Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1)

by Hollyday, Thomas

  Dear Pastor Jefferson Allingham,

  Before his death, your father was a frequent and welcome visitor at Tulip Neck. He came to preach to me in lieu of my going outside the farm to a church in River Sunday. He also helped me plan and grow my flower gardens. Your father grew the most beautiful peonies. He said that these flowers were the most reliable, that they kept on being beautiful every spring without all the care the other plants required. I grew to depend on those plants just like I depended on your father tending to their physical health and to my spiritual health. The talks with your father were as valuable to me as any other moments in my life.

  In my life, being often misled by emotions, I spent my money on poor goals. Your father was one of the few who helped me do penance and find forgiveness, a forgiveness that was like the peonies coming back as beautiful each spring no matter how poorly I had lived my winter. Perhaps in memory of your father I can do some service that will be valuable. It seemed logical to give you something reliable for your own life as a way of remembering your father. I know that you travel to see your parishioners. Please accept the gift of this Cadillac automobile. My attorney will see that it is properly insured and maintained for you. I have told him that it is my wish that you get every expense on this car covered by my estate.

  Sincerely, Mrs. Steers

  “And that was all there was to it?”

  “That was all. The lawyer seemed to be a little upset. He said that the estate would be willing to pay me money instead of the car.”

  “I said, ‘No, that was what she wanted so I would use it for the work of the church.’”

  “Strange,” observed Frank. “She didn’t take the time to find out about you and your brother starving up there at the old church building.”

  “I was wondering about that,” said Maggie.

  “No,” said the Pastor. “I understand her. It’s like in the old slavery days. Nobody got their freedom while the white slave owners were living. They only got freed in the wills after the white folks died.”

  “There’s a lot to learn,” said Frank.

  “I heard later though that she gave out several of these kind of gifts from her will. She was an odd old lady and had kept mostly to herself. There was a story around that German submarines used to come up to her house to get money for Hitler.”

  “Did they?”

  “Nobody ever found out. There are lots of those stories going around on the Eastern Shore.”

  “You’ve had that car for a long time.”

  “Yes I have. I think I was right to keep the car too. I’ve had it for a while and had it repaired a few times. I can understand why that lawyer just wanted to give me the money. I think he gets tired of me still coming around with repair bills.”

  “You’re going to have a high mileage Cadillac.”

  “I think, Frank, that I will probably drive that car into my grave.”

  “We’ll put on your gravestone a little poem,” grinned Frank:

  “Here in God lies Allingham

  Never to part his Cadillac sedan.”

  Maggie laughed. “You can do better than that, Frank.”

  The telephone rang in the farmhouse. Maggie stood up and splashed through the muck. She called back, “Frank, you’ve got a call.” Then it was Frank’s turn to run across the muck towards the house. Maggie was standing inside the doorway, holding the telephone.

  Frank sat down at the table. He pushed back one of the piles of Maggie’s handwritten field reports and pulled a piece of clean paper in front of him.

  “Frank Light,” he said.

  “Just a moment, Frank,” a female voice said. Frank recognized the soft sound of the university president’s receptionist. In his mind he could see the carpeted office, the mahogany desks, the computer terminals and the portraits of past university officials.

  The line clicked. “Frank, how are you doing down there on our little reconnaissance?” said his boss.

  “Yessir. I had not called in because I wasn’t sure how much longer this job would take.”

  “Well, that’s all right. I just want you to take care of Jake Terment. Is everything going well?”

  “I think so.”

  “I got a call from New York. From the tone of the call it sounds like something is wrong.”

  “Who called you?”

  “One of our trustees, Frank.”

  “Well, Jake Terment is in a hurry for us to get out of here.”

  “You can understand that. What do you think of him?”

  “He’s a little pushy,” laughed Frank.

  The president also laughed. “I didn’t expect him to be as interested in history as we are, Frank. I’m sorry you have to rush this one. Maybe you can wrap it up today and get back here.”

  “I can’t get out of here for a little while yet.”

  “Well, just don’t overstay your welcome. I don’t want Jake Terment to get the wrong idea about our university. Frank, it’s people like him who support our departments including archaeology here.”

  “I certainly can’t leave today.”

  “Frank, if I have to ask you, you will leave. Don’t you agree, Frank?”

  Frank did not respond. There was a long pause. Then the president went on, his tone less friendly, more demanding. “Frank, I guess I’m asking you. You get back up here in less than twenty four hours, a lot less if possible. You leave Jake Terment in a damn happy mood when you do get out of there. I want to see you as soon as you get back on campus. Do we understand one another?”

  Frank didn’t say anything.

  “Well, I guess that’s a yes,” said the president. “Come on, Frank. This reconnaissance is not the end of the world. There’s someone else here, wants to talk to you.”

  Another click, a new voice. “Frank?” It was Mello.

  “Yes,” he answered. She seemed far away, a stranger, not the warm flesh, the clever mind, he had loved so fiercely only days ago.

