Slave Graves

by Thomas Hollyday

It was the morning of Heritage Day.

  Hundreds of people were at the funeral. Their cars formed one of the longest lines River Sunday had ever seen for a burial. Old timers said with authority that the only time more people had shown up on the streets was when General Eisenhower came through looking for votes. The Pastor told Frank that Lulu, one of his friends from the old civil rights days who was now the owner of a twenty four hour strip club on the main highway south outside River Sunday, said she and her girls had made more money since yesterday that they had during the peak of last year’s peak summer vacation season. Friends of Jake and his wife were transported from the small River Sunday airport in black limousines. The cars stopped at the small Episcopal church. It was the same church from which Jake’s father had been buried. Many of the friends were celebrities themselves. They were richly dressed and their faces showed a common and well practiced expression of grief.

  Maggie observed that she would have believed their sorrow was truly felt if only there had been some difference among their expressions.

  “You expected an occasional tear,” said Frank.

  “Yes,” she said, “Or a sob or two.”

  Those not invited to the ceremony at the church, especially the hundreds of tourists visiting the harbor for Heritage Day, stood on the sidewalk outside. One visitor from Texas remarked casually that he was delighted he could see, if not a wedding of a celebrity, at least a funeral. Frank and Maggie watched from her replacement State of Maryland sedan. Some of the crowd on the street near them, especially the teenagers, they recognized as members of the crowd at the fire. Many of the local onlookers were crying as if a close relative had died.

  “They thought of Jake as their royalty,” said Maggie.

  Clouds had come up and the day had a strange chill, even in the summer humidity. The procession came out of the church. The line of cars moved slowly under the Heritage Day banners stretched across Strand Street. Maggie pulled her car into the end of the line. State government officials ordered by the Governor to attend at the gravesite were in the line in chauffered black state cars, much larger than Maggie’s sedan. The Governor had stated that he was unavoidably detained. The mayor had urged a short church ceremony so that the Baltimore television crew would have more time to film the outside procession going through the tourist area of the town. Out in the harbor an offshore breeze chased large swells out to the Chesapeake Bay where a distant roll of black sky foretold storms. Jake’s white yacht, its bow showing scar marks from the explosion, pitched with the waves, rising and falling without purpose or direction.

  The television cameras, set up in front of the ruined church just over the old bridge, were broadcasting live as the cars rumbled onto the island. People throughout Maryland and across the United States saw the slow limousines filled with mourners pass by, headlights proclaiming the night of death. The television commentators spoke repetitively the keynotes of Jake’s audiovisual obituary, his great real estate wealth, his glittering marriage to Serena, his antique house on Allingham Island. They reported nothing about the tall concrete piers thrusting up in the background behind the limousines. Nor did they mention the collapsed crane in the river, oil still leaking. The cameras were set high and did not photograph the strips of bullet cracked concrete and the scorches from machine gun tracers on the walls of the ruined church. No one mentioned the blackened trees in the distance where the fire at the farm house had burned leaves and treetops.

  Other expertly placed cameras captured the cars moving slowly into the ancient graveyard. They panned over the gravestones, televising the names of generations of Terments who lay buried under the ivy and lingered at the Admiral’s grave tracing the deep carved Confederate flag, its stone lines filled with the everpresent cemetery moss, the cannonballs at its foot. They caught the dim light of the cloudy sky as it bounced off leaves of the heavy bending trees. If the moisture of the rich vegetation and ancient burying place could be transferred to film, the photographers accomplished this.

  Frank and Maggie stood behind the other attendees, barely able to see the grave as the minister said last words. The white preacher had been told moments before to shorten his speech still further because the television coverage requested more linkup time for the interview with Jake’s wife.

  Billy led the other pallbearers as the coffin was rolled to the gravesite. Now the television cameras turned to the minister.

  “He lost his life,” quickly intoned this black suited man, trying to accomplish what perhaps was the greatest speech of his church career as he continued speaking, “doing what he cared about most, serving his people, his family, his land. He lost his life but he won our hearts as only a man of principle can do. Jake Terment will be remembered by all who knew him. He will not be forgotten. Here was a man who cared about homes for the people and devoted his life to sheltering his neighbors. Only the truly big man can give so graciously to the small man.”

  Frank stepped out of the way as the television reporters began interviewing the guests. He watched as a very old woman with red dyed hair came unnoticed up to the gravesite as the others were moving away. She stood looking at the grave for a few moments, tears coming from her wrinkled eyes. Then, as she slowly stepped away, a trumpet began playing “Maryland My Maryland,” the song Frank recognized from his first day in River Sunday.

