollars in her account personal account, to buy things she might need in the hospital, and signed the other money over to the lawyer to pay her bills.
And now the plantation returned back to its old and rightful owners, and Whisky Charlie moved in, moved out of Ozark, Alabama, and moved in with his family member, his cousin Abby, first cousin, once and for all.
The Phantoms
Of the Wallace Plantation (Whiskey Charlie)
(1964)
Whiskey Charlie had went to the Wallace Plantation to be with and live with Abby Wallace for the summers, or at least that was the original plan, although I think deep down inside their minds, both Abby’s mind and Charlie’s, they had no intentions to limit it to summers, it was perhaps a smoke screen for the neighbors, and relatives in Ozark, Alabama were Charlie lived ((Whisky Charlie Codden) (a distinct cousin born 1935, relative to Frank, Wally, and Abby Wallace, of Ozark, Alabama; Charlie’s sister being sister Cindy Codden, born 1932; their mother was the sister to Gertrude Wallace.))
They now had only four acres of land, with a plantation house on that remaining four acres, only a patch compared to what they once had, and had sold the rest, which was 396- acres some time back, meaning her brothers, Frank and Wally, and thereafter, Burgundy, who owned the land for a short period, now in a mental facility, a hospital for the mentally deranged, in Prescott Wisconsin.
It is fair to say, Abby does not miss her two brothers who are now deceased, she hardly seen them when she was alive, and therefore the grieving process was next to nil. To be honest, I think the only one that grieved over Frank Wallace was Minnie Mae Walsh, the cook, now working for the Stanley’s, and as far as Wally goes, there is no human being left to grieve him, so they—the two brothers—parted this earth, with perhaps what they came with, nothing, although Wally got his brother’s Frank’s grieving, he had died a little before Frank.
Abby, on the other hand, not wanting to live alone, preferring company to no company —Whiskey Charlie Codden, is good enough she tells herself (Langdon Abernathy is now thirteen-years old, growing like a weed, works for Abby, and he also is good company now and then, along with Amos, who now and then comes around, more than, than now, since working for the Stanley’s; but still helps Abby, reluctantly).
A sudden phenomena looks as if to be entering Abby’s life though, disrupting it, engaging her mind, taxing her sleep, paranoia coupled with anxiety, not sure if I’d call it a disorder, perhaps there is some logic to this, some realism also, for she is seeing ghosts, pure and simple, ghosts, she says to Charlie (and babbles on, and on with it to Amos) she sees Frank and Wally talking by that old 1950-Chevy, every morning, just talking, that is all they do, and she is wondering what they got to talk about. She really doesn’t even want to get out of bed until the afternoon. If she looks out the window, down onto the car, down onto that old green Chevy they simply look up at her, pay her little to no attention, and then they go about their business as usual, as normal, as they always had, and talking about whatever they were originally talking about. Not much difference from when they were alive, but it frightens her, scares her some. She doesn’t know if there is any substance to this or not—she just knows it is.
In addition to these visual scenes into the invisible world, that Charlie Codden cannot see nor Amos, Abby is hearing voices, those of Wally and Frank, sitting by the hearth and they just talk and talk and talk the night away. It is becoming all too much for her to endure. She, Abby, is not a mentally strong woman, not in particular, no—never has been, and so this state of paranormal psychological occurrences, is becoming, or is beginning to become, beginning to takeover more of her life, consuming her you might say, taking up more hours everyday, in the day, likened to a bad habit, an alcoholic, or drug habit, one that slowly possesses you and then it grips you by the gut, and you got to see, listen, and you get more and more involved, then it controls you, your life, your very existence—a damn fixation develops, and this is what is happening to Abby.
Her family, and she knows her family tree pretty well, goes back to the tenth century, back into Scotland for the most part, where they were called, “Those Walsh Folk,” meaning those who migrated from Wales, to Scotland, and through time and events, the name was combed out to Wallace. And if you went back to several more generations, to her Great Grandmothers, one married a Judith, and she was a woman who not only had second insight, but a light blend of Haitian blood, who folks said she saw things, things not of this physical world, and those same folks debated over if she had a gift from God, or perhaps it was from the devil, or was it simply a form of insanity—who’s to say, those days are long gone now.
Be that as it may, Langdon Abernathy was working for Abby Wallace at the time which is only a hop-skip and a jump, from his family’s plantation (twenty-one miles outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina) and he would say when questioned, she and Charlie got along well, as well as any two folks could, and perhaps better, they respected one another, if not even a little more.
