Novella by Steve Wick

Porchlight is proud to continue the American tradition of serialization by offering a novella, Mr. Wilson by Steve Wick. Following is the fifth installment. 

Steve Wick is a journalist and writer living on eastern Long Island. His stories about the last farm labor camp in the region ran as a series in Newsday, where he was a longtime reporter and editor. He shared in Newsday's Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for the newspaper’s coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800. He is the author of four works of nonfiction and one novel, The Ruins, which was published in February 2025 by Pegasus Books.

While what follows is fiction, some aspects of the stories of the people and places are true, and are based on newspaper accounts, public records, family oral histories, and interviews conducted by the writer.

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”  –-Zora Neale Hurston

Mr. Wilson

Audrey Manley arrived at the Young house a few minutes before 8 a.m. She walked to the door and knocked. Wilson opened the door and greeted her. Mrs. Young followed Wilson to the car.

“I will be back tonight,” Wilson said. “If that’s okay. I have the money.”

“Do what you’re here for,” she said. “You can stay as long as you like.”

It was a short drive to the Manley house, which sat off Coffee Street, behind the Bradshaw turpentine camp and its cluster of shacks and out buildings. Wilson didn’t see anyone in the shacks. It did not look abandoned, however. 

As the car passed by the shacks, that feeling of place, of being here, overwhelmed him once again. She turned down a dirt road, drove over a section of railroad tracks, and stopped the car in front of a two-story house. Standing on the front step was an older man who greeted Wilson as he exited the car.

Mr. Manley pointed out towards the shacks. “You lived here when you were a child,” he said. “With your mother, grandmother and grandfather, Shadrack Wilson. You may not remember that.”

I do, he thought.

They went inside. Manley pointed to a table near the kitchen. It was stacked with paperwork, bankers’ boxes filled with files, and piles of newspaper clippings. Audrey went into the kitchen to make coffee. When she returned, she took a seat next to Wilson.

“I needed to find you, Mr. Wilson,” Manley said. He sat down at the head of the table, paperwork in front of him. “That will take some explanation. I understand. You’ve come a long way. But I want you to understand why I wanted to find you as I research the history of my own family.”

He pushed files out of his way when Audrey brought in a tray with three coffee cups and saucers, a pitcher of milk and a sugar bowl.

“How do you like your coffee, Mr. Wilson?” she asked.

Wilson had been unable to speak since he arrived at the house. His body shook with the knowledge that he was here, on this spot.

She poured a cup and passed it to Wilson. He took a sip, put the cup down, and said, “I don’t understand.”

“I want to tell you something about myself,” Manley said. “I was a school teacher here in Barwick and Thomasville. I was born in this house. My uncle was Mr. Bradshaw. He owned the quarters, as we called them. Where your people lived.”

Wilson sipped his coffee. Manley’s quiet manner put Wilson at ease. Manley handed Wilson a sheet of paper with a series of drawings on it.

“What you see on the property, Mr. Wilson, are the shacks the workers live in.” He pointed to the paper. “These are the shacks; this is the barn where barrels are made and where the pine resin is processed; these are the stables for the mules. My parents lived in this house until they passed.

“A coal burning train comes up right through the quarters, past the shacks, and on to a switching station in Barwick,” he said. “It spews thick coal smoke as the locomotive passes through the quarters. We were a white family living in black quarters. I remember the hands, which is what we called them, playing baseball when they weren’t working in the woods draining sap from yellow pine. That work was difficult and very dangerous.

“My great grandfather, Mr. Manley, lived in Alabama. And his wife, my great grandmother, took very ill. She became so sick she could not nurse her newborn son, who was my grandfather. The baby was going to die, don’t you see. My great grandfather was desperate to find some way to keep his son alive. 

“Well, as it turned out, a slave caravan had come into town and set up in a field. People came to look at slaves to buy. Mr. Manley went to where the trader had camped, and he looked in one of the wagons. And right there was a slave woman nursing her own newborn son. So Mr. Manley bought her and the baby on the spot. Eleven hundred dollars.

“And he brought this woman and her baby back home, and that woman began immediately nursing the white baby. You see, she saved the baby’s life. Mr. Manley named her baby Henry Manley. And Henry grew up on that farm and stayed there until he died. 

