“You all right there, little lady?” asked Soldado.
Maggie smiled and nodded.
With his boat entering the channel, Soldado began to steer for the bridge. “We’ll run up around the island.”
The throbbing engine made tremors in the surface of the coffee in the cups. Maggie took her coffee and climbed up on the top of the small cuddy cabin. She pulled her tee shirt up under her breasts and tied it so the sun was on her skin. She took the white string off her hair and her long blonde hair fell past her shoulders. Then she leaned back on her elbows on the cuddy roof. The slight breeze from the forward motion of the boat flicked her hair upward so that it served as a burgee for the boat.
The boat moved under the rusty center span of the old bridge. The span arched over them about ten feet above. The motor resounded as the craft went under the span, loud echoes pumping against Frank’s ears. There was darkness. The sunlight created a pattern of shade lines from the grillwork above in the road, the lines raining like prison bars over the boat. . Frank could see decades of bird nest history on the ledges of the old concrete bridge supports. A gull, surprised and angry, flew off with a sudden whipping of wings.
“You want to look at these fracture cracks,” Soldado said over the throb of the engine. “Terment got himself into a bind. All his talk about building on the island so the town decided to stop fixing up this bridge. Just let it fall apart. The mayor and the rest of them in River Sunday figured they’d get Jake to build a new one. Kind of foxed him. Jake has to replace it whether he wants to or not. It’s too worn out to support all that new traffic coming over to his houses. Didn’t seem too smart of him if you ask me but he’s the big businessman, not me. I just run a crab boat. I expect if he’d been a little smarter, made them keep it repaired, he might not have had to build no new bridge, might not have had to go near that swamp at all.”
“That’s what I wondered from the beginning,” said Frank. “Why couldn’t he have built the bridge, if it was so important, somewhere else along the river?”
“From what I understand,” said Maggie, her words drifting back to the others in the middle of the boat, “This bridge was put here because it was always the simplest place to build, the shortest distance. Other places along the river were much wider and deeper with more soft bottoms and currents.”
“You’re right,” said Soldado. “He’s got to build it here or not at all. For one thing the other folks along the river won’t let him build anywhere else. Second, he owns this area here. His neighbor, she won’t let him build on her land.” He pointed to the Pond house, back under trees. “She’s in there plotting how to muck up old Jake, I bet,” chuckled Soldado. “Her old man left her a ton of money. Just the other day I heard another story about her. Years ago, this fellow told me, she’d go into the Chesapeake Hotel during the hunting season, November, December, when all the tourists were in River Sunday, coming in to hunt geese and ducks out on the Nanticoke and on North Creek. In the hotel the hunting guides left their brochures all over the tables so the tourists could get their numbers and call them up to arrange hunting trips. Well, Birdey’d go in there and pick up the brochures, carry them outside and throw them into the trash. Then she got all the bird watchers, peepers, to do the same thing. Got so there had to be a guard in there to keep them from taking the brochures. They started going right up to the tourists and giving them material on not hurting animals. It got so the tourists were canceling their reservations. Finally the guides just stopped contacting their clients in the hotel. She made it a lot harder for them to do business. Most of them guides don’t dare tell where they meet their clients, afraid she’ll show up. She’s got a mind of her own, she does.”
A large Coast Guard channel marker was ahead of them to port. Its green mass strutted into the sky with a blinker light and small railing on top. The shoreline on both sides of the Nanticoke River at this point were covered with small pines and bushes. In addition, there was earth of red and brown colors. Roots of decayed trees were caving into the river or already lay buried in the shallow water of the river’s edge. Ugly snags struck into the air, bare of leaves. Where Frank could see beyond the masses of honeysuckle and brambles, he had quick glimpses of tassels waving in rich cornfields.
“This swamp probably hasn’t changed since the Native Americans were here, before the Europeans came,” said Frank.
Soldado corrected him. “Before them, there were the visitors from the south. I know, because my mother descended from those southerners. They were Mayan nobles, warriors,” said Soldado. “My mother taught me that the Mayans traveled here two thousand and more years ago.”
