Slave Graves

by Thomas Hollyday

Water mirages and waves of heat danced on the blacktop as they drove towards the site. Then the road narrowed leaving less room for an oncoming car to pass. Adding to the danger were treacherous roadside ditches with edges steep enough to turn an entrapped car or tractor on its side. Frank saw water in the ditches, the water half hidden with high grass, but deep and dark.

  Frank observed Spyder from where he sat in the back seat. The older man was across from him at an angle. His continuous grin bothered Frank, bringing back memories of constantly smiling Vietnamese during the war, men who appeared friendly yet who turned out in many cases to be his enemy. Spyder was subservient to Jake and acted like a perfect butler, yet his clothes were fashionable, tailored with the same cut as Jake’s expensive suit. There was also the repetition of Jake’s promise during the speech, that the bridge would be built on time, a comment that Jake had seemed to direct to Spyder.

  “One call and I can get some of your company men down here,” Spyder reminded Jake. Frank surmised that they feared potential trouble from the white haired bird woman, that she was still in their thoughts.

  “No,” Jake answered Spyder. “Not yet anyway. We won’t get along with local people if we bring in outsiders. Besides, we don’t want to do anything that might draw more attention to her butterflies. Bringing in our people might just get her more support.”

  “What are ‘company men?’” asked Frank.

  “Sometimes we need special guards for our construction equipment,” explained Jake. “Company men are the security forces that we bring to sites.” After that, neither Spyder nor Jake said any more about the woman he had called Birdey.

  Spyder began to slow the car. He started to turn left at a small white gate nestled in a huge honeysuckle hedge. Jake raised his hand. “No, go straight. We’ll give our expert a little tour over the bridge before we go to the site.”

  Spyder drove ahead and within a few moments they were close to the river and the bridge. “Here we are at the Nanticoke River, Frank,” said Jake, excitement in his voice, shifting slightly forward to see better out of the front window. Frank looked ahead also and saw with a little nervousness that the old bridge was constructed as a single lane, only wide enough for one car, built obviously for the old days of horses and carriages. He had a sudden vision of an overloaded farm truck coming fast from the opposite direction, tomato boxes toppling from its sides, and of Spyder driving the three of them into the truck without a change in his grin.

  The car halted as the light turned red.

  “You can see why this bridge has to be replaced,” said Jake.

  “People around here are probably afraid they’re going to get killed on it,” said Frank.

  Jake wasn’t amused. “No, nothing like that. It’s safe enough. I was thinking more of the inconvenience. We need a wide fast bridge with no stoplights, a bridge people can cross quickly. People who spend big money for houses want convenience.”

  On the right a three story house sat well back from the road across a long lawn, its estate grounds decorated with small hedged gardens and multiple bird feeders attached to trees and hanging on wires or set on poles. Large trees obscured the house, but Frank could see some ancient roof lines, brick sections and multipaned windows.

  Jake grimaced when he saw Frank looking at the house. “That’s where that butterfly lady lives.”

  “Birdey?”

  “Birdey Pond. You could see what an old bitch she is. She hounded my father before me, too, always looking out for the butterflies as if they were more important than people.”

  “I like butterflies,” ventured Frank.

  The two men looked at him instantly and sternly. “I’m counting on you to understand these things, Frank. Don’t let me down,” said Jake, with a quick smile.

  The light finally changed. At the same time a second stoplight on the other side of the bridge went to red to stop traffic if there had been any coming from the island side. Then the car was on the bridge, its tires bouncing through the broken macadam surface to the iron grate supports. The bridge joined a jetty or point of land with a similar surge of hard ground from the island side. Each point went into the river about forty feet. The bridge had been built out on these points. Its span crossed open water for several hundred yards.

  “That’s the island?” asked Frank, pointing to land extending beyond a row of trees on the other side of the bridge.

  “Yes,” said Jake, slowly, his words affectionate in tone. “That’s the beginning of Allingham Island. I ‘ll show my house up there sometime.”

  The car bottomed with a jolt as it hit a pothole.

