On Mullens Creek Farm
by Cristina Bryan
When Mamaw died on the farm outside Mullens, we were afraid the ground was too hard for us to dig a grave the normal way, so we called Picky Pickins. He didn’t tell us any stuff, like why we don’t use Jennings Funeral Parlor for the embalming and such, or don’t you need a license to bury a dead body on your own property. He just agreed to bring his John Deere baby backhoe all the way from Springs to do the job. It cost my husband a hundred dollars, but that was our only real expense.
As soon as this heavy rain stopped, we wanted to plant her out in the western meadow, on the high ground right near that fork of Mullens Creek, next to where Papaw was already waiting. We’d get around to registering her death at the courthouse sometime soon. My husband would get the coffin made, and we’d prepare her body for a decent Christian burial and say a few words, and that would be that.
The very morning we found her dead, which was Saturday, I called my cousin Nettie, and she came over to give me a hand. The only real job we had to do was wash her body and shroud her with a big piece of clean linen sheet. Washing a dead person’s body is a sacred task, and Nettie thanked me for letting her have the privilege to do it with me. We filled two basins with warm water and used these soft sponges I had, and clean bath towels. We did her head to toe, and I really mean head to toe, she may never have been so clean in her life. I could imagine Mamaw saying, even in her grumpy voice, “Thank you, girls.” I suppose she sometimes appreciated what folks did for her.
I should tell you her death was kind of mysterious. Her sheets were all messed up, and her pillow was next to her face. We didn’t care for any of the neighbors or the people in town to hear about. It was none of their business. Besides, it might have been a natural death.
But if not, why did it happen? We could figure maybe why.
For a long time, there’d been rumors of how Papaw had left Mamaw ten solid gold American Liberty coins, mint, value $100 each in the twenties, but each worth much more now. Where did he get them? From his uncle, who was a pretty well-to-do coin dealer in Parkersburg during the Depression, when people with money could buy up just about anything that desperate folks were selling. Now they were Mamaw’s, though they were to come to my husband as his inheritance when she passed.
The story was practically a local legend, including the fact that she had them squirrelled away somewhere. The funny thing is that the legend was true, though we told everybody it wasn’t. Was gold like that worth killing her for? Well, at that place and in those times, sure. It was miraculous it hadn’t already happened. I might say we scoured her room the next day but didn’t find the gold coin one.
But there was a big new complication that week. You probably know the West Virginia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane is in Beckley, less than ten miles away. Hospital escapes had happened before. This time, everybody was saying, it was this guy we’d all read about—somebody from Charleston who was not right in the head. I thought he could have heard about Mamaw and her valuable coins; she was right there in the neighborhood of his loony bin. Maybe he snuffed her out with her pillow, then searched till he found her stuff. Who couldn’t use the money, especially if you need to make a getaway?
Her death wasn’t the only misfortune to happen. Saturday was the three farmhands’ day off. They never got back from living it up in Beckley till after midnight. Early the next morning, after Mamaw’s death, my husband went down to the bunk cabin to tell them she’d died. He wanted their help making the coffin, and otherwise, he was going to give them another day off.
He could see right away that two of the men were gone, and the third, named Franklin Burroughs, was still in bed. He was dead, actually, with bloodshot pop-eyes wide open. From the bruises on his throat, it looked like he might have been strangled.
“I have to get the sheriff,” he said as soon as he got back to the house. “I guess I need to tell him about Mamaw after all. And now Franklin has got himself murdered, and the other two have run away. Keep the doors locked, and don’t let anybody in till I get back.”
I might as well tell you that two days later, the authorities caught the nutcase over in Harper’s Ferry, with no gold. When they heard about Mamaw, too, they decided that Franklin must have smothered Mamaw late at night and stolen her famous coins. After Franklin killed her and found the coins, they figured that Boyd and Arthur robbed him and then killed him. Then they naturally skedaddled. They were all pretty low-type people. The authorities began a statewide search and broadcast the news that we should all be on the lookout for anybody with big gold US coins in their possession.
On that day, though, after my husband had gone into town to fetch the sheriff, I went back upstairs with some clean bed linens, a fresh towel, and a wet rag. I unwrapped Mamaw, then changed her bottom sheet, the rolling way hospital nurses do with immobilized patients. I toweled off her damp hair till it was mostly dry. Then I lay another big towel near the lower end of the bed and took my time washing away the dried mud from the bottoms of her feet.
