Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 07:36:07 -0400 From: John Ellison Subject: The Landing - Chapter One This story contains situations and scenes of graphic sex between consenting males. All legal disclaimers apply. If this topic offends you, do not read any further; and ask yourself why you are at this site. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, although it may be loosely based on real events and people. If you are under the age of 18 (21 in some areas) and too young to be reading such material or if you are in a locale or country where it is not legal to read such material then please leave immediately and come back when it is legal for you to do so. We'll be glad to have you back. Copyright 2008 by John Ellison Additional works publish in Nifty in the Military Category: The Phantom of Aurora The Boys of Aurora Aurora Tapestry The Knights of Aurora Aurora Crusade The "Aurora" books are a series and should be read in sequence. A Sailor's Tale Constructive criticism is always welcome, and comments are appreciated. Flames expounding a personal agenda are not appreciated and will be treated with the contempt they deserved. Please feel free to send comments to: paradegi@sympatico.ca The Landing A Novel by John Ellison Chapter One Introduction Not so very long ago I had occasion to watch CNN, which was broadcasting the funeral of the late President Gerald R. Ford. One of the things that the talking heads made much of was that Mr. Ford had been an Eagle Scout. It seemed, also, that every time the camera panned the crowd watching the ceremonies there was gaggle of late teenage boys, in their BSA uniforms: "Eagle" scouts come to pay their respects to one of their own. I thought it all very touching. Then I thought that when I shuffle off this mortal coil the last mourners I would expect (or want) to be around, shedding their crocodile tears, would be representatives of the fine, flawed, homophobic and bigoted organization called the Boy Scouts of America. I had been an "Eagle" scout, although a most reluctant one, having been drawn kicking and screaming by my father down to the church basement where the local Boy Scout troop met. My point is that Boys Scouts are loyal, patriotic, true-blue, think clean thoughts and do manly things in manly ways. They epitomize the American way of live life, of all that is good and proper. They believe in God, in doing good works, and generally projecting all things American. This led me to think about my father. My father believed in all these attributes, without doubts of any kind. He was also a stern, conservative, rock-ribbed Republican who also believed in boys doing manly things in manly ways, and bullied me into joining the local Scout Troop. He had done the same thing to my older brothers, who had also been "Eagle" scouts. I doubt he would have done so had he known of the merit badges awarded that never appeared in any BSA manual. Anyway, shortly after my twelfth birthday, I was dragged down to the church hall, where the troop met. Had I known what awaited me I would not have yelled so much. Sadly, in later years the BSA, and all its members, paled in status, and in respect as far as I was concerned. At the end of the day I came to think that well while yes, the Scouts do have some very sterling goals and ideals, they are just another bigoted, hate-producing product of their culture. Thinking back, had I known then what I know now, perhaps I would have yelled a little louder. ****** I was born in Charleston, and raised in a small, provincial, South Carolina town called Charles Town Landing. It is located at the headwaters of the Cooper River, a pleasant drive from the larger city, now called Charleston. Over the years "Charles Town" was dropped and the place was always called simply, "The Landing". Originally the town site had been part of Broadlands Plantation, which my family owned. Forty miles or so to the south and east as the crow flies is Charleston, where we have a house just off the Battery, where my oldest brother, Philip XI Charles Tradd, his shrewish wife, and three of the most obnoxious children God ever gifted on unsuspecting parents, live. I also have a sister, Alva, who lives in Columbia. She is married to a man from a fine old South Carolina family possessing far less brains than money - they had been marrying their cousins for generations and the gene pool had been sadly diminished thereby. Their son, Wade Hampton, my favorite cousin, is a throwback - has to be. Somewhere along the line a freebooter of some kind stuck his dick in and screwed up the gene pool. Where Wade Hampton's father is short, and big-boned, as we say, Wade Hampton was a scrawny little peckerwood of a kid. He still is. Wade Hampton also has a voice so gravelly that he sounds like he smokes two pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes a day, and drinks a quart of bourbon into the bargain, neither of which he did or does. He has bright red hair, and freckles. Wade was always skinny, even as a boy, all knobby knees and legs, like a newborn colt. He isn't all that bad, and of all my cousins, he's been my favorite (for a number of reasons). He was, and is, an adventurous spirit. When we were boys, he would be the first to get into trouble, the first to strip down for skinny-dipping, and the first to proudly display his carrot-colored pubes when they started to sprout. He also has the cutest looking pecker south of the Mason-Dixon Line! Needless to say, Wade Hampton was also the first to demonstrate to me, and to my friends, that his pecker was useful for more than just peeing out of. I also have another brother, Damien Lee (this was the South, after all, and one of us had to have a Lee in his name), who lucked out and got all the good looks in the family. He is tall, with a shock of black hair, straight white teeth, a square-jawed face and flashing black eyes. Back in the days Damien Lee was one of the most popular boys in town. He was also the quintessential jock! Whatever was going, he played. He ran cross-country, he swam, he was the star forward on the high school basketball team, and twice in every season pitched no-hitters for the baseball team. He had more school letters, trophies, and assorted chromed plaques and shields than he had hairs on his head! Of course I idolized him. Damien would later attend The Citadel, join the U.S. Marines, win some medals in a place called Viet Nam, and move north. He lives in New York City now, and has a high-powered job with a very well-known brokerage house. He has a life partner, Avi Herzog, and they have adopted three boys, the cutest little Yeshiva brats that ever lived. I don't know what his ex-Marine buddies think of his domestic situation. I do know that my father had not approved and Damien did not return for the funeral when father died. In addition to being a poster boy for the South Carolina male, Damien was also an "Eagle" scout. Being loyal, true blue, and always willing to help the younger scouts begin their quest for the gold, Damien took me under his wing and during the long, hot, Carolina nights taught me more than how to tie knots. ****** I am a Son of the South. I am also a son of what is arguably the most hidebound, snobbish, secret society in existence. I am a son of Charleston, and an S.O.B. The first is self-explanatory. The second, well, that means I was originally "South of Broad", having been born, on the seventeenth of May 1957, in Roper Hospital, Charleston, and taken from there to my mother's family home, a huge, classically Charleston house at the corner of Church and South Battery. It is a very old house, having been built in 1743, and it has weathered hurricanes, the Yankees, and an earthquake. Here, in accordance with family tradition, I was presented to my maternal grandmother, Arabella Huger Pelham, stripped naked and examined, presumably to ensure that nothing had been lost in transit or fallen off. My fingers and toes were counted, my little nub of pecker, covered in a Vaseline soaked cap, examined closely, and certified that I was indeed male. Why this was done I to this day have no idea. It was a tradition in the family and in Carolina you never questioned family, or Southern tradition. ****** Two weeks after my birth I was christened Cooper Huger Pelham de Marigny, in St. Michael's Church. In attendance was the cream of Carolina Society, men and women of ancient and honorable birth, heirs to a magnificent heritage and tradition, all gone now, thanks