by William Bell
“Besides,” I said. “Aren’t you curious to see if anything is different?”
When we got to the African Methodist Church I began to regret my bravado. I let the van roll to a stop and parked by the monument. It was the kind of summer evening when the air is soft, the sky taking on a pink band along the horizon, and you wish that time would stop. The building and cemetery looked peaceful, and the smell of freshly mowed grass hung in the still air. But my nerves didn’t feel the calm.
I got out of the van and closed the door quietly. Raphaella stole a glance at the church, then looked away. I kept my eye on her as we walked across the old cemetery and climbed the fence. If there were any unwelcome presences around, she’d know, I figured. She turned to me and smiled as if to say, Nothing yet.
We plodded slowly through the trees, scanning the forest on both sides of the path, our feet making the only noise. By the stream, where Raphaella had confronted the men, the mark in the earth when she clawed up the handful of dirt was still there. We continued, slowing as we reached the clearing. I took her hand and we held our breath in unison as we stepped out of the trees.
I was the first to laugh.
On the pile of rocks that had once been Hannah’s chimney sat a grey squirrel, busily nibbling on a pine cone that he held between his little hands, as unconcerned as if he owned the place. Sparrows squabbled in the trees and darted across the clearing, chasing one another. Bees hummed and butterflies fluttered in the warm air.
“Well, I guess it makes sense,” Raphaella said, reading my mind. “Hannah’s gone. The others must be gone, too.”
Our tent was half-collapsed, and stones lay scattered about. We set to work, rolling the tent and stuffing it into its bag, then packed our gear, including the little radio, into the backpacks we had brought with us. When we were finished, Raphaella took a look around and shouldered her pack.
“It seems so, well, normal here now. But I won’t miss the place, that’s for sure.”
I stood quietly and looked at the only reminder that the men who had chased Raphaella and me away had been here. The thrown stones, which had been plowed up by Jubal and Hannah after they had cleared the land of trees, lay where they had fallen. I picked one up — it was cool and rough against my skin — and thought about the irony: with the man she loved, Hannah had labored to pull from the ground the instruments of her own murder. It seemed wrong to leave them scattered chaotically around her yard.
“There’s something I want to do before we go,” I said.
“I’ll help.”
“No, I’d rather do this by myself.”
Raphaella nodded, sloughed of her pack and sat down on it, watching me. She smiled.
One by one I gathered the stones and returned them to the wall, arranging them in as orderly a fashion as I could to make the wall the way it had been. It didn’t take long. When I had finished, I took Raphaella by the hand and we walked back through the woods.
Author’s note
The black settlement in Oro Township in the nineteenth century and the African Methodist Church are part of the historical record. However, this remains a work of fiction, and names, characters, incidents and places are either products of my imagination or are used fictitiously.
Acknowledgments
Thanks are gratefully offered to my three children, Brendan, Megan and Dylan, and to Rachel McMillan and Leanne Dwinnell for reading the manuscript and offering suggestions; to John Pearce for support and guidance; and to Ting-xing Ye for comments, suggestions, love and inspiration.
In doing background research for this novel, I found these books helpful: Men of Colour, by David French (Kaste Books, 1978) and The Oro African Church by Tim Crawford (Township of Oro–Medonte, 1999).
The persons in my dedication, Irene and William (“Ding”) Bell, are my late parents. They were the model for the three couples at the center of this book.
Copyright © William Bell 2001
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