“When I was a younger man, I went back to Alabama with my father and we found Henry Manley’s daughter. And she knew the whole story the way I knew it. I think on this often: My grandfather lived, and therefore my father was born, and I was born, because of a slave woman bought from a trader so she could nurse a white baby and keep him alive.”

Wilson could only shake his head at the story. Manley’s account hung in the air, too incredible for Wilson to get a grip on it. 

Manley sipped his coffee, put down the cup, and rooted through one of the files before him. He retrieved a yellowed, well-worn copy of the Thomasville Enterprise and showed it to Wilson.

“In that picture, Mr. Wilson,” he pointed to a white woman in a long dress, “Is Mrs. Bertha Pope. Her husband was Wesley Pope. A fine couple. A fine family of many children. She died of cancer when she was barely into her thirties. A very sad story.”

He pointed to the woman next to Mrs. Pope. She wore a housekeeper’s uniform.

“Many of the families here in Barwick had housekeepers. That was very common, don’t you see. My mother had a woman who cleaned the house, another who did the cooking and laundry and other chores. The Thornhills had a housekeeper, so did the Chapmans, and Dr. Sanchez as well. And, of course, the Popes, and Roy Barwick.

“The woman in the uniform, Mr. Wilson.” He waited a moment while Wilson fixed his gaze on the picture in the newspaper. “That’s Ada Wilson, your mother.”

Wilson leaned back in his chair. His head fell back and he stared up at the ceiling. When he lowered his head to look at the photograph again, he saw the face of a woman in her mid-thirties. Every thought he had ever had of his mother over the past eight decades came to him in this moment as he looked at her face and, for a brief moment, felt her presence in the room seated next to him.

“Have you ever seen a photograph of your mother?” Manley said.

He shook his head. He could feel his heart beating through the skin over his ribs and through the flannel shirt.

My mother, he thought. His head spun.

Manley broke the silence. “I want to introduce you to a man who knew your mother, but first I want to talk about something that happened right here, on this land, that’s been on my mind for a very long time,” he said. “You were there that day, Mr. Wilson. I was too. I saw you. A man we knew was in the mob and he told us what happened.”

Barwick

The line of trucks pulled up behind a large white farm house, lighted up brightly as if a holiday celebration were underway. Sheriff’s cars and trucks with their headlights on filled the lawn around the house and barn. 

A man in work clothes stepped off the front porch and walked to the cars as the deputies pulled Berry, Ralph, Robert, and the other men out of the backs of the trucks. Another truck held three more men, including Berry’s friend Willy Barnes, whose head was bowed.  

“Talk’s all over someone already got lynched near Pavo,” the man said to a sheriff’s deputy. His voice held a large amount of disappointment.

“I don’t know who that would be,” the deputy said.

 A man in oil-stained overalls followed by a teenage boy came out of the house and stood on the porch. The deputy escorted Ralph Wilson towards the front porch. The deputy said, “Mr. Scales? Sir, we got some more for your daughter to look at.”

“I never been here,” Ralph said. “Worked in the woods out yonder, but I never come to his house.” 

Berry shouted, “Sir! Sir! It’s not him!”

Ralph tried to step closer to Scales, but the deputy held him back. “Sir – you know me! You been to Mr. Williams’ turpentine quarters. I seen you there, sir.  You know me. Mr. Williams, he say I’m okay.”

We lookin for a light-skinned man,” Scales said to the deputy. “That’s what my daughter says to look out for. A small man. Thin. Wearing clothes like he was working in the woods.”

Beams from flashlights passed over the men’s faces. Berry twisted around to see Willy behind him. He nodded and Willy nodded back, his face trying to crack a relieved look at the words “light skinned.” The front of Willy’s overalls were soaked in a wide circle around the crotch, reaching to his knees. 

“I’d like to bring ‘em in one at a time, Mr. Scales,” the deputy said.

He led Ralph to the front door. A few minutes later he came out and was put in the back of the truck. Robert followed the same routine, and then it was Berry’s turn. He forced himself to keep his head up so he could see exactly where he was. 

He was in entirely new territory, as he could not remember any time when he had been inside a white man’s house, other than stepping inside the backdoor by a kitchen but going not a foot farther. 