to a wind that, in 1865, swept through the state, a wind called Sherman. To anyone who is not a Carolinian, my names are simply that, names. However, to a genealogist (as all Carolinians are), or a student of the Old South, I am descended from Southern Royalty. Amongst my ancestors I can number Coopers, as in Lord Ashley Cooper, the founder of Charleston; Hugers, long a name bespeaking gentility and gentle birth; Pelhams, who had roots in Alabama - I am a lineal descendant (through his sister) of Major John Pelham, Lee's Chief Artillerist in the Army of Northern Virginia, known to history as "The Gallant Pelham", so named by the Great Man himself. Finally I am a de Marigny, which bespeaks breeding and nobility. The first de Marigny, Philip I, had arrived in Carolina in 1686, to represent the interests of the Earl of Craven, one of the original eight Lords Proprietor of Carolina. De Marigny was the second son of an impoverished Anglo Irish peer. He was, by all accounts, tall and handsome, with dark red, gold-flecked hair, emerald green eyes, and a rakish manner. His hair and eyes have been manifested in me. Sadly, I did not inherit his rakish manner or his looks. If the truth were told, I was a scrawny, typical American boy of the period. As Lord Craven's agent, Philip, known in the family as Philip I, prospered, married well (a Huger) and, in 1729, his son, Philip II, purchased what became known as Broadlands Plantation from the heirs of the Earl when they sold their interest in Carolina to the Crown. The plantation was relatively small in the scheme of things, only 630 acres. To the north was the Conyngham plantation, Conyngham Hall, the two plantations meeting at a small, high-bluffed creek, which is now the northern boundary of the town square of what became known as Charles Town Landing, now more often referred to as "The Landing". The plantation was on the Cooper River and the land was fertile and produced fine crops of corn, rice, and later cotton. The surrounding lands were equally fertile and, as the farmers and plantation owners needed a means to transport their produce down to the docks of Charles Towne (as the small city was then called), the landing, which was the last navigable point of the Cooper, became the transit point. Wagons would bring in the rice and cotton and corn, which was loaded on barges, and poled down to the sea by gangs of slaves. Philip II, with his connections in Charles Towne, spent little of his time on his plantation, which he used as a retreat from the summer heat of the coastal city, and an escape from the miasmas and Yellow Fever epidemics that ravaged the little city every year. Every May, those who had a place to go, would leave the city and spend the months of June, July and August in imagined safety up country. My name therefore proclaims me to be a product of good breeding, gentility, and rich beyond imagination, although not in the conventional sense. I say this because in the Carolina scheme of life birth, breeding, and antecedents, mean everything. Houses south of Broad Street in Charleston, the historical district, sell for a million dollars or more these days, usually to rich Yankees looking for instant nobility. It does not work that way. Money means absolutely nothing. You can live in the finest house on East Battery, employ an army of servants, and entertain lavishly, but on the day the young gentlemen from the St. Cecilia Society hand deliver the invitations to the annual Ball, they will pass you by. The invitations go to members of the Society and their guests, all determined by a sixteen-member Board of Managers. To be a member of the Society one must first have been "born", that is, be a member of a family that had been in Carolina for at least two hundred years, be of a family that had given treasure and devotion to the city of Charleston, and its sons to the Confederacy. There are many monuments to the Glorious Dead of the Lost Cause throughout the state. The two most notable are in the vestries of St. Michael's and St. Phillip's churches, the churches of Charleston. To have an ancestor's name chiseled on either one of the crumbling monuments meant that you had been born, and my family name was right up there, in the vestibule of St. Michael's. At the end of the day, if you do not have these qualities, you wait in vain. Thanks to ancestry, I am considered "aristocracy", and received everywhere, as are my siblings, including my loathsome sister. But then, she married well, and while everybody might think her a candidate for the title of "First Bitch", nobody says it out loud. She is one of us, after all. As a certified member of the aristocracy I suppose I should have behaved better at my christening. I am told that I was fidgety and squalled loudly throughout the ceremony. To my mind I think I should have been given some consideration. After all, nobody likes to have water, Holy or otherwise, sprinkled over one's head, barely a fortnight after surrendering one's foreskin, even if the latter is a fine old Southern tradition! After a period of recuperation for my mother, and healing for me, I was taken to what would be my home for the first eighteen years of my life. Home was to be the small, sleepy town of Charles Town Landing. ****** Charles Town Landing was and is a small community much like just about every small Southern town. There is a square, filled with green grass and tall live oak trees. In the centre of the square there is the obligatory statue, a memorial to the Glorious Dead of the War, on which are listed the names of the boys and men who had defended the South against the Yankees in the War of Northern Aggression. Surrounding the square are the various public buildings indicative of any small town: the Court House, the library and a church, almost always, in this part of Carolina, Episcopal (Anglican). There is also a bank, a hotel, some shops and a town house or three. On my infrequent visits home I sometimes sit in the square and gaze up at the statue, studying the weathered features of the old soldier who stands atop the monument, and think that if he should come to life and step down from the pedestal he has been standing on since 1878, and if he had been born a son of the town, he would immediately recognize the place! Nothing much has changed in over 150 years, except for the names on some of the businesses. The focal point of the town is the town square, although it is not called that. It fronts on the Cooper River and the walkways and floodwalls lining it are referred to as "The Landing". Here, before the railroad came, the upcountry farmers would unload their crops - corn, cotton, indigo and rice - from mule-drawn wagons and on to flat-bottomed boats that would carry their crops down to Charleston. On the north side of the landing, running parallel to it, is Colleton Street, and here stands the Court House, a white columned, red brick structure with a dome. The lintels of the windows of the first floor are fire blackened, exactly as they have been since 1865 when Sherman's vandals marched north from Savannah to lay waste to South Carolina. Kilpatrick's hooligans had raided the town and, after looting the bank and the library, then housed in the Court House, set fire to both buildings. It is a matter of pride, and not a little condescension, to have a relic of this raid on or in one's house. In my room, which faces the back piazza and the river, high up one wall, is a framed patch of shattered plaster. Imbedded in the plaster is as small cannon ball, fired at the house by a Yankee gunboat bringing dispatches to Sherman, who was actually miles away, busily setting fire to Columbia. Almost every old house in town has such a relic, and they are pointed to with pride whenever the War is talked about, which is often! Next to the Court House is the combination town hall, and police headquarters (actually the office of the Town Constable). Behind this building, actually a wing, and facing Conyngham Creek (usually referred to simply as "The Crik"), is the town clink, originally a magazine where the local militia stored their arms and powder. On the south side of the landing, again running parallel to it, is Marion Street, the town's original "business district". At the corner of The Landing and Broadlands Road, is the Landing Hotel, a renovated cotton warehouse with wide verandas that stretch over the sidewalk, forming a loggia on the ground floor. The hotel marks the beginning of Marion Street, where most of the town's businesses