VI

Licinius Mordecai Prentiss, Doctor Divinitatis, President of the Athens Theological Seminary. Prim and pencil thin, smooth shaven. He read Matthew with love, and Plato with passion. He lived in his mansion on Beaty Street called Parthenon. Now he was being harangued at his desk by his fellow Greek petitioners. These elite few gathered around him like Olympus Mons. What were they going to do about Strangetown? There are illegal whiskies and ladies-of-the-night down there. There are Republicans and transvestites. There are negroes with guns, although they did not say it like that. Dr. Prentiss’s normally steadfast patience snapped. Enough!!

 
The Democratic Party of Limestone County was dominated by the Greeks of Athens. They were for the most part the planter elite and ran it like a machine with Dr. Prentiss as the chairman. Even when the Union army occupied the town early in the war, they remained surly and obstreperous. That is until the mad Russian Ivan Turchininov descended on Athens and sacked it like the Muscovite he was. That was in the Spring of ‘62. The Greeks became pretty docile after that. In fact, they collaborated with the Yankee power to preserve their status. They sold cotton up North in exchange for real money. Formerly ardent secessionists, they were now flexible opportunists. But while they adjusted to gradual emancipation by paying their former slaves, there were already cracks in the edifice. Freedmen were pouring into town from the countryside. They took up residence along Town Creek in a ‘contraband camp,’ which is a rude word for a place of refuge. When the Yankees started paying them real money to dig forts along the Decatur & Nashville railroad, word got around. The Greeks were losing their freedmen workers. They were moving into Strangetown. That just will not do!

 
For Dr. Prentiss, the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment turned crisis for the party’s hold on power. Suddenly thousands of negroes had the right to vote, and who did they vote for? They voted for the party of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator himself. They voted Republican! The Greeks blinked and did nothing. They had grossly underestimated the surge of political muscle this voting bloc suddenly brought to the polls. When elections came and went, the Democrats were flabergasted to find a Republican was now in control of the most powerful office in Limestone County - Sheriff. They thanked their heavens he was white. But my god? What if he had been black? The possibility terrified the Democrat elites, and so they slowly and surely drew their plans against the source of this new power – Strangetown.

V

The Darlings of Strangetown all loved “Royal Bill” Marmaduke, Sheriff of Limestone County. The man was a living legend, and a deep thorn in the side of the Greeks. He was a Republican. Among their councils on the Hill they sneered him as a scallawag, traitor to his class, traitor to his race. But he was a war hero. He swore his oath to the Confederacy in Huntsville, Alabama and mustered into the 19th Alabama Infantry Regiment. He fought under Fighting Joe Wheeler at Shiloh with the 19th Alabama, and rode as a guerilla fighter with his friend Frank Gurley, who became Sheriff of Madison County. When John Bell Hood invaded Tennessee in the winter of ’64, he came down out of Hurricane Valley to fight with the 19th Alabama one last time. When he mustered back in, there wasn’t anybody left he knew. And when he fought at Franklin, he lost all the new friends he’d made too. He was a changed man after all that. But that’s a whole another story.

 
He ran on the Republican ticket, which was roundly viewed with cynicism by his fellow Greeks and suspicion by Strangetown. Maw Possum brought in the colored vote and helped elect Limestone County’s first Republican. Royal Bill ran down the Klan’s operations out of Dogwood Flats while getting his take out of Strangetown’s tables. The Klan was bad enough. There were a lot of people coming home from the war with everything gone, and then being told it’s the negro’s fault, it’s the Yankees’ fault. They’re told that they might have lost everything, but at least they are still white and they should be grateful. And people actually believed that stuff and joined the Klan because they just ate it up. The Klan’s problem was that most of them were stupid, but they provided a pool of useful idiots for the real enemy of Strangetown.

Adelphon Kuklos was a secret society of absolute white terrorists. They were a committed few willing to do violence on their fellow man for a white world. No one knew who its members were. Rumors and gossip abound about the AK. They controlled the Klan from the shadows, and possibly the Greeks themselves. All anyone really knew is that Royal Bill Marmaduke shot one of them dead saving the life of Drake Shoney down in Belle Mina. The Adelphon Kuklos had strung Shoney up by the noose when Royal Bill pulled out his Navy Colt and shot down a figure in a scarlet robe as the others fled. No one recognized the man who Royal Bill shot, and the investigation into this curious episode is a story for another time.
After that, Royal Bill grew beloved in Strangetown. He had taken on the terrorists himself. His popularity snowballed from there. He ran parades and rodeos and raced wagons around the track. The crowds in Strangetown cheered Royal Bill who rode along like a king on his wagon. He became a powerful political force that was resented by the Greeks, admired by The Major, and profitable to Maw Possum.