Slave Graves

by Thomas Hollyday

Out on the river, a small breeze had come up. In the quiet without the diesel engine roar, Frank could hear a loose cable slamming against the side of the barge, the steel resounding, still sounding to Frank like the cry of a child. Hanging across the river, the great crane still struck eerily towards the site, moving slightly up and down with the tidelap and the wind.

  This was the first time he had been able to inspect the damage to the bridge from last night’s firefight. Frank could see the terrible scars ripped into the ancient concrete of the bridge by the machine gun bullets. Here, the iron central draw mechanism of the bridge was bent in some places where shells had ricocheted from them. In an absurd tribute to the workmanship of the previous century’s Maryland ironworkers, none of the rounds from the police boat had been strong enough to pierce or destroy the old iron. The church too was more tumbled. The walls were scorched black from the tracers.

  The breeze brought a new sound that contrasted with the clank of the crane. This was the swishing and squeaking sound of oars in oarlocks. Along the brush and tree trunks at the river’s edge, there was movement, flashes of orange and black against the bright glare. Then, from under the bridge arches, small wooden rowboats moved single file toward the site shoreline.

  Frank showed Maggie the rowboats. Frank could see the orange and black of human butterflies, several in the front part of each boat, wings folded to their sides. Behind the butterflies, two others, their wings folded beside them, sitting side by side, rowed the craft. The rhythm of the oars resembled drumbeats as they touched the water, dipped, pulled and then spat the riverwater behind.

  At this time, Birdey Pond appeared in the stern of another craft, her hands on a large pole that pushed her boat onward against the current. Like a tall Viking chieftess from some distant mythological century, she was directing the boats towards the beach at the site. Frank watched her poling around the same trees he had been trapped against in the night.

  After the first boats had landed and human butterflies were striding up the beach, Birdey, with a few strokes, beached her craft. She in turn stepped ashore and began to organize her people, using hand signals and making very little noise.

  “Jake hasn’t seen her yet,” Frank whispered to Maggie.

  “We may have some hope yet,” she replied.

  The butterflies assembled on the small riverbank, forming a wall against the quiet river behind them. Human hands came out of the insect fabric and brought up binoculars to eyes that were still hidden in the costumes Birdey walked back and forth, less dreamlike and more like a sergeant drilling her troops.

  Then the butterflies were discovered. One of Jake’s guards ran down to the riverbank and began to yell at Birdey to no avail. The guard was surrounded by three of the butterflies and forced to return to where Jake was standing with his police escort.

  Jake began a tirade, walking back and forth also, waving his arms at the assembled policemen, trying to get Billy to order his men to force the intruders off the site area. The policemen milled about the bulldozer waiting for orders from Billy. Billy in turn watched Birdey Pond’s group growing in size. Meanwhile, the operator, Buddy, continued to repair his bulldozer.

  From the highway came a new sound, the roaring of powerful engines and squealing of brakes. Entering the farm and moving against the cornfield and the trees, Frank saw the flickering glare of multicolored buses. Some had the names of churches and of cities like Baltimore and Washington printed on their sides.

  One, a purple vehicle, gave the name, in giant letters, of a Baptist church in Philadelphia. This blustering machine drove through the small gate, its side breaking off one of the posts. In front of it, two guards in the green Terment jackets tried to stop the bus but jumped back out of the way as the truck ran into the marsh brush at the right of the lane, disappeared in the tall cattails and then reappeared at the far side of the excavation where it stopped against the honeysuckle hedge. More than thirty persons got out, some of them elderly men and women, some with canes and walkers.

  The buses were in various stages of repair. Some trailed the smoke of burning engine oil. The other arriving buses were prevented from entering the property because the guards had formed a solid human line. However, one at a time the machines discharged their passengers on the highway. Then with revving engines and straining bus transmissions, each truck pulled ahead and turned away to park back along the road. The passengers pushed their way into the lane and circled around the guards until the green coated men gave up and stood back out of the way.

  “General Store,” Frank shouted, squeezing Maggie’s hand.

