Rusty Springs was an
off-the-beaten-path town of just over 600 people, mostly older folks who had
retired up north and moved south to escape the cold, harsh winters. Ancil Griggs’s Peace in the Valley Funeral
Parlor was the town’s largest employer with seven workers, which included the
“interment site attendants,” as the uppity Mr. Griggs liked to call them.
(Everybody else just called them grave diggers.) Rusty Springs was a quiet,
peaceful community until a rash of burglaries hit, of all places, the funeral
parlor. That’s when Hoyt Ledbetter’s life began to unravel.
In small, closely knit
towns, news, good or bad, spreads like a sagebrush fire…and Rusty Springs was
no exception. In the darkness of a cold November morning, the town ne’er-do-well,
Mickey Joe Clayton, was caught red-handed inside the funeral parlor. The word
around town was that he was stealing embalming fluid and selling it to deer
processor Carl Haskins, obviously for “preserving purposes.” But the town folks saw right through
that ridiculous rumor, fairly certain that it was the work of Harve Brantley,
the town’s other deer processor. Mickey Joe was actually helping himself to the
unclaimed personal property of accident victims…rings, watches, women’s
jewelry, even pocket change. But on Halloween night of ’67, the granddaddy of
all burglaries, or pranks, if you will, took place. A threesome of boys from the nearby junior
college got into the funeral home, made off with the training cadaver, rode it all
over town, its head stuck out the window,
and then sat it in the front seat of a friends pick-up while he and his date
were in the high school gym attending the annual “Halloween Booger Bash.” Mr.
Griggs had had enough.
After pondering the situation
for what seemed like months, he decided on the obvious…a night watchman. It
would have to be the only person who had the intestinal fortitude to work a
graveyard shift at a funeral parlor…Hoyt Ledbetter!
Hoyt had been fired from his
truck driving job with the county highway department after he threatened to
“whup” his supervisor, so when Mr. Griggs offered him the job, he didn’t even
blink. “I reckin ye gotcha self a man.” “Then be here tomorrow night at ten ready to
go to work. You’ll get off at six in the morning. And I don’t put up with any
foolishness,” Griggs replied, in his trademark gruff voice. “In addition to
making rounds through the building, your job will include some minor janitorial
work...sweeping, mopping, cleaning the toilets, and the like.”
The night of January 18 was
a typical mid-winter night…cloudy, cold, wind whistling through the trees,
which made for an especially eerie night at the small-town funeral parlor.
Having finished his cleaning, Hoyt stepped outside for a quick smoke when the
ringing phone ended his break. Concerned that it might be the county hospital
reporting a death, he hurried back in…maybe in too much of a hurry. When his
feet hit the newly mopped, still-wet floor he slipped and started falling
backwards, grabbing the nearest thing he could, which happened to be the arm of
the dearly departed Aunt Maudie Tullis, still lying on the prep table. Being a
big, strong man, he accidently pulled Aunt Maudie right off the table, her corpse landing face down on top of him, with her
cold, hollow eyes staring straight into his.
The next morning, a truck
driver reported to the sheriff’s office that around 4:15 AM, he had seen a man
running at top speed down Highway 49 toward Aldersville.
Hoyt Ledbetter was never
seen again in Rusty Springs, Georgia, and for the rest of his days, Ancil Griggs
wondered if hiring a night watchman to work a graveyard shift at a funeral parlor was such
a good idea.
