Billy Evans

Billy Evans

          All these years later the images rest clearly in my mind. The winding dirt road leading from the main highway to the old river shack barely wide enough for one car as it cut through tall trees. Deep kudzu vines choking those tall trees, rock bluffs, and anything else in its way. Finally, we spilled out in a clearing on a high bank above the river. Old Jackson lived in what was once the ferryman’s house at the mouth of the Stones and Cumberland Rivers. Bridges had long since replaced the need for a ferry, but the old house was still standing on the riverbank; the back half of the house supported by tall pylons that disappeared into the river’s darkness. For tax purposes he was a commercial fisherman selling Cumberland River catfish to fancy restaurants up north. This also gave him an excuse for living in the woods along the riverbank, but most folks knew Jackson Caldwell as one of the most prosperous bootleggers in Nashville. It was 1965. I was 10 years old an something called Blue Laws meant that Old Jackson did a booming business on Saturday night. 

As the children of one of Jackson’s best customers, my little brother Ronnie and I knew this place well. On summer Saturday nights we joined with the children of the other regular customers playing tag in the large gravel drive or hide-n-seek in the woods. Jackson had hung a tire swing from the branch of an old oak tree near the edge of the drive, and we would each take turns standing in the tire swinging as high as we could daring the next swinger to go higher. That was in the summer when the days were longer, and the light lasted till well past our bedtimes. In the fall the trees in the woods dropped their leaves crunching under foot if you tried to hide behind them. The kudzu vines were still holding onto their thick foliage waiting for the first frost and provided coverage, but they were creepy. The thickness of the vines combined with the early nightfall of late autumn made hide-n-seek too dangerous for October play.

One October evening Ronnie and I were sitting on old wooden Coke crates outside the kitchen door of the Caldwell’s little house. Mrs. Caldwell, a plump grandmotherly woman who spent all her time in the kitchen, had brought out oatmeal raisin cookies and let each of us take a Coke from her big chest cooler in the kitchen.  Halloween was only 2 weeks away and as the oldest it was up to me to pass judgement on plans for Halloween costumes. Ronnie was of course a cowboy again. I told him that wasn’t scary enough, but he claimed to have extra loud caps for his six shooters that our big brother Pat was going to get for him. “Why don’t you just be a ghost this time?” I suggested.

“Ghost costumes are for babies, and I’m not a baby,” he whined at me in a distinctly babyish voice. 

It was my turn to explain how our mother had altered an old black and gold dress of hers and was even going to let me wear some of her big gold bracelets. “You’re going to be a gypsy again?” Ronnie asked wearily. “That’s not scary,” he offered.

“I’m not just a gypsy. I’m a gypsy fortune teller and fortunes can be scary,” I explained. “Mother even made me some big gold hoop earrings and a shiny bandana for my hair,” I bragged. Well, in truth the hoop earrings were curtain rings, and the shiny bandana was a remnant off a wedding dress she had sewn back in the spring. Still, I felt like a real gypsy in my costume, and I had been working on things I thought a fortune teller would say instead of “Trick or Treat” in the certain knowledge that fully embodying my character would assure a bigger haul of candy.

“You will meet a tall, dark stranger,” I said to my younger brother in the deepest, most mysterious sounding voice I could conjure at 10. 

“And I’ll shoot him with my six shooters. Pow Pow!” he answered while firing imaginary pistols toward the tire swing.

As if on cue we heard a branch crack and a thump like someone tripping over the kudzu vines and falling to the ground. “Let’s go sit in the car,” Ronnie insisted.

Being older and therefore not scared of noises in the dark, at least I tried to look like I wasn’t, I reassured him. “No, stay here. It’s just the ghost of Billy Evans.”

“You’re making that up!” he yelped. “There’s a bogey man in the woods and I’m gonna go get Daddy.”

Ronnie started to get up, But I pulled him back to his seat on the crate and started to explain. “The ghost of Billy Evans. You never heard that story?” I asked.