He glanced at Frank. “Long before the Europeans came to plant tobacco, the place on the mainland where the bridge to the island begins was where the tribes from the north would meet to trade with the Nanticoke. The Mayans would come there too. These northern people were eventually called the Iroquois and the Susquehannock. In time there was war between them. The Nanticoke fought the Susquehannock and Iroquois for many years. There was a final battle right here at this place in which the Nanticoke were completely vanquished. My mother said that in her magic she could still hear the screams and see the blood of the dying children. In their defeat the Nanticoke were forced to give up their children to the northerners. This place where you dig was where the children were taken prisoner and were carried north as slaves. The slave bands were put on their arms and these captives never came home again. It became a place of misery where no Nanticoke would visit or live.”
“If that’s true, that explains all the arrowheads we found,” said Maggie.
Soldado looked at her solemnly, “You dig enough you’ll find the Mayan things too.”
The craft chugged further along. After about twenty minutes, the river came to a fork.
“We’ll go up to port and head towards the Chesapeake Bay and open water,” said Soldado.
Frank could see that the Nanticoke River continued inland and narrowed as it extended away from them into the backcountry of the Eastern Shore. As they turned to port, the craft entered a small deep creek, about two hundred yards across. On both sides, there were the same pine trees and hedges and endless swampland stretching away from the riverbank.
“We’re on North Creek. You’re in the middle of the wetland we know as Wilderness Swamp. This swamp has always been famous for its black duck and canvasback hunting. Supposed to be the best duck gunning on the whole Eastern Flyway. The birds come in from rafting out on the Chesapeake Bay and feed in here on the wild rice in the shallows. The hunters wait in their duck blinds in the marsh grass and reeds. In the old days, market gunners from Baltimore would hunt in here with great guns that looked like howitzers. They could kill several hundred birds with one shot.”
A breeze picked up. Soldado raised his voice high to be heard. “The creek makes Allingham Island honest, makes it into a true island.” They watched to port as the boat moved slowly past the marsh, about twenty yards offshore from the first of the green reeds poking up in the water.
Sodado went on, “This area is the reason Mrs. Pond is so anxious to keep the island from being built up with lots of houses. The sewers from those new houses will kill the wetland and all the birds and animals and insects that live in it.”
“I’ve found that the nature folks care more about the animals and the insects than they do about any people,” said the Pastor. “I could never get any support from them for helping people.”
“It’s beautiful here,” said Maggie, dipping her toes into the river and making small ripples. “It’s the last of the wet areas along the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The real estate developers have built on every other one.”
The wetland stretched back several hundred yards and stopped at a cliff that was higher by twenty feet over the swamp grass. The breeze blew currents of air which moved over the grass like waves. A dense smell of life came from the grass.
“Smelled the same way ten million years ago when huma
ns started coming out of that kind of muck. You go in there,” Soldado continued, “You’ll come across little pot holes and trails where the muskrats and the other animals live. It’s like a city in the grass. We go in there and we can’t survive like the wildlife can. Boots, bare feet, mosquito juice, it doesn’t matter. We get beat halfway across the swamp and we have to come back. Sometimes I think that’s why we destroy these wetlands because we can’t live in them and the animals can and we don’t like letting the animals have anything on us.”
Two mallard ducks, male green and female brown, got up and skimmed the creek as they lofted together. The wake from the boat barely kissed the marsh grass yet made the fragile water reeds tremble. Soldado’s workboat approached the open area of the Chesapeake Bay. The water under the boat was changing from a slightly rippled current to a movement of slow swells, lifting and dropping the narrow hull. After several swells hit the boat, Maggie almost lost her balance and then pulled her feet out of the water. In the distance a harbor tug was heading up the Bay to the right, its exhaust boiling a dense black smoke into the blue sky.