  Jake grabbed the dashboard. “Town won’t maintain the bridge anymore,” he said. “The structure was quite an engineering feat when my family built it a hundred years ago.” He shook his head.

  Across the bridge, Frank could see large areas of cleared land. On this land the access road had been almost completed. Two small cranes and several dump trucks were parked. A green steel barge with great streaks of brown rust and the word TERMENT on its side in large white letters was anchored to Frank’s left, beside the bridge. On its deck were various large engines and generators, concrete mixers, pumps and hoses.

  Also on the barge and rising up over the river, like a great sword, was a third construction crane, a very large green unit with a massive pile driver attachment. The system of pulleys on the equipment raised and dropped the tremendous weight of the hammer to drive the pilings deep into the river bed. Beneath the crane, in the water at the side of the barge, was an unfinished cofferdam, steel pilings arranged in a circle to keep out the river water.

  “We build the bridge piers on these cofferdams,” said Jake. “Pile drivers sink the cofferdams and then we pump out the water and fill them with concrete. You come back next spring you’ll see great new white piers going high into the air, looking real nice against the green of the trees along the river. “

  He paused. “Unfortunately, everything is on hold while we wait for your research to be finished.” Jake bounced in his seat as the car continued on the rough road. They were passing through the old draw machinery section with its rusted ironwork.

  “For years now,” Jake explained, “Every time a yacht with a tall mast comes up this river, its skipper has stop and to go all the way into River Sunday to get a man to raise the bridge. Even then no one is sure whether she’s going to go up or not.”

  Frank noticed how the concrete railings of the old bridge were cracked from age. Looking down at the road, he saw in places that the river water below the bridge showed through surface holes in the road. He wondered if the car he was in would be the first car to break through the road and fall into the water. Jake talked on, unconcerned.

  “When the town found out my company was going to develop the island and build a new bridge, the county commissioners in the River Sunday Courthouse stopped the allocation of funds to keep the old bridge fixed. They just let it rust. Of course, I don’t complain because it’s just my tenant farmers going up to their farms on the island. Safe enough for them. They run a few trucks and cars across the old bridge every day.” He chuckled. “Some of them go drinking in River Sunday at night and I might even hear from Billy about a car smacking into the railing one night or another. “

  He confided in Frank, his voice low, “I can remember one day when we kids fixed the stoplight on the bridge to stay red. We held up traffic all day until they come out and reset the light. We sat back in the grass in that same old marsh where you are going to work, Frank. Horns were honking, people yelling, and it was a lot of fun.” He got serious. “When my father found out about it, I got whipped good with his shaving belt.”

  The station wagon stopped bouncing when it reached the other side of the bridge. Off to the right Frank could see a ruined church.

  “The Nanticoke Chapel of Ease,” said Jake. “Years ago lightning struck the building’s roof,” he continued, looking quickly at the church. Frank’s educated eye studied the old bu
ilding. He could see where the fire had reduced the structure to jagged up thrust walls and piles of neglected brick and stone rubble. A path outlined by years of young explorers trickled through the front arch. There was an inner void open to the sky that was filled with wild vines. The lush growth maintained an appearance of natural sanctity, yet in the midst of this green he saw remnants of abandoned campfires with piles of beer cans and broken wine bottles scattered on the ruined brick floor.

  Jake noticed Frank’s interest in the ruined building. “The kids still come out here with their girlfriends,” he said. “I’ve taken my share of girls there too. It’s a local tradition.”

  Frank smiled, thinking of the irony of those charcoal pyres, left by generations of River Sunday teens, memorializing more the fiery rites of first sex than the scorching words of some long dead preacher.

  Spyder pulled off the road and turned the car around until it pointed towards the river again. The car air conditioning protected them from the intense heat outside, as they sat looking out at the construction.

  “We got pretty far along with the access road on this side,” said Jake, proudly. Frank saw how the area for the new bridge had been ripped out of the land. Beside the old bridge, the ramp for the access road raised up, its massive structure of poured concrete and soil fill dwarfing the old structure. It was leveled to a certain incline, ending at a point near the edge of the river where the barge and the pile driver were positioned with the first of the cofferdams. This new road was poised to connect with the future bridge spans when Jake’s bridge project was completed.

