Old Piery

I had a paying little refinery
And all was well with me, and then
The Trust edged up to me and wiped me out.
So much for northern tariff, freedom
Of niggers and New England rule.
Praise God for sponging slavery from the Slate!
Well, then I was without a cent again,
What should I do? I wanted first a change,
And rest in the use of other faculties,
So I went out and took a farm.
One thing leads to another. I wake up one morning
And find a man from Illinois
Become my neighbor on the adjoining farm.
It’s your John Cogdall, once of Petersburg,
County of Menard, in Illinois,
Precinct Indian Point, he said to me.
We’re friends at once, and visit back and forth.
Two months ago I saw upon his table
A copy of the Petersburg Observer--
John likes to hear the home-town news--
I pick it up and scan it through to see
What a country paper is in Illinois.
And there I read this notice of “Old Piery,”
Real name Cordelia Stacke, dead thirty years,
Whose money in the county treasury
Is to be made escheat. So here I am
Maneuvering for this money, rather shabby
If I was not so devilish poor and pressed;
If letting Menard County have the prize
Would profit any one, when I can prove
Old Piery was my great aunt,
Her father and my grandfather brothers,
When I can prove that I’m her only heir.

Yes, but not as pure of blood.
Her father was a judge in South Carolina,
Her mother was a belle of New Orleans,
My father told me so. Cordelia Stacke,
“Old Piery,” as you called her, was a story
We heard as children sitting on his knee.
I know to prove my name is Stacke,
And then because her name was Stacke
Won’t draw this money from your treasury,
But wait
Go to your vault and get that ring she wore,
Slipped from her dead hand when you found her body
Dead for a week amid her rags and stuff.
Go get that ring, Mr. Treasurer of Menard,
If I don’t describe it
Down to the finest point,
Just as I heard my father say
The night she disappeared she wore a ring
Of such and such, I’ll go back to my farm
In Mississippi. But I’ll do much more
I’ll trace her from Columbia to Old Salem;
I’ll show her crazed brain luring her along
To find the spot where Lincoln kept the store
Two miles from where we sit.
She must have walked
Across Virginia, West Virginia,
Ohio, Indiana, or perhaps
She footed it through Tennessee, Kentucky.

I talked this morning with your county judge.
He said she came here late in ’65
Or early ’66,
Was seen by farmers near the Salem Mill,
A loitering, mumbling woman,
Not old, but looking old, and aging fast
As she became a figure in your streets
And alleys with a gunny-sack on back,
Wherein she stuffed old bottles, paper, things
She picked industriously and stored away.
Would buy a bit of cold food at the baker’s.
Sometimes would sit on door steps eating cake,
Which friendly hands had given her, then depart
And say, “God rest your souls!” Attended mass
On Sunday mornings, knew no one
And had no friends.
In ’69 was found incompetent,
And placed in charge of a conservator.
Then as she was not dangerous went ahead
At picking rags,
Until in ’97 passed away.

Such was the life and death of a fine girl,
The daughter of a judge in South Carolina
And a belle of New Orleans.
And after life at best knew life at worst,
Beginning in a southern capitol
Where she knew riches, admiration, place,
She ended up in Petersburg, Illinois,
A little croaking, mad but harmless waif,
A withered leaf stirred by the Lincoln storm.
And here’s my guess:
The fancy of her madness brought her here
To see the country where
The man who was a laborer, kept a store,
Could rise therefrom,
And bring such desolation to the South,
Such sorrow to herself, that is my guess.

The name’s Cordelia Stacke inside this ring
You tell me. She’s the same no doubt.
We all lived in Columbia when the troops
Of Sherman whirled upon us to the sea.
I was a year old then. We were burned out,
Lost everything.
The troops came howling, plundering,
And tossing combustible chemicals.
They butchered just for sport our cattle;
Split chests and cabinets with savage axes;
Walked with their hob-nailed boots on our pianos;
Ran bayonets through pictures;
Rode horses in our parlors;
Broke open trunks and safes;
Searched cellars, opened graves for hoarded gold,
And yelled “You dirty rebels now we’ve got you.”
They filled their bellies up with wine and whisky,
And drunken, howling through Columbia’s streets
They carried vases, goblets, silver, gold,
And rolled about with pockets full of loot,
And then at last they stuck the torch to us
And made a bon-fire of our city.

Cordelia had a lover who was killed
At Antietam fighting, not for niggers,
But fighting back the fools who had been crazed
By preachers, poets, Garrisons and Whittiers
Who thought they worked for freedom, but instead
Worked for New England’s tariff--look at me
How could the trust destroy me if the tariff
Put no bricks in the bully’s boxing gloves?
Well, then, Cordelia lost her lover,
And when the troops came was a novitiate
Nun at the convent. And the soldiers came
To say the convent would be spared. But when
The flames arose, she ran into the city
To be beside her father and her mother.
And she arrived
Just as the soldiers entered the house for loot.
Her mother was in bed half dead from fright,
Not well at best.
The soldiers broke the bedroom door,
And howled for treasure. When the mother said
There was no treasure, then they took her
And flung her from the bed, ripped up the matress,
Raked pictures from the walls, and smashed the mirrors,
Tore closets open, then went to the cellar
Leaving the mother lying on the floor,
Who lay as dead.
They drank what wine they found,
Then seized the father, hung him to a tree
To make him tell where he kept money hidden.
The mother died in two days from the fright.
The father was not killed, they took him down,
And went their way carousing, yelling out
“You dirty rebels now we’ve got you fair.”
Cordelia thought no doubt that both were dead.
A passerby beheld her on the lawn
Her hair let down and plucking at her dress.
But who could stop to help her in that hell
Of a city burning and the howls and shouts,
And falling walls?
Cordelia disappeared and from that night
Was never seen or heard of. To his death
Her father thought she met a terrible fate:
Was raped and slaughtered.

So you see
All of this put together tells the story
Of this poor creature whom you called “Old Piery.”
But let me add Cordelia had a horse
She called “Old Piery”--that fits in my proof.
That’s why she named herself “Old Piery” here,
And gave your boys and girls a mocking name
To hail her with as she went up your alleys;
With which to rap the windows of her room,
Where bottles, cans, waste rags, and copper things,
Old hoops of iron, staves, old boots and shoes,
Springs, wheels of clocks, and locks of broken guns,
Old boards and boxes, stacks of paper waste
Stuffed up the place, and where unknown to all
Paper and silver money hid in cracks
Between the leaves of fouled and rain-soaked books,
Or packed in jars were kept by her. You see
Her mind was turned to treasure, hiding it
Against the soldiers maybe, in this land
Where Lincoln was a laborer, farmer, kept
A store at Salem.

Well I say
God rest her soul, as she was used to say.
I want to raise a stone to mark her grave,
And carve her name below a broken heart.
For listen now: the ring Cordelia wore
Was just a little band of gold and set
With a cornelian heart--am I not right?
I knew I was.