are. The warehouse had been built in 1802, and had been burned during the war and had lain derelict until 1868, when it was converted into a hotel. It was still owned by the descendants of the original hotelkeeper, Lanfranco Ravelli, an Italian woodworker and carpenter who had made a tidy sum making caissons for the Confederate artillery. The hotel has a large riverside piazza and is a favorite with the tourists "discovering" Historic South Carolina. Here they sit and watch the north shore and the river flowing slowly by to the sea, drinking iced tea and bitching that there are no mint juleps available. Immediately adjacent is the restaurant, which rates three stars in all the travel guides. The rooms inside the hotel are large, comfortable, and well-furnished. The place is run as a family business, with Poppa out front and Mama in the kitchen. One of their sons, Anthony Ravelli, went to school with me. Tony was tall, with thick, black, curly hair, a slim and trim Italianate body and dark, smoldering eyes - bedroom eyes my mother would have called them. Across Broadlands Avenue was Biedermeyer's Emporium, a down-market Talbot's Department Store that unabashedly catered to the conservative, less than sophisticated tastes of the upcountry ladies who came to town every Saturday, which was Market Day. The Emporium's three floors were packed with bolts of calico, ready-made frocks and suits for men and boys. On the second floor was the china department, which sold plain, white plates and bowls for the most part, but also carried old-fashioned patterned sets of china for "Sunday Best". You could find poke bonnets, lace berthas, even corsets, at the Emporium! My mother shopped there often, mostly to buy underwear for me - always the ubiquitous tight, white, cotton briefs that almost every boy in town wore. The store also had a tailor shop, where my first suit was made. The Emporium sold old-fashioned goods for old-fashioned people. The Beidermeyers had arrived in town one rainy, gloomy day in January 1862. They were refugees from Charleston, having been driven from their home and small shop by the Fire of December 28, 1861, which destroyed much of the city's commercial district. That they were Jews was more or less overlooked, given that there had been Jews in Charleston from 1702, and it was in Charleston where one of the first synagogues in the Colonies - Beth Elohim - was established in 1750. What helped the family to become respected and accepted was that in the back of the broken-down, mule-drawn wagon they were riding in was their only son, Abraham, lying on a thin, soiled mattress. Abraham Beidermeyer was proof positive that while the Beidermeyers were Jews, they were first and foremost true Southerners. Abraham had been badly wounded at the battle of First Manassas (Bull Run to Yankees). He would recover from his wounds and march on to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he would be wounded again and taken prisoner. After the war he would return "home" to The Landing and open the Emporium. There were three Beidermeyer sons, Tony, Marty and Joey. Marty was the best looking of the three, with blond hair and the deepest blue eyes in town. Joey, who was skinny and darker skinned that his brothers, was most generously endowed. Tony, who would eventually be my first seduction, had dark, black hair, smoldering eyes, and a crooked grin that drove me to flights of fantasy. He wasn't bad looking and was a favorite with the town girls almost from the moment his voice cracked and his balls fell. In the Southern Tradition both the Ravellis and Beidermeyers were referred to by the purists as "New People." Having Jews doing business right next door did not sit well with Stubby Richmond, a huge, grossly overweight man who, in addition to owning the local hardware store, was Kleagle, or Grand Klucker, or whatever the hell they called it, of the local chapter of the KKK - which everybody pretended didn't exist. Stubby was a bully, and blustered and threatened, but was roundly ignored by gentle folks. Stubby's influence extended to that portion of the population my father disparagingly called white trash and peckerwoods, which Stubby was. He was the son of a sharecropper, and born in a rickety wooden shack, with a slatternly neighbor acting as midwife. Genteel folk had little truck or trade with the Klan and relations were, to say the least, somewhat strained. My father loathed the Klan in general and Stubby in particular. Stubby was a racist, and opposed anything and anyone that would aid the local colored population. Father, appalled at there being no doctors or medical facilities in Overbridge, as the colored part of town was called, set up a small clinic there. Stubby took exception to white folks tending to black (who were too lazy, according to Stubby, to do it themselves). He organized a march, complete with hoods and a cross, and was confronted by Father at the old stone bridge that spanned the Krik. Father met the Klansmen with the only language they seemed to understand: a double barreled shotgun, which he fired at the demonstrators, peppering Stubby's ample backside with birdshot. Stubby walked with a limp for weeks and Father was fined five dollars by the magistrate for discharging a firearm within town limits. Next to the hardware store was Lucille's, a very genteel ladies dressmaking shop, which was owned by the Misses Hennepin. Most of the ladies in town, my mother included, did not buy their frocks and hats at the Emporium. The frocks and hats sold in the Emporium were behind the times, old-fashioned and out of style, adequate for the upcountry women, but a lady never appeared in a store-bought dress and they shopped at Lucille's. Also in Marion Street were the town's drug store (called the Chemist's), an antique shop that catered mostly to tourists (every house in town was filled with antique everything, from silver to chamber pots), a somewhat sleazy café (although the food was excellent), and the bank, a branch office of Charleston Savings and Loan. Except for the bank, all the shops had overhanging eaves that extended to the edge of the red brick sidewalk. Ranged along the sheltered and shaded porches were benches and chairs where the old men gathered when the sun was too hot to sit in the square, and passed away the day. At the corner, where the bank stood, Cooper Street ran at right angles, curving northward toward Broadlands Road. Here were located a flower shop and a supermarket, Metcalfe's Shop and Save, although the place hadn't been owned by a Metcalfe in over seventy-five years and was in fact owned by the Piggly Wiggly chain of food stores. Directly opposite the bank, on the southwest corner of Marion and Cooper, was Marigny Block, a large, three-story red brick building housing the offices of the town's lawyers (there were four), a cotton broker, my father's office and examining rooms and, taking up most of the space, what passed for the local movie house. Originally it had been a concert hall, had a stage and was the venue for dances, wedding receptions and large dinners. At the time of which I speak it was only used to run "B" movies on Saturday night. On the west side of the Landing, in a leafy square of its own, was the showcase of the town: St. George's Anglican Church. The church had been built in the Anglican Georgian style in 1753, from designs by James Gibbs, a student of Sir Christopher Wren. It had a two-stepped, octagonal, red-brick spire topped by a dome and a gilt weathervane. The fabric of the church was cypress and pine, painted white and, except for the overhang above the main door, presented a very plain façade. In the spire hung a complete set of twelve Change Bells, which clanged discordantly every Sunday morning after High Mass, at weddings and at funerals. These twelve bells were replacements, their cost met through public subscription, and hung in 1888. The original bronze bells, cast in England, had been taken down and donated to the war effort in 1862. Marion and Colleton Streets curved around behind the church to form Hampton Road, which meandered west to the Interstate, which everybody called the Charleston Pike. Beside and behind the church was the old churchyard, crowded with gravestones and markers of some of the town's long deceased, most eminent citizens. Philip I is buried in the churchyard in an ornate tomb that is much the worse for wear, sadly. Originally there had been an ornate gilt and iron fence around the churchyard but it too