  Frank got out of the car and stood in the heat. He saw piles of brush stacked at the edges of the construction, the piles of broken saplings and brush and vines testament to the tremendous power of the machines. He noticed too the dead plants, bloated fish, and stained water. Along the shoreline a slick of diesel oil moved out into the river. The oil washed back and forth in the weak tide lap against the few remaining cattails and marsh grasses. Above the purr of the station wagon engine, he heard the clank of a loose cable slapping against the steel sides of the barge as it moved in a slight breeze. The steel resounded like a cry of a person, a child. As Frank looked again at the pile driver and the laddered shaft of the great crane, Jake, restless with excitement, called Frank to get back inside the car. Spyder drove back to the bridge. The car chattered slowly back across to the mainland.

  This time, Spyder turned in at the small gate in the honeysuckle. The entry road was more a path for farm tractors than automobiles. There was a cornfield growing high on the left and on the right Frank were tall cattails. He realized this was the beginning of the marsh which would eventually reach the riverbank. Flowering vines and corn plants brushed and scraped against the station wagon as Spyder drove hard towards a small farmhouse a few hundred feet ahead.

  Now, as the vegetation thinned, Frank saw more. To the right, past the thinning number of cattails, was a large yellow bulldozer, deserted, its engine quiet. It was parked at the edge of a several acre section of rough and desolate brown soil.

  “That’s the site?” asked Frank.

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  Frank caught a glimpse through the brush and vines of two people near the riverbank, several hundred yards in the distance, leaning over a small machine. In the center of the clearing were a few broken timbers.

  “That must be where that tractor ran into the frame of the old ship yesterday.”

  Jake chuckled. “That’s the spot.”

  The car stopped in front of the farmhouse. The house was once white with red trim but now the paint hung off the boards. Great trees surrounded it, giving shade in the bright sunlight and making the house still a viable refuge to find cooler air. Jake got out and stood, looking around and checking his watch.

  “It’s a hot time of day. I guess the archaeologist from the State has taken off for a few hours. She was here this morning before I left for the luncheon.”

  Frank started to mention the two figures he had glimpsed but Jake had already walked ahead towards the farmhouse.

  “Not much of a house,” said Jake, pushing on one of the porch pillars. “One of my great aunts took up with a retired Yankee general after the Confederate War. Neither one of them lived to a very old age.”

  Frank smiled and shook his head. “The Terments were very considerate building monuments to former slaves and giving houses to former enemies.”

  Jake didn’t hear him. “I expect they wore each other out. She was a lot younger than he was. Then, for years the family had tenant farmers in here, one after the other, none of them making it very long. There’s still a telephone inside and running water. Nobody lives here now. It’s a firetrap. I’ll never be able to rent it out any more.”

  Jake looked back at the site. “When I was a child my father used to talk about filling this marsh in with topsoil and planting more corn.”

  Frank stood next to Jake. Even in the shade of the huge trees the heat was overpowering. He had lived in hot weather like this before. He remembered getting out of the back door of the big cargo plane when he arrived in Saigon in blinding heat, walking down the ramp with the huge tail of the aircraft high above him. In Saigon, there was no pleasant greeting by a celebrity, no comfortable lunch, no air conditioned ride in a station wagon. He had felt an initial terror and an urge to run for cover.

  Frank saw boxwood, large and overgrown, rambling across the yard and bumping into waist high grass, and treelike shrubs. Among the boxwood were a variety of disorganized perennials and wildflowers blooming in a few clear spots where the sun could get through to them. In this wilderness, touching Frank’s carefully shined shoes, were a mass of violets mixed with English ivy, their spring blooms long gone.

  He stepped up on the sagging porch which flanked the house on two sides and saw rows and rows of corn plants in the surrounding fields, with a single crow, cawing loudly for companionship, flying slowly across the green mass. Towards the river, beyond the boxwood were glimpses of the light blue of the summer heat on the Nanticoke River surface, a hazy wetness, a dim glint in the sun, with quick wavelet flashes against the darkness of the far shoreline pine trees.