  She stood on tiptoes, straining to see more.

  The people, black and white families from these churches, women, men, children, gathered in small groups in the site area and stood restlessly against the honeysuckle mass. In a few minutes there were several hundred people assembled there, the yellows and whites of their clothes bright against the green honeysuckle vines. They moved among the patches of high green marsh grass and sat on the piles of construction materials stored in that section of the site. Some of them were close to the furthest edge of the surveyor twine outlining the edge of the shipwreck itself. From time to time one of the adults would point to the pile of skeletons and whisper a few words to children nearby who would look quickly and then retreat behind their parents.

  Finally a small car reached its turn at the gate. The Pastor climbed out, arm in a sling. He was dressed in a black suit with a bright tie. The bandage was gone from his forehead. As he approached Frank and Maggie he stopped and looked back at the assembling lines of church people. He removed the sling and raised his hands in salute, then turned and yelled to Frank.

  “We’re here, Frank!”

  Then the Pastor saw the skeletons of the child slaves in the excavation. He stopped and knelt on one knee beside the great pit. Then he looked up at Frank. Frank nodded.

  “There’s not much joy I can have in seeing this horror,” he said approaching Frank and Maggie.

  As he climbed up on the small hill to stand beside them, he said, his voice subdued, “When Jake set that old farmhouse on fire, tried to burn you folks, he lit a fuse under these people. The word went out on the telephones and the computers all night.”

  He turned and glanced at Jake standing beside the bulldozer. Jake stared back.

  “Jake has made a big mistake,” said the Pastor. “He gave us what we needed. Jake himself provided the push. Those skeletons push even more.”

  The Pastor pointed at the police. “I know every one of them police. The station dispatcher is a black woman goes to our church. She tells me what is going on. Billy is here today because he and Jake have been together since kids. He always does what Jake wants.”

  He caught his breath. “These folks come with me today, this is an army. They will fight with their bodies. They will stand right here on this hill with you and they will stop that bulldozer with their bodies.”

  “Some of them are very old. Some are children,” said Frank.

  “It’s what they want to do. Frank, there’s a line of them buses stretches away down the road. In town the traffic is all blocked up. There’s a lot of unhappy local businesses, too, especially down around the harbor. Tourist customers can’t get through.”

  A black man with a beard and large protruding teeth came up to them.

  “Chipmonk, these folks are the archaeologists,” said the Pastor.

  Chipmonk shook hands solemnly with Maggie and Frank. “It was time,” he said. “It was time to start this. If it had not been here at this marsh it would have been something else. Jake has been in charge too long.”

  The man swept his arm towards the others. “We intend to stay here this time.”

  A fragile looking white woman holding a baby in her arms came up. “You know,” she said, “there is a heritage day celebration this weekend, starts the day after tomorrow. I just want this one, this little baby, to have some part of that. So I got to be here today. It
’s like this old marsh here means something for all of us.”

  “Amen,” said the Pastor. Then he climbed down off the hill and walked out among the bus people.

  From the end of the marsh, Birdey Pond began walking toward the Pastor. She reached out her hands to him. The Pastor clasped her hands in return.

  The Pastor’s crowd had grown considerably against the honeysuckle hedges. With a movement of his hands, the Pastor directed them to close ranks with the human butterfly group that was spread along the riverbank. As the murmurs poured out and smiles were shared, an alliance became fact.

  The united movement began to express itself in a chant or perhaps it was a war cry, that was repeated over and over. As the chant reverberated with different human accents, it increased in power and force until it became high pitched, like a scream or yell. This was a human fellowship. Here, Frank could see all the causes, the requests for justice, all blending into one cry. There were the two leaders hand-in-hand, the tall white aristocratic Robin “Birdey” Pond standing with the warm black preacher, the man of God, Pastor Jefferson Allingham.

  The crowd began to move forward. The people from the riverbank moved up, and the people from the buses came across the field. The wall of people were fused together as they moved, their emotions bursting out ahead of them.