had been donated to the Confederacy along with the bells, and the church made do with a wooden picket fence. As Philip I de Marigny had donated the land and put up most of the money to build the church, we had a pew directly below the Choir. I was dragged there every Sunday, dressed to kill. In those days people dressed for church. Men wore black, navy blue or grey suits (complete with waistcoat, no matter how hot it was). Ladies wore their "Sunday Frocks", light colored and flowery, except for funerals, when they invariably wore black. They also wore hats, because in those days a lady never appeared in public without one, and white gloves. Little girls wore miniature versions of their mothers' frocks, and hats and white gloves, almost always with white ankle socks and patent leather flat shoes. Little boys always wore starched white shirts (that left a red ring around your neck), a bow tie, and a short trousers - always short trousers - and a matching jacket. This was the rule until a boy turned thirteen, when for some reason they were permitted to shuck the shorts and wear long trousered suits. St. George's was the acknowledged parish church, the Established Church. There were other places of worship, of course. There was a Baptist church, with a huge, foursquare spire, but no bells, on Pakham Street; a smaller, less stolid Presbyterian church on Tradd Street, and an Evangelical Temple on Hampton Road, halfway between the residential district and the Interstate. It did a land office business on Sunday, at least it appeared so from the number of cars and mule-drawn wagons in the huge parking lot that surrounded the place. The Evangelicals made more noise than the Baptists and were always parading down to the Landing for mass baptisms. There were other churches in Overbridge, mostly variations on "The Church of God" theme. One, the Overbridge Church of Christ Risen, boasted the tinniest bell in Creation, which had been donated by the Vestry of St. George's when the Change Bells were hung. There was no synagogue. The Beidermeyers drove into Charleston for Sabbath and High Holy Days services. There was a small Roman Catholic chapel attached to the Ursiline Convent School where, until he died, an ancient priest celebrated Mass for the sisters, the fifty or so students (all girls) and the Ravelli clan. The Ursiline sisters were refugees from the burning of Columbia by Sherman's arsonists. Sherman's army had taken the town, swollen with refugees, rested for a few days and, on the 17th of February 1865, began moving out, heading north to confront Joe Johnston and Marse Robert E. Lee. Sherman had given his solemn word to the Mayor of Columbia, and the Mother Superior of the Ursiline Convent, that he would not burn the town. Historians have argued ever since about what happened next. Sherman always claimed that the fires, which appeared all over town as the Yankees marched out, were the work of vengeful blacks and looting Rebs. Southerners have a different opinion. So do I. Given Sherman's track record on his march through Georgia, and through southern South Carolina, my money is on Sherman the Arsonist. In the event, burned out of their Convent and School, the Mother Superior directed that the nuns and schoolgirls should leave Columbia, and try to find a place to live and work until the convent could rebuilt. They could not go north (where the Yankees were rampaging far and wide), so they went south. Toward the end of February, 1865, four nuns and seven schoolgirls, all hungry, bedraggled and footsore, knocked on the door of the much-battered Conyngham Hall, the big house of the plantation that abuts Broadlands Plantation. They asked for succor and Mrs. Conyngham took them in. She could hardly refuse them for she felt that not only was it the Christian thing to do, she knew that when her son, Somerset, had been captured, mortally wounded after the battle of Gettysburg, he had been taken to a hospital staffed with Sisters of Charity. As he lay dying one of the nuns had taken down his last thoughts and written to his mother, enclosing a lock of his hair. The nuns and their charges were welcome and, as there were no schools for girls available, the nuns stayed and Mrs. Conyngham bequeathed them her house and plantation. The nuns kept the house, but sold off almost all of the land, primarily to poor blacks, ex-slaves who had left the plantations and were squatting on the land anyway. The small collection of rickety shacks and moldering sheds became what was called "Overbridge", so-called because it was located over the stone bridge that spanned the creek separating to two sections of the landing, one colored, one white. ****** The history of the Landing, as a town, began with the death of Philip II, and the end of the Revolutionary War. Many of the planters had been Tory, and staunch supporters of the Crown. Philip II was no exception. Not only was he vociferous in his loyalty, he raised a regiment of militia that fought under the Standard of Saint George, and he obtained Letters of Marque for the three ships he owned. They preyed on rebellious colonials shipping out of the Northern Colonies, and in the eyes of many Philip was little better than a common pirate. Pirate though he might have been, Philip II was a smart cookie. He deposited his profits in England, safe from confiscation when the war was lost to the colonials. The Revolutionary War in Carolina was bloodthirsty in the extreme. Bands of "Patriots" roamed the Low Country, burning crops and houses owned by Tory sympathizers. Bands of Tory Loyalists, and the British Legion, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Banastre Tarleton ranged far and wide, burning Patriot homesteads, farms and hamlets. Tarleton showed no mercy to colonials, his depredations and atrocities culminating in the Waxhaws Massacre. Colonel Abraham Buford, commanding two companies of Virginia Militia, had been en route to reinforce Charleston. Delayed on the march south, he arrived late and found that the city had surrendered to the British. Buford turned back but Tarleton, hearing that the Patriot Governor of South Carolina, John Rutledge, was with Buford, set off in pursuit. He caught up with Buford's column at Waxhaws Crossroads. Buford, under the mistaken impression that he was vastly outnumbered (he wasn't, Tarleton had just two hundred and thirty men), decided to withdraw as quickly as possible to avoid a fight he knew he could not win, and refused Tarleton's demand for his surrender, and kept on marching. The British charged and routed the Patriots. What happened next is the subject of much debate. According to a rebel eyewitness, a field surgeon named Robert Brownfield, Col. Buford raised a white flag of surrender, "expecting the usual treatment sanctioned by civilized warfare". While Buford was calling for quarter, Tarleton's horse was struck by a musket ball and fell. This gave the loyalist cavalrymen the impression that the rebels had shot at their commander while asking for mercy. Enraged, the loyalist troops charged at the Virginians. According to Brownfield, the loyalists attacked, carrying out "indiscriminate carnage never surpassed by the most ruthless atrocities of the most barbarous savages." Tarleton's men stabbed the wounded where they lay. Buford fled, leaving 113 dead. Carolina was a dark and bloody ground long before the war for Southern Independence. The Waxhaws Massacre gave the Patriots reason to wreak vengeance on Loyalists and their property. Patriot bands ranged far and wide through the Carolina Low Country, looting and burning indiscriminately. One of the first properties pillaged was Broadlands Plantation. The original Broadlands House was burned to the foundation stones by rebels in November, 1780. It had been a typical, Low Country house, rambling and comfortable. The house was not a white-columned mansion, although it did have a wrap-around porch on the first floor. Slave built of cypress and pine, with stone foundations, it stood on a bluff overlooking the river. Nothing was left except a jumbled pile of charred wood and the twin brick chimneys that marked the ends of the house. ****** Philip II returned from the war to face the wrath and petty vengeance of the victorious Colonials, now called "Americans". He was a Tory, and under a cloud, but home was home and he wanted to die on the land where he had been born. As no atrocities could be attributed to him, his property was "amerced" that is, subject to a penalty of 12% of its