  “You sound different,” she said. “I was thinking you’d be back already. Then I thought you might get tick fever or some other disease from being done there in that God-forsaken place. I’ve never been to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. What’s it like?”

  “I feel different,” he said, looking at Maggie as she made some notations in her site journal. “The place here is raw, new, different. I feel like I did back when I first got in country in Vietnam, strong like I was in those days.”

  As if she had not listened to what he had just said, Mello went on talking with no change of tone, no real worry in her voice, “Working in all the heat and sun probably isn’t doing you any good. You’ll soon be home, sitting in our air conditioning. When are you coming back?”

  “Not until I finish my job.” He realized he had never heard her say she was worried about anything or anyone.

  “Your BMW needs an oil change. The schedule just came up on our computer. You told me to remind you. You treasure that new car.”

  “I’m not concerned about the car.”

  “That’s a change. What is going on? You sound very different.” Her voice was strained, maybe concerned. “The president says you finished the work down there.”

  “He’s wrong.” There was silence. He knew she was sitting down in the President’s office, her short dress up on her thigh, her left hand caressing her leg the way she did unconsciously, the way she did that had brought him running from the first day that he saw her.

  “I think the insects down there bit you, maybe gave you a fever. Don’t do this to yourself, Frank. The President says you are excited about some piece of wood you’ve found.”

  “I have to do this right.”

  “Frank, all you have to do is what the president says,” she said, her voice loud. “Your career is here, being a member of the university team. I’ve told you that. Have you forgotten the most important lesson I’ve taught you? Where the Hell do you think that car came from? Where the Hell do you think I come from? We like winners, Frank. You want us, yo
u have to do what you are told.”

  He answered her slowly, “I’m beginning to think I may not be grown up enough for you, Mello.”

  “Then I guess there’s nothing more to say. You know how I feel. Business always comes first.”

  “I’m keeping that in mind.”

  “All right, Frank.”

  “I understand,” he said. “It’s all or nothing.”

  She paused. He could see her swinging her leg, puzzled like she got sometimes when things did not go her way, thinking what to say next. Then she made her basic decision. He had watched her do this many times. Whenever she was on the telephone and ran out of words, he’d seen her just hang up. She did that now to him. The dial tone returned. Frank looked at the telephone receiver for a few moments as Maggie watched him.

  “Bad news?” asked Maggie.

  “You could say that. More proof why I got selected to come down here. I think my boss almost guaranteed Jake Terment that I would do whatever the man wanted on this job. It’s nice to know that people you work for have confidence in you.”

  As Frank walked back across the site to the pit he suddenly felt very tired. He looked down. The cat was walking alongside him. Strange he thought how he was getting more muck on him every step he took while the cat’s light orange fur remained clean.

  Frank kneeled down in area Q and returned to work without speaking further to the others. He thought back to the last time he had seen Mello, to the feeling of her in his arms. Then his mind was back to the present, to the site in front of him. The thoughts of Mello did not linger.

  He saw his face in the shallow puddle beside him. He did not like what he saw. There was not much reflection in the dark water, but there was enough to see that he had changed from that young man of a few years ago, far more than he had realized. The professor who had driven into this country was not the man who had gone to Vietnam. Even the returning veteran, as disillusioned as he was in those days, was not the man he saw today. The face was that of a man in the control of others. He worried if he could trust himself to have the integrity that the Pastor and Maggie needed.

  He should have realized that his career had come along too quickly, that life had become too easy. He had moved too fast from an academic life to the administrative responsibility that came with being director of his department, from his teaching to his involvement in the business of a university career. Then, with this trip to the Eastern Shore, all of a sudden, the real world had burst into his protected university career.

  Frank was disappointed in himself but he was also happy that he was here with these two. He also knew that he had taken off the custom tailored suit, the uniform of his career. Dressed only in the old khaki work shorts he had worn on countless other digs, he was bare enough to feel free of the pull of the university bureaucracy and its money driven hypocrisy. He felt that he could think and see his life more clearly. He saw a movement behind him, something more in the reflection in the puddle. He looked up at the edge of the test pit. There, the cat, its Mayan leopard markings shining in the sunlight, watched Frank to see what he would do next.

  Chapter 11

  Frank worked as fast as he could, knowing little time was left. Maggie was working in area T. Nothing had been found there yet. This was disappointing to Frank because that was the stern section, the Captain’s area which he had expected to be rich in artifacts. As for himself, he still expected the cargo area Q in the center of the wreck to produce something more. He would continue to work methodically as he expanded the pit. He kept the Pastor working at area H where the bones of the giant were found. Soldado’s divining rods had been right about area H but they had not been as effective on pinpointing area Q. The Pastor worked hard, stubbornly scraping at the earth. From time to time, Frank looked over in a supervisory manner at the Pastor’s work. He knew this wasn’t necessary. The older man was too dedicated to make a mistake.