As soon as this heavy rain stopped, we wanted to plant her out in the western meadow, on the high ground right near that fork of Mullens Creek, next to where Papaw was already waiting. We’d get around to registering her death at the courthouse sometime soon. My husband would get the coffin made, and we’d prepare her body for a decent Christian burial and say a few words, and that would be that.
The very morning we found her dead, which was Saturday, I called my cousin Nettie, and she came over to give me a hand. The only real job we had to do was wash her body and shroud her with a big piece of clean linen sheet. Washing a dead person’s body is a sacred task, and Nettie thanked me for letting her have the privilege to do it with me. We filled two basins with warm water and used these soft sponges I had, and clean bath towels. We did her head to toe, and I really mean head to toe, she may never have been so clean in her life. I could imagine Mamaw saying, even in her grumpy voice, “Thank you, girls.” I suppose she sometimes appreciated what folks did for her.
I should tell you her death was kind of mysterious. Her sheets were all messed up, and her pillow was next to her face. We didn’t care for any of the neighbors or the people in town to hear about. It was none of their business. Besides, it might have been a natural death.
But if not, why did it happen? We could figure maybe why.
For a long time, there’d been rumors of how Papaw had left Mamaw ten solid gold American Liberty coins, mint, value $100 each in the twenties, but each worth much more now. Where did he get them? From his uncle, who was a pretty well-to-do coin dealer in Parkersburg during the Depression, when people with money could buy up just about anything that desperate folks were selling. Now they were Mamaw’s, though they were to come to my husband as his inheritance when she passed.
The story was practically a local legend, including the fact that she had them squirrelled away somewhere. The funny thing is that the legend was true, though we told everybody it wasn’t. Was gold like that worth killing her for? Well, at that place and in those times, sure. It was miraculous it hadn’t already happened. I might say we scoured her room the next day but didn’t find the gold coin one.
But there was a big new complication that week. You probably know the West Virginia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane is in Beckley, less than ten miles away. Hospital escapes had happened before. This time, everybody was saying, it was this guy we’d all read about—somebody from Charleston who was not right in the head. I thought he could have heard about Mamaw and her valuable coins; she was right there in the neighborhood of his loony bin. Maybe he snuffed her out with her pillow, then searched till he found her stuff. Who couldn’t use the money, especially if you need to make a getaway?
Her death wasn’t the only misfortune to happen. Saturday was the three farmhands’ day off. They never got back from living it up in Beckley till after midnight. Early the next morning, after Mamaw’s death, my husband went down to the bunk cabin to tell them she’d died. He wanted their help making the coffin, and otherwise, he was going to give them another day off.
He could see right away that two of the men were gone, and the third, named Franklin Burroughs, was still in bed. He was dead, actually, with bloodshot pop-eyes wide open. From the bruises on his throat, it looked like he might have been strangled.
“I have to get the sheriff,” he said as soon as he got back to the house. “I guess I need to tell him about Mamaw after all. And now Franklin has got himself murdered, and the other two have run away. Keep the doors locked, and don’t let anybody in till I get back.”
I might as well tell you that two days later, the authorities caught the nutcase over in Harper’s Ferry, with no gold. When they heard about Mamaw, too, they decided that Franklin must have smothered Mamaw late at night and stolen her famous coins. After Franklin killed her and found the coins, they figured that Boyd and Arthur robbed him and then killed him. Then they naturally skedaddled. They were all pretty low-type people. The authorities began a statewide search and broadcast the news that we should all be on the lookout for anybody with big gold US coins in their possession.
On that day, though, after my husband had gone into town to fetch the sheriff, I went back upstairs with some clean bed linens, a fresh towel, and a wet rag. I unwrapped Mamaw, then changed her bottom sheet, the rolling way hospital nurses do with immobilized patients. I toweled off her damp hair till it was mostly dry. Then I lay another big towel near the lower end of the bed and took my time washing away the dried mud from the bottoms of her feet.
Cristina Bryan has been a professional editor for many years. In her retirement, she is writing strange stories.