12 minute read
"Just Gene"
© 2019 ALL IMAGES AND TEXT COPYRIGHT BY DR. LARRY K. MARTIN.
“JUST GENE”
By LARRY K. MARTIN
In the “American Characters” series, some subjects do not simply need an explanation; they require one. Gene McCartney, son of Ches McCartney–America’s Goat Man, deserves a Story Behind the Drawing. His life was uniquely simple, often difficult, and he filled only a minor niche. He was “Just Gene” ...and, although he filled only a minor role in the legendary anecdotes of the Goat Man, his own saga was both compelling and his name should be remembered.
He was “Just Gene”, but he was also Albert Gene McCartney,son of and companion traveler of one of America’s greatestreal—life legends.
F rom our hidden vantage point among the pines, my friend, writer Jerome (Jerry) Chandler and I, watched the lone figure as he searched a huge pile of old clothing that spilled out of a dilapidated lean-to shed. He seemed short and stocky, disheveled hair and a rough smattering of a beard that surrounded a downturned mouth. He seemed perplexed by the choices of old shirts. “Jerry, that can’t be our man. He looks more like an escapee than any Goat Man. Must be his son… and he looks pretty rough. Are you ready to check him out?” “Well, we came this far…” Jerry mused.
Having made the morning-long drive to Macon, we were in search of the Goat Man, a legendary figure that I’d remembered from childhood. I knew that this wasn’t our man because the object of our quest had to be about 100 years old if he was still alive. We eased back to the car and drove down to the little clearing where an old school bus sat, just beyond the shed. “This is going to be interesting,” we agreed as we approached the figure, who now sported an even more puzzled expression. “Good morning, Sir,” Jerry broke the silence with his not-so-southern, polite voice. The man’s expression reflected total bewilderment. “Howdy. We’re looking for a feller they call the Goat Man” I offered as a more familiar greeting. He finally spoke. “Yeah, this is where the Old Goat Man lives, but he’s not here. I’m his son Albert Gene–no, Gene… just Gene. I’ve got two brothers, no, three brothers. Let’s see The Old Man has three sons, one is me, Albert Gene and one is Gene, no, he’s Albert Gene, and I’m just Gene. There was another son, but he was lost in Vietnam. I think his name was Roy.” The reply was perplexing but friendly–in stuttering, stammering nasal tones. “The Old Man, uh, Old Legend, went to Jeffersonville, but he should be back soon.”
Gene wasn’t stout at all but was short and frail. It was the many shirts and pants he had retrieved earlier that gave him the stocky appearance. Gene was a functional dresser, and I suspect that he might have
introduced to the fashion world the process now called “layering.”
While we waited, Gene showed us around their small plot of ground graced by scattered loblolly pines with lots of straw and several huge piles of aluminum cans. “We pick up cans and sell them.” I guess it’s time to sell these, he apologized as he gathered a few strays and threw them back onto the pile. We entered the grimy, rusty old bus and Gene, with an air of authority, took his place in the driver’s seat, and held the wheel as though he were already driving. “See, the door still works!” he demonstrated. “Our bus is still in pretty good shape. We might travel in it soon after we get some wheels and axles, and, uh, a motor,” he noted as we regarded a fairly large tree growing dead-center in the cavity where the engine had been. Gene continued to drive, looking intently straight ahead, obviously captivated by all the possibilities. The bus had for years sat there flat on the ground, returning to earth a few millimeters each year. Several front and rear seats had been replaced by two makeshift bunk beds, and an old pot-bellied coal heater which still held a small pot of leftover mystery food, maybe some oatmeal from a few days past. The interior of the bus was coated with black soot except for a few missing windows.
Then we walked to the edge of the property, past a sizeable hole that was partially covered by a wide board, I could see water some 15-20 feet below. “This is our well, but it gets lots of dead animals in it, so we don’t use it anymore. I have to take that big five-gallon can down the road to our neighbor’s and bring back our water.”
“What’s that over there?” we asked simultaneously. “That’s a ‘mossy-limb’ or whatever they call it… a place for burial.” Gene’s term fit well. The mossand-mildew-splotched, ancient mausoleum held two homemade concrete vaults. “There are two bodies in here already–my grandmother and her husband.
The old Goat Man says he wants to be put in there when he dies. Here comes the Old Legend now,” he parroted from a lifetime of hearing that expression. The ancient figure eased out of a surprisingly new automobile, obviously a free ride from a friendly neighbor. As Ches McCartney moseyed down the embankment and down to the clearing, I whispered to Jerry, “We’ve got a winner!” and he readily agreed. Everything that I’d hoped to see that day was standing there in full regalia–but all that’s in another story.