Plain furnishings filled the house. The air smelled of lilacs. A painting of a barn adorned the wall over the fireplace, next to a framed portrait of a white-haired man in a Confederate general’s uniform striking a pose of privileged greatness. Black bunting was draped over the top of the frame as if the man in the portrait had recently died.

A grand piano sat in one corner. The deputy led Berry through a sitting room towards the back of the house and into the kitchen. It was an expansive kitchen, with a long oak table in the middle of the floor. 

At the table sat a girl next to a young man who held her hand. Berry did the unthinkable and looked directly at the girl. She returned his gaze, staring at him until he dropped his eyes. She had a child’s skin, and blue eyes that looked red, sad, and confused. She wore a long, white dress, white stockings and shiny little-girl shoes.

“C.H., I’m tired,” the girl said to the boy.

She looked Berry over, more casually than seriously, like she had grown bored with her role in the drama. Her mother, seated to the right of her daughter, refused to look at him. She stared at the floor or looked at other family members, her head rocking side to side.

An ancient woman sat in a cushioned chair at one end of the table. Unlike the girl’s mother, she stared intently at Berry as if the act could cause him physical pain. Her face, her lips painted bright red, twisted and contorted, her mouth opened and shut. Her dress was long and formal, the collar tight to her chin.

A furious anger, a convulsing resentment, shook her body. A high squeak passed over her tongue. Her right hand rose above the table, the shaking index finger pointed at Berry. Everything she had ever known in her life, everything she had long believed in, all of her history, personal and the larger world of her family, her state and her country, the memory of the Federals and the northern bureaucrats, the government oppression, the indignities heaped on her family, the self pity that came with so much loss, welled up inside her and boiled over in the kitchen of her family’s farmhouse. 

Her hair was as white as fresh snow, her faced covered with dark brown spots like paint drippings spilled on a throw-away canvas. Her long fingers, the nails painted as red as her lips, were bent and twisted. Her eyes stayed locked on Berry. She conveyed an air of long gone, blown-away aristocracy; of erased privileges and ageless grievances; of attentive house servants and loyal field hands; of handsome horses drawing buggies to Sunday morning church services.

Berry glanced over her head towards a woman, gray haired, in her housekeeper’s uniform, seated in a small room off the back of the kitchen. She looked at him, then away. After several long minutes the young girl turned her head and whispered something to her mother, then the boy. 

Her mother let out a loud sigh of frustration; the boy slammed both hands onto the table. He stood up so quickly the chair shot out from under his legs and crashed to the floor. 

With great effort, the ancient woman pushed herself off the table. Her bright red lips moved frantically. Slowly, she extended her quivering hand towards Berry, waving it back and forth like a weapon.

“Get him out of here!” she shouted.

Turning towards the girl’s father, who stood away from the long table, she shouted, “If you had any decency in you! Any decency at all! Daddy would have killed all of them dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Hanged them from every tree he could find! You brought these people into my home! Into my home!” 

She fell back into the chair, covering her face with her hands.  “Gone, gone, gone,” she shouted. “Everything’s gone.”

The deputy turned Berry back towards the front of the house, the woman’s hysteria following them to the door. When they reached the outside, he put Berry in the back of the truck with Ralph and Robert. They could still hear her.

“Can you take us back to Mr. Williams?” Berry asked.

“Road blocks all over,” the deputy said. “People wanting to hang someone tonight. Not sure there’s a way back there right now.” Looking at Berry and Ralph Wilson, he said, “You boys brothers or something?” 

“No, sir,” Berry said. “Ralph’s daddy’s Sam Wilson. Sam’s my daddy’s cousin.”

“Who’s your daddy?” the deputy asked.

“Shadrack Wilson.”

“No fooling? That old boy live at Bradshaw’s quarters?”

“Yes, sir,” Berry said.

An hour passed before the sheriff came out of the house with Mr. Scales. The two men stood on the porch in the glow of a gas lamp. Scales’ arms rose above his head, then collapsed to his side. The door opened and his wife came out, her arms folded tightly across her chest. Behind her came the old woman, her right hand pointed at the sheriff’s face.

“What kind of country do I live in where they can get away raping a white child? We used to whip them! You understand that? Whip ‘em with bull whips and chain ‘em to posts to get their respect!”