  As the words traveled over the other graves, Frank and Maggie turned to leave. He wanted to get some more work done at the site. There was an interview with Jake’s wife at the entry to the graveyard, near a pair of concrete and stone posts and a broken iron gate that was pulled back to the side in the uncut grass. Frank stopped nearby with Maggie and listened.

  “I knew this was a mistake,” Serena sobbed to the television interviewer. She was the same reporter who had interviewed Maggie. Serena was dressed in a loose fitting pantsuit and her right arm was in a sling.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Terment,” the reporter sympathized.

  She looked up from her handkerchief. “Please use the name Serena. Jake would have wanted it that way. He said it was better for my pictures.”

  “Serena, is it true that you had a premonition of harm coming to your husband? Did you try to warn him?”

  “Jake never listened to me. I did tell him not to come to this place. I told him he belongs to the world, not to this island where he was born. I tried to keep him away.”

  “What did he say when you tried to stop him?”

  Then Serena stared at the interviewer for several moments. The reporter moved the microphone in an attempt to get her to talk. “We’re on the air. There’s no time. Can you tell us?”

  “He said we had to make this trip. He wanted to announce here in his home town that we are expecting our first child.”

  “You’re pregnant.” The reporter smiled broadly.

  “She’s got a scoop and she knows it. She smells pay bonuses,” whispered Frank to Maggie.

  “It’s all wrong now,” Serena said, wiping her eyes. “Now he’s dead. I don’t know what he wants me to do.”

  “You can name the baby after him. He was a great man.”

  She held her sore arm. “We know it will be a boy. Jake wanted the name to be Henry. Now I must go.”

  “Just one more question. People here say that he was loved. What do you think?”

  “Do you expect them to say anything else? Do you expect them to say that he died because he was hated?” She sobbed as she looked at the reporter, a look that begged the reporter to let her go.

  The reporter persisted, “We’ve heard from reliable sources in Hollywood that your centerfold modeling and your movie career are finished, that the accident you had here with a wild animal has scarred your body so you will never be able to model again.”

  Serena did not answer.

  The reporter continued, “What do you think about the bankruptcy of the Terment Company? Now that your movie career is finished and your husband’s money is gone, what will you and the child liv
e on?”

  Serena sobbed, then stared through her tears with what appeared to Frank as sudden hatred at the reporter. She said nothing more and the reporter finally walked away leaving Serena crying, standing alone as other visitors to the grave passed by her without stopping.

  As Frank left the graveyard with Maggie, the clouds went away and the sun blazed light among the old trees. Outside the shade of the trees, his body felt the brunt of the steaming sunlight.

  Later at the site, Cathy reviewed with Frank and Maggie how the technicians brought in from other sites were transforming the dig. She was dressed more simply now in blue jeans and a brown work shirt. She had come out to the site to inspect the installation of a new security fence, a tall chain link affair that would protect the excavation site from any future vandalism. Most of the honeysuckle hedge along the road had been taken down for the fencing.

  “There will be a twenty four hour human and electronic security system, paid for by the State of Maryland,” she said.

  “Tell me,” said Frank, “What’s the State going to do here now?”

  “The Governor is making this place into a park. There’s also some chance that it will be picked up by the National Park Service as a Federal park. We are going to make a maximum effort to get this site established in the best way we can. I’m sure that you will be pleased about that.”

  “Certainly am.”

  “Poor Jake Terment. He was such a gentleman to have come to such a horrible accident. His death will be a loss for the whole State.” She looked at Frank. “You mustn’t feel responsible.”

  “I don’t,” said Frank.

  For a moment she was taken back by Frank’s earnestness. Then she went on, “The Governor is going to dedicate all of this to the African children who died here in the shipwreck. There’s a lot of hope in Baltimore that there will be tourist interest in the site, maybe the same as there is for the old slave monument out in the harbor at River Sunday.”

  They walked toward the site where a long steel building was being bolted together. “This is temporary,” Cathy said. “It will protect the site from rain. We will have it there until the site is completely studied. Maybe two or three years. Maggie will supervise the reassembly, study, and proper burial of every skeleton. We are hoping to trace every child as far as we can to his or her original village in Africa.”

  One of the archeologists, a woman in jeans, waved to Frank. She had a small plastic bag in her left hand.

  “It’s a sample of what we found this morning,” she said.

  “Where?” asked Frank.

  “The area where the Captain’s cabin should have been,” the woman replied.

  “Find any more possessions of Captain Henry?” he said as he opened the plastic sample bag.

  “Not yet.”

  Small seashells fell on the ground.

  “These are trading shells,” said Frank. “Cowries.”