“That’s channel water out there,” said Soldado. “No seaweed to foul our prop. We’ll head south along the island.” The shoreline gradually changed to sandy beach, backed up by lonely trees and fencerows. Some of the island farms came into view behind lines of more trees, the barns and farmhouses floating on cornfield seas.
“Lots of corn grown here for the poultry business. Big chicken plants further south. Fortunes have been made in the little creatures. People got to eat. When I was still on an ocean deck I carried lots of them to Africa, breeding stock for the chicken business over there.”
A mansion, white columns against red orange brick walls, with a sweeping lawn and ancient trees carefully arranged by some ancient plan stood out from the rest of the houses on the island. At the right of the mansion was a small cove extending into the island about two hundred feet. On the left of the cove there was a large wharf where the white Terment yacht was moored along with a small Boston whaler runabout.
Soldado pointed at the mansion. “That’s Peachblossom, the Terment house,” he said. “To the right are pilings where in colonial days the tobacco ships used to land for cargos of island tobacco. Jake has to keep it dredged out all the time because it silts so much around here. There’s something you might be interested in.” Soldado pointed to great trees a few hundred feet down the shoreline from the yacht, the size of the green trees showing well the many centuries they had stood and grown big with life. “Those are the trees where the Monarch butterflies land. You see them flies in the fall when they fly through River Sunday heading south.”
“Hard for a butterfly to get a good lawyer,” Frank chuckled.
“You got that right.” Above them a small red airplane began to circle. Maggie pointed to it just as it began to trail orange smoke.
“That pilot’s almost as old as I am. He keeps to himself like he’s still fighting out in the Pacific. I’m one of the few people he’ll still talk to. Flies out of his own field. Just a runway through a cornfield with one shed to keep his plane. He made ace flying Hellcat fighters shooting down Japanese Zeroes out in the Pacific. Came home to his farm and hasn’t gone much out of the county since.”
The plane circled the first letter of its message into the blue sky. A “B” took shape. The mouth of the Nanticoke River appeared, signifying the end of the island. Where the river poured out into the Bay there was a slight chop and the spray began to soak Maggie.
“You getting too wet up there?”
“No,” she said, “I love it.” Frank could not help noticing how her tee shirt was soaked, fully outlining her well-shaped breasts. Soldado steered his boat near a steel buoy to port, its anchor chain tangled with seaweed, the rusty channel marker rising and falling with the swells. A fish hawk nest was in the top of the buoy. The hawk got up and flew around and threatened to dive on them as they went by.
“Osprey’s just trying to tell us to stay the hell away from her children in that nest. Can’t blame her,” said Soldado. He pointed ahead. “That’s Stoke’s Point. Some call it Fort Stokes. There’s the fortifications for an old War of 1812 outpost there. Then, if we go by Stoke’s Point we come around into the harbor of River Sunday. We’re not going that far. We’ll head back up this side of Stoke’s Point.”
As they went up the Nanticoke River Frank could see off to the right three hulks of large ships. Soldado began to describe the wrecks. “Here’s what folks call the wheat or lumber schooners. These wrecks been here as long as I can remember. I guess this is what Jake is trying to tell you he’s got up there by the bridge. Anyway I’ll bring her on by and you folks can go in and study them all you want. They stopped using these sailing ships for carrying wheat when the highways got built and the trucks started hauling to the processing plants. The owners just left these hulks in here to die.”
“Maybe Jake is right,” said Maggie. “It just seems like our shipwreck is older than a hundred years.”
“I wouldn’t believe anything Jake tells you,” said Soldado. “However, I do know this. You come back here in a few years and these wrecks will look just like what you got up there.”
Soldado anchored the boat against the current so her bow was pointed toward the channel. The water was very shallow. Maggie and Frank waded from the stern into the muddy shoreline to study the wrecks. Above them, trailing its cloud of orange smoke, the airplane completed its second letter, a “T.”