The sheriff stepped off the porch, whispering to his deputies. One of them came to the back of the truck. He first looked at Robert, shaking his head as if trying to make up his mind. He looked at every face. The deputy reached out and pulled Ralph Wilson out and onto the ground, lifting him by his arms and pushing him into the backseat of another car.

“No! He is innocent!” 

At the Manley table, emotional and physical exhaustion gripped Wilson. He didn’t have the strength to push off the chair and stand up. He didn’t want to know anymore. 

“Could I use your bathroom?” he asked.

“Of course,” Audrey said.

When Wilson returned, Manley said, “This has been on my mind all these years, Mr. Wilson. We knew people who were there that day, who accompanied the truck to the Scales house for identification. That’s where Ralph Wilson was arrested. He was then put on trial, Mr. Wilson. How it all turned out continues to amaze me. Mr. Bradshaw, my uncle, was on the grand jury that indicted Ralph Wilson for rape and assault.”

Wilson’s shoulders slumped over, his head fell to his chest, the picture of an overwhelmed man. Behind him was the couch. He got up and picked his way to the couch and fell backwards into it. Audrey got up and went to the chair next to the couch.

Ten minutes passed before Wilson returned to the table. In front of Manley was a stack of newspaper clipping about Ralph Wilson’s arrest, his near lynching, and his trial.

“As I said, my uncle was on the grand jury that indicted Ralph Wilson,” Manley said. “Was he in the mob? I don’t know. Others we knew were.”

“You know someone who saw the whole thing?” Wilson said. 

Manley nodded. “You were there that day, Mr. Wilson. A boy watching this. You saw it when the mob came to this camp”– he pointed out the living room window towards the shacks – “and your mother and grandparents saw it. Do you have a memory of that day?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be here,” he said.

“I want to show you some more information about your family,” Manley said.

He pulled two overstuffed files out of the pile next to him and opened one of them. Wilson could see sheets of stiff, green paper, adorned with raised government stamps.

“This is the death certificate for Shadrack Wilson,” Manley said, showing it to Wilson. “It’s spelled ‘Sadorak.’ The man who filled out the form was a Reverend Joe Wright. Julia Wilson is listed here as Shadrack’s wife. He was eighty at the time of his death. He was owned – “

Wilson cut him off. “You wanted me to hear that?” Wilson said.

“I wanted you to know the truth,” Manley said.

“I was born different. That’s all I ever knew. I have truth; it’s mine.”

Reading from the form, Manley said, “At the time of his death, he was working for a D.S. Chapman in Barwick. As for the names of Shadrack’s parents, Wright wrote ‘dont no’ in the appropriate box. No birthplace was given. My guess is he was born in Virginia and brought south for sale after the Indian lands were taken and new cotton plantations opened up. Dr. Sanchez signed at the bottom. Wilson was “buried in the colored ‘simitary’ in Barwick by friends.’”

The second official record Manley held up was Ada Wilson’s death certificate. The mother Jimmy Wilson could not remember was thirty-seven years, seven months and 14 days old at the time of her death. 

Reading out loud, Manley said Julia Wilson was listed as the “informant,” meaning the person who supplied the information to someone who filled out the certificate. Dr. Sanchez signed it. 

“The cause of death is hard to read,” Manley said. “It looks like, with odd spellings, ‘intestinal hemorage, colitis and malaria fever.’ Ada’s father is listed as an Allen Bivens; her mother, Julia Wilson. Both were born in Thomas County, Georgia.”

Manley looked at Wilson, who looked back and held his gaze. “On the line that asks ‘if married, widowed, or divorced,’ the person who filed out the certificate wrote three straightforward, illuminating words, all spelled correctly: ‘Berry Wilson deceased.’”

Audrey said, “You father was dead by the time of your mother’s death, Mr. Wilson.”

“I didn’t know him,” Wilson said. His tone worsened, as the information he was hearing was not useful to him in any way.

“On the line that asked for your mother’s occupation is the word ‘housekeeper.’ The place of death and burial simply says ‘Barwick.’ No specific piece of ground – or colored cemetery – is listed. What really caught my eye, Mr. Wilson, is that at the bottom of the death certificate, on the line marked ‘undertaker,’ is the signature of A.E. Massey.”

“Mr. Massey was my husband’s uncle on his mother’s side,” Audrey said. “He was the major undertaker in town. A prominent man in the community. That he signed for your mother and handled her burial says something about your mother’s stature in Barwick.”