  Then a large orange banner, the size of a dozen bedsheets sewn together, was unfurled above the crowd. Hands grasped its edges so that it was a square with fingers of many colors around its borders. It was held, stretched and flat, across the heads of the demonstrators. Frank could see from his vantage point on the hill several feet above the crowd that there were large black letters painted on the fabric, the letters spelling out, “BUTTERFLY.”

  Frank heard that word repeated over and over in the chant. He looked around the site. Toward the river, the site was lined with the human butterflies. In front of the massive honeysuckle hedges by the highway were the arrivals from the buses, the former members of General Store who joined and mingled with the butterflies. The area along the entrance lane was still open. Then, between Frank and the ruined house were Jake Terment and the policemen, as well as the two bulldozer employees.

  Jake stood watching the new situation in front of him, his face impassive. From time to time he spoke to the chief, pointing to one person or another as though he were taking names, suggesting people to be arrested or prosecuted. The operator had parts of the bulldozer engine spread out on the great tread of the machine. He kept dropping them as he nervously tried to finish his repair.

  Other men and women began coming through the gate. They moved tentatively into the open space along the lane. Many of these people had been at the cocktail party. Frank recognized the black businessman who had asked about the slave graveyard legend. None of them walked forward to speak to Jake. Instead they stood by themselves.

  “They are not sure whether to support Jake or to support the people on the site. The buses coming through town must have alerted them that something was happening up here,” said Frank.

  Maggie nodded. “Maybe Jake sent for them thinking they would support him out here.”

  “Doesn’t look like they are going to,” observed Frank. One of these men stood with his eyes fixed on Jake, his hands at his side, a grim smile on his face. It was the mayor, who had introduced Jake at the hotel speech. Frank knew any mayor of a small town was a powerful figure, a cheerleader for economic development like the Terment Town project. This man was the caretaker of the townspeople’s hopes for the future. Yet, as Frank watched, this man made no attempt to walk up to Jake. Instead he stood with the new arrivals, hesitant, nervous, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and looking around at the crowd in front of him.

  Jake waved to different people but received no greetings in return. It was as though he were suddenly an outsider, no longer part of the inner circle of local power. Jake turned back to stand again beside the bulldozer.

  “Pushing out these scientists, the mayor ain’t for it, Jake,” said Billy.

  Jake ignored him, looking at the bulldozer.

  The chief turned to the line of the other officers and said, “Each of you boys do what you think is right. “Then he left Jake’s side and walked over to the group at the cornfield where he stood by the mayor and waited. Billy looked at the ground, not returning Jake’s stare. Several other policemen followed including all the black officers. Three officers remained with Jake, one of them, Cheeks, moving the leather restraint off his holstered service pistol with his thumb.

  “Hey, Jake. They’re choosing up sides,” called the Pastor from out in the field. “It’s back like it was when we were kids. You’re ending up on the worst team again.”

  The sunlight had become very hot. Frank felt the burn of the sun on his bare skin. Maggie wiped the sweat from her forehead, streaking her face with black soil from her dirt covered hands. The people around the site inched closer, some of them in the back standing on tiptoe to see. The murmurs of conversation slowed. There were no air currents to move the leaves in the trees. Frank could hear some animal noises, the creatures venturing out to peek, but even the animals and insects in their subdued racket sensed the danger of the moment.

  Buddy finally finished attaching the last part and looked up with satisfaction at Jake. “That’ll do it, boss.” He dropped one of his wrenches and the bang of the metal sounded like a gunshot.

  Jake nodded, impatiently. Buddy climbed up on the tractor. Frank could again see the tip of the operator’s head behind the great roll of trash. The engine began, first faintly as the starter motor whirred, then building up revolutions and rolling its terrible thunder out over the site. Buddy held back on the forward clutch, restraining this power. The machine shook with pent up destructive force, the tracks slipping inch by inch forward.

  Jake looked up, almost reverently, at the huge roll of trash, the pieces of sharp steel and fire blackened wood hanging out precariously in the air, then turned and, after straightening his silk tie and tucking it back into his summer suit, walked toward Frank and Maggie, a confident smile on his face.

  Chapter 22