Jenny Johnston carried a cane with seven notches, one for each of the murderers she and her sons tracked down and killed in a spree of vengeance. Jenny and her family eked out a living deep in the forested hills and hollers of North Alabama until the Civil War disrupted the peace, forcing neighbors to take sides and disputes to flair. And that was the problem. She and her husband were considered Union sympathizers. Word was they had even sheltered Confederate deserters and it was for certain that her able-bodied husband and oldest son had refused to join the ranks in support of the Glorious Cause. And that was unforgivable. It was just something that couldn’t be tolerated.
So one dark night in 1864, eight members of the Home Guard paid Jenny’s family a visit, intending to make an example of them. Dragging her husband outside, they slung a noose over his neck and prepared to hang him, first gunning down one of Jenny’s sons who got in the way. She and her remaining family were left to pick up the pieces, minus a husband and son, and stew on how best to seek vengeance. That’s exactly what the determined young widow did, making a blood pact with her remaining sons to hunt down each of the eight murderers, no matter how long it took and no matter the cost. Over the next few decades, they did just that, at the expense of every one of her sons’ lives. With each payback, she notched her cane, making seven fresh scores down the staff. By the time that was done, she was a lonely old widow, still pursuing the eighth murderer. She had room for one more notch and she would never give up. She even kept the skull of one of the hunted Confederates on a table for the rest of her life, using it as a soap dish and a reminder of the evil she swore to eliminate. And yet she died with one transgressor still out there somewhere.
Most of those who knew her feared her. I’m sure I would have. Some swore she was as mean as a snake, while others declared she was a fine Christian lady. Whatever she was, she knew how to keep a promise. For most of her 98 years, she was known simply as “Aunt Jenny.” No doubt, a very respected Aunt Jenny who was given a wide berth and no talkback.
At least that’s the way the story goes. They also say that if you visit Aunt Jenny’s deserted homeplace after dark, she’ll come to life in an eerie green glow, shrieking at you to leave her be or she’ll kill you, too. She’s a bit testy because she has one life left to take and she’s a woman of her word. Until that happens, she can’t rest. So she’s in perpetual limbo deep in the gloom of the encroaching forest, occasionally hanging out in the remote cove where she’s buried along with several nameless souls.
Hers is a classic story of murder, intrigue, and passion, best shivered to on a hayride through the inky blackness of a forest alive with silence and solitude. And maybe a few stumbling wild hogs, stealthy panthers, and a Sasquatch or two. The night sky was barely illuminated by a half moon slipping in and out of the cloud-filled night we had chosen for the pilgrimage to her grave—perfect for the gloomy spook-infested evening we had in mind. Aunt Jenny is the reason we piled up amid those hay bales in the back of the lawnmower trailer hooked to the 4-wheel drive, venturing into the wooded abyss. Well, actually the group of friends amongst the hay, enjoying the fresh air and scenery, didn’t include me. I chose, instead, to help navigate from the safety of the truck cab. I was necessary there. I was also the designated survivor, according to our youngest daughter, who was safely ensconced several states away in sunny Oklahoma, but still calling the shots.
In my lifetime, I’ve been in only two places where cell phone reception is nonexistent. One is Wyoming and the other is Aunt Jenny’s Bankhead forest. There appeared to be only one way in, which called into question plans for the return trip out. Just the way Jenny would like it. We had flashlights, though, and a full tank of gas, and a knowledgeable guide who had grown up in and around the forest. Nobody there but just us and the occasional coon hunter. Or at least I hope the pickup truck parked alongside the gravel road with the box in the back belonged to a coon hunter. I choose to believe that.
I’d like to say the forest was eerily silent, but that would be a lie. The contagious belly laughs and wobbly flashlight beams cascading from the hay pile on the trailer behind the truck would have awakened the dead. So I’m guessing Aunt Jenny was well aware of our approach, especially as the fearless, or at least flashlight-armed, group of ghost hunters trekked the few yards to the clearing at Poplar Creek Cemetery. And there she was. Or at least there’s where her marker says she was. “Aunt Jenny” Elizabeth Margaret Jane Bates Brooks Johnston. Weathered pink plastic roses adorned her well-marked stone, while most of the other dozen or so gravesites sported plain knee-high rock slabs, arranged willy-nilly and at all sorts of odd angles, appearing to have just sprouted from hastily-scattered graveyard seed. Almost none of them were etched with anything, or if they had been at some point, weather and time had worn away all record of their existence. It occurred to me that if our small crowd were actually spooked into a stampede, those rock slabs were at just the right height and spaced at just the right distance to take out every single one of us at the shins. Flailing around in a deserted—at least by the living—forgotten burial ground for those with no name was not on the agenda but suddenly entirely possible in the murky stillness of that night.
As we stood beside Aunt Jenny’s grave, someone suggested turning off the flashlights and just staying quiet for a minute. I’ve never known silence to be so palpable as it was in that graveyard of nothingness. You could reach right out and touch it. No engine sounds, no hum of transformers, no barking dogs or chirping crickets. Just total stillness of life amid intense blanketing blackness, as it really should be in a final resting place. And it was unnerving. Not exactly spooky, but well on the way.
In its ageless simplicity, time has stopped at the Poplar Creek Cemetery, with no real reason for change to occur. It’s just a tiny clearing in a remote wilderness that was and is and will be pretty much the same, I dare say, in another hundred years. In fact, I’m betting that if Aunt Jenny does haunt the hills, she finds her way around pretty easily.
For about three hours, time stopped for us, too. And that was perfectly OK. For one Sunday night in October, all that mattered was friendship, fun, and caramel corn. Jenny didn’t join us and that was perfectly OK, too. Because in truth, she’s not really the reason for the hayride.
But she’s welcome anytime.
