Death at The Bridge

There’s a road near the center of Lonoke County, Arkansas called “Doc Eagle Road.” It takes off from “Old Highway 70” just before you reach the city limits of Lonoke and runs generally south until it reaches Bevis Road at which point it becomes “Cole Road,” a name chosen by the 911 folks. It’s the road on which Brenda’s family and a bunch of other Coles lived.

Anyway, Brenda’s dad and his family lived on Doc Eagle Road when time came for him to be drafted into the United States Army in early 1944 and spend the rest of the war with the 79^th Infantry Division—called “a fighting unit”— as it battled its way across France, Belgium and Germany.

So Julius, that was Brenda’s dad’s name, was quite familiar with Doc Eagle Road and its most widely known landmark, called simply, “Doc Eagle Bridge.” He told this story.

It seems that in 1866, just after the Civil War, a stranger wandered into the town of Lonoke. Nobody knew much about him, but he got into an argument with a local man and it resulted in a “cuttin' scrape.” Actually, locals called it “a duel,” and it took place at Doc Eagle Bridge.

The local man killed the stranger and they buried him a mile or so to the east at the edge of a field. Years ago, after Brenda and I married, I spent a lot of precious time with Julius. He would tell me about coming home from the war and walking the five miles or so from where the bus dropped him off to their new place, just off the far end of Doc Eagle Road. Incidentally, he would find that his family had spent the money he sent home to “buy me a fillin’ station,” on more farmland and a car for his younger brother. That’s a story for another day.

He would also point out, as we drove to tend his cows, the grave of the stranger killed at Doc Eagle Bridge. He never failed to tell the story again. He was like that. He didn’t give up on a good story. If a story was good, it was worth retelling.

They had plowed around the grave site for years, the simple tombstone standing among growing cotton or soybeans. There was no name on it, just "Born 1833, SC" and "Killed 1866." I couldn’t help noticing that the rows came closer to the grave each year.

Then one year, the tombstone disappeared and the plowed rows obliterated the grave. I couldn’t even begin now to tell you where it was. Maybe Brenda could. Julius always said that they threw the tombstone in a ditch somewhere.

As I get older, I can’t help thinking about the stranger who wondered into a strange land to face death. Was he a trouble maker? Was he an inciter? Was he careless? Was he different? We know he must have been white, for his murder wouldn’t have merited the honor of a duel otherwise. Was he thoughtless? Had the trials of his own cruel war clouded his judgement? Was he, perhaps, just walking his way home when he stopped in Lonoke?

Or was he a simply a stranger? That’s enough cause to call a person out these days. It probably was then, too. What thoughts might have passed through the mind of the young veteran, Julius Cole, as he walked across Doc Eagle bridge that night, the horrors of war still swimming in his head?

Do you suppose he might have wondered about his own case, being sent into “harm’s way” and surviving, as opposed to a man seeking food and shelter and finding death instead? Do you suppose he found life, at that moment, a little unpredictable?

We’ll never know.

Julius Cole, center—survivor