  Jake followed him and they walked to the end of the creaking porch, where Frank saw rusty steel tractor implements buried in more overgrown grass, the rotary blades shining bright from recent use by the farm contractor’s team in the fields. The porch itself had been screened at one time but now the screen hung like great brown curtains of rust. Around the yard were remnants of wire animal fences of various types, the links of the fences totally overwhelmed by the powerful tangle of green honeysuckle.

  In one of the sheds Frank recognized a four wheel drive utility truck like the one he had driven during his months in Vietnam. The truck still had the white star of the United States Army on its door. Behind the cab, he could see a hoist, like a small crane, its metal structure rising from the bed of the truck.

  “That truck is mine now,” said Jake. “Last tenant left me without paying his rent. He had that truck in good shape. Runs good but the gears are too low for use anywhere but out here on the farm.”

  He stopped and looked at Frank. “There was one thing when I was reading your resume that I didn’t understand. Sometime I’ll ask you about it.”

  Frank nodded, wondering what Jake had found in his background that he did not like. Then in front of another shed Frank saw two cars almost hidden in the tall grass. One was a simple black sedan with a State of Maryland seal on its door. The other was a Cadillac coupe, an older model but well polished, glinting even in the shade where it was parked. Jake saw the cars too.

  “They must belong to the government archeology people. They’re making more money in these State jobs now, Frank. Maybe you ought to go to work for the state and get yourself a Cadillac.”

  “I like my BMW.”

  They heard a small gasoline engine start up.

  “Pump engine,” said Frank. Scared by the engine nois
e, a red winged blackbird flew up from one of the mounds of honeysuckle. “That’s probably them, scared up that bird.”

  “Hello,” a woman’s voice came from across the yard, behind the boxwood. Frank turned and walked with Jake back toward the front of the porch.

  “Maggie Davis,” Frank called out, recognizing the woman coming forward.

  “Doctor Light. My boss said you would be coming in today.” Maggie was a plain looking woman, tanned, dressed in a dirty tee shirt, shorts, her feet bare, her blonde hair casually tied up in a bunch with a piece of white surveyors twine.

  “I guess you two have worked together before. Maggie’s with the State,” said Jake.

  “Maggie was one of my field school students ten years ago.”

  “Best teacher I ever had. We all thought so,” said Maggie, grinning.

  “Good. You two can solve my problem better if you’ve worked together before.”

  “You’ve survived that little controversy in Southern Maryland,” said Frank to Maggie. “I see you still have your state job.”

  “Yes,” she said, catching her breath.

  “Controversy?” said Jake, staring at Maggie.

  “Maggie’s such a good archeologist it gets her in trouble sometimes,” winked Frank.

  “What kind of trouble?” asked Jake, with a glance at Spyder. Spyder nodded and walked away.

  “I wanted a dig to continue; the State of Maryland ordered it closed up,” she said.

  “She made the mistake of saying it should stay open and that upset some people who wanted it closed.”

  “Well,” said Jake, “I hope you want this one closed, Maggie. We don’t need any more delays.”

  Her face took on a half smile. Frank recognized that look. He had seen it before when he had corrected her term paper and she had not agreed with the correction. In those days he would have sat down ready for a long argument from her.

  “How is this reconnaissance going, Maggie?” asked Frank.

  “Since I got here this morning, I’ve been working on laying out the project. You’ll recognize the scheme. It’s your system.”

  “Any results?”

  “Nothing yet. Lots of surface water.”

  “We hear the pump.”

  “Yes. There are two strange things I’ve discovered already from my first probes.”

  “What?” asked Frank.

  “First of all the wooden artifact they hit with the bulldozer is in pretty good shape. I would have expected the water in this marsh to have completely rotted it.”

  “I told you folks that this wreck was not very old,” said Jake.

  “Could be the water here in this part of Maryland doesn’t have as much salt. That might be responsible for preserving it. What else, Maggie?”