“I don’t understand,” Wilson said.

“What we don’t know, and may never know, is the fate of your father,” Manley said. “He was deceased when your mother died.”

“I didn’t know him,” he repeated.

Manley looked at his watch. Wilson used that as an excuse to return to the couch.

“I’d like to go back to Mrs. Young’s,” Wilson said.

Manley let a minute or two go by before he spoke up. “Mr. Wilson, I located the records of a branch of the Barwick family,” he said. 

Another long minute passed. Manley did not speak again until Wilson stared at him, waiting for the next shoe to drop. 

“Oral history, what we learn from people around us, can be misleading,” Manley said.

Wilson felt he was being ganged up on, with information thrown at him in such a manner that he couldn’t keep it all straight. He excitedly waved both hands in front of his face as though he was pushing away a swarm of bees.

“I didn’t need to know all this,” he said. “Why do you have all this?”

“There are stories I’ve lived with my entire life,” Manley said. “I wanted to know what happened here, and what my family’s role in it was. I don’t want to die before I can learn what is out there. Do you understand, Mr. Wilson. Questions that hang out there and are never answered – well, that’s not what I want for myself.”

Wilson didn’t want to deal with the issue of unanswered questions. 

To break the silence, Manley said, “I couldn’t find your birth certificate. Did you have one?”

Wilson felt the question was insulting. 

“Georgia wasn’t issuing birth certificates to – “ Manley began to say before Wilson angrily cut him off. 

“Enough!” he said.

“I’d guess you were born around 1870 or so,” Manley said. “Five years after – “

Again, Wilson cut him off, this time with a wave of his arm in Manley’s direction.

“I thought it best for you to know the whole story,” Manley said.

Wilson felt alternately cold and hot, like he was developing a fever. He pushed Manley’s comments out of his head; he didn’t want it.

“I want to go back to Mrs. Young’s,” he said.

“If you are willing, Mr. Wilson, I’d like to take you to places and to introduce you to Olin Pope. He’s ninety-two or ninety-three years old. And still sharp. He can’t come out in the sun. He’s had so many skin cancers. I saw him a while back taking a walk before nightfall. He has a woman who stays with him during the day. I would like you to meet him. We can see him later this afternoon, if you’d like. Before that, there’s a farm I want to show you.”

“I want to go back to Mrs. Young’s,” he repeated, stronger this time.

“I will take you, Mr. Wilson,” Audrey said.

“Could I swing by later today?” Manley asked.

Wilson wanted to say no, he’d had enough, but he didn’t. He was a guest in someone’s house, and he didn’t like that, but now, at this moment, he wanted to go there and sit in the bedroom with the door closed. 

At Mrs. Young’s house, the man was asleep in the chair, the blanket pulled up over his chest to ward off the morning’s dampness. He heard Mrs. Young tinkering in the kitchen. He went in the bedroom, closed the door, and lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. 

Mr. Manley knocked on the door at 2 p.m. Mrs. Young called out for him to come inside, where he found Wilson and Mrs. Young having coffee at the kitchen table. Wilson got up and put on his coat, the only one he’d brought with him from up north, and followed Manley out to the car.

In the car, before they pulled away from the house, Manley said, “I’ve tried to explain that what happened at the Bradshaw quarters on that night. The mob drove onto my uncle’s property looking for the right Negro to haul off and take to the Scales farm for some sort of identification. After that, the man would have been hanged.”

Manley drove down Kendrick to Coffee Street and turned right. A mile down the road he turned right again on Salem Road, went about a quarter mile, and pulled into the driveway of a farm house. Fields recently plowed up, with wisps of cotton clinging to sticks and branches, spread out on three sides of the house. Behind the farm house were pine trees that dropped down into a gully. 

“This was the Scales farm, Mr. Wilson,” Manley said. “This is where the girl was supposedly attacked. As I’ve said, I knew the people in the mob and my uncle was in the grand jury that indicted Ralph Wilson. I wrote hoping to find you, so I could tell you this story.”

Manley parked the car. Wilson pulled himself out with both hands on the top of the door. They walked up a gravel path, the stones crunching noisily under their feet, and stepped up onto a porch. The door opened and a middle-aged woman stepped out.