value, and Philip II was allowed to take up residence in his battle-damaged house in the renamed city of Charleston. He paid the hefty price, selling his one remaining ship to the new government, and swore allegiance to the new people in charge. Swallowing his injured pride, and drawing on his funds deposited in England, Philip II built a new house, two-storied, of brick and stone, with two wings stretching toward the south. The east wing housed the children - he had thirteen of them - and the west housed the kitchen and store rooms so necessary to country living. He also added a street of one room brick cabins, "The Quarters", below the bluff. Here lived the slave families, the people who looked after the house, minded the children, plowed the fields and harvested the crops - rice was even more labor intensive than cotton and frequent storms inundated the squares and destroyed the flumes and gates of the water system - so Philip planted cotton, much in demand in England, and a guaranteed cash crop. Philip II settled back and rebuilt his fortune as a planter, and a ship owner. He exported cotton for the most part, and imported manufactured and luxury goods. He repaired the house in Charleston, where he spent much of his time. During the "Fever Season" he retired to Broadlands, always with an entourage of relatives and friends. Southerners have always loved entertaining. Houses were large, slaves plentiful, and the weather mild and accommodating. When in residence at Broadlands, Philip II hosted barbecues, balls, excursions on the river, and hunts, where an unfortunate fox was chased over the fields and sometimes, into the dusty street and square of the growing Landing. In 1812 Philip II died of a heart attack while directing the effort to save his house from the nemesis of all plantations: fire. That summer had been very hot, and very humid. An epidemic of yellow fever raged in Charleston and the house was full of relatives and friends. Contemporary records are scarce, thanks to Sherman's Bummers, who burned the Court House. Family legend has it that unbeknownst to Philip II and his guests, a hurricane had been brewing out in the Atlantic and it roared ashore just north of Charleston. It traveled north by west and the eye passed about three miles north of Broadlands House. Apparently most of the guests had ridden into The Landing and taken refuge in the stone warehouse. Philip II stayed behind with his slaves, busily supervising the efforts to board up windows and move stock to safety. Somehow the house caught fire. The force of the wind and the rain made efforts to fight the flames near impossible. He did, however, get a bucket brigade going, and directed the removal of furniture and such from the house. While it soon became apparent that the house was gone, Philip II carried on, only to clutch his chest and fall to the ground, dead from a massive heart attack. The funeral was attended by only a few people, Philip's children and their wives, the Conynghams, and the slaves. Philip II was buried in St. George's Churchyard and his son, Philip III inherited the plantation. ****** For the next five years or so the plantation, and the Landing, was little more than derelict ground. Most of the men were away, fighting the War of 1812, and the hurricane had wrought disaster to the farmers and rice planters. The fields were bare, mostly weed-strewn, and the planters and their slaves survived on what little vegetables they could grow. Trade in Charleston was at a stand-still, thanks to the war, and Philip III's warehouses were empty. He did manage to make a few dollars by accepting a Letter of Marque from Congress, but what little he made didn't go far. He had many mouths to feed and while more than one of his neighbors sold their slaves to the planters in Mississippi and Louisiana, Philip III would not do so. He had a paternalistic nature, and was not alone in feeling that God had given the care and keeping of his Negroes into his hands. They were his people and he was responsible for them. Philip III persevered and began to sell his land. He sold a large parcel to Charles Edward Pegram, a Charleston banker who had recently married. His new bride, an Arnott from Columbia, South Carolina, yearned for a summer retreat, and in 1817, Philip III sold ten acres of riverfront land to Pegram. The house that the banker erected, a typical Low Country place, thus became No. 1 Broadlands Avenue. This house survived the ravages of time, weather and Yankees, and at the time I write of was home to two of my best friends, John and Thomas Pegram,. It was also the home of their brother Charlie Pegram, whom I saw little of, as he was a Plebe at the Citadel down in Charleston. All of the Pegram boys were blond-haired, blue-eyed, pink-cheeked, slim-bodied GODS! Of the three, I lusted after Charlie, Charles Edward Arnott Pegram to give him his due. He stood six foot three inches tall, had sparkling blue eyes, a well-muscled, but slim body and golden hair, cut high and tight. He walked with a grace that belied description and never seemed to be without a smile for everyone, including his brothers' bratty friends (myself being one of them). Charlie's beauty was such that every time I saw him, smartly turned out in his cadet summer uniform, I all but drooled and became tongue-tied if he so much as looked at me. At night, in the privacy of my bed, I would fantasize about seeing him naked, wondering if he resembled his brothers, whom I saw almost every day nekkid when we went skinny dipping in the river. My fantasy soon progressed to the inevitable and, even though I knew the results would lead to much grumbling from Mam Berta, our housekeeper, who did the laundry, I always ended up soiling the sheets with my watery seed. I was completely, totally, infatuated with Charlie Pegram. The Pegrams, while pillars of local society, and well-born, enjoyed a certain fame, thanks to Somerset Conyngham Pegram who, at the tender age of thirteen years, was not only a veteran, but the only casualty of what became engraved in legend as "The Battle of Charles Town Landing" or, more commonly, "Pegram's Last Stand". ****** On the 19th day of January, 1865, General Sherman and his army of Yankee vandals, 65,000 strong, crossed the Savannah River and began the invasion of South Carolina. Sherman's infantry tramped north, burning and pillaging with impunity and was preceded by a stream of refugees fleeing the barbarian horde. Sherman had proclaimed that when he invaded South Carolina he would leave a trail of such devastation that at crow flying over would have to carry his own rations. His men looted grand plantations and modest farm houses. His line of march was marked with towering pillars of black smoke . . . the flaming houses and barns, churches and simple sheds, the symbols of a dying civilization. Panic reigned throughout the state, and the Governor, Andrew McGrath, pleaded in vain for Richmond to send reinforcements. There were none to be sent, although Lee did manage to free up few men from Hampton's Legion and Wheeler's cavalry. It was too little, and too late. As the Yankees advanced northward, the Confederate generals, Hardee, Beauregard, D.H. Hill and Gustavus Smith tried to divine Sherman's intentions. They expected him to head for Charleston, "the seat of the rebellion", and move on Columbia, the state capital. They moved what little troops they had to cover the coastal city, and set to work building earthworks and defenses in and around Columbia. What they did not realize was that Sherman had no intention of going to Charleston. He had seen how debilitating a siege could be at Atlanta, and again at Savannah. He would bypass Charleston, leaving the garrison to wither and starve. He was heading for Columbia, spreading devastation and death as he went. Governor McGrath, with little or no help coming from the Regulars, called out the Home Guard and the cadets of the military schools to defend the state. The panic spread as news of Sherman's depredations reached each little town and village in the Union army's path. Many civilians packed their valuables and fled, abandoning their homes and slaves. Philip III, still suffering from wounds received at Chancellorsville, left his sick bed and joined the small group of old men and boys who made up the Landing's local defense force and marched south. ****** With the departure of the Home Guard there were no troops to defend the little town, except the small Battalion of boy cadets of the Parker-Semmes