There were so many cousins. The Taylors were a sprawling clan, the family tree heavy with fruit. When Montgomery was a boy he was closest to Uncle Johnnie’s kids, particularly Anna, the youngest. They were about the same age and possessed the same propensity for mischief. As he sat at the desk in his library surrounded by his mother’s correspondence, he noticed a letter she had written to Anna in 1969 but never sent. It was so typical of Elizabeth Taylor to write such letters. Whenever she had a thought she would write it down with the greatest of intentions of sharing, but somehow her busy life would conspire against follow through. This note was so kind and loving it brought a lump to his throat as he read. His mother was trying to encourage her niece who was worried sick about her brother Richie. Even though Anna was only ten, she watched Walter Cronkite on their grainy black and white RCA Victor every night like everyone else. She heard the dour old man give the day’s kill numbers from Vietnam and her young heart would break with worry. Anna, every night I lift Richie up in my prayers. Each night I beg the Lord for protection for your brother. And each night God answers my prayers.
Montgomery smiled. It was so like his mother, basking in her unique personal connection with the creator of the universe. Of all the millions of prayers raised each night by the dutiful and the desperate, Elizabeth Taylor’s prayers were heard and answered. It was an otherworldly relationship that defied not only logic but theological scrutiny. Nevertheless, she persisted with undimmed confidence.
As Montgomery sifted through the letters and random scraps of paper he found a faded photograph of Richie and Anna taken in 1968. There was Richie in his sharp Army Ranger uniform with it’s distinctive beret, his arm around his little sister’s shoulder. Probably a going away party from the looks of it. Anna had been crying.
He remembered a story at that moment that he hadn’t thought about in years. It had been told to him years ago by Patty, Anna’s older sister. For some unknown reason, Richie and Anna were having a sleepover in the horrid back room at Blue Hill, the sinister red sofa frowning at them through the darkness. Richie heard his grandmother’s shuffling footsteps coming from the kitchen down the dark hallway to their room. “Kids? Wake up now. Put on your shoes and follow me.”
Edna led them both to the kitchen then to the back door. “Somebody is in the pasture. See?”
Anna squinted through the window and saw a pair of lanterns swaying with the rhythm of people walking. They were half way down the hill from the cemetery on this cloudy, moonless night.
“Who are they?” Anna asked
“I don’t know, child.” Edna answered. “But they’ve been walking back and forth out there for the last thirty minutes so they are probably lost. I want you kids to go out there and unlock the gate for them. Whoever they are, they’re going to catch their death out there.”
When Montgomery first heard the story he remembered thinking, as he did now, what an odd strategy. Two strangers trespassing on your property in the middle of the night and instead of carrying a shotgun, she sends her two defenseless grandchildren out to greet them armed only with a lantern and each other. But, such was the less jaded existence of farm life in 1960’s America.
Anna, terrified, stayed glued to her brother’s side as they walked down the back steps, through the yard and past the barn where their grandfather kept his Packard. By the time they reached the big swinging gate at the entrance to the pasture, they noticed that the lanterns had stopped swaying. Richie hollered out, “You guys lost? Nanny says you should come inside and warm up or you’re gonna catch your death!”
Anna never wavered on what happened next. Every time she told the story, she added details, changed others, but this was the one stalwart and reliable fact...the lanterns vanished.
“Hogwash!” Montgomery had exclaimed the first time hearing the tail. “More like the men blew their lanterns out and ran away!”
Anna was adamant. “NO, Cousin. By this time our eyes had adjusted to the darkness. We both could see outlines of their bodies and their floppy hats. When those lanterns went out, their shadows left with them. Besides, if they had run away we would have heard those lanterns rattling. I’m telling you, the both of them vanished into thin air.”
Eventually Montgomery had stopped arguing the point, letting his cousin believe whatever she wanted to believe. Later, older and wiser Richie confirmed Anna’s version of the story, adding much needed gravitas to the tale. Many theories had sprung up over the years since seeking to guess the identity of the two lantern carriers. The most popular suggested that since Edna had seen them walking down from the graveyard, it was probably the ghost of Maggie Watson, the daughter of freed slaves who had worked at Blue Hill as a housekeeper for their Great Grandfather when he owned the place. Eventually Maggie and her husband had purchased a small plot of land just west of the graveyard and lived there until they both passed away. The small cabin they had built had been torn down years ago. It must have been the two of them searching for their old home, the only building either of them had ever owned.
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Uriah Madison Taylor was the one and only lawyer in a family of farmers and builders. He had attended the University of Virginia and gotten a law degree while his brothers and sisters stayed put at Blue Hill. He was a giant of a man, physically imposing yet gregarious. He practiced law at his office in Charlottesville during the week then came home to his farm adjacent to Blue Hill which he ran along with his sister. Elizabeth remembered how her Uncle would always bring her gifts from Charlottesville, which to her might has well have been from the ancient marketplace in Algiers. Uncle Uriah was the Taylor family exotic, the farm boy who made good in the big city.
Uncle Uriah also had a soft spot for bad men. His work put a lot of them in jail, but he believed in second chances and redemption. As a result he worked to establish a work release program for first offenders, a first for Charlottesville. From time to time his soft-hearted disposition led him to hire these work released men to work on his sister’s farm. He ignored the warnings of his legal colleagues, refusing to give in to their world weary conclusion that some human beings were beyond redemption and that his kindness and compassion was at best misplaced and at worst, dangerous.
One particularly cold December Friday evening when Uriah got back to the farm, his sister complained about one of his “convicts” being excessively lazy, repeatedly refusing to do what she asked him to do. Uriah called him into the main house to talk with him and hopefully appeal to the better angels of his character that Uriah insisted lived somewhere within every man. An argument ensued. The man stormed out of the house and headed back to the small barracks housing building that Uriah had built for the workers. Uriah, against his sister’s warnings, insisted in pursuing him. When he walked through the front door of the barracks the man shot him in the chest with a double barrel shotgun. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Uriah Taylor’s death caused a sensation throughout the polite society of Charlottesville. Montgomery’s father had attended the trial and told of the heightened emotional rhetoric and the fierce, unrepentant heart of the killer. Although Uriah’s belief in redemption had ultimately cost him his life, people who knew him believed that if he had it to do all over again...he would have. It was not the first tragic death to occur on the farm at Blue Hill, and it was not to be the last. But Uriah’s murder was to be a reminder to the Taylor family that the world could be an unforgiving place.
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