“Hello, Mr. Manley,” she said. She reached out to shake Wilson’s hand. “I’m Dorothy Webster. My husband and I live here most weekends. We both teach at Emory in Atlanta. You must be Mr. Wilson.”

She pushed open the screen door and they entered the front room. They passed through the parlor and into a kitchen, dominated by a plank table that ran along a series of windows that looked out over the fields.

From a desk in the corner, she picked up a framed photograph. She showed it first to Manley, who had seen it before, and then to Wilson. He stared at it: a family seated at the table, a young girl in the middle.

“This is the Scales family,” she said. “When we bought the property, there was a lot of stuff left up in the attic, including a portrait of Robert E. Lee in his uniform. That hung prominently over the fireplace, probably placed there after his death.”

She went to the stove, ran water into a pot, and put it on the gas burner. She had already prepared a tray of recently-baked cookies and put them on the table. They were still warm from the oven. Manley and Wilson took their seats.

“In this room, at that table – the table that’s here now - is where they brought Ralph Wilson,” Manley said.

“There’s so much history in this house and on this land,” she said. “It speaks to both my husband and me. He teaches American history, and I teach English literature. This land was all Indian land, Mr. Wilson. When the land needed to be opened up for cotton and to expand the slave system, the Indians were removed. ‘Removed’ sounds less menacing than it actually was. The Indian Removal Act, one of the most nefarious in our history, was passed and pushed along by President Andrew Jackson. History is the story of one people pushing out another, and then writing the story proving how brave and righteous they were, how God had been behind them all along.

“The Scales family sold the house and land right after the so-called rape. A local judge was the buyer. Mr. Hugh Vonier. He paid very little for it, along with back taxes. He was involved, we’re told, in the mob that grabbed Ralph Wilson. Odd he ended up with the property.”

Manley said, “Cotton prices were poor. The boll weevil had done a great deal of damage. I suppose they couldn’t afford to own it any longer. Life here then was very tough.”

Mrs. Webster raised a hand to correct Manley. “They moved to get away from the embarrassment and fallout from their daughter falsely accusing a man of raping her that nearly got him hanged. I’ve always believed the Scales family, soon after the trial of Ralph Wilson, picked up and left for Polk County, Florida, and never returned.”

She put three cups and saucers and spoons on the table. When the water came to a boil, she poured it into a tea pot and put that on the table. Wilson nibbled at one of the cookies.

“Behind this house, Mr. Wilson,” Manley said. “I’ve walked it. There are well worn paths through the woods. They lead up to the next farm, which back when the Scales were here was owned by Roy Barwick. The path runs alongside the Barwick farm and ends at a Baptist church.”

Mrs. Webster sat at the table and poured tea into each cup. The sugar bowl was in the middle of the table. Wilson, who never drank tea, spooned sugar into his cup and stirred it.

“He was brought here?” Wilson said. He looked around the kitchen in disbelief he would ever have found himself in this place.

“The family was seated at this table,” Manley said. “A number of Negroes were brought in to be shown to the Scales daughter. The newspaper accounts say the mob was looking for a ‘yella’ Negro. Berry Wilson was brought here, as were others from the different turpentine camps. And Ralph Wilson. The family picked him out as the culprit and he was taken away.”

Do you know what happened to either Berry or Ralph Wilson?” she asked.

He shook his head.

AUTHOR’S NOTE 

The residents of a farm labor camp on the North Fork of Long Island were the focus of reporting I did for Newsday. The camp was the very last of its kind and was home to Black men and women who had long been separated from their southern birth places and families. James Wilson was one of the residents of that camp, as were Bea, Oliver, Frank and Clara.

When the camp was shuttered after a disastrous fire, these people had to find new lives. Some went South; others had long lost any connection to where they were from. Bea was murdered by a man who broke in her apartment. Mr. Wilson, who had been a farm laborer since he was in his teens, refused to return to where he was born, in Barwick, Georgia. He died of a heart attack, never having ventured south to find his beginnings, or the ground where his mother was buried.

Those stories, and a series of photographs taken by Viorel Florescu, were compiled into a book called All That Remains. It was published by the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Free Library in 2024. 

The story of the arrest, trial and acquittal of Ralph Wilson is told in newspaper accounts in Thomasville, Georgia.