“Please, tell me more,” I said, not able to hide my interest.
“About the man witch?” the woman asked, giggling at the sound of the moniker.
“Yes. I have a relative…?”
“Had a relative, Albert Livingston, who was born in Ellerbe in July 1948, and he lived there until he died, about three years before your birth. They said he was a strange man, but when I met him just the one time he was the most charming man that I’d ever met in my life.”
“Albert Livingston? I’ve never heard that name.”
“He was the brother of your great grandmother, so technically he was your mother’s great uncle, but he had the Piedmont witch in him. People used to say he talked to animals, more than one person told me they saw him carrying on full conversations with deer, squirrels, cats, dogs. Someone said they saw him talking to a bear, but I don’t know if that’s true. He rarely ever left Richmond County, despite all the attempts to run him off.”
I wondered what my great great uncle Albert looked like. He would have features evocative of my mother and the members of her family that I had interacted with. He was probably handsome, light skinned, tall and lanky. Even though he died in the late nineties, I’ve yet to see a picture of him.
“Why did they try to run him off?” I asked, leaning on the chessboard table top in front of me, fully enraptured in the woman’s words.
“The biggest thing, the one time that almost got him lynched happenend because of the way the white women followed him around like he was the Pied Piper. And believe me, your great great Albert was not interested in no white women, no women at all. He was a fabulous gay man at a time when being gay could’ve got him lynched by black people, but he was so charming. They say he could put a spell on anybody, and he used it to get men that wouldn’t normally be interested in gay sex. That was another time they tried to run him out, rumors started spreading that he was intimate with the sheriff and he’d used his witch powers to bend the respectable father of six over his desk three days a week.
“But this time, a bunch of white men around town would catch groups of they women just swooning over Albert at the mall or at the park. He went to school with a lot of them when he was young, and they would chant until he sang songs with his brilliant alto. The man could have been a superstar the way some people tell it, but he was happy with the admiration he got around town.
“The white men hated Albert, but they viewed him as more of an annoyance than a threat, he was very clearly a gay man. But one day, one of those white women gave birth to a half black baby, and even though everyone knew Albert wasn’t the father, the white men decided to pin it on him because the white woman refused to reveal the name of the true father. Someone had to pay for humiliating that white man.
“They showed up at his house with torches, and Albert stood on the front porch with a smirk on his face. Some people say he had a black cat in his arm, stroking the fur all evil like, just laughing at all the guns pointed at him. ‘Go on ahead,’ he said. ‘Shoot me and set me on fire if you can.’
“He taunted them until they opened fire like a firing squad. People say it sounded like the fourth of July, it was so many gunshots. And not one hit Albert, or his cat if he was really holding one. They say his eyes went ablaze with green fire and either the cat or Albert said something in a language ain’t nobody ever heard before, and then a pack of wild dogs just came out of the woods and either chased them white men off or ripped them to shreds.
“Albert called the police with a smile on his face and he stood on the porch while police and medical examiners confirmed the story that he was attacked and apparently saved by the wild dogs.”
“The police didn’t try to run him off?” I asked.
“And risk pissing off Albert?” the woman asked with a laugh. “They left that man alone as fast as they could.”
It was delightful to hear the story of great great Albert and I felt a lot of pride at my relation to him, which the woman seemed to pick up on.
“As fine a man as Albert was, he traded it all at the end. The man was intent on living forever and the older he got, the more desperate he became to stave death off. He played with dark magic towards the end, but I’m sure he didn’t do the worst stuff witches can do for immortality or else he’d still be among the living. He did do something though. He bound himself to your mother because he thought so highly of her, and if she were to step foot in Richmond County, or any of her witchy descendants, she would get all of Albert Livingston’s powers and he would become a visible apparition that would guide her in the ritual to restore him to life. It ain’t exactly the most well intentioned magic that binds your spirit to another person against their will, and the feeling of it must have driven your mother out of the area. You’re pretty witchy, Wesley, maybe you the only one of your siblings with that witchy feeling on them, but you should warn them against it, too. It might seem interesting to be a witch, but all magic has a price that is not always easily paid. And your great great uncle may not be so nice after being gone from this mortal coil for so long. It’s best to let that rest. Ain’t that much going on in Richmond County no way. Big city man like yourself, why risk your big time future to get sacked with a ghost?”
I sat back in my seat and laughed to myself. I had planned to visit Richmond County many times in the year preceding this meeting and each time, I had been forced to cancel because of some unforeseen circumstance.
But I didn’t really believe the woman, did I? I could travel to Ellerbe, NC and not worry about awakening the ghost of a man witch.
PRL Serials 