Military Academy (of which more later), and a four-gun battery of horse artillery that had managed to lose its way on the byways as it marched north to join Hardee's troops. Scouts brought news that Sherman's army was miles away to the west, but that Yankee cavalry, in the persons of General Judson Kilpatrick's troopers, were screening the march and heading toward the upper reaches of the Cooper, there to cross the river and continue their rampage northward. On the evening of the 12th of February, 1865, word came that the Yankees were camped on the southern bank of the Cooper, barely a mile from the Landing. Major Davis Burke, the commanding officer of the artillery, decided that a show of force was needed and made his preparations accordingly. One thing he lacked was infantry. He knew of course that the Home Guard was south and west of the Landing, somewhere, just as he knew that there was a military school nearby. He mounted his horse and rode to the school. Here he begged the Commandant, an elderly veteran of the Mexican War, to order his cadets to march to war. The Commandant was reluctant, although he knew that his cadets were eager to defend their homes and the honor of South Carolina. He listened to Major Burke's pleading and ordered the Corps to march at dawn. The next morning, resplendent in their dress uniforms: Confederate gray, brass-buttoned coatees, starched white trousers, and kepis complete with Havelocks, the cadets formed up in front of the red-brick barracks they called home. Led by the Colors and the Fifes and Drums, one hundred and twenty young boys, the youngest being ten, the oldest sixteen, began their parade. Amongst them was Somerset Conyngham Pegram, aged thirteen, proudly carrying his Enfield rifle, bayonet fixed, frightened beyond belief, but determined to protect his mother and sisters, all of whom gathered on the porch of their house to watch their little boy, the only surviving male in the family, march to glory. Out of the ornate gates of the school, drums beating, flags flying and the fifers tootling "The Bonnie Blue Flag", they marched. Past Broadlands House, past the Gascoyne place, where Miss Elizabeth gathered with her remaining house servants at the rickety wooden picket fence that surrounded the house and waved "their boys" to war. Past the ruins of the Spencer house - destroyed by the same Yankee gunboat that had lobbed a cannonball into Broadlands House. Past the Izard house, where a faded, withered, funeral wreath still hung on the door, marking the passing of the master of the house during the battles around Atlanta. Past the Pegram place, Somerset's mother and sisters and the ancient Mammy who had coddled and cradled all the Pegram boys, weeping into their handkerchiefs. On they marched, into the town, past the few people gathered on the wooden sidewalk, the tinny bell of St. George's sounding the tocsin. They crossed over the stone bridge that spanned Conyngham Creek, passing down the dusty street that separated the rows of wooden cabins that housed the slaves who worked the Conyngham Plantation, and onward, a band of brothers, and native to the soil. ****** The boy cadets literally marched toward the sound of the guns. Major Davis had opened the ball by lobbing shrapnel at the Yankees, who were encamped in and around the recently abandoned Venman farm house. Inside the house, General Kilpatrick, a notorious philanderer and swordsman, was entertaining, or being entertained by, a young lady, Marie Boozer, a Savannah beauty who, with her mother, Mrs. Feaster, was being "escorted" north by the general. That neither lady was received in Savannah, and were traveling in a carriage "appropriated" by the general from the Oglethorpes, is often not mentioned. In the event, the boy cadets marched on, and up a low rise. Here they halted and formed a line of battle, two ranks deep. As the drums rolled the cadets raised their rifles and began volley fire. The first rank, as the cannon thundered behind them, fired a volley, hitting no one, but adding to the confusion in the Yankee camp. As horses bucked and troopers tried to gain some measure of control of the animals, General Kilpatrick, in his nightshirt, and followed by two hysterical women in their night gowns, ran from the house. The general began bellowing, the women screamed and the guns roared. The boy cadets of the second rank marched forward, raised their rifles, and fired. This caused even more panic and the general, not anxious to fight a battle in his nightshirt, order a strategic advance across the river, north! As the Yankees recovered and mounted, and began crossing the ford, the boy cadets, overcome with the sense of victory, charged! Somerset Pegram, excited and feeling flushed with knowledge that he was actually fighting the Yanks, charged down the field toward the remnants of a fallen tree, really just tangle of shattered wood and twigs. As he ran a Yankee, his mount terrified from the noise, galloped in front of him. A shell landed nearby and the horse reared, throwing its rider to the ground. Somerset, intent on pursuing the fleeing invaders, tripped and fell on top of the Yankee. The Yankee, pissed off, called Somerset a dirty little bastard. Somerset retorted that the Yank was a dirty big thief and rolled away. He stood up and stuck out his tongue. The Yankee, not at all pleased with seeing a little boy pointing a gun at him, or sticking out his tongue, called Somerset a fucking little brat, and jumped up. Somerset never hesitated and took off running. With the howling Yankee close behind, Somerset ran around and around the tangle of tree and bushes, like Little Black Sambo being chased by the tiger. Around and around they ran until the Yank suddenly changed direction. Somerset ran right into the irate man. The shock of the collision left both participants momentarily breathless, but Somerset was quick. He fetched the man's shin an almighty kick. The Yank was also quick, and before Somerset could run away, grabbed the boy, sat down on the log that formed the main basis of the tangle, turned Somerset over his knee and began to spank him. His dignity affronted, Somerset yelled in indignation. The Yank, unimpressed, got off three good swats before a sergeant rode up and told the man to stop molesting little boys. The Yank left off spanking Somerset, who rolled under the log, his bottom smarting. The cannons roared again a piece of shrapnel went whizzing by the two Yankees. Being old veterans, they both decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and joined the strategic advance to the north. Somerset, basically unhurt, left his refuge and rejoined his comrades in arms, who were cheering and waving their caps, having gained the field. Somerset told the other boys of his brief captivity, was promptly dubbed a hero, patted on his head, and for the rest of his life was acclaimed a hero on every Confederate Memorial Day, as the Fourth of July was called at the Landing. ****** The latter day Pegrams enjoyed no such fame or honor, and while they did contribute their men folk to subsequent wars, the closest they came was when Charlie Pegram, the object of my lust, sang to glory at the Christmas Chorale in St. George's Church. St. George's Episcopal (Anglican) Church was sternly traditional - High Church with all the incense and candles and soaring hymns. The services were conducted in strict accordance with the Book of Common Prayer and no Book of Alternate Service nonsense was allowed. In keeping with St. Paul's admonition to the Corinthians (I Corinthians 14/34): "Let your women keep silence in the churches for it is not permitted unto them to speak;" there were no female acolytes or deacons; women were not permitted to read the Gospels and there would be no shrieking from the choir loft, which the church in any case did not have. The choir was male, usually around twenty-four boy sopranos (depending on the availability of boy sopranos) and ten tenors and basses. My brothers sang in the choir; I sang in the choir and, Charlie Pegram, the man of my dreams, sang in the choir. About the only young male who didn't was Wade Hampton, who sounded like a very sick frog croaking its death rattle. While it was before my choir time by about three years, I was present in the church on the Christmas Eve when Charlie sang to glory. He had a pure, crystal voice that defied description. He could hit High C over C, which is quite an accomplishment and Charlie, the darling of the Choirmaster, was chosen to