Folly park, p.1
Folly Park, page 1
PRAISE
FOR FOLLY PARK
“Temple Preston’s beloved ancestral plantation harbors evil secrets. When faced with the sins of its past, will she set the story straight—at any cost? Folly Park spins a haunting tale of a struggle for integrity in the face of familial corruption. Timely, engaging, and evocative.”
—ADELE HOLMES, author of Winter’s Reckoning
“Are we ever able to escape our past? Should we be allowed to? At once a work of superbly accurate historical fiction and a commentary on today’s clash over the place of historic monuments and rhetoric surrounding race and slavery, Folly Park is a gripping, good read.”
—L. DIANE BARNES, historian and associate editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers
“In this fast-paced and suspenseful novel, a daughter of the white southern aristocracy veers between accountability and nostalgia as she struggles to become an agent of social change. Especially vivid is Temple’s developing alliance with Vee, a Black researcher whose findings threaten to unseat Temple’s idols and to place both young women on surprising common ground.”
—WENDY SANFORD, author of These Walls Between Us: A Memoir of Friendship Across Race and Class
“Hackford’s writing is crisp and poignant. It also avoids the didactic inclination to steep the reader in facile lessons about racial justice and harmony. Rather, she artfully conveys a compelling drama and allows the philosophical themes to develop organically. The result is a powerful novel, as affecting as it is provocative. Thoughtfully reconsiders a chapter of the nation’s fraught racial history.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
FOLLY
PARK
A NOVEL
HEIDI HACKFORD
SHE WRITES PRESS
Copyright © 2022, Heidi Hackford
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.
Published 2022
Printed in the United States of America
Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-271-4
E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-272-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022909334
For information, address:
She Writes Press
1569 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707
She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.
All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To my dad, whose boundless curiosity first inspired me to explore the past
Nations reel and stagger on their way;
they make hideous mistakes;
they commit frightful wrongs;
they do great and beautiful things.
And shall we not best guide humanity
by telling the truth about all this,
so far as the truth is ascertainable?
—W.E.B. DU BOIS,
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880
CHAPTER ONE
A plain, flat package had appeared on the dressing table in the dank basement room where the speakers waited before they were called to the stage. Inside, Temple Preston found an advance copy of a new book. It had a catchy title, and the back cover promised “a tell-all tale unearthing the scandalous past of a prominent Southern family.” That family was hers, and she was the one who had released its ugly secrets. The time had come for her to make a choice—reject her heritage or be complicit in the enduring evils spawned from the deeds of her ancestors.
But there were consequences for challenging power and privilege. The price Temple paid was the loss of the place she loved most in the world.
IT BEGAN WITH AN EXPLOSION. Seconds later, the shriek of Folly Park’s security alarm sent the dog darting into the closet as Temple scrambled out of bed. Jamming on tennis shoes, she sprinted up the gravel drive, praying the historic home that had been in her family for over two hundred years had not been damaged. Workers were blasting through rock to build a lake for a new golf course nearby, and for three days tremors had triggered the alarm.
The noise stopped abruptly as Temple opened the back door of the mansion, the sudden silence fizzing in her ears. She was just in time to see Al, Folly Park’s groundskeeper, stretched to his full height, lowering the golf club he’d used to beat the alarm into submission. He could have climbed the ladder that leaned against the wall and flipped the manual switch, as Temple had pointed out yesterday. But although she was his supervisor, Al often ignored her suggestions. Temple told herself she didn’t push it because Al had worked at Folly Park for so long and their friendship stretched back to her childhood. The real reason was because her people had once owned his people, and it troubled her deeply.
As they surveyed the ceiling where a jagged crack had appeared, a second blast rumbled in the distance. The crack split wide, and chunks of plaster came down in a flurry of dust. Something struck Temple above her left eye just as Al shouted, “Watch out!” and pushed her to the floor.
When the dust settled, Al helped Temple up. “You’re bleeding,” he said.
Pain throbbed in her forehead, and Temple’s fingers came away spotted with blood. But she was only interested in what had hit her—a tin box about the size of a hardcover book. She pushed the debris aside as tiny stars sparked in her peripheral vision.
Al tugged a faded blue bandanna from the pocket of his khaki pants. “Let me check out that cut.”
“I’m fine.” Temple straightened up with her prize. “Look at this!” Al hovered over her shoulder as she pried open the box. Inside was a hinged case and a leather-bound book.
The case contained a framed ambrotype photograph. Temple immediately recognized two of the five people in it—General Thomas Temple Smith and his wife, Carolina, who were both tangled in her lineage. In the photo, likely taken just before he went off to fight, the general stood on the wide veranda of Folly Park in his Confederate uniform with Carolina seated in front of him. Beside her was another woman Temple could not identify. Nor could she name the dark-skinned man and a pretty girl at the edge of the frame, who were likely enslaved.