Well, here is what took place: the Ritt family (who owned the bank in Ozark, Alabama) had bought most of the plantation land up, and around the Wallace’s, and now had corn and cotton growing on it, it was the month of July, Amos and Langdon had quite working for the day on the Wallace Plantation, fed the hogs, and mended some fences, among other chores, and Langdon went home, and Amos went back to his regular employer the Stanley family. Now Charlie and Abby are alone. It was during this time, Abby overheard Frank and Wally talking, the ghosts during one of those long evenings I was talking about, when they’d sit by the fireplace, as they often did when they were alive, and what she remembers the most was that Frank, the meaner one of the brothers, was angry at her for accepting the $500,000-dollars for the plantation, the land Burgundy sold, then turned about and repurchased the plantation home back, with out even enough land to spit across. He was madder than a mass of hornets, and swore to get even. That was it, that was all she overheard, that was the top of the iceberg, I say top because what was underneath, only Frank and Wally knew, and Abby would never fully be allowed to know, be familiar with, for sure, but would blame them for, yet she’d not say it out loud, lest she be taken to the same place Burgundy was, the mental hospital; then they vanished, as usual, in this case the voices simply faded out.
In the morning, Langdon came over to see what work Miss Abby wanted him to do—had for him, he knew she would not come down those stairs until noon, she never did, but left a note on the dinning room table, under the chandelier, and when he came into see the note, to read it, he was shocked almost into a vomiting state. There was Charlie, Charlie Codden from Ozark, Alabama, hanging from the chandelier, old Charlie’s hands tied behind his back, hanging like a limp fish, tongue out like a dead bulls. He woke Abby up, and she fainted once she got a glimpse of Charlie, scant was the glimpse, but more than enough.
No one expected Abby to have been able to have done such a job as lifting a man in midair that weighed somewhere around one-hundred and eighty pounds, and besides, tied his hands behind him, and a rope around his neck, that was absurd. And Abby would never admit to ghosts, although Langdon knew the story behind her visions and voices, and mentioned them to the Chief of Police, it came to a point of leaving it as a mystery, there was even a suggestion that two bums came from the train nearby, that normally slows down as it nears the city and jumped off that evening, and they might have done the dirty deed, but that was manufactured by the police department, there really was no train, nor bums, but they now had suspects, which eliminated the ghost theory, although nothing was taken in the house, and in place of that, they said the bums were simply hungry, wanted to drink and got too drunk to rob the place, and so they hung Charlie as a stupid trick, and then the file was put into what they called “file thirteen,’ the dead file area, and left to grow mold.
Langdon of course was told never to go back to that haunted house by his parents, where one thing lead into another, and after the other, there was always another, and it just simply looked too much of a troubled spot. And for the most part, he came to be fine with that, he was in those early days, talking much about going into the Army, the Vietnam War I guess had started, and that really is what he was waiting for, a new war to start so he could join and be like his grandfather, and Amos.
The Monster Hog
((…of the Wallace Plantation) (August, 1964/and conclusion))
It was a bad summer, 1964, bad because the Wallace Plantation had buried, Charlie Codden, a relative of Abby Wallace, bad because she did not have the help she needed to take care of the place, Langdon Abernathy was told not to return to work for them anymore, it was all too much: first Burgundy, and the slaying of her child, and then the mysterious hanging of Old Whisky Charlie, and before that the deaths of Frank and Wally, although that was now a little over three years in the past since Wally had died. Even old Amos avoided the plantation as if it was plagued by God and Satan or both; Burgundy was still in the hospital in the Midwest, close to two years now. So, what next could happen, or go wrong, no one knew, and no one wanted to be acquainted with it, whatever it was going to be—meaning that plantation. The Ritt family, was making money off the land they bought, and although that did not worry Abby for the most part, she heard the ghosts—as she referred to them—talking at night how they hated Abby for selling the land to the Ritt Bank. Evidently, Wally and Frank hadn’t gotten over it yet, hadn’t gotten enough revenge, because he fought over who got to tie the hands of Whisky Charlie, and who got to swing the chandelier with Charlie hanging from it, that is what Abby told Amos anyhow, also mentioning in passing: “I don’t think the boys know they’ve died!”
But what was really on her mind, Abby’s mind, now was to sell the plantation, and so she had put it in the paper up for sale, and Frank, the mean one, the suggestive one, angry and more hateful than a horde of rattle snakes and more stubborn than a herd of mules, the more aggressive one of the two brothers, read the three line ad in the paper: “Lovely four acre plantation (or, hobby farm, because that was all that was left of it) outside of Fayetteville, for sale, any reasonable price.”
Frank and Wally knew there was no other plantations for sale, this was it, Abby was selling their souls now, so the brothers grimly said.