sing the solo part of the favorite Christmas offering: "Suo Gan." Now, thanks to Mr. Steven Spielberg, the song was used as the opening piece for his film "Empire of the Sun." It was lip-synched by a very young Mr. Christian Bale, and as the setting is pre-war Shanghai, China, everybody assumes that the song is Chinese. It isn't, it's Welsh and the chorister was singing in Welsh, not one of the Chinese dialects. In the event, Charlie sang his heart out, sang so beautifully that there wasn't a dry eye in the church. Even my father, a hard-nosed ex-sailorman, admitted to a few sniffles. It was a wonderful performance and people still talk about it. Whenever Charlie's name is mentioned nobody talks about him attending the Citadel, joining the U.S. Marines and being awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in Vietnam. It is always about the wonderful Christmas Concert where he sang so wondrously. Everybody is too polite to mention that less than a week after his stellar performance he had his first full-blown nocturnal emission and his voice broke during the processional hymn, "Guide Me Thou O Great Jehovah!" at the January 1st service (the Feast of the Circumcision). Charlie stayed with the choir until he left for Charleston. He was the stuff my dreams were made of, and I very early on decided that when the time came he would be my first. ****** No. 2 Broadlands Avenue was the home of Cecils. The house was large, with a large porch, great for just sitting, and the home of Nicholas, Gregory and Bob Lee Cecil, eleven, thirteen and fourteen respectively. They had two sisters, Maude and Marie, who were as beautiful as their brothers, but who never figured in my night time fantasies. No. 3 Broadlands, a two-story, wood frame house painted yellow, the house somewhat the worse for wear, and always looking as if it needed a new coat of paint. This was the home, along with his parents, of St. John Lowndes Tradd. "Sinjin", as he was called, was short, as skinny as a snake, and as cute a boy to come down the Charleston Pike in generations. He had red hair, pale skin, and freckles. He also had a pecker that was a thing of beauty, sculpted, and a pale pastel pink in color. It was perfectly proportioned to his firm body, perhaps four inches in length when angry and about an inch or so in diameter. It was also so perfectly circumcised that it appeared to be untouched, as if he had been born skin-free. As he was fourteen, he had a trim, respectable bush of deep red, gold flecked pubic hairs sprouting on his groin and surrounding the base of his pecker, casting a deep shadow on his smooth, lightly tanned skin. Sinjin had a sunny, open disposition and claimed to be unique, being an only son, and the only male in the family of his generation. He had a horde of female cousins who fortunately visited infrequently. He also claimed that he was the only hope for the family, which could, but did not, boast that their ancestry went all the way back to the first white child born in the Carolina colony in 1683. He was as playful as a puppy, smart, and usually as horny as a two-peckered polecat, and usually started the group masturbation we always engaged in when at the swimming hole where we skinny-dipped. No. 5 Broadlands, where I lived, dated from 1822. When Philip III returned from saving New Orleans he had lived in the old overseer's cottage, which was small and not at all suitable for either entertaining or housing his growing brood (he eventually was married twice, widowed twice, and sired sixteen children). Philip III's new house was slave built of native brick that, while it weathered well, over the years turned a sickly-saffron color. It was a "classic, three-storey, Georgian-style" house built from plans by John Nash, with an oriel window reaching from the ground to the roof line. The south front was plain while a two-storey piazza dominated the south front, and overlooked the river. Attached to one side was a miniature copy - the kitchen, which joined the house through a covered walkway. This was in accordance with tradition and Philip III, having lost one house from fire, decreed that none of the rooms were to be paneled. Most were painted in light pastel colors, although the dining room had mural wallpaper, imported from France. Sometime in the 1850s an ugly, wrought-iron, black painted porte-cochere and balconies was added to the front. It was supposedly the "latest" in Victorian architecture and exceedingly ugly. Fortunately it collapsed during the earthquake of 1886 and was replaced by a simple, one-storey porte-cochere. It was at this time that the building was stuccoed and whitewashed, and a two storey balcony added to the north and east fronts. My bedroom was at the back and I could step through floor-to-ceiling French doors onto the balcony and watch the river roll by. Across Broadlands Avenue were two additional houses, one a late-Victoria mansion inhabited by the Misses Finch, Miss Hester and Miss Adele, sisters, and spinsters, who wore the strangest hats ever created and cultivated a large vegetable garden where they grew tomatoes. They more or less stayed to themselves and were the mainstay of the Presbyterian Church. The other house, a low, one-storey structure, had been the original overseer's cottage of Broadlands Plantation. It had been added to over the years and was home to the Conynghams. Their plantation, except for the house and outbuildings, had been confiscated by the Freedman's Bureau and the land parceled out to freed slaves, and much of the land was now occupied by Overbridge, the colored section of town. There were two Conyngham brothers, Tristan and Damian. They were handsome boys, with jet-black hair and fine, well-muscled bodies. None of the houses on the street had fences separating the lots, and from the wall that separated Broadlands House and the Conyngham place westward to the hotel was one emerald green lawn, usually inhabited by screaming children and whatever waterfowl had migrated from the reeds and mud banks of the Cooper River. Broadlands Avenue ended at the weathered, red brick wall and ornate, wrought iron gates of the Parker-Semmes Military Academy. Behind the wall, and surrounding a neat parade square lined with whitewashed stones, were a series of brick barracks and classroom buildings, and a chapel with a soaring tower. This was the home of one hundred and fifty boy cadets, ranging in age from nine or ten to eighteen years of age. I knew none of them, as I did not attend the academy, but saw quite a bit of them as they were always parading about something. What I saw I liked, being a Southerner, and loving anything military and in a uniform! Southerners have always had a military tradition, responding to the call to the colors in every conflict, from the Revolutionary War to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The South also has a tradition of sending its young sons to military schools, which at one time were scattered all over the place, and every state had its "State Military Academy". These academies were more a product of fear than of yearning for education. The fear of slave uprising, as had happened in St. Domingue, was very real and, in 1822, the state legislature had allocated funds to establish "a competent Municipal Guard" in Charleston and Columbia. An arsenal and guard house was constructed at the north end of Marion Square in Charleston and a "Citadel" established. Similar structures were built in Columbia and were called "The Arsenal". Although they were intended to be seats of education, Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831 sent a shiver of fear throughout the slave states. It was very quickly realized that the Regular Army, which was small and scattered in the West, would not, and could not be of any help if the blacks rose. Southerners would be on their own, and in 1842 the South Carolina Military Academy was established and the first class of thirty-four cadets housed in the Charleston Citadel. At the time there was no such thing as a "public school". There were church-affiliated "free schools", where the children of merchants and shop keepers were educated. The children of the aristocracy were educated at home, the boys by tutors and the girls by governesses. Someone came up with the idea that combining military training with a classical education was a something to be desired and state funds were allocated to establish schools for boys. In 1845 Phillip IV was approached by Captain William Parker, ex-USN, who