Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1) (12 page)

She grinned, “Just think how much it would cost to move all the graves in a slave graveyard to some other site. A lot of that cost would come from our budget, and take funds away from other projects. Do you want that?”

“I’ve always been a professional,” said Maggie, moving from foot to foot.

“Maggie,” she said as she lowered her voice even more, “The Governor gives me my orders. On this job he said to please the preacher and to please the businessman. That’s all he said but I knew he meant that both these men were very powerful and could cause him a lot of adverse political pressure. He expects to hear no complaints from Jake or the Pastor. As I see it, the best way to please both of them as well as the Governor is to have you both do as little investigating as possible here and to cover this site soon with tons of impermeable concrete.”

She gave Maggie an understanding smile. “I’ve always tried to help the people who work for me. I keep you protected from the politics so you can do your job. This site might become very controversial if you archeologists find anything out of the ordinary. So, in order to please everyone, I find it useful not to care what is here. Frankly, I don’t want you to find anything at all.”

She winked at Maggie. “I’m sure you’ll do the right thing here.”

She walked over to where the Pastor was working. He was holding a small bone up in the air, examining it. She did not ask to look at the bone. Instead she ruffled her papers to let the Pastor know she was standing there. When he turned around, she said, “Thank you for helping us out. I understand you’re a pretty good volunteer archaeologist.”

The Pastor stood up. “I’m trying to be some help. A little too old for some of this though,” he smiled.

“I’ve told Maggie to keep an eye out for your graves. Of course, we’ll have to stop our research when we have decided about the shipwreck.”

“I understand that. I appreciate your concern. The Governor has been very kind.”

Cathy then turned to Frank. “I’ll bet you’re enjoying working for Jake Terment. Isn’t he a delightful man? He looks just like he does on television except I think he looks a little shorter in person.”

Frank smiled. She continued, “Well, I’ve got to get back to Baltimore. I’ll be back again soon to look in on the project. I’m scheduled to meet with Jake Terment tomorrow.” She turned to leave and then noticed the broken conglomerate in the grass.

“What’s that?” she said.

“That’s the cannon I mentioned to you earlier.”

“Well,” she said and continued walking, calling back to them, “Maybe what’s left of it can be set over at the side of the new bridge as a marker of some kind.”

The three of them watched as Cathy got into her car and started the engine. She waved as she drove down the lane.

Frank gave Maggie a friendly nudge. “Why is a bright person like you working for a political appointee like Cathy?”

“Why is a bright person like you working at the university? We got to eat like everyone else. Besides, it’s interesting. There’s more potential sites in Maryland than many other places. Just like everywhere else, it seems, most of the time the sites get concrete poured over them no matter what we think might be there. We learn a little each time though. I keep hoping that I’ll find a site that I can study for a while, spend some time with, study. That’s why I became an archaeologist. One good site would make the effort all worthwhile.”

“I guess,” said Frank.

“Cathy isn’t the slightest bit interested in this site, Frank.”

“I overheard a lot of what she said,” said the Pastor.

“She sure was interested in you, Pastor.”

“The Governor wants the votes of my little congregation next election. It’s the real estate lobby versus the minority lobby.”

“She wants it finished,” said Maggie, looking out at the site.

“Why bring me here if everybody has made up their minds already and no body is interested no matter what we find here?” said Frank.

“They figure that you’ll just go along, add authority to their move,” said the Pastor.

“Is that what you are, Frank?” asked Maggie. “Jake’s insurance policy?”

Frank didn’t answer her. They went back to digging. Frank was working at Location Q, Maggie still at T, the Pastor working on the remains of the soldier near H.

“Frank, you remind me of my parents,” said Maggie

“How?”

“The way you still think that Jake Terment is somehow OK. My parents would do that, put off a decision about people. Being in Vietnam didn’t teach you anything. I think you’ve agreed to put up with anything that comes along, right or wrong.”

“You think I’m kind of hardened?”

She didn’t answer him directly. “My mother and father were flower children. The only reason they stopped living in a shack in the woods was that I was getting older, needed to go to school, needed clothes and shoes. There were other families there. We ran around naked in the summer. It was like a village. I remember the ramshackle house that my father built, like a painting with all the strange colors and the octagonal windows. Then, my father gave up on the lifestyle. He started wearing shoes. He went to work in a hardware store and was so good at it that the day came when he bought out the owner. Even then he managed to give away goods to poor people. He never chased people for bills that they owed. My mother was the same, so wonderfully competent and perfectly willing to spend her energy on anybody who needed her.”

Frank smiled. “Maggie, I never even knew my parents’ real name. They changed it after they came to the United States. They are both dead so I guess I’ll never know. I think they helped to kill a lot of German soldiers during the war.” He brushed intently at a spot of dark soil.

“They took the name of Light when they were allowed to emigrate to this country,” he continued. “The name was in a copy of the music for the Star Spangled Banner. My mother learned the song. She liked where it said the “dawn’s early light.” My family name was from the song and then my first name was after President Franklin Roosevelt. I don’t remember them ever telling me the original European names. They never even talked their old language.”

“Why?”

“They hated the place they came from. Whatever home they had was destroyed in the war. They had been fighters, probably underground soldiers. Their bodies were covered with scars. Their wounds caused them serious medical problems when I was growing up. They had a pass to go to the Veterans Hospital. I would ask them but they never told me how they got the scars.

“My father had a big knife that he kept in a box in their bedroom closet. I sneaked a look at it one time and I thought I saw stains on the blade. I grew up thinking that those were bloodstains from when my father killed enemy soldiers.