It was a warm August evening, in the year 1964, the end of August, Abby heard the hogs squealing, fighting with one another, biting at their tails, at their feet, the big one, the one they called “Big Wally the Hog,” the nine-hundred pound hog, the one that won a Blue Ribbon at the County Fair, was becoming nasty to one of the smaller hogs, the very small one, the smallest of the lot in the enclosure—or pigpen—and took a nibble out of its leg, it was a week since Amos had came around to feed the hogs, and she was always scared to get too close to the hog pen herself, although it was fenced in, with four by four poles, and two by four cross beams, to make a sturdy fence. Actually there were several hogs in the pigpen, nearly all over 400-pounds except a few smaller ones, and that one little one that got a bite taken out of its leg that had been yelping to get fed, and instead became in part, part of the Blue Ribbon hog’s meal. Abby at this point was quite frustrated, hearing those hogs yelping like wild dogs night and day, endlessly yelping, and so she called up the Stanley House for Amos to come on over and feed them—nearly begging him this time, but Amos refused to work for her, his mind unchanged, it was out of sympathy he had came the few times he did after her brothers had died, because of her constant mumbling about her seeing and hearing the brothers walking about the house and yard—especially by that old car of theirs that they worked on for ten-years straight, it was all too creepy for him, all too much, way too much for Amos to take, so he refused to come for the last time—with a straight emphatic and final: “NO!”
Mr. Ritt, the owner of the bank who purchased the land from Abby, through Burgundy, and in earlier times bought land from Frank and Wally Wallace, stopped by to see Abby, he did now and then, a kind gesture if anything, he knew she liked company; he figured he’d say hello, and she’d offer him coffee as usual and he’d have a little break, and be on his way. But she didn’t answer the door when he came, and the hogs were going wild in the back area, where the pig enclosure was. And he went back to see what was going on.
The evening by itself was most pleasant with its starry sky and gibbous moon, overlooking the Wallace Plantation, had not the hogs been yelping, moreover giving it an uneasy kind of eerie touch within its atmosphere it would have been a perfect end to a long day.
As he, Mr. Ritt walked slowly back to the pigpen, it seemed as if everything was unattended, he even got a cramp in his stomach, a nervous cramp, as if something strange had taken place, or was taking place, you get such feelings when something is wrong, deadly wrong—death reeks, and your body does something like a turnabout, a knotting up of muscles to protect you, to guard you from heart attacks and strokes and all those impending doom related occurrences that take a person by surprise, it signals the brain, beware…! And it was doing just that.
The hogs were fighting mad, squealing mad, jerking this and that way everywhichway, bumping everything, pulling with their teeth, bits and pieces of the wooden fence, gnawing on the thinner parts of the fence like rats, to free themselves: he got closer, they were limbs he was seeing, limbs his eyes scanned, indeed he confirmed they were limbs, red like roots hanging out of the limbs, muscles tissue, read knotted fleshly muscles hanging out like threads from a limp limb; hair hanging out of the pigs mouth—Big Wally’s mouth, and his associates, they were chewing Abby Wallace up, like pulp, as if she was in a wheat grinder, a saw mill, she evidently was trying to feed the hogs, fell in, or got pushed in, through the fence (because it would have been pretty hard to fall through those two-foot openings between the two wooden flat pieces of timber, one above the other, crossovers, and foolish to have gone to the top of the fence of the pen it would not have been necessary) and before she could get up, she was pined down by the monster hog—all nine-hundred pounds of pork. Her head was balled, they had ripped the hair out from its roots, and her torso was the main thing now the hogs were fighting over….
Her shawl lay over one of the fence two-by-fours wooden cross beams, and many of her bones—splintered—laid about, and the hogs licking the marrow out of them; everything was being caked with mud, as it surfaced here and there, as the livestock moved about, then sunk into the mud again, as if the hogs themselves were trying to hide the flesh from the other predators; Mr. Ritt had to turn about, look deep into the sky, hold his stomach, catch his breath and grab his heart, as it started to leap.
The Plantation
Conclusion
The plantation was up for sale thereafter, and the money was to be given to the boy’s farm, but in September of 1965, a little over a year later, it burnt down, another mystery, perhaps those two bums the police talked about who they said hung old Whisky Charlie came back; for the most part, it remains a mystery to this day (although it was known in the dark queues of Ozark, it was the town city folk). The Ritt Bank bought up the remaining four acres of land, and the money, before it could be sent to the boy’s farm, $25,000-dollars, a woman showed up by the name of Cindy Codden, from Ozark, Alabama, the sister to Charlie Codden, or old Whisky Charlie and claimed it, the Codden’s were relatives, the only ones known, of the Wallace’s.
Note: Chapters 10 thru 15, deleting chapter 13; written 6-2008; reedited, 10.-2009, and reedited 5-2010. From the unpublished work “The Last Plantation” (includes the chapters: the Deal, the Sacrifice, the Trial, the Phantoms, the Monster Hog, and the Plantation.
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