From that point on, Gene faded into the background as we listened to the life of an American Legend, in his own words. I explained my idea of making a drawing of him, and he was amused enough to agree. He talked as we retook the tour (this time without a fantasy trip in the school bus). He walked straight to the back of the bus and began trying to stir the small boiler of mush. Almost impulsively, I said, “Hey, we’re about to go into Jeffersonville and get a burger. Want us to bring you guys something?” “Sure, we’ll go with you,” Mr. McCartney said, to the horror of Jerry Chandler, owner of the new Honda sitting there waiting for us. Jerry excused himself and bolted like a quarter horse straight up to his car. He frantically searched his trunk and came up with a good number of flattened grocery bags, which he spread across the back seat. All windows were down by the time we got to the car, and we sped off, windows still down, to the nearest town. This kind of treatment was apparently quite familiar to the Goat Man, but a rare event for Gene. We then returned to the clearing, and I asked Mr. McCartney to walk around with me while I took a few photos.
“Mr. McCartney, you don’t still have a goat or two, do you... maybe a baby goat?” I said, not expecting anything positive. He smiled at me with that almost-toothless grin. “Got two teeth left,” he said with considerable pride, as he opened wide, and demonstrated. “They’ll probably last as long as I do. No goats left, just a pony” he offered. “Well then, how about a cat?” I said. “Did you ever pick up a goat and hold it? You know, like holding a baby goat,” I began. “Sure, Bud. Been picking up goats all the time, even the big ones.” I smiled back. “No, I was thinking of getting you to hold something small, just like you used to hold a baby goat–maybe a cat.” “Gene!” he yelled back to his son. “Bring me that cat.” Within seconds, we created the pose that was already in my head. “Mr. Ches, when I come back, you’ll be holding a goat.”
In my drawing, “America’s Goat Man,” his left arm discloses an apparent physical defect–an unnatural curve in the forearm. Ches explained to me that it was the result of being hit by an 18-wheeler when he was walking the back roads of America. “Broke my arm up pretty bad here below the elbow. Killed two of my goats. They thought I was dead and sent me to the funeral home. That old mortician was beginning the embalming when I woke up. Scared him to death, and he died pretty soon after that.” Ironically, I saw that Gene had an identical deformity in his right arm–a reverse image of his dad’s. “I got mine,” he said, “when I worked for a pulpwooder in Florida.” In both cases, their horrific deformities seemed so unnecessary, but not surprising.
Before I began the pencil rendering, I had another chore to do. At “Trade Day” in Sand Mountain, Alabama, I located a seller who had a small goat in his booth. He looked puzzled when I asked to get a snapshot of him holding the kid goat, but he complied. It was close enough reference to begin my first sketch. The final pencil rendering took almost a month.
@1983 Larry K. Martin
ALL IMAGES AND COPY ARE PROTECTED BY US COPYRIGHT, LARRY K. MARTIN, 2019
I did return to South Georgia, with a printers' proof from the press- run of the original. I had signed it with a note to the Goat Man and was curious as to what his reaction would be. Gene was there, but not Ches. “There’s no telling when he'll be back” he mumbled. I said, “O.K. then, when he comes back, here's a present for him.” I opened the cardboard cover and pulled out the print, watching for Gene’s response. He looked over the entire print, inch by inch, and showed the most enthusiasm I’d seen from him. “That’s the old legend, all right. That’s him, all right.” I decided to caution him about caring for the print in those filthy surroundings. “Better put it in a safe place and not handle it too much,” I suggested. He immediately began digging for space in an old chifforobe, and I relaxed. Then he kept talking about how excited Ches would be when he saw the picture… as he carefully folded the large print in half…
and then folded it again in half…
and again and again, until it looked like a pack of cigarettes.
He was very proud.
‘O.K., no problem,’ I thought. ‘The Goat Man’s aesthetics are not overly sophisticated, either. After all, he burned old tires for ambiance when he traveled with his fragrant goat herd–and both he and Gene were recognizable by their olfactory challenge, even at a good distance. So, he probably wouldn't be concerned with Gene’s handling of any print.’
There was one distinction between the two McCartneys when it came to an appreciation of beauty: Gene most likely had never had an opportunity to relate to the opposite sex, but the Goat Man loved women, and his taste in them was considerably diverse. He claimed to have been married four times. I actually knew about one of his erstwhile romances–a youngish woman from our community. Mary Elizabeth Gobble told my sister that she was married to the Goat Man. Now, Mary Elizabeth was no raving beauty–“plain” might be a magnanimous description. When I asked Ches about Mary Elizabeth’s claim, he acknowledged that he had known her back in those years. She, in all innocence (in a more innocent era), wandered the roads of our neighborhood, where they likely met. “No,” he smiled, “She wasn’t one of the four wives.”