The arching bow of the first wreck was pointed towards the channel as if its hull was still straining to be free. Tension in the old boards was still trying to spring loose from rusty fastenings, from the bending and clamping of its straight fibers to make the curves. Two masts stood proud and there was a stub of a bowsprit. The trailboards and railings were all washed away. Inside this wreck some of the deck remained. Frank and Maggie agreed that they would not try to walk on the old deck. It looked far too rotten. All of the wood below the tide line was covered with the green and brown growths of the thousands of water creatures infesting the hulk. The two of them examined the frame and planking structure of the bow, which was ten feet above them. There was nothing but slippery seaweed growth to climb on.
“One of us has got to get up there to look at the bolts and fastening patterns.”
“Here, get up on me,” said Frank.
Frank helped Maggie climb up on his shoulders. They lost their footing and fell into the water twice. Soldado and the Pastor laughed at them, giving advice. Finally Maggie climbed up and was holding on the ship framing, her bare feet leaving wet prints on Frank’s bare shoulders.
“Anything for archeology,” said Frank. After studying the worn timbers for a few minutes, she looked down. “She’s built entirely different than our wreck, Frank. There’s almost nothing the same. Timber size, planking, fastening methods. This, I would think, is a later type of construction.”
They waded over to the second hulk, rusty chains linking it to the third wreck so that the bows of both were side by side. This hull had charred railings as if it had been in a fire.
Maggie climbed up on Frank’s shoulders again. “I can see some handmade spikes here, Frank,” Maggie reported.
“That may mean late Eighteenth Century. The lines still seem to be different. We don’t have the same apple shaped bow that we have at the site. These boats have sharper bowlines, entry lines more like Nineteenth Century clippers.”
They waded back to Soldado’s boat. The soft bottom caused them to lose their footing several times.
“He’s finished writing,” the Pastor pointed to the sky. Frank looked up. A wavy line of mist spelled the word BTRFLY.
“Like I say, he fights wars,” said Soldado.
“There’s a lot of them to fight,” said the Pastor, thoughtfully, as he watched the letters vaporize away to nothing. Soldado got his boat underway and they moved slowly up the river. After a few minutes Frank noticed a fire blackened building on the right
bank, hidden behind a row of loblolly pines.
“That’s the cannery I was accused of burning down,” said the Pastor.
“It’s a large building,” said Frank. “Looks like some of it is still useable.”
“Not much. By the time the fire department finished there was nothing left of the wiring and improvements we had done. The walls were weakened. The fire destroyed the building as a space for ours or any other business. You can’t see it from here but the roof on the other side is completely open.
The Pastor went on, “Back when I came home from the war, the other men from River Sunday who had been in Vietnam, some black, some white, some Hispanic, they came to see me. They had saved their mustering out pay and they were waiting for me to return. I remember it was a hot day like today.”
“One of them said, ‘Pastor, we have this money and we want to start a company. We been fighting for free enterprise so we want it ourselves. We want to do something with the money, something that will free us from working for the people who have always given us orders. If we start a company of our own we can have that freedom, work for ourselves, and also make enough money to live here in River Sunday. We need to make a living but we don’t want to be in the position of losing our jobs whenever some rich white man feels like firing us to save his profits. We need our own company. Will you help us put it together?’”
“The young man talking to me, we all called him Chipmunk. Nervous like. Always tapping his fingers. Played good drums. As for me, I had never done much business before. All of us grew up doing a little trading but most of us did not have much of the finer training in books and accounts, the kind of know-how needed to run a first rate business . We all knew, however, that the key to our future success was economic power, green power. We knew that we had to have money to be free. The white people in River Sunday had always been in charge of most of the farms and little assembly factories and the lumberyards. They were the people who had traditionally owned and run those businesses. So we first had to find something to do to make money . We sat around and decided that our best product was going to be ourselves. We all knew how to work hard. We just wanted to get the money out of that hard work into our own pockets. We decided that we were going to sell our services to whoever wanted them. We agreed that the money would come back to the company, not directly to us. I remember we also agreed that we would use the money to help each other, not to become like the same people we wanted to escape.”
Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1) Page 11