  “It’s the soil. I’m finding soil strata that shouldn’t be here. It might have been brought in from several hundred feet away where I found a borrow pit. It’s like someone wanted to fill the place in, cover it over.”

  “Silting?”

  “There’s evidence of some silting by high tides, field runoff from rains, but not this soil type. This was definitely re-deposited, carried in by humans.”

  “You know anything about this, Jake?”

  “No.” He paused, then said, “Nothing. My father wanted to fill it in but he never did. It would have cost a fortune to hire all those men, carry in all that topsoil.”

  “Another thing,” said Maggie.

  “What?”

  “I did a quick walkover survey of the area. I’ve never seen so many arrowheads and primitive stone tool artifacts. They must have been dug up by the tractors plowing each year. Hundreds of them. Early woodland, I’d say.”

  A man walked out from behind the boxwood, coming from the same direction as Maggie. “You must be the expert archaeologist,” he said. He appeared to be several years older than Jake, a small black man with a pointed nose and a mustache and gray and white hair showing under his straw hat. He walked towards the porch. He was dressed in shorts and a tee shirt which had printed on it the words Baptist Youth Group. On his feet were knee socks and muck stained high tops. “I heard you talking about Maggie. I told them up at the State that I thought she would be a good pick to come down here, do this work,” said the man in a strong voice.

  “I didn’t know you were interested in shipwrecks too, Jefferson,” said Jake without a smile.

  “Always interested in things that have to do with people I care about in River Sunday, Jake. You ought to know that by now.”

  “I haven’t seen you since my father’s funeral.”

  “You didn’t see me there, Jake.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “No, I didn’t go. Me and most of the other black people in River Sunday.”

  “He did a lot for you, Jefferson.”

  “I would expect you to say that, Jake.”

  “I’m glad he doesn’t have to hear you talk like that.”

  “I said it to his face long before he died. Mister Terment never listened to anything he didn’t want to hear.”

  The pump continued beating in the distance.

  “What are you doing here on my farm?” demanded Jake.

  “I’m a volunteer.”

  “We don’t need any volunteers.”

  “Sorry, Jake. The state archeology people thought it was a good idea. You see, Jake, they agreed with me that there ought to be someone else here from the local community just in case there were any questions of local black history to resolve. The Governor’s Office thought that was a good idea too.”

  “I see,” said Jake. “Maybe I ought to say hello to the Governor now I’m visiting Maryland.” He paused, “Funny how you always turn up, Jefferson.”

  “I thought about the same thing myself. I asked myself a simple question. Why is Jake Terment here? These little houses on Allingham Island are not his kind of deal. No slums to make big profits.” The Pastor dropped his voice. “Tell me Jake, when are your green coated tough guys coming in to River Sunday? I’ve heard how your guys handle anybody who complains about being moved out. I guess that doesn’t get into your television coverage though, does it? It’s probably bad for the image.”

  Jake changed the subject. “There’s jobs up here in this development.” He hesitated. “You know, Jefferson, people call me Mister Terment these days.”

  The Pastor smiled. “I could call you Termite like we did when we were kids.”

  Jake quickly turned his attention to Frank. “I don’t think anybody would have buried anyone in a marsh. You try to tell that to a person like Jefferson and it’s like talking to a stone.” He went on, “I’m sure we can let you know if we find anything, can’t we, Frank?”

  “I think I’ll see for myself,” said the Pastor.

  “We can all work together,” said Frank, sensing the two men might be ready to start an actual fight. “It’s only for a short time.”

  Jake said, “Frank, now I don’t want a lot of folks coming in here and nosing around. There’s a lot of expensive equipment in here, the barge, the bulldozer. Maybe I can’t keep Jefferson out of this place. I guess we’ll see on that. I want you to keep alert though. Let me know if anybody bothers you.”

  “A few folks around here don’t like you, you know, Jake,” said the Pastor.

  Jake ignored him. “You look out for a fellow named Soldado,” he said to Frank.

  “You stole Soldado’s house,” said the Pastor.

  “That’s what he says. I don’t want him on my land. That goes for the old lady over across the road, too.”

  The pump stopped.