  The woman continued, “One of the new workers was moving his trowel along the strata line, right below the charcoal and the point of the blade opened what was like a fissure in the side of the hole. The shells just started to pour into the hole, like children’s gumballs out of a candy machine. There was quite a pile of them in the floor of the pit.”

  Frank bent over to pick up the tiny shells. “Must be left over from the trading journey.”

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “It’s horrible to think of, isn’t it? I wonder how many of these shells would buy a human child?”

  “Antonius could tell us, but I’d rather not know,” said Frank.

  He looked up at the Army truck parked near the boxwood. “That truck did its job for us. I thought I’d try to locate the real owner. I’d like to buy it from him.”

  “If you take it back to the university, you’ll certainly surprise your friends.”

  “I’m not going back.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’m staying here to work with you on this project,” said Frank, looking into her eyes.

  Maggie looked away, “The Pastor is going to speak in a few minutes. I thought we could listen together.”

  “There’s a radio in the truck,” said Frank.

  They walked toward the truck, silent for a moment.

  Then she said, “You’ll really stay here?”

  “This is a pretty place. I’ve always wanted to work in a pretty place.”

  “What about your department at the university?”

  He looked at her. “I’m going to resign. There’s nothing more for me there.” He paused. “Sometime, I’d like to tell you about Vietnam.”

  “I’d like to hear,” she said. She moved her toe in the mud.

  He said, “Would you mind if I worked with you?”

  “If you were still the same guy who came down here a few days ago, my answer would be a lot different.”

  He smiled. “I wouldn’t want to work with that guy either.”

  She looked at her watch. “The Pastor’s speech.”

  He opened the door to the truck. “Here, sit up here.” He looked at her across the large sea. “It’s a little different than last time.”

  She smiled. “Last time wasn’t all bad. You and I were here together.” He reached under the steel dashboard to where a small radio was strapped to the dash supports. He turned the radio on.

  “I know how to get the station.” Maggie reached over and tuned the set.

  A voice welcomed them to the Daily Church Hour with Pastor Jefferson Allingham.

  “Birdey said she was taking the Pastor out to see the butterflies,” said Maggie. “She’s also going to try to raise some money to get General Store started up again.”

  “I think they could do a lot together if they wanted to.”

  The radio blurted again. “Here is Pastor Jefferson Allingham.”

  The familiar voice began.

  “Mercy.”

  “Amen,” responded his congregation.

  “I say again, Mercy You hear me now.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The children were down below shouting for mercy,” said the Pastor.

  “Yeah.”

  “Adam and Eve had a son, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, yes, they did,” chanted the congregation.

  “The son Cain was up above murdering his brother Abel.”

  “Yes, yes, he was doing that.”

  “Then the innocent children were set afire, burned to death,” said the Pastor.

  “Amen.”

  “Murdered to hide that crime of brother against brother.”

  “Amen.”

  “Do we hear the children now?” asked the Pastor.

  “Yes, Dear Jesus, yes.”

  “Do we hear the cries for mercy?”

  “Yes, Lord, yes, Amen.”

  “I say to you those cries we hear are not for mercy,” asserted the Pastor.

  “That’s right, you’re saying it.”

  “They are for justice.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We will make that justice come over the land.” said the Pastor.

  “Yes, we will,” agreed the congregation.

  “I say that every one of those souls will have a grave on land.”

  “A true grave now.”

  “Every one will have the prayers of the Lord said over them,” the Pastor said.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “We pray that their own gods will accept the prayer to our God.”

  “Amen.”

  “That land were they have lain so many centuries, that land will be made pure again.”

  “Amen.”

  “That land will be testament to the Lord,” charged the Pastor.

  “To the truth,” agreed the congregation.

  “Let me say again there will be butterflies in this land now.”

  “Amen.”

  “There will be no bridge and profiteers to destroy the land.”

  “Yes.”

  “There will be always
butterflies for these children.”

  “There will be butterflies for all children,” agreed the congregation.

  “As we walk among these new graves we will shout that Jesus is great.”

  “Amen.”

  “Let me hear you now,” shouted the Pastor.

  “Amen.”

  “These will not be the graves of slavery,” said the Pastor, his tone lower.

  “No.”

  “These will not be the graves of the oppressed.”

  “No.”

  “These will be the monuments to the future.”

  “Like soldiers of Jesus,” said the congregation.

  “Like the survivors that they are,” said the Pastor.

  “Amen.”

  “Like the children that they will always be.”

  “Amen.”

  “Let me hear you sing, my brothers and sisters.”

