IX

The river folk of Limestone County migrated to the area throughout the 30's following the abolition of debtor prisons. Waves of poor whites followed in the wake of the great Indian removals only to find lands already swindled by the rich whites. So they settled along the Tennessee and Elk Rivers and survived by brailing for mussels and noodling catfish. They were sneered at as the Rats by the landed gentry upon whose land they squatted. They did not farm or own slaves. They did not even own property so they could not vote. Even a negro was worth 3/5th a vote. They were vociferous Unionists and spent the war dodging conscription up the many creeks and coves of the Nickajack.

The Rats bred among themselves until there were only three clans: the Harlows, Bigsbys and Cotters. They clung to the banks in clusters of keelboats and shacks where they distilled whiskies and cultivated marijuana, migrating along the river following the mussel beds. They spoke a dialect of dubious English origin to more refined ears. Before the war they ferried fugitive slaves as part of Maw Possum's underground railroad, for a price of course. Then the war came and they ferried spies, armies and deserters from both sides and were growing fat and rich.

 
Kingpin Cotter was the acknowledged boss of the Rats. Weighing in at twenty stones, he loved the barbecue. His hair was greasy and matted, and his bloated fingers were bedizined with mother-of-pearl rings. He tied his breeches with rope. On hot summer days he wore what could only be described as a sampan and painted his nose with zinc to hold the sun in abeyance. He presided over the 'picnicks’ where a pit was dug and a pig was stuck. They were occasions of great saturnalia, but they also allowed for the three families to discuss their business. Just then, after the war, the mother-of-pearl trade was exploding. It was all the rage with the Yankees, and The Major himself was expressing interest in joint opportunities. All of these blessings for erstwhile vagrants, however, seemed no more surprising than who Kingpin Cotter kept as his wife.

 
Blanche Cotter (nee Bigsby) was tall, blonde and exceptionally buxom. She wore garments unseemly to Christian sensibilities, scant and torn. She spoke that same abstruse, drawling river dialect with a pitch that men found titillating. She was a distraction to the cousins. Her salacious temperaments, however, belied a cunning and, some say, cruel mind. Now that the war was over, and new business opportunities arose from the ferment of Strangetown, the Rats felt ready to exert political influence, including for suffrage and land reform. They had their own ideas of what the Square Deal was, and they prepared to sell their muscle to the power who could finally settle them on rock steady shores.

IV

Everybody was getting it down in Strangetown. It was the place to be in the days after that damned ole war. Everyone was so desperate, and here was a place where money suddenly flowed like honey. Only three years before the Yankees had pillaged the town like lunatics. Even the Greeks on the Hill were feeling the pinch. Egyptian cotton flooded the market, and Confederate bonds were in the toilet. Now the Yankees were dumping thousands into Limestone County to give freedmen and poor whites what The Major patently called “The Square Deal.” It sounded suspicious to anyone who first listened, but everyone went along with it because this was real money. It wasn’t that Confederate dreck they just printed out like it was nothing during the war. Nobody knew or asked where this money came from, but it worked, and that’s all that mattered.

Strangetown was getting crowded with all sorts of comers: freedman, veterans, cranks, immigrants, laborers. Everyone was coming to get some of that Square Deal The Major kept going on and on about. The problem was that Town Creek was a place of ill-humors. Frequent flooding left an air of miasma for which people fashioned masks. So, The Major financed a dam, which gave Brother Pruitt more than a foot of water to baptize the wicked in. Next, The Major planked in the road known today as Strange Street and built a bridge over the waters. Businesses sprouted along the banks and the main drag. The Major walked down every day from the Freedman's Bureau to look satisfied at the progress.

At one point during Reconstruction, Strangetown had no less than two cathouses, four saloons, and a Chinese laundry. There was also a theater, a brewery, three fortune tellers and two churches. That was in addition to the shacks and tenements that crowded this little clapboard skyline. And then there was Maw Possum, giant of them all, who ran Strangetown with a deck of Tarot and the luck of an obsidian stone. She called everyone in Strangetown her darlings… the Darlings of Strangetown.