11) “His Unquiet Ghost” by Mary Noailles Murfee

Plot:

A group of young men is hauling some, um, homemade brew packed in a “coffin-box” late at night when they happen across a party of “revenue-raiders.” The “rev-enuers” casually ask them what they’re hauling.

“What we-uns mus’ all be one day, stranger—a corpus.” They then name the deceased as one Watt Wyatt. At is happens, Watt is alive and well and one of their party. Needless to say, Watt is quite surprised.

Thoughts:

This is cute. The narration is written in standard English, but the dialogue is in dialect and takes a couple of seconds to decipher. The moonshiners play a cat-and-mouse game with some of the less discreet “rev-enuers,” while word of Watt’s “demise” spreads fast. Watt has to hide to avoid being spotted by people who know him. Even people who know him don’t seem to see him and don’t mind talking about him. The things they say are revealing to poor Watt.

He wanders to his “grave” (where his friends have buried their hooch) and sees Minta Elladine Biggs weeping by it. He didn’t realize she cared so much.

This is a cute story but not exactly profound.

The story can be read here:

Bio: Mary Noailles Murfree (1850-1922) was a descendant of Colonel Hardy Murfree, for whom Murfreesboro, TN, was named. After a fever at the age of four left her partially paralyzed—she had difficulty walking—she turned to books. While modern readers often consider her depiction of people as stereotyped, Murfree was considered one of the earliest “local color” writers.

Title: “His Unquiet Ghost”
Author: Mary Noailles Murfree (alias Charles Egbert Craddock) (1850-1922)
First published: The Raid of the Guerilla and Other Stories, May 1912