The Reservoir (31 page)

Madison sees his daughter’s accusing eyes. His single overalls strap has broken so that the bib hangs below his waist, his dirt-smeared, sagging undershirt revealing the pale breast of an old man. He tries to say something to Willie, but his jaw is locked, his throat a dry streambed. He drops the cleaver.

Willie turns to his cousin. “I’d best be leaving if I’m to catch the ferry.” He picks up his hat where it fell, slaps it on his thigh, and mounts his horse. “Good-bye,” he says, lifting his hat for Hannah, the same hat Tommie wore that day in Richmond—a gray slouch hat with a tear in the crown. He rides slowly up the hard-packed dirt of the drive, its stripe of high grass leading him out to the road. “Come back here,” Madison says, his voice hollow, gone to nothing but wind along the ground.

The smell of wood smoke and green cedar bites through the cold of a January afternoon. A little farther down the road and he finds he does feel like singing after all. He wets his lips, and softly, jostling along, he hums songs he remembers his brother singing.

After a while the cloud cover begins lifting, the sun edging out of the western sky, and he sees what looks like a formation of geese. But as he watches it grow closer, he realizes it’s a balloon. It’s the strangest thing he has ever seen in his life. A balloon in King William County—who would have thought? It grows larger, a giant sea-green teardrop, and he can see people in the wicker basket, waving their hats. He waves back as they go silently floating over the trees, riding beneath their own world. How strange life is, how filled with wonder and amazement. “Did you see that, Tommie?” he says. “Damnedest thing. I miss you, brother. God be with you.”

He looks up and beholds at the edge of the clouds the deepest blue sky he has ever seen, with the evening star shining like a little fire in the west. “Till we meet,” he sings quietly, “God be with you till we meet again.” Two brothers gone—it’s just himself now. “The world is upside down, Tommie,” he says, “and I can’t make it any righter.”

He pushes his horse into a trot. With luck he’ll be home in time for a late supper.

A N
OTE ON THE
S
OURCES

This novel is based on an actual court case,
Commonwealth v. Cluverius
. A paragraph in a book on Richmond history got me digging deeper. I found copious newsprint dedicated to what became a sensational trial; it was wonderfully detailed, but it gave no clear idea of who the participants were, where they had come from, and why they ended up doing what they did.

I continued to dig up as much as I could about the case, while doing general research on the period. Though most of Richmond’s early buildings have fallen to the wrecking ball, a good sample from various periods remains. Finding Lillian’s grave early on—which took more effort than I’d thought it would—gave me a tangible link to the story and made me feel committed to telling it with as much passion and honesty as I could.

I soon realized that I was going to have to imagine most of the story. By this point I felt so connected to these long-dead people that I thought I owed it to them to get it right, which in fictional terms meant that the story would have to rise up out of the facts like a holographic image from a flat screen.

But the question remained: What
was
the story? I was lucky in that the events of the case suggested a rough plot line, as all interesting court cases do. There was a real Tommie, Lillian, Willie, Jane Tunstall, Richardson, a shadowy character on whom Nola was based, and so on. In my research I came across key pieces of evidence, carefully preserved for more than a century: letters, photographs, and, most interesting of all, a watch key and a torn note. I integrated much of this into the story, though not always exactly as it appeared in the actual case.

While I have done my best to keep the novel true to its historical period, I have tailored the facts to suit the story’s dramatic purposes. Most of the pre- and post-trial story is of my own creation. For the trial itself I borrowed freely from the transcripts, employing the standard writer’s tricks of cutting, adding, and moving. Time was collapsed in some places—Tommie, for instance, spent much longer in jail than he does in the novel; the lawyers are composites, and minor characters have been added as necessary; events such as Hatcher’s visits were filled out; and so forth. The details of the case, then, were the fence posts on which I hung the story. The tragic love triangle at its heart was my invention, but it was suggested by the facts.

As to Tommie’s guilt, the record remains tantalizingly unclear. One can pore through pages of material and be convinced one way, then sift some more another day and completely change one’s mind.

The following sources were invaluable: The
Richmond Dispatch, Chataigne’s Richmond City Directory
(1885),
Cluverius: My Life, Trial and Conviction
by Thomas J. Cluverius (Richmond: S. J. Dudley, 1887),
Houses of Old Richmond
by Mary Wingfield Scott (Richmond: Valentine Museum, 1941),
Old Richmond Neighborhoods
by Mary Wingfield Scott(Richmond: Whittet&Shepperson, 1950),
Richmond: The Story of a City
by Virginius Dabney (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990),
Celebrate Richmond
edited by Elisabeth Dementi and Wayne Dementi (Richmond: Dietz, 1999),
Richmond: A Pictorial History from the Valentine Museum and Dementi Collections
edited by Thomas F. Hale (Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1974),
American State Trials
edited by John D. Lawson (St. Louis: Thomas Law Book, 1936),
Along the Trail of the Friendly Years
by William E. Hatcher (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1910),
John Jasper
by William E. Hatcher (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1908),
William E. Hatcher
by Eldridge B. Hatcher (Richmond: W. C. Hill, 1915),
Old Houses of King and Queen County Virginia
by Virginia D. Cox and Willie T. Weathers (King and Queen County Historical Society, 1973),
Old King William Homes and Families
by Peyton Neale Clarke (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1976),
The Architecture of Historic Richmond
by Paul S. Dulaney (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968), and
General Fitzhugh Lee: A Biography
by James L. Nichols (Lynchburg: H. E. Howard, 1989).

Archivist and Southern gentleman Minor Weisiger at the Library of Virginia was extremely helpful and gracious; he is, coincidentally, the great-great-grandson of one of the lead reporters on the Cluverius case. In general, the Library of Virginia was essential; particular thanks goes to map specialist Cassandra Farrell. I received good advice from professor W. Hamilton Bryson, expert on Virginia legal history; King William County historian Steve Colvin; professor James A. Bostwick; and Richmond Circuit Court Assistant Chief Deputy Supervisor Ed Jewett. I’m also deeply indebted to Alderman Library and the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections at the University of Virginia.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’m unutterably grateful for the extraordinary talents of editor Katie Henderson, who pulled me across the finish line and made this a much better book; the keen insights of Judith Gurewich; and the generosity of Paul Kozlowski, Sarah Reidy, Marjorie De-Witt, Yvonne E. Cárdenas, and the rest of the Other Press staff. I bow as well to Alanna Ramirez and Ellen Levine for their encouragement and unfailing support. For reading, listening, locating graves, and showing me what a meat cleaver can do, thanks also to Chris Tilghman, Caroline Preston, Henry Wiencek, Donna Lucey, Tom Whitehead, Sue Hart, Steve Keach, and Ricky Weeks. Finally, thanks to my wife, Margo Browning, who has been with this novel every step of the way—helping me see where to go, again and again.

J
OHN
M
ILLIKEN
T
HOMPSON
is the author of
America’s Historic Trails
and
Wildlands of the Upper South
, and coauthor of the
National Geographic Almanac of American History
. His articles have appeared in
Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Islands
, and other publications, and his short stories have been published in
Louisiana Literature, South Dakota Review
, and many other literary journals. He has lived in the South all his life. This is his first novel.