inquired as to the availability of a hundred acres or so. He needed the land to establish a school for boys and had cash. As a tropical storm had roared in from the Atlantic and devastated the cotton crop, Philip IV did not hesitate and the deeds changed hands, the school was establish and little boys in uniform began appearing all over town. ****** In the main, then, this is my history, and the boys who lived in the houses on Broadlands Avenue were my friends, my lovers, and my partners in crime. We did everything together, and while the riverside houses each had a boat house and a wharf, we much preferred our swimming hole, which was really a secluded cove on the other side of the military academy. Here we would skinny dip, oblivious to the catcalls and whistles of the senior cadets, whose barrack room windows gave them a bird's eye view of our naked butts and immature genitals. There were other boys in town, of course, most noticeably the Ravelli and Beidermeyer boys. A sometimes participant of our schoolboy shenanigans was Stubby Richmond's son Simmons (named for the so-called founder, in 1915, of the "Second Klan"). Simmons was a tall, husky boy and after the first time we saw him nekkid, was the only one of us who always wore a bathing suit. We ragged him unmercifully I'm afraid, being vicious boys, because he wasn't like us. His father, Stubby, being a jerk and an anti-Semite, had not taken advantage of my father's advertised service: "Pre-and-Post Natal Care $65.00, including circumcision if the child is a boy." Simmons only came around when he wanted something, usually sex, which no one would give him. Nobody wanted to touch his pathetic excuse for a pecker, let alone suck it, even Wade Hampton, who was normally quite liberal with his favors, especially if the boy was halfway decent looking. Simmons had to be the most frustrated boy in town! Then there were the Smiths! The Smith family didn't actually live in town. The tribe, and that's basically what they were, lived in a sprawling, ramshackle cypress and pine shack on the other side of Overbridge. The shack had been built, the front part on land, the back on pilings that stretched out over the river - the better to dispose of their trash, fish innards and, I am afraid to say, their sewage. It had no running water and no electricity and the place looked as if it was a hundred years old, parts of which I believe were. It was weather-beaten and hadn't seen a lick of paint in a generation at the least. The yard on the land side of the place was overgrown with weeds and littered with broken farm implements, a derelict Ford pickup minus doors and a wind shield, and chickens. The birds roamed free and nested everywhere. Chickens were not the only livestock in residence. There were four or more dogs - no one was ever quite sure how many because one or more was always pregnant - and cats. Ma Smith (as she was always called) favored cats. There was also a herd of the most scrofulous pigs ever known to man. The pigs supplemented the family diet (as did the chickens) of fish and whatever the males managed to trap or hunt. The Smiths were a strange tribe to say the least. Daddy Smith was a huge man, a bear of a man, with an untidy beard and always seemed to be in need of a good scrub and never appeared in anything other than Bib overalls. Daddy Smith was a man of many parts, in some ways was a Renaissance man. He was all but illiterate, although he could sign the welfare checks the County sent him once a month. Why he needed public assistance was a mystery because he had two claims to fame, and adequate income. Surrounding the hovel were ten acres of heavily mortgaged prime bottom land, planted with corn. Every year at harvest time Danny Smith, his sons, and the corn, would disappear into the pine woods that surrounded his property and eventually he would reappear with jugs of what my father described as the best sippin' likker this side of Jim Beam. Those in the know lined up for the jugs, everybody keeping an eye out for the County Sheriff and the fed'ral revenuers who were perennially on the lookout for Daddy's illicit still. They never found it although they tried hard. Daddy Smith's second claim to fame was his incredible skill as a wood worker. Examples of his work existed in almost every house in town. He was a master carver and when St. George's needed a new altar (the old one was being devoured by termites) Danny Smith was the man the Vestrymen called. Not only did he craft an altar, but also carved the rood screen that separated the choir from the nave, and the columns that supported the gallery. Broadlands House was no exception in that there were several examples of Daddy's expertise in the house, notably the fireplace surrounds in the front parlor, and the delicately carved and gilded series of trophies that adorned the doors leading from the drawing room to the dining room. Daddy Smith's ability was inherited by three of his sons. They also inherited his love of corn liquor and coupling with anything with a pulse. The girls of the family also inherited their father's loose morals, although to be honest they never charged for their services. They might have been Swamp Trash, but they were honest Swamp Trash, and they did it because they enjoyed it. They all resembled their mother, a plain, washed-out woman of indeterminable age. She always looked as if she had been weaned on a pickle, and always seemed to wear the same faded house dress, and wore her grey, thinning hair in bun. While her daughters were as washed-out and pale as their mother, they did not emulate her example when it came to clothing. They always appeared in public wearing as little as possible, usually the shortest shorts they could find, and halter tops tied under their ample breasts (worn without bras or panties, according to my sister, and the town biddies). The girls, all named after flowers: Peony, Rose, Lilac, and Lily, while demonstrably under age, rarely spent time in the County Consolidated School, and were always being rousted by the State Police for propping up the bar in Peckinham's Road House, a low dive out by the Charleston Pike. The boys of the family, Bobby Lee, Jeb, Stonewall, Ambrose Powell (called AP) and Bradley, were, except for Bradley, mirror images of their father. They were all tall, heavy set, reputedly hung like horses and like their sisters spent as little time in school as they could. The runt of the litter, Bradley, was short, skinny, wore glasses and was considered "literary" since he could read the words in the porn mags his brothers fetched home from their periodic raids on the whore houses of North Charleston. All of the brothers were as mean, as sneaky, and as venal as their father. They thought they were good ol' boys, rednecks all, and bragged of their staunch membership in the Klan. That they were all destined for prison, or Death Row was a foregone conclusion, although only one, Bradley ended up in the Ridgeville Penitentiary Death House. Bobby Lee and Stonewall were killed in a botched robbery attempt in Columbia, and AP died of a drug overdose in a crib in a North Charleston whore house. Bradley was electrocuted for hacking one of his tricks to death with an axe, in an apparent dispute over Bradley's inability to bring the man to orgasm. It was widely rumored that the Smiths were incestuous. This assumption, widely spread by the biddies, was reinforced by the presence of three toddlers that cluttered the Smith ménage. Just who had fathered these whelps was up for grabs. They were never brought to town, and while some said they all resembled one or another of the brothers, this was hardly surprising, given the family's genes. Others speculated that given the girls' lack of morals and inhibitions, and inability to say no to anything with a penis, it was anybody's guess who, or what, had fathered the children. About the only things everybody agreed on was that the babies were human, and not of mixed race parentage. The girls might be dippy skanks, but even they obeyed the Unwritten Law: under no circumstances were relations between blacks and whites permitted. Even the hint of such a relationship was guaranteed to result in total, complete and utter ostracism at best or a visit from the Klan at worst. It was the Unwritten Law that would, in the waning days of summer, 1968, expose the sleepy little town of my birth to national scrutiny and subject the inhabitants, the innocent and the guilty alike, to excoriation and disdain.