Ronnie just shook his head and moved closer to me as I began to tell the tale. “Long before Old Jackson set up his business here in this clearing, even before the ferry was built here, the gypsies had a camp in the edge of the woods right near where the tire swing hangs. At night there would be a fire and exciting gypsy music. Men from town would come here to listen to the music and watch the beautiful gypsy girl Lola dance around the fire. Her mother was the head of the band of gypsies and also had the gift for seeing your future in the cards. Local men, and even some brave women, from town would pay her to read their fortunes. But Billy Evans came just to watch Lola dance.”

“Billy had fallen in love with Lola and wanted to marry her but didn’t have the courage to ask her. One night he got the courage to have her mother read his fortune in her cards. The old woman had figured out Billy’s plans and knew she couldn’t let Lola marry a man who wasn’t a gypsy. She lied and told him a fortune she knew he wanted to hear then offered him a cup of tea that was laced with a sleeping potion. He drank the tea then went back out to watch Lola dance thinking that his dreams were about to all come true. He stood right over there leaning against that big oak tree watching Lola circle around and around the bright fire as the potion began to work. When he could hardly stand any more 2 of Lola’s brothers obeyed their mother and helped Billy walk through the woods to the river’s edge and pushed him in.” At this point in the story, I pushed suddenly against Ronnie. He jumped and yelped like a little puppy. I was thoroughly enjoying his torment.

I dropped my voice to a husky whisper and added “His body was never found. The local police suspected foul play by the gypsies but had no proof. The gypsies left town in the middle of the night, and they never returned. The town put the ferry in place and built a small shack on the river’s edge for the ferryman to live in. Over the years folks have told how they have seen the ghost of a young man stumbling right over there in the woods in the dark. Some even claim to hear something heavy splashing into the dark river waters late at night. Everyone knows it’s the ghost of Billy Evans.”

I looked down at my little brother whose eyes were wide and trying not to focus on the dark edge of the woods across the gravel drive from where we were sitting. “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” he declared in as brave a voice as any 8-year-old. “You’re just trying to give me bad dreams.” 

Even as he defied my story, I noticed that he had moved closer to me all the while never taking his stare from the edge of the woods. “Then walk over there and prove it,” I taunted him. I think I enjoyed how much I was scaring him even more than making up my gypsy ghost story. “Go ahead. Show me how a big, bad cowboy handles a ghost,” I added pushing him off the stack of crates we were sharing.

“I don’t have my six shooters with the special caps,” he answered standing right in front of me this time looking me in the eye. “You’re the gypsy fortune teller, so why don’t you go over there and tell him to go away?”

I rose from my seat and felt a sudden flood of confidence from his dare. “Okay, I will. I’ll walk over to Billy’s ghost and let him know that Lola is gone, and he needs to go away too,” I stated with what I hoped was a sound of authority. Inside I was scared, but I had started this whole thing, and I couldn’t let Ronnie get the best of me. Maybe a big brother, but never my baby brother. I just hoped it was too dark for him to see my knees wobbling as I walked slowly toward the big oak tree calling out to the ghost, “Billy. Billy Evans. Go home Billy Evans. There’s no gypsy woman waiting for you here.”

The crack of a tree branch and a rustling in the bushes ahead made me freeze in my steps. Had I really conjured up a ghost I wondered. Ronnie had been following closely behind me but the noises in the woods had made him turn and run back toward the light by the kitchen door. It was pitch black dark ahead of me as my eyes struggled to see the outline of a long dead lovelorn young man. 

“Kids, get in the car. Time to head home!” my father’s voice boomed behind me. Ronnie was already sitting in the front seat with the door locked. I climbed into the back seat of our Chevy Belair then turned to sit up on my knees staring out the rear window as Daddy aimed the car up the winding road to the highway. I peered as hard as I could into the darkness invoking another line from my fortune teller script, “You will be taking a long journey to unknown places, Billy Evans.” I blinked at what I am sure was the figure of a tall young man stumbling to the river bluff and tumbling over the side.