  “I’ll have to clean out that carburetor. It’s not taking fuel,” said Maggie.

  In the quiet they heard the sound of wood cracking, like an old rotten limb being pulled from a large tree, a limb with just enough timber left in its center to make a strong noise as it snapped. They heard cursing, a sure sign that a human was involved, that this was not a natural thing.

  �
�Somebody’s at the site,” said Maggie.

  Maggie and the Pastor ran, Jake and Frank behind them, the hundred yards through the tall grass. Frank passed the green mounds of vines where honeysuckle swamped old fences, then moving along a tiny winding path which opened into the cleared area of the now destroyed marsh. There he saw the grinning Spyder, standing among the carefully measured rows of white twine and survey stakes. Spyder was looking at the large piece of rotten wood in his hands. At his feet was the fresh hole from which it had been taken, the hole quickly filling with brown marsh water. The Pastor and Maggie stopped in front of him, speechless.

  Spyder held up the wood, the still strong center of the wood jutting out from the rottenness around it. He had picked up one of the artifacts. Frank, as soon as he figured out what had happened, left Jake behind and walked slowly, almost tiptoeing, towards the man. He was afraid that even a tiny noise might startle Spyder, making him destroy the wood artifact more quickly. As Frank got closer to him, Spyder did begin to laugh. The shaking of his body made the wood crumble faster in his hand. A neat cone shaped pile of wood dust grew on the earth in front of him, near his alligator shoes. Spyder dropped the remaining part of the timber and reached down to dust his shoes.

  Jake ignored how bewildered Frank, Maggie and the Pastor appeared at Spyder’s wantonness. He talked as if nothing had happened. “I’ve got to get back to my yacht in River Sunday and, Frank, I know you want to get your car and get settled. Why don’t you come back and get your room set at the hotel?”

  “Maggie, are you staying out here at the job?” asked Frank, finding his voice.

  She nodded. “There’s plenty of room in the farmhouse. I don’t mind at all. I’ve got some food and the Pastor is bringing some from his church tomorrow. Remember, in school, you taught us to live at the site.”

  “Maggie’s right,” Frank, remembering one of his lectures from years ago, and turning to Jake. “We need all the time we can get with the site itself. I’ve got everything I need in my suitcase. I’ll stay here at the wreck so you can let the hotel room go. Right now I want to get to work.”

  Jake looked at him as though he were unwilling to leave Frank alone with the Pastor and the State employee.

  “You want a job done in two days,” insisted Frank. “It’s going to mean some late evening work. “

  “Ok,” Jake agreed. “I’m sure you know what to do out here. Look, mosquitoes start to get to you out here you let me or Spyder know and we’ll get you a room. Matter of fact you could stay out on the yacht. There’s plenty of room. You too, Maggie.”

  “Like I said, it’s better if we stay here and get in a few more hours.”

  “Well,” Jake said, “God knows it isn’t much fun digging in marshes. I’ll be out again tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”

  Jake motioned to Spyder and the two of them returned to the station wagon. As Jake and Spyder started their car, Frank looked at the others and scratched his neck.

  “Termite? That’s what you called him?”

  “Termites work on you without you realizing until it’s too late,” said the Pastor. “It fits Jake, believe me. Just remember that old wreck is made of wood.”

  “By the way. My name is Frank Light.”

  “Pastor Jefferson Allingham.” They shook hands. Then Frank said, “We got work to do. I’ll change to work clothes and we can see those soil samples, Maggie.”

  Maggie and the Pastor stared at him. There was a touch of apprehension in their faces and Frank knew that they were wary of him. Their faces showed hesitation, acceptance of the third member of their team but an acceptance given with reserve. They were not sure of him, not sure he was going to do a good job.

  Frank smiled. “Look, guys, you two remind me of when I first got in country in Nam in the old days. The other guys wanted to see what I would do when the first mortars came in, a kind of test to see if I was all right, safe to be around.”

  “We haven’t got any mortars here to try you out,” said the Pastor, solemnly.

  Maggie said, “I remember how you used to be, Frank. That’s good for a start.”

  Chapter 3