  Frank switched off the radio. Above the truck a helicopter was circling. It was a television news unit, big silver letters on its fuselage, photographing the site for the evening television news in Baltimore. The noise of the rotors resounded over the area. At the site many of the workers looked up for a moment, then resumed their toil.

  Frank and Maggie climbed out of the truck.He scratched his neck and adjusted his hat. Together, they looked out at the shimmering Nanticoke River. A large red white and blue harbor tug was moored next to the half sunken barge. A diver was over the side from the tug working on the leak in the steel hull. They could see the air hoses going down into the oil stained water and small bubbles coming to the surface.

  “They’ll pump her out. Then they’ll tow that equipment out of here,” said Maggie. The name on the barge was half under the water. The great white letters spelling “Torment” appeared to melt as they reflected under the surface of the water. Some other men from the tug were busy attaching restraining cables to the crane and the piled river.

  “After they pump it out and get it level that crane won’t look so bad,” said Frank.

  At that moment, the cat appeared from the nearby brush and nuzzled at Frank’s bare right foot. He looked down at the cat’s orange fur and black stripes.

  “A cat that swims. Hard to believe.”

  “You saved the butterflies, cat,” said Maggie.

  “Cats don’t like butterflies.”

  Maggie looked at Frank. “Why don’t cats like butterflies?”

  “The Monarchs,” Frank grinned, “They’re poisonous to eat. Makes cats sick.”

  Maggie stooped down and patted the cat. “You don’t eat butterflies, do you, cat?”

  “Jake said cats brought him bad luck.”

  “He sure didn’t like cats,” she said.

  “Maybe it just comes down to luck,” said Frank.

  Maggie looked at him, “Good beats evil.”

  “The ghosts of all those dead people in the wreck rose up to get him?” Frank smiled. “No, I think maybe Jake just slipped. He had bad luck.”

  In the distance from far down the river there came the sound of deep booming thuds, each boom separated by several minutes.

  “Those people firing that cannon have their own reasons,” said Frank. “That old cannon has to insult, has to be heard to be alive.”

  “There’s no way any of it can be compromised either,” said Maggie. She recited a poem. slowly, her lips moving around the words,

  “War is slavery,

  Slavery is war,

  Slaves become warriors,

  Warriors become slaves,

  Until we learn to do better,

  It will always be so.”

  Frank said, “That’s not bad.”

  “Soldado taught it to me,” she said.

  “He knows a lot, that old man.” He pulled her close to him.

  “I was thinking about those Mayan relics Soldado said might be found at the site.”

  She grinned. “There’s just one thing you should know.”

  “What?”

  “Roses can never overcome thorns. They just learn to live together. So, you’ll have to get used to briars when you dig,” she said.

  He tightened his arm around her waist as she held his hand. They watched an orange and black butterfly fly out from the brush on the shoreline. It flew near the old war truck and landed on the olive drab windshield frame . The insect fluttered quietly for a moment and then took off, circling out over the site where the workers were digging in the boiling sun, flying tentatively to a small mound of wet earth that had just been excavated. Then as it lifted again into the sunlight, the butterfly seemed to tip its wing to Frank and Maggie before it disappeared among the honeysuckle.

  The End

  About the Author

  Thomas Hollyday brings to life strong Chesapeake characters showcased in their stunning, unique Eastern seaboard landscapes. Reviewers praise his rich sense of place and his respect for the great machines that made our era possible. His stories resonate with a deep awareness of history and legend. The humor in life shines through as Tom draws on a comedic sense honed sharp from an accomplished cartooning background.

  In his River Sunday Romance Mysteries series, Tom honors the battles for love of land that have recurred over and over in the Chesapeake Bay. Past victories and defeats created mists of legend and history which shroud the present landscapes. Throughout Tom's stories, he incorporates both the machines that have left lasting imprints and the wildlife that enriches the captivating natural landscape. His modern and timely novels feature memorable characters from the small town of River Sunday, Maryland, and reveals their compelling stories as they search for answers to achieving love, unveiling mystery, and vanquishing evil.

  Tom grew up in the Chesapeake Bay, and his love for his native land shines through in every word.

  Part of the proceeds from the sale of Thomas Hollyday fiction and non-fiction goes to support drinking water resources for wildlife.

 

  The River Sunday Romance Mystery series of books:

  Slave Graves

  Magnolia Gods

  Gold

  Powerboat Racer

  Terror Flower

  China Jewel

  These books can be found in paperback and ebook format from most major online retailers including Amazon, iTunes, and Nook.

  For more information, and to talk with Tom, visit:

  Web: https://SolarSippers.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RiverSundayRomanceMysteries

  Twitter: @tomholly