But I digress…
In his very old age, Ches decided to culminate an adventure he’d told me about some quarter-century earlier. He would now head out, this time sans goats, to California to find that “little starlet” whom he still wanted to marry–Morgan Fairchild. That first mention of Ms. Fairchild had predated the hilariously popular SNL skit by Jon Lovitz, who played the role of “The Pathological Liar, Tommy Flanagan.” Jon had America rolling on the floor every Saturday night as we waited to hear some variation of, “Yeah, and that’s where I met my wife, uh… Morgan Fairchild…yeah, Morgan Fairchild, who actually lets me sleep with her. Yeah, that’s the ticket!” Now, I don’t know whether Jon happened upon the same idea as Ches by coincidence, or if the story of Ches’s search had reached Jon in New York, but it demonstrated to me that these two birds (McCartney and Lovitz) had the same good taste. In Ches’s case, however, it almost proved fatal.
On this trip to California, he was mugged, almost killed by a street gang, and went missing for months. I happened to go to Jeffersonville during his absence, and when I learned from a local service station attendant that he was missing, I went to scout for Gene. On a tip, I found Gene near a logging road in the woods some miles from his school-bus home. I followed an old “jeep road” to a local dump–actually just a deep ravine in the trees. Stopping to search for him, I heard an enthusiastic, familiar nasal shout… “Jacksonville, Alabama!” That’s what he remembered as a viable substitute for my name. He emerged from the garbage, holding an old steering wheel. After taking him to town for a box of chicken, I learned that Gene, too, was concerned that his dad might’ve met with foul play.
What we both learned much later was that, in his months-long visit to California, a vicious attack had left him unconscious, and unable to communicate even his identity. He eventually recovered and returned to Georgia, with apologies from California, but the Goat Man had finally given up on any expectation of a happy ever after with Miss Fairchild. In the meanwhile, Gene had kept the drawing of his dad, in the chifforobe, clean and neatly folded. Later, when I brought a stack of intact prints to the Goat Man, he seemed quite pleased. It was shortly after this that Ches was given living quarters at the Eastview Nursing Home, and that left Gene permanently alone and insulated from the world. When I made occasional trips to Eastview, I also went to check on Gene. He seemed to appreciate the company, especially after I agreed to pay for a six pack of beer for him to enjoy during the long, dark nights. I thought of the countless nights he spent with only a candle in the isolated school bus. If anyone deserved an occasional buzz, it was Gene. As it turned out, Gene had more than isolation and darkness to worry about.
@ 2012 Larry K. Martin
ALL IMAGES AND COPY ARE PROTECTED BY US COPYRIGHT, LARRY K. MARTIN, 2019
Gene McCartney’s solitary, spartan life was ended one night in 1998. I talked with both the Sheriff and the Coroner before his funeral. He was shot as he laid in bed, and then the job was finished as he ran among the pines in terror, instinctively seeking escape. “Do you think that someone was looking for hidden money?” I asked, knowing that the rumor had always circulated that the Goat Man was rich, with hidden money around their property (a false rumor that accompanies a surprising number of eccentrics). “No,” they said. “This was an execution. We’re almost positive that a local gang targeted him, and that one or more of the members were on a mission to ‘kill somebody’ as an initiation into their gang. Gene was just the most vulnerable adult available. We’re almost sure who did it, but we haven’t proved it enough to make an arrest.”
They gave an unvarnished account of the event. Gene had gone to bed when he was likely awakened by a figure standing above his cot, shining a flashlight into his eyes. It must have been a pure terror as he felt the .22 caliber bullet hit his chest. He ran in panic, pursued by the killer, pounding his body with two more shots. He died out there in the woods. The Sheriff added, “The suspect almost admitted the shooting by his demeanor. The probable killer said, ‘What does it matter? Gene was a dumb, crazy guy that didn’t have any reason to live,’ but still, there was no confession.”
The funeral, at a privately-donated cemetery plot, was attended by a surprising number of maybe 40-50 people. As the elderly preacher took to the graveside podium, I thought, “Hope it’s not another inane, impersonal cut/paste sermon about death.” After taking a long breath, the minister gave the most beautiful, eloquent eulogy that I’ve ever heard. It followed this thought… “Gene was always alone, walking the road or looking for subsistence wherever he could find it. He had his understanding of life that might have been very different from most. He was a gentle, harmless soul, who trusted even those who penetrated his insular little haven of an old school bus-home. He traveled with his dad for years and watched crowds of bemused camp visitors as they studied him and his dad. But, in essence, he was solitary all of his life.” The unforgettable talk ended as he addressed the wooden casket bearing Gene’s remains.
“Gene, you were alone your whole life. You were sometimes puzzled by life, and the other lives that you saw, but you were not invited to participate, except for an occasional act of charity. Now your isolation and discomfort and pain are over. You are now in a better, happier place than we are. And you’ll never be alone again.”
“America’s Goat Man—Mr. Ches McCartney”. “Face of a Legend”
@1983 Larry K. Martin
@ 2012 Larry K. Martin
ALL IMAGES AND COPY ARE PROTECTED BY US COPYRIGHT, LARRY K. MARTIN, 2019