“One night my mother was drinking wine and talking a lot. She told me about a night during the war when a great number of children were freed from a concentration camp near her village. The camp had been attacked by the underground. After the children ran into the woods, three guards were killed by hand to hand combat by a village man and his wife. The couple then had to flee soldiers who hunted them for months. She began to tell how the man and woman almost starved to death and how the woman’s own baby died of hunger. My father told her to stop talking, that he did not want to hear the story. The next day, I went to look at that knife again but it was gone. I never saw it again.

“My father was a cabinetmaker. I have some of his furniture. Beautiful. He was an artist. She was too. She helped him build the furniture. I remember when their customers used to come to the house and sit in the kitchen and talk about the furniture. They had many wealthy clients. I overheard my father asking one of them to write a letter to help me get into college. My father would never tell me about things like that. He did not like to admit that he ever took a favor from anyone.

“My parents were the reason I went into history as a career. They owned every book they could buy about the United States. They taught me about this country, about American history. Every day when I was little they would quiz me about America, about the Presidents, about the American heroes. To them everything the country did was right. Europe was always wrong.”

“Later I got into archaeology. I began to find out that what actually happened here was very different from the history that had been written. Heroes were really scoundrels, and scoundrels were really heroes. Archaeology didn’t lie. It laid bare how people actually behaved. There was no argument with an artifact hidden under the soil that no one has tampered with. I did not talk with my parents about my discoveries in archeology. They were happy with their own view of history.”

“Then Vietnam came,” Maggie said.

“My parents were very patriotic. They thought it was their duty to support me going to the war. My parents insisted it was a just war because they believed simply that the United States was always right. Maybe I thought too much about my mother’s story of those children escaping the concentration camp. Anyway I convinced myself I had to go to Vietnam.”

“My folks,” Maggie said, “could never decide which side was right, which one to cheer for. It was against their nature to choose. In the beginning I worked for the Viet Cong in the student marches at my school. My parents would watch and look sad about it all. Then when the soldiers came home and some of them were so terribly wounded I worked in the Veterans hospital helping out. They were sad about that too.”

She smiled. “Maybe my flower children parents are why I like flowers so much. Children too. I like children.” She looked at Frank.

“I like roses,” said Frank. “I respect them.”

“Why?”

“They overcome the thorns.”

“You have something to learn about roses,” Maggie said

The Pastor called, “Should we try to lift out these soldier bones?”

“No, leave them. Come help me here. We need to work on the shipwreck itself. We can come back to that area if there’s time.” Frank scratched his neck. “That waterman, Soldado, said he would be here to take us down the river.”

“You think looking at those other wrecks might help figure out this one?”

“I’d like to see what those hulls look like. That could help us direct our work to the best spots on this wreck.”

They worked silently for a while, the Pastor digging at the opposite corner from Frank. The Pastor spoke first, “Let me tell you about my family. When my father and mother were let go from Peachblossom, we moved back to River Sunday. We lived upstairs at the church where I preach. My father and mother were hired as the custodians. He cleaned the place, repaired it, and she cooked for the itinerant preachers. Then my parents died suddenly. My brother and me were taken care of by the visiting preachers and some of the church members who looked in on us. They did all they could for us but they had their own families to take care of. It was cold in that old church. In those days there was not much insulation just boards on the walls. In the summer there were all kinds of bugs. We got along except that we were always hungry. Most of the time my brother would steal some of the food left out on Sunday morning for the church breakfast. He would sneak it back up stairs and hide it and he would share the food with me during the week. At first I wouldn’t eat any of it because I said we shouldn’t be stealing. I said that the preachers had told us not to steal. Then I got too hungry at night and I started to eat.

“My brother, Lincoln, had an idea that Jake would give us some food. He thought that because Jake was a little kid and little kids care a lot about other people, that he would be generous. Lincoln figured we could get enough food for a week. So we set off in the morning, walked all the way out to the island and up to the big house and knocked on the door. It was cold, I am telling you. A wet wind was blowing hard off the river, and my feet were just about frozen in some old red rubber boots I had. My brother was cold too but he stood there and rang that front doorbell over and over. He wouldn’t give up.

“Finally the big old wood paneled door opened just a crack and we saw Jake peering out at us, his arm reached over his head like this.” The Pastor demonstrated with his arm stretched upward. “That arm, you see, was holding the doorknob. Jake, he smiled at us through the crack and said, ‘What you want, Lincoln?’

“My brother said, ‘Jake, we’re hungry and we want some food.’

“So Jake said, ‘All right, you wait here,’ and he closed the door. Just closed the door. We waited there in that cold for this little fellow to come back. My brother was smiling then like he had won something.

“Byembye Jake comes back to the door. We hear him turning the knob inside and then it opens up a little bit more. Jake’s hand comes out in the cold air and in the palm of his hand is a handful of corn flakes. Then he says, ‘You better not eat too much because I’ve heard my father say that black folks won’t work when they got too much food in their bellies.’ Then he drops the food on the snow on the step and slams the door. Well, my brother, he looks at me and we both reach down and pick up every one of those flakes and just gobble them down we were so hungry. Then we set off for home. My brother told me then he said he knew I was cold but that he was warmed up by his hating Jake.”

Maggie nodded.

“I lost my brother a year after that. He got caught stealing food by one of the preachers and he was thrown out of the church building. He went off to Baltimore and I heard in a while that he died up there in the children’s jail. That was the end of my family till my wife come along.”

The Pastor brushed at the ground with one of the excavating brushes. “I thought about that all my life, that kid and his corn flakes.”

He paused. “I’m hopeful though,” he said softly. “Always hopeful. People around here might just surprise me. They may turn on Jake, throw him out of town with all his money. Just tell him they don’t want it. One of these days they might.”

Frank pointed to a hard curved object coming out of the soil under his scraping. He was working into a new area. “Test pit Q is finally showing something. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more. This is right where the main cargo hold should be.”