The unknown woman on the veranda looked about the same age as Carolina, who was nineteen when the Civil War began. Smooth dark hair framed an angular face, and her light eyes—probably blue—were intense in the black-and-white photo. Oddly, the general’s hand rested on her shoulder rather than his wife’s. And Carolina was leaning to touch the stranger’s hands where they were bunched into fists on her lap. Easing the photograph from the frame, Temple turned it over to find only the date—June 17, 1861—scrawled on the back.
“Who’s that sitting by Carolina?” Al asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Seriously?”
Since her grandfather died last year, Temple was the resident expert on Folly Park’s long history, and the Civil War period was her specialty. She believed she knew all the important people in the general’s life and most of the minor characters too. But this woman, clearly on intimate terms with the master and mistress of Folly Park on the very eve of the war, was unfamiliar to her.
Returning the photograph to the box, Temple opened the small book. It appeared to be a diary, but no name was written on the flyleaf. The first entry was headed, “Thursday, August 30, 1859,” in an even, legible script.
Temple read, “I have resolved to record in this little book—an engagement gift from Mother—my daily skirmishes with self-improvement. There is, Mother assures me, much to be done to prepare me to be a wife.”
Carolina had married the general in May 1859, Temple recalled, so this was not her diary. Did it belong to the stranger in the photograph?
“I wonder who hid this.” Temple peered up at the hole. “The ceiling was damaged during the Civil War, so I suppose the box could have been sealed in when it was repaired.”
“It’s probably been weak ever since.” Al poked a text into his cell phone with his forefinger. “I’ll get a structural engineer to check things out. We can’t afford to have it collapse on a bunch of tourists.”
“We’re supposed to call them guests, not tourists,” Temple said. It was one of the many pointless changes Stuart Sprigg had made since coming on board. “We also can’t afford to fix the hole.”
“Sue the developers doing the blasting. Greedy crooks.”
Al’s habitual assumption of bad motives often had the perverse effect of making Temple defend people she didn’t even know. “I suppose you can’t really blame them for buying land people are willing to sell.”
“Yes, I can. These new developments are making everything so expensive folks can hardly afford to live in their hometown.”
Temple’s own family had struggled to hang on to Folly Park. By any measure they were highly privileged, but her maternal grandfather, Chauncey Temple Smith, had inherited a quagmire of debt accumulated over generations. He had been forced to sell the estate to the nearby town of Preston’s Mill, which allowed him to remain living on
“I’ll try to get some compensation for repairs,” Temple said.
“Should I tell Sprigg what happened?” Al had a mischievous glint in his eye. He liked to stir up their excitable new director.
“No, I will,” Temple said hastily. “After I talk to the developers. And please don’t say anything about the box until I can do some research.” The strange woman in the photograph made her vaguely uneasy.
Al nodded, and a chunk of debris fell from his grizzled head. His brown face was caked with white plaster dust, and he snorted when he caught sight of himself in the beveled mirror on the wall. “Look at me. I could pass for White with the tourists.”
“Guests,” Temple said absently as she started down the hall.
OPENING THE FRONT DOOR, TEMPLE stepped out on to the wide, white-columned veranda—the same one from the photograph in the box she held. She had passed many quiet evenings here with her grandfather, who looked like he belonged to another century with his trim beard, string tie, and crisp white shirt. When he rolled up his sleeves and played old Southern ballads on his violin, she imagined the ghosts of long-gowned women and men in tall boots strolling in the shadows under the trees. But the spring foliage of the massive oaks on the front lawn seemed sparse this year, and Temple supposed they were nearing the end of their natural lives. They were already ancient by the time her great-grandfather inherited Folly Park in 1934.
Although the house tour covered the family history from colonial times to the present, Folly Park was a tourist attraction because of General Smith. He was one of the most effective cavalry commanders in the Confederate army, but in September 1863, his brigade had been defeated in the meadow below Folly Park. The night before, the general himself was accidentally killed by his own sentry while sneaking back into camp.
Whether or not the general had gone to see the Union commander and betrayed his men in a deal to save Folly Park was an enduring mystery for historians, but most people in the nearby town of Preston’s Mill never questioned his loyalty to the South. They believed the general had been on a reconnaissance mission.
On long, drowsy Saturday afternoons when Temple was young, her grandfather had taken her and her brothers to the battlefield to search for bullets and other artifacts. Harry, the eldest, spent most of his time under a shady tree joking with the other treasure hunters when they took a break. Temple’s younger brother, Beau, hunted field mice, which he killed with deliberate purpose when he could catch them. Occasionally, one of the treasure hunters, slowly uncoiling his back, would catch sight of Beau stalking his prey in the distance and remark benignly, “There’s something wrong with that boy.”
Temple shadowed her grandfather, absorbing his tales of the general’s exploits and the old days at Folly Park, while the red dirt worked its way under her fingernails and into the sweaty creases behind her knees. She was seven years old the day she caught on that her favorite characters in her grandfather’s stories—the “aunts” and “uncles” with the funny names and sassy attitudes—were Black people who lived with but weren’t related to their White ancestors. She pressed her grandfather for more information, and he provided an explanation of slavery he probably felt was suitable for a child: people who came from Africa were given food, clothes, and houses for their whole lives in return for their work. But Temple sensed there was something wrong about it all, and she felt as if she’d somehow let down her beloved aunts and uncles just by being herself.
The front door squealed open, and Al emerged, swatting plaster dust from his arms. “What are you still doing here?”
Temple gestured at the lush lawn sloping down to a green river that curved through blue hills toward the distant Atlantic. “I love this view. It never changes.”
Al seemed about to say something, but just then his wife appeared at the edge of the drive. “Look at you two! You’re filthy!”
A sturdy, cheerful woman with a tawny complexion and a dash of freckles across her nose, Betty Jean ran the ticket office at Folly Park. Today, she had braided her hair in cornrows finished off with orange beads, and she was wearing a hot-pink blouse and black-and-yellow-polka-dot pants. Temple smiled. Betty Jean’s colorful clothes were a sore spot with the new director. When Stuart told her she looked unprofessional, she remarked that in her experience only unhappy people were offended by bright colors.
“I’m happy,” he’d said peevishly.
Betty Jean came closer, squinting, and Temple casually moved the box behind her back.
“What did you do to your face, honey?”
Al told Betty Jean about the ceiling while she fished a Kleenex from a capacious woven bag and wetted it on her tongue.
Temple knew it would be pointless to struggle, so she meekly submitted to Betty Jean’s ministrations. In any case, she liked the way Betty Jean held her chin firmly while she dabbed at the cut, face puckered with concentrated concern. It reminded Temple of her mother.
A button pinned to Betty Jean’s blouse read VOTE POE FOR MAYOR. Temple was interested to learn that Frank Poe was running in the special election. He was a public defender whose wife ran an organic farm on land that had been in Frank’s family since Reconstruction.
“Put antibiotic cream on it,” Betty Jean instructed as she let Temple loose.
“I will. Thanks.” Temple turned to Al. “Can you please clean up the mess from the ceiling?”
Al drooped his shoulders and shuffled his feet. He whined in a falsetto voice, “Yes, Missus, I gets right on dat. Don’ hit me, Missus! Don’ whip yo’ faithful darky.”
As usual, Temple’s cheeks flushed at this routine. “Very funny. Cut it out.”
“Yes, Missus.” Grinning, Al went back inside the mansion.
TEMPLE CROSSED THE GRAVEL DRIVE and peeled her soggy newspaper off the doormat. A thin local daily, the Preston’s Mill Progress invariably ended up soaked by the morning dew. Chick, her fifty-pound mutt, was pushing a bulge into the screen door with his nose, and Temple let him out for a run. In the bathroom mirror, she examined the gash on her forehead and the beginnings of a bruise around her right eye. She had literally been beaten up by a house.
After a quick shower, Temple went into her bedroom and carefully eased out her dresser drawers so she wouldn’t disturb the haphazard pile of paper stacked on top. The only mess in her tidy house, this was her dissertation, which she was supposed to be turning into a book. She had a contract with an academic publisher who wanted the complete manuscript at the end of the summer, but even though she was grateful to have such an opportunity, Temple just couldn’t make herself work on it. At some point, a mouse had chewed through a good portion of the bottom margin, and she imagined its nest lined with her footnotes. It seemed as good a use for them as any.
When Temple entered the detached kitchen building where the offices were located, Martha silently handed over a handful of message slips. The star of her church choir, Martha abstained from speaking before ten o’clock because she believed morning air harmed the vocal cords. Stuart Spriggs’s office door was closed, but Temple could hear him braying into the telephone. He seemed to think talking loudly made him sound confident.
The phone messages were all from Temple’s brother Beau. He called her at work whenever she didn’t answer her cell phone, refusing to leave a voicemail or text. Like their father, who believed information was power, he preferred to keep her guessing. Temple tossed the messages into the recycle bin and took the tin box from her work bag.
Carefully leafing through the diary, she found a letter slotted between the pages. The address was written in blotchy ink: Miss Jane Elliot to the care of Mr. John Elliot, Boston, Massachusetts. The wax seal was broken.