  “Frank,” the Pastor said, after a while, “I know you don’t think there was much to that graveyard story of mine.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I know there’s not much proof. You younger men, you all want touchable proof. I just rely on faith in an old man’s words. Maybe I shouldn’t have faith.”

  Frank kept working. The Pastor was right. He, Frank, had no faith in anything he couldn’t see or touch.

  The Pastor went on. “I always believed there was something up here. There wasn’t a black kid in this town that didn’t hear about the old slave burying ground and the magic up here. Our parents used to scare us, say they’d set us up here by ourselves, when we were bad. I had never done anything about researching the story. None of us had. Then the talk started about building the new bridge over this property and covering it up with concrete. There was a feeling among my church members, among many of the River Sunday black community that something should be done. No one knew what to do. Just about that time Mister Henry Johnson came to see me and told me his story.”

  “Why did he come to you?” asked Frank.

  “His wife was a member of my church. He didn’t have much religion. She was in my choir. A fine voice. She was a lot younger than him. They had one baby baptized by me. Let you know something about this old man, that baby was born when the father was in his eighties.

  “It was early in the day when she brought him in. He was a short skinny black man with white hair. He could not walk real well. His wife supported him and he had a cane. Came in and sat in my office by the wall. Took off his cap. He had a John Deere cap, like a green baseball cap with a little yellow deer on the front. Told me that hat meant a lot to him.

  “‘It proves I can still plow straight,’ he said to me.

  “‘Yessir, Pastor,’ he said, ‘Still driving my own tractor.’ His voice was very low, but he pronounced his words carefully, like a man who wants to be known for good speech habits. His wife smiled at me to tell me to relax and just sit back at my desk and give her husband some time to get his story out at his own speed. So I did just that and waited for him.

  “‘He’s not been too well,’ she said. ‘Besides that he just mostly contrary. He gives us a little trouble here and there, don’t you?’ she said to the Pastor but looking at her husband.

  “‘Yes ma’am, I do,’ he replied.

  “‘Mister Johnson, I sure appreciate you and your wife coming by the church today,’ I said to them.

  “Mister Johnson stared at the floor of my office for a while. He turned his head once to look at his wife and then he stared at the floor again.

  “‘Does it bother him to talk about this?’ I asked the old man’s wife.

  “‘No,’ said his wife. ‘He sure talks enough at home.’

  “She went on, ‘Well, he told me that when he was a little boy this farm was his favorite fishing spot. He used to find old pieces of rusty metal lying around. He said there were no gravestones there just the bits of iron here and there all pitted and rusted. There was little bit of marsh then but the marsh got worse as he got older. Pretty soon it was wet in there a lot of the time, especially under the brambles where the sunlight couldn’t get. There was an old white wooden gate to the property. It was closed up and chained most of the time when the farmer wasn’t working the fields there. Henry remembers sometimes when he got up there he would find a wreath of flowers on the old white gate and one time he saw one of the traveling preachers that used to come to River Sunday every week. The preacher was putting out some flowers too. They always put the flowers outside the fence. They never went inside on Mister Terment’s land. Henry went in though, snuck along the muskrat trails and went down to a hiding place on the riverbank where no one could tell he was there or not. No one couldn’t even see his fishing line because he didn’t use a bobber. He could feel a fish without using a bobber.’

  “Mister Johnson smiled with pride at that comment.

  “‘Did you ever see any sign of anyone getting buried?’ I asked him,” said the Pastor.

  “The old man
looked up at me and shook his head. ‘Nossir,’ he said. ‘The folks,’ he said, ‘that were buried in there were all old time slave folks.’

  “Then he said after a moment, ‘I was told by my grandfather that the slaves buried there were Africans and that they were some of them great magic men. That’s what I was told.’ Then he went on to say that back in slavery days the black folks scared the old Indians, they call them Native Americans, away from the graves by telling them that the dead men buried there would make spells on them, would play tricks on them, if their graves were interfered with, if they tried to rob them. He said mostly the Native Americans, the Nanticokes, they were scared of the place anyhow. He said, ‘My father told me that if I went in there I might run afoul of them hants and get me a spell too.’”

  “Well, he went on to tell me, ‘It was a good spot right along that shoreline. The weed wasn’t too bad in those days and there weren’t no snags to speak of. It was fair water for fishing.’

  “‘There was this time I was there, this time I came to tell you about, one strange time. The tenant farmer was away somewhere and the farm was deserted,’ Mister Johnson told me.

  “‘I was sitting there on the riverbank fishing. It had gotten dark. There was almost no light and I was getting ready to pick up my line. I knew my way out of there in the dark. I had been there so many times.’

  “‘Up by the road, near the white gate to the farm, I heard this noise, sounded like a large truck. It slowed down, backfired like a shot, and stopped right past the gate. I peeked out at it from where I was in the bushes and saw a bus. I could see people standing up and moving out of the bus and then standing along the road. They were black folks, all ages, about fifty of them in all. I could not see the markings on the bus but I thought it might be a church group just because I had been in buses like that with people of different ages when I had traveled with my own church and my parents.’