The Unfinished Business of Sarah Potts

The following account is the first draft of "The Unfinished Business of Sarah Potts" DS 3/26/09


I awoke in the middle of the night because my dog was barking. As I stumbled through the kitchen I saw her. I thought I was dreaming, My dog's incessant barking convinced me otherwise. It was the ghost of Mrs. Potts. Even though I could see through her to the wall beyond, she was so radiant. She stood looking up, as though to be delivered from something. "What are you doing?", I asked, trying to stay calm, and turning the coffee pot on. "What do you mean, 'What am I doing'? she asked. "My father built this house, but not for you. So, why are you here now?"

"I bought the house two years ago. It had been vacant for years before that. I didn't know you still lived here." I said. She looked at me blankly for a moment, "I don't live here," she replied. "Are you hungry? Do you want some breakfast?", she asked, glancing about the kitchen. I nodded weakly. and said "Yes." I sat down at the table and stared through her, as she scrambled some eggs.





Many people like a good ghost story told around the campfire in the dead of night. But it's another thing to be living in a ghost story. I can't say that Mrs. Potts is an evil spirit. To the contrary she is somewhat delightful and endearing. Mysterious and intriguing. The kind of woman I like. She can be all around me, and yet, I can't see her. In fact, it feels as though she is standing behind me at this moment. Perhaps watching me make these words appear about her. It is the fragrance in the air that tells me she is here. Its quite floral and familiar. A faint air of perfume, I suppose. Yesterday, while driving the back roads around Pottsville and waving now and then to neighbors, this same fragrance caught my attention. If not for that, I would not have known she had come along for the ride. I glanced over to the empty seat next to me and smiled at her. I wondered what she thought about how things have changed around here. The fallow and shrinking fields once worked by farmers and mules, now being surveyed and marked off in 3 to 5 acre plots for new home construction. The nearby quarry operations digging huge deep craters into the ground. I took her for a drive along the road that follows the river thinking she would find it familiar and comforting. We stopped along an old bridge that looked out over the rushing water. As I stared down at the pools and eddies, watching a piece of dead wood rolling and spinning at the river's will, I was suddenly aware that the fragrance was gone. I waited for quite awhile. She was out walking the bank, perhaps. She never came back.




I drove slowly home, lost in thought. Was this only my imagining? Am I just inventing her? As I entered the house I was again aware of the fragrance. The bathroom mirror was fogged as though someone had showered. On the counter by the sink, sat a small box. Next to it a rounded cake of soap glistening wet. I picked up the box and examined it. "Savon Ceillet-Mignardise" (carnation) by Roger Gallet, Paris, France. So, this was the fragrance. And Mrs. Potts seems to have decided to stay for awhile.



The historical archives at the county library shed little light on the matter of just who Sarah Potts was. But I did find mention of her name among the documents of births and deaths. She had been born on March 21, 1911, and died on March 21, 1931. She clearly had died at an early age. And it was so strange that she was born and died on the same day, of the same month. Strange, because it was the day of the Vernal Equinox, and that it was on this date she had appeared in my house. I made several notes of some cemetery locations, and wrote down the names of several families who had lived in this area during the period of Sarah's brief time here. Perhaps some surviving kin of theirs has a story about what happened to Sarah Potts.

I visited several small cemeteries, and at one along the road from Pottsville to Caney Fork, I stumbled onto the grave of Sarah Potts. It was a simple eroding limestone marker that bore her name and dates. Beneath that, was a simple image of a heart broken into two pieces.


Late in the afternoon, I managed to track down an elderly gentleman and his wife whose names I had noted while at the library. We sat on the front porch of their humble salt box house. When I asked about Sarah, the old man just shook his head sadly and shrugged. But later, I took a walk around the yard with his wife. She wanted to show me her garden. One by one, I complimented her on the lovely specimens of rose, hollyhock, hibiscus, and lilac that she obviously took great pride in. Suddenly, she turned to me and said, "Sarah had a baby that wasn't supposed to be. The other woman knew about it, and told Sarah, if ever she could not take care of this child, to bring it to her, and she would raise it. A rough winter came on, and Sarah was quite ill much of the time. One night she bundled the child up and walked through the woods. It wasn't snowy, but an icy rain. She handed the baby to the other woman, and walked the woods back home. Sarah died 5 days later of pneumonia." I felt somewhat stunned by the story. "How do you know these things about Sarah?", I asked, as we continued through the garden. "My grandmother always referred to her as my 'half-aunt, Sarah'. I was young, and had no idea what that meant. When I grew older, I asked Granny, and she told me the truth." I walked back to my truck and made a few hurried notes. Tomorrow, I hope to find the son of the mortician who laid Sarah to rest.



I drove past the house twice. It was a ramshackle place that smacked of neglect. But, by the numbers on the mailbox out by the road, it would be the home of the mortician's son. I had a hunch it was his father who had examined the body of Sarah Potts, and prepared her for burial. I was a bit intimidated by a large dog barking at me as I pulled up to the house. He was showing some mean fangs to me, and daring me to get out of my truck. I turned the motor off and sat there hoping the door would open, and someone would appear to call this dutiful beast off. In a short while, a large, pot-bellied shirtless figure stepped onto the porch. He gave a sharp whistle and a raspy muttered "G'wan", or in the King's English, "Go on". The dog turned and trotted off, giving me one menacing glance back, before disappearing behind the house.

He was reluctant to say much at first, mostly looking skeptically at me, and fumbling with a toothpick in his mouth. I told him that I had only moved to this area recently, and that I lived in the little green house down the road. "I know," he finally said. "I've seen you out sitting on the porch in the mornin's." I nodded, "Yes, I love to have my coffee watching the sunrise." He looked down at the ground and kicked at it aimlessly with the toe of his boot. "That's the house my daddy used to live in, " he said glancing up at me. I was struck by a wordless feeling that I was getting close to something. "Your father, he was a mortician wasn't he?" "Yep," the man said, sitting down on the tailgate of my truck. "He was all that, and more. Back in those days, he was the coroner, the mortician, and the buryin' man too. You know that ol' cabin down along the river?" he asked, looking up at me, and shading his eyes from the sun with his hand. "I think so," I replied. "The one down by the old bridge that takes you to Caney Fork?" He nodded, looking off in the distance. "Mmm hmm, That's where he would take the body and declare it dead. Then he'd lay it out, and figure out what caused it. After that, he'd bury the poor soul. He even made the grave marker." I took a deep breath, and sat down next to him. I stared off into the distance where he seemed to be looking. "Did your daddy ever know a 'Sarah Potts'?" He turned to look at me, and there was a long silent moment when he seemed to be sizing me up. "Yeh, my daddy buried Sarah Potts," he said. "An' there was lots of folk wanted to know why she died, like it was some murder, or sumthin'. But it weren't nuthin' like that. He wouldn't talk about it. He just kept sayin' it weren't nuthin' like that."

"So, how did she die?', I asked. "Was it pneumonia?" He shook his head. " Naw, it wasn't nuthin' like that. But it weren't 'til he was dyin' hisself, he tol' me, I had my mama's eyes." I turned to look at him. "Are you the son of Sarah Potts?" He nodded silently. I put my hand on his shoulder. "I think your mother wants to see you." He nodded, and took a deep breath, "I always figgered she